Content Magician, Freelance web content writers

I started my writing career on freelance with sites like www.getafreelancer.com. If eBay was the site people went to for cheap stuff, then www.getafreelancer.com is the site people went to for cheap services. That’s how started my career as a freelance writer….producing really cheap writing materials. There was one time I wrote 100-word articles for about less than $1 a pop! No seriously. But the competition on the freelance writing world is tough…being that there are a lot of adequate writers in this world with a little bit of talent, who can whip out a decent article with a decent number of words, laced with keywords (splattered is more the word) in this world. Particularly countries like India where there are, admittedly, more talents than others….really cheap ones.

I’ve long abandoned my account with Getafreelancer because I started to have a client base and I focused more on quality these days. But I got curious, one day, and I went back in and took a look at the kind of projects that were being posted in there. And once again, I was sucked into a black hole….a vortex of cheap writing. It’s a wet market of cheap services….still. You can see it from the way people are focused on speed and cost.

For example;

“I need 50 articles with 500 words with keywords. More work to come. If good, will assign more projects regularly. Budget is $1 each article”

Article by: Marsha Maung

Continue Reading (New Window)

There are many articles out there that I find interesting and very helpful on the Internet. These are talented writers who pay a lot of attention to every word, letter, number, dot, punctuation mark that they put into their articles. Some of these renowned writers are people like me, someone who works from home, sitting there sipping his or her fourth cup of coffee, smoking up the room with cigarette smoke and screaming at the kids to stop fighting.

 There is one element in ALL of my favorite articles that I find present….and that is, they’re all very personal. Yes, personal as in, the writers are not afraid to reveal themselves, their lives, their mistakes, and their experience as a writer in their articles. They scream on top of their lungs with BRIGHT BOLD LETTERS and swear their heads off when someone screws with their work. In other words, good writers usually put their hearts into the articles that they write.  

I can tell you that writing is a very methodical and also mechanical process. After some time, you write just to get it over with and when this happens, the quality of the article drops dramatically. You sit there wondering if something is wrong with the batteries in your wall clock because time seems to have stopped moving. It happens all the time. This is not the way it is supposed to be done. Good writers don’t do this. When they start getting robotic or mechanical, they get off their butts, do something else, stretch a little, read and then get back to writing. (more…)

By Barbara Worton

What keeps you up at night? Your to do list? The bills? Worries about people you love? Your health? Your job? More than 70 million Americans have a hard time falling asleep. If you’re one of them, I have a solution. I call it sleepwriting. At bedtime, I pick up a pad and pencil and start writing. I start with the first words that pop into my head and keep going for three pages–no looking back–and after I’m done, the noise of the day is silenced, I can hear my own voice and I slip into a deep restorative sleep.

Everybody can sleepwrite. Here’s how: (more…)

Hey, it’s Christmas time and it’s also time to hang up the pens and pencils, stop writing and give those fingers a rest, y’all! Have a drink, be merry, bitch about a client, dream of having a write-less night, no more deadline (just for today) and just enjoy the merry atmosphere. Those kids of yours hovering outside the door while you’re writing and typing madly into the keyboard and computer….yeah, those are yours and they’re waiting for you to bring them somewhere special on Christmas.

Those phonecalls….yeah, the phone’s been ringing….those calls are from your frantic parents who thought they’ve lost their child to a writing syndrome! Answer the phone, for crissakes! And that turkey and tuna salad….they’re for you.

For freelance writers like you and me, a holiday is never quite a holiday until we give ourselves a break. It’s Christmas and New Year’s approaching. Time to give the fading alphabets on the keyboard a break, crack some knuckles and dig into the food and drain the wine bottles!

Merry Christmas!

“You sit there and just type and type and type. What job hazard have you got?” came the taunt. Jumping out my seat, out rolled the following job hazards of a writer who sits there typing and writing stuff for other people.

1. Writer’s Finger aches – You don’t think it hurts to type all day long? You don’t….try it. I mean, I know software programmers get the same problem, so do secretaries and legal clerks. Freelance writers get this problem too, you know. And yes, it IS a job hazard because it bloody hurts!

2. Writer’s Wrist-ache – Tennis players get tennis elbows. Writers get writers’ wrist? Well, I am not kidding here, ok? Because at one point in time, I developed a serious case of a condition very common among writers like me, the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome which affects the wrists of the writer. Don’t believe me? I don’t blame you. Wanna know more? Check out Wikipedia.org’s elaboration of Writer’s Wrist….otherwise medically known as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

(more…)