Post: #226

Great work mate. I'm doing a history article (thanks to BB for the link) which is basically a compressed form of my dissertation and I'm getting just shy of $100 for it. Bloody fantastic. The hard work comes in taking 10,000 words and editing it into a 2000-3000 word one, and still formulating a concise piece of prose with a definitive argument and narrative thread.

If they decide they want more articles, then I'm completely buzzing. I can knock out 2000 words of properly researched and referenced work on Nazi Germany, or things preceding but related to it, in about 3 hours, so a nice little earner there.

Post: #227

Nice one mate. That's good to hear.

Post: #228

Matt, you should get onto the Freelance Den that BB has posted about. Me and bojangles are on it, I think there's a few links on this thread where you can join. There's loads of info on there, and I think just being there for a month and watching the vids on there etc is enough for you to gain loads of knowledge. I'm really busy atm, but I'm going to really dive into it next week.

Post: #229

Thanks mate, I signed up last week. I haven't looked into it fully yet as, like you, I've been really busy.

Post: #230

(10-27-2013 03:40 PM)MattC Wrote:  Just landed a job writing......dating articles! Ha!

I went onto Elance and I'd received an invitation to apply for it. He wants 7 done a week at $10 an hour. I told him $20 an hour or 2.5cents a word, and blitzed him about how I'm the best writer he'll come across for the job. Adding that I have a blog about the subject with over 100,000 views helped my cause a bit!

Settled on $12 an article and I'll do 5 a week. It's only 500 words or so per article and I can rehash a few I've already done for about 4 weeks. The only task is to make them blue pill.

Congrats Matt, but going to do a little parade-raining here...This is not just directed at you but kind of a plea to everyone.

I understand the eagerness to get working when you're just starting out, and I know the money is not currently a big concern for you, but one thing to keep in mind is that every writer delivering high-quality work and professionalism at low rates makes it more difficult for other writers who use these qualities as their competitive edge to stand out and get paid what they're worth.

I've been guilty of the same. When you need money or are, as in your case, just anxious to get your start, you take what you can get - but the end result of a bunch of writers doing it is the type of stuff you see on Elance - clients having outrageous demands and standards for $5 pr $10 articles, if not lower (even from native English-speaking writers).

$12 an hour is pretty rough when you consider that if you had to depend on it for a full-time income you'd be covering taxes, online fees, health care, retirement, and not to mention your marketing and admin hours all on that budget. If you actually sat down and did the math, it would be a hard stone to swallow.

I don't want to discourage you because I like seeing people take action, but I believe you were one of the guys who mentioned several times that the loot was a nonissue. Settling for these types of jobs has its place, but in my opinion, that place is when you're scrambling to get some dough in your pocket to pay the bills.

Another way to look at the fact that you've got an income is to realize that you've got plenty of breathing room to shoot for better clients even if it takes longer - I say take advantage of it, Man; not everyone gets that luxury, even when they're young. If you're anxious to break ground in this niche, you could use your time better by filling up a blog with solid articles on dating, and then doing some guest blogging or approaching webmasters in the niche directly, leveraging your blog for samples.

As for guest blogging, you could probably find a lot of those webmasters here on the forum...

If this guy can only afford to pay you $12 bucks an hour, I doubt his site is going to give you some kind of prime coverage, so why not build your portfolio working for yourself? While at the same time also building something you can show clients in your niche as proof you understand the bigger picture when it comes to blogging?

I know it's hard to turn these jobs down when you're looking to build some cred. Just try to make it extremely temporary when you do it or at least insist on the client giving you a resource box at the end of the articles with a link back to your site so you can try to make the most of it. And if you choose the latter of those options, be sure the dude has a readership or it's wasted effort.

If anyone plans to stay in these lower-paying markets for long periods of time, I'll try not to judge, but please ignore any of the customer service advice I've dropped in the thread so you don't undercut the rest of us. LOL I feel a lot better about sharing tips here when I know they're going to guys who will insist on getting paid well instead of supporting the self-perpetuating belief that good writing comes cheap.

You did say you'll be giving him rehashed work, so that calms my concerns a bit.

Since you missed the deadline to get into the Writer's Den, go back and check out the link VP dropped about the Nigerian guy who built a $50K a year business (twice) with his client-getting methods. It may even treat you better than the Den because it pretty much lines up a step-by-step method (for free) while the Den covers a lot of info in one place and, as some guys mentioned, can be a bit of an overload.

Anyhow, I'll get off the soapbox now; good to see people are landing work.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #231

^This

especially if money is not an issue why are you wasting your time with this stuff?
You would be better of writing free guestposts on high-profile blogs or doing pro-bono work for non-profit organizations. This builds a GOOD portfolio that can attract good clients.

On the other hand you wont be able to impress high-profile clients with 12$ articles! A website that posts those kind of articles is not high quality to begin with. Do you want your name and writing associated with some hack who doesn't care about quality? Youre not only wasting your time but like BB said youre also making it harder for writers who desperately need the money.

