Post: #401

I am in the market for about $100 worth of articles on russian/ukrainian online dating at $3-4/100 words, if any of you are interested. I've done business with another forum member here already who might vouch for me if he is ok with doing so.

Post: #402

Quote:I am in the process, Man - thanks. I should have it done before I leave Cambodia and will make it available on my blog. The blog will see a lot more action once it's monetized too.

Tell us more about getting steady assignments through your website. Most of us haven't really capitalized on that as much as we should. Are you guest blogging? Or just blogging?

Though I replied to this a while ago, my bad.

But two the guys are bloggers. One I edit for b/c he's not a native English speaker and the other guy I ghostwrite for. Third guy runs a website and need webcopy for guides and shit.

My advice to find recurring work is this;

1) Look for bloggers, website owners, online magazines. Doesn't matter if they say they need one article, they will need more later.
2) Deliver top-notch content.
3) In your proposal explain how you have an interest in their topic. Tell them you worked in a related field or have some relevant personal experience. Lie if you have it to they buy it.
4) Send an e-mail after you get feedback offering yourself in the future The worst they can say is no.
5) I bid around $100.00, weeds out the cheapskates.

Number 3 is the most important. Just add a paragraph about "topic x" to your bid template. Hope that helps.

Post: #403

Anyone here has experience with outsourcing projects?
Im getting sick and tired off the whole freelancing thing and trying to transition into selling info products.

Last week I outsourced my first gig to a university student... I can pocket 50% of the money and dont have to do squat. Feelsgoodman.
Now I have time to work on my own projects where the real money is... lets face it trading time for money is a shitty deal!

Definitely wanna do this more... if you can get 20€ an hour you can split it 50:50 and still make 10 bucks an hour. Not much but you can take more jobs AND you can free up your time.

Pro-Tip... your local university is full of broke students who would be ecstatic to get some work-from-home opportunities.
Girls seem to be willing to work for less than guys from my assessment so far.

Post: #404

Another thing we should all be striving to move up the curve and that is DELEGATING and spending your time with high-value stuff like copy-writing, creating marketing campaigns, and so on...

Read Perry Marshalls 80/20 sales and marketing this stuff will blow your mind!

A friend of mine recently did a product launch and made 20.000€ revenue in 5 days... thats easily 15k in pure profit. He pretty much made in 5 days what I made in one year!

Do 3 of those in a year and youre set. And since he has his whole launch sequence and product in place, pretty much all he has to do is keep building his list and send out some emails during the launch.

We need to start thinking like businessmen and stop thinking like wageslaves... and that means focussing on high-value skills and outsourcing all the low value crap like content creation.

http://oi59.tinypic.com/swshom.jpg

It works for freelancing too... plenty of six-figure freelancers who have teams of writers and only oversee their work and do some quality control.

Post: #405

Yeah, I've run writing teams before.

It's pretty lucrative, but the management can be a nightmare. You'll also find yourself jumping in a lot to save jobs when people turn in shitty work or disappear on you.

Focus a great deal of energy on hiring right, and I think you can avoid a good deal of the hassle. Resist the urge to hire the first guy who seems half-legit.

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: #406

I've found these two sites to be useful in providing writing and proofreading services:
Polish My Writing, which gives you feedback on how to improve the style and grammar of a piece of content. It's handy when you're in a hurry and need help in tweaking an essay or an article.

Article Rewriter is pretty similar, and can be used as an article spinner by giving you suggestions for synonyms and similar articles. Hit and miss sometimes, but it depends on your needs, I guess.

Post: #407

BB or others,

Any experience with, or thoughts on using elance for attorney work? I looked through that and it could be a good payday.

Post: #408

^ What do you mean? The legal jobs section or writing for legal subjects?

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: #409

Sorry should have been more clear - legal jobs section. I'm an attorney, so I would freelance actual legal jobs (litigation, contracts, etc.)

Post: #410

Hey everyone. I'm new to the forums but I've been lurking for at least a year. I've been speaking with BB a bit through PMs and I'm grateful for the info he's given me. Hope to even buy him a drink in person someday.

Im currently teaching in Thailand, and this weekend in planning all of my lessons in advance so I can devote the next four months to freelance writing. Im completely new at this, but not new to writing itself. I'd love to join some mastermind Skype groups that you guys are having. I'd like to meet up with some people too if that's possible. I'll update you folks on my progress as well.

Post: #411

(06-05-2014 12:39 PM)slubu Wrote:  Sorry should have been more clear - legal jobs section. I'm an attorney, so I would freelance actual legal jobs (litigation, contracts, etc.)

Right on - yeah, I don't know anything about it, but I imagine there's definitely some location independent cash to be made in that section for sure.

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: #412

I've notice that alot of jobs on elance now have an additional, mandatory box about "outlining your approach to the job".

I don't know what the hell to write there. Clients give me a topic, I google it, read the 1st pg results and I write about it but I can't just put that, it's nothing special.

Anybody have any ideas?