Post: #232

Bagged myself a $24 per hour blog posting job, with further likely prospects. Highest yet, for me.

Post: #233

Fair enough lads. I haven't accepted the terms on Elance yet and yesterday after I posted on here I was thinking that it was going to be too much time and effort. I've emailed the guy and told him that I won't be accepting the job now. Next time I'll hold my ground with my prices but yeah, the ease of the articles and the reputation flashed before my eyes.

Post: #234

(10-29-2013 06:41 AM)MattC Wrote:  Fair enough lads. I haven't accepted the terms on Elance yet and yesterday after I posted on here I was thinking that it was going to be too much time and effort. I've emailed the guy and told him that I won't be accepting the job now. Next time I'll hold my ground with my prices but yeah, the ease of the articles and the reputation flashed before my eyes.

Understand completely and hope you don't think I was harping on you too much. I think you made a good choice. Part of negotiating is definitely knowing when to walk away, and it's always a good idea, if you do go lower than your proposed price, to always get something for the hit (the byline, for instance, may have made it worth it). Makes it more worth your while and keeps some high value in the client's eyes.

I've had to email people back and tell them I've changed my mind before too.

Anyhow, here's the way I see it, since you've got the time and breathing room. Focus your effort on building a niche site (if you don't have one already) and doing some guest blogging. It accomplishes multiple goals at once.

1) Builds your own site and traffic, hopefully monetized for some affiliate income, which means it can put loot in your pocket soon or at least build you a list. If this pays off well enough, you may forget about freelancing altogether, though you don't want to count on that yet.

2) If you target sites that also pay their guest bloggers, while still giving you the byline and link, writing money in your pocket too - boom.

3) Write a "hire me" page, and it sells your services for you.

4) Builds you some authority in your niche.

5) Gives you some blog management experience, which, along with social media, is becoming an increasingly important skill for the higher-paying job ads out there.

Quite a set of birds to knock out with one stone, if you ask me.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #235

Not all mate, that's what this thread is for; to help each other and if I couldn't see I was getting sold short, and you could, then it's done its job.

I've got a few ideas ready for when I'm going to go full time into this at the beginning of December. Vincent's post in the location independence thread outlined quite a lot of good ideas too and I'm definitely going to be looking into the guest blogging side of things.

In terms of a niche website, I'll have to think of something although I'm gearing towards online dating since I've killed it on dating websites. The competition is rife though. Obviously I already have my blog but I can't use that professionally given some of its, er, "wild side".

Post: #236

(10-29-2013 08:46 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  [quote='MattC' pid='566114' dateline='1383046887']
Anyhow, here's the way I see it, since you've got the time and breathing room. Focus your effort on building a niche site (if you don't have one already) and doing some guest blogging. It accomplishes multiple goals at once.

Can you elaborate please BB, I don't want to sound like an idiot, but I'm not sure what guest blogging is, and how it relates to your own website.

Post: #237

(10-29-2013 09:19 AM)Teedub Wrote:  

(10-29-2013 08:46 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  [quote='MattC' pid='566114' dateline='1383046887']
Anyhow, here's the way I see it, since you've got the time and breathing room. Focus your effort on building a niche site (if you don't have one already) and doing some guest blogging. It accomplishes multiple goals at once.

Can you elaborate please BB, I don't want to sound like an idiot, but I'm not sure what guest blogging is, and how it relates to your own website.

Sure, Tdzl.

Guest blogging is when you write articles as a "guest poster" for another site, preferably a site with a lot of traffic and authority. You usually get a byline at the end of the article (a "pitch," of sorts), giving you credit for it, and a link back to your site.

You can link back to your writing site if you want, but to really maximize the efforts, you can build a blog in a niche you want to try to make some money in and focus on landing guest blog spots in that niche. Traffic comes back to your site so you can start building a readership, hopefully getting them into an email marketing funnel.

Meanwhile, you can put up a page on the site offering your services, so that clients in your niche who come across your site see that you freelance. It can also be linked to as a portfolio of your work and proof you know how to blog coherently and consistently on a single topic.

It's a pretty high-powered marketing strategy if you do it right, though a lot of the biggest blogs are starting to turn them down because it's become the next best thing for SEO guys and shitty writers. It's become a bit crowded and a lot of sites who have embraced it are deteriorating in quality. I foresee the door closing on guest blogging a bit in the future, at least in the IM and blogging niches.

Not completely, of course - it will always exist - but writers will more likely be welcome upon invite only in a lot of places. Now may be the time to build some relationships with some big sites and hopefully get some regular posting spots. If you're a good writer it's definitely not too late. And you can get plenty of traffic off the mid-range sites still too.

Some sites actually pay you AND give you the byline, as I mentioned in the above post. They usually don't pay as much, but pretty cool if you can get paid while also marketing your services and, possibly, making money off your affiliate stuff or own products.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #238

Merci

Post: #239

BB even if guest posting gets abused I dont think it will ever die or become invite only. Lots of blog owners are busy/lazy and will welcome guest articles with open arms. They might get more picky but I dont think its going out of style.
As long as you can deliver a KICKASS guest post thats custom-tailored to the specific blog, why would they turn it down? Its free content and after a while they will run out of things to write about so theyre usually happy to get a guest writer who will present a different angle.