Post: #413

BB, have you ever tried freelancing on the Warrior Forum? Fiverr's been a total bust for me :/

Post: #414

I have a question.

I was messing about with a coding side project, and wrote a script to automatically increase an instagram user's number of followers, and it allows for targeting users of whatever demographic you want

Now I found out after I made it that people will pay for this...what's the best way to market it?

I'm just curious to hear different ways of going about it

If anybody wants the script I'll give it to them for free, but you actually have to give me an idea of how you'd market it

Post: #415

(09-25-2014 02:19 PM)frenchcorporation Wrote:  I have a question.

I was messing about with a coding side project, and wrote a script to automatically increase an instagram user's number of followers, and it allows for targeting users of whatever demographic you want

Now I found out after I made it that people will pay for this...what's the best way to market it?

I'm just curious to hear different ways of going about it

If anybody wants the script I'll give it to them for free, but you actually have to give me an idea of how you'd market it

PM me bro.

Post: #416

So I decided to give this freelancing thing a go. Thank you to everyone in this thread for the inspiration. Special props to BB for all the help and encouragement in this thread. Ill let everyone know how Im progressing.

Post: #417

I'd like to share my brief experience with Elance. My business is software development (web, mobile or desktop).

After going through this thread and also some of the related links (esp. Hacking Elance), I signed up, filled my profile with details phrased to sound professional, I started bidding.

In all my proposals I have been very detailed about my analysis of the client's situation (based on the info they provided), my relevant experience, and the suggested plan of approaching the project.

I recorded a video proposal several times, too, as suggested in the Hacking Elance article. This hasn't had an effect yet; I suppose I'm not a great TV personality However I need to test this more to be sure.

To my great surprise, I won my 8th bid with a client who initially responded with a very detailed follow-up to his project posting. After a brief back-and-forth, I sketched some mock-ups for him and let him know I'm ready to start working if he chooses me. Which he immediately did.

It was a web application of the ecommerce sort that I knew would cost me more (based on my ideal hourly rate) than the bid amount, but it was supposed to be a learning experience, too (I did not work with the technology I was supposed to know for ~ 2 years) and also a way to establish my reputation on Elance. When you are new there, you really want to get some 5-start feedback ASAP so that the buyers see you've proved yourself.

I delivered the project in ~ 3 weeks, out of which I may have spent 5 full working days on it (which, again, rendered any profit to be an investment rather). Luckily the client communicated extremely well and did not make any demands that would go too far from the original agreement. He also made a prompt payment and gave me my coveted 5-star rating.

Now, mission accomplished, I might have thought, but looking at the project postings there, I am not yet optimistic. I mean, most of the projects are not described very well and have unrealistic budgets, which means the clients themselves are not very clear about what they want and what they should be paying for it. And let me tell you, these are the clients from hell.

What I'm looking for in clients are people who run a genuine business and have a clear vision of what they're trying to accomplish; they may not understand the technology all that well but are easy to talk to and you can persuade them to follow your advice IF they are convinced you understand their business and truly want to help them. However, I may only find one or two such prospects any single day among the wasteland of "website scraping", Wordpress bug fixing etc.

In the end it seems Elance will only be a stepping stone for me until I can develop relationships with serious clients who'll give me serious business over the long term.

Any fellow techie who's had success there?

Post: #418

Any established members here looking to get into some writing work?

I may have a need for someone to help out. Just a little here and there until I see how you perform. I want to see some examples of writing work of some type, though. Big plus if you're well-read in health and fitness - the type of topics we cover here.

Should be versatile though too. I do a great deal of web copy and blog articles for corporations.

I'm not looking for anyone new to the forum. You must have credibility here.

I'll probably edit what you write pretty heavily, but I have high standards for quality and ability to write a cohesive piece that flows (and is entertaining as well as educational), so keep that in mind.

I know some of you have emailed me about something similar over the last year or so, and I probably told you I'd get back to you if something comes up. I've got a ton of private messages here, though, and it's hard to keep up with who was who. So forgive me if I spaced it.

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: #419

I've PM-ed you BB.

Post: #420

I'm interested BB.

Post: #421

I'm interested.

Post: #422

Hey BB, I'd be happy to contribute if possible. I wrote some SEO for G Manifesto a while back and I'm an English teacher so my writing should be on point, regardless of subject matter (happy to do a little research as well).

Post: #423

We discussed this a while back but I'm not surprised with the amount of attention you got, Beyond Borders. I could always use another hustle to stay sharp: I can send you writing samples again.

Post: #424

Guys, sorry I wasn't a bit more explicit, but it's probably best to pm me on this kind of thing. You can also email me at [email protected]

Sweet Pea, I know we've corresponded before, but I'm looking for someone a bit more established here. If you've met some members that you think I know and/or trust, feel free to let me know.

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: #425

(09-23-2013 03:00 PM)Teedub Wrote:  Well, I must say I have never come first out of over 3 million before! Granted, the test was very easy...but I must type faster than Superman.

Yeah they have it set so that if you get a perfect score, you're ranked "first place." But you're tied for first place with hundreds of other people