Regarding guest posts so far Im 3/3 that got accepted and one website is an authority blog in the make money online niche. Its actually a lot easier than I thought to get guestposts going.
Its a good way to drive traffic and one of my main tools to build my email list right now. Im curious though how they can stand up as a long-term source of traffic as I kinda doubt its sustainable. At some point the blog posts will disappear on second page and will hardly get any views anymore.

Post: #240

I am posting a job right now on eLance for programming an iPhone/Android app, if someone is interested drop me a PM!

Post: #241

For freelancers, how confident do you feel in what you charge people? How do you find out what other people are charging for similar work?

Post: #242

(10-29-2013 04:55 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  For freelancers, how confident do you feel in what you charge people? How do you find out what other people are charging for similar work?

I see it as what you value your time as. A piece of advice I have picked up from the Freelance Writers Den is that if you are charging $2 per word, there will be clients willing to pay that, same at $1, 0.5, etc.

This obviously needs to be representative of your quality.

I charge what I do because it allows me to build more of a client base, recommendations and to get my name out there which will make finding higher paying clients more likely to work with me.

Post: #243

(10-29-2013 11:27 AM)w00t Wrote:  BB even if guest posting gets abused I dont think it will ever die or become invite only. Lots of blog owners are busy/lazy and will welcome guest articles with open arms. They might get more picky but I dont think its going out of style.

Better blogs are already starting to shut the door and make their sites invite only. Problogger, Copyblogger, and DailyBlogTips are just a few that come to mind. These are some of the biggest players out there, but the mid-range blogs tend to follow whatever the biggest authorities are doing, so I smell a bit of a trend coming.

But as I mentioned, it's mostly the big blogs in the MMO or blogging niches that are starting to put their guard up - these guys get a ton of people emailing them and I've even noticed the quality has gone down on these sites in recent years because they've opened the door a bit too far. Their readers seem to be noticing the same.

Over the years, I've seen a lot of marketing channels people said couldn't possibly get played out do just that, and the pattern tends to follow the same course. All the aspiring IM'ers out there are a force to be reckoned with and in their numbers have the power to ruin just about any good thing.

But yeah, I agree there will always be a way. There always is when you're a good writer and a hard worker, in my opinion. And there are plenty of other sites where it still looks easy to get in there; there are countless PR 3 and PR 4 sites to aim for too if that suits. And many niches to target. Google's Matt Cutts has made it pretty clear that as long as you don't overdo or abuse it that the practice should still be safe in the near future; many sites that are closing their legs are doing so from fear of Google, I presume, so this is encouraging. Just have to be serious about it and make it more than just about the link. And have something intelligent and interesting to say.

I'm just saying I don't think it hurts to build those relationships now while the bar is still somewhat low. I actually meant to encourage people rather than discourage people from this marketing channel, so maybe I should have kept my mouth shut on the personal speculations. LOL

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #244

Quote:many sites that are closing their legs

lol

Yeah its definitely a good idea to get in on the groundfloor and build relationships now. I also shouldve mentioned Im not operating in the English market so there might be more competition.
And even if google devalues guest articles you could still drive traffic with them. Im not a big fan of relying on google anyway. They are like a moody women changing their stuff all the time.

Post: #245

(10-30-2013 07:00 AM)w00t Wrote:  

Quote:many sites that are closing their legs

lol

I thought you might appreciate that analogy.

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #246

I've undersold on my first elance job but I need the feedback and a rating. My Odesk profile is going well, I've got a client that needs 2 500 word articles at $20 a pop each month. I do need to start my own blog up though and start doing some affiliate marketing I guess.

Post: #247

I understand this might be sensitive information but for those of you comfortable with sharing, how much are you banking per month? Are you able to pay your bills with your freelancing gigs? I am a good writer and would like to get started with this but hearing rates like $24/hour being called "high" makes me nervous.

Post: #248

(10-30-2013 08:50 PM)dreambig Wrote:  I understand this might be sensitive information but for those of you comfortable with sharing, how much are you banking per month? Are you able to pay your bills with your freelancing gigs? I am a good writer and would like to get started with this but hearing rates like $24/hour being called "high" makes me nervous.

I never called $24 high, just the highest yet. I have chosen to work my way up the ladder, increasing price as you go.

According the the Writers Den, if you work hard you can get up to $250 per hour and more.

Post: #249

Sorry. Seems like I misread your post!

Post: #250

I'm setting myself goals for my earnings when I start out full time. For December while I'll be at home, I'm targeting $200 a week. By February I want that to be $700 a week minimum.

Considering I've earned about $250 in around 20 hours of freelance work to date, and that's from a position of nothing, I'm sure it's more than achievable. That's just on Elance too.