Category Archive:
Posted by paul novak on September 2, 2010 at 1:44 am
I’ve been busy. Really busy. Normally that’s a good thing, and it means money is coming in and jobs are in plentiful supply. As is usually the case with me, nothing is ever normal. I’ve been working, but the things I am doing won’t see any ROI right away. If you’re a freelancer or independent marketer I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.
Although I am a freelance writer, I also do a fair bit of web development and dabble occasionally in online commerce. To that end I am restructuring a commerce site which really, is unrelated in any way to my freelance work, but if I don’t get it done I could very well end up single in short order. So of course that one’s a priority job. Love you too honey… Ahem.
Next on the list is something that to tell the truth, I am somewhat excited and optimistic about. This really worries me because any time one of my ideas gets me excited and optimistic, I start having those visions of Lucy and the football. Despite this, I am rushing headlong into a new venture. Although I’m not ready to present it or even let Google find it yet, (those damn bots are persistent little buggers), I can say that it’s very much related to freelancing and online employment.
I’ve heard a consistent complaint lately that work and clients are hard to come by, no one wants to pay decent rates, and all the job sites like E-lance are overrun with fly by night operations that are driving down the rates. I know from my own experience that these complaints are all too true. In fact, they are worse than they appear because on top of all this, finding the work often costs money on top of it all.
I’ve also been asked frequently about how I find work, how I get paid, and what can people do to improve their own efforts.
So, with these complaints and questions for inspiration, I am working on a new endeavor that I hope will address these complaints and more. Much more.
To that end, I’d like to use this post to ask some questions. You don’t have to go into detail although I’m very much interested if you are willing to. I just want some candid feedback which will help me to narrow my focus and put together something truly useful and of benefit to the freelance and professional online entrepreneur. Thanks in advance for helping me out here. I’ll toss out a little bit of intrigue before listing my questions and say that I have some of you in mind specifically, and how you reply may have some unexpected results.
Without further ado, here we go.
1. What has been the biggest challenge when it comes to working online?
2. On a scale from 1 to 10, how difficult would you say finding work as a freelancer or independent business person is?
3. Do you hold a paid membership, free membership, or subscription to any job services like E-Lance, Demand Studios, I-Freelance, Guru and other similar job outlets?
4. If yes to number 3, what is your biggest disappointment with them, and what do you like most about them?
5. What do look for in a business resource? Advice? Leads? Free programs? Network capabilities?
6. What is your biggest disappointment with working online?
7. Do you believe that online job services should be free like free classifieds, or do you believe that job services are justified in charging fees and taking commissions from the work their patrons perform?
8. Have you made substantive connections and found work through any social platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, or Twitter in the last 3 months?
9. This one is probably a bit difficult and I’ll understand if folks decide to skip it. What do you think needs the most improvement in the world of freelance employment and online business?
10. Do you think the independent online worker is going to become increasingly in demand in the near future, or do you see them finding the market for their services becoming smaller as commercial business continues to increase its online presence?
That’s it folks. I appreciate your taking the time to answer these for me, and I hope to have something to show for your effort within the next three weeks. I’ll be attempting to post regularly now that I have an actual agenda and schedule figured out. Of course, I could end up operating out of a Frigidaire box come next year instead so I can’t make any promises. I’m keeping all my landscape equipment in operating condition just in case.
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Posted by paul novak on August 27, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Before I freed myself from a life of slave labor I worked in the landscaping industry. For fifteen years I worked my way up from lowly hired laborer to foreman and manager positions. During ten years of this hardscrabble existence I was brain damaged. I must have been. You see, how else can you explain believing for ten years that hard work and good work ethics will be enough to eventually land you in a good position with a fat salary and benefits? I chalk it up to inhaled carbon monoxide from weedwhackers and tractors and the daily baking of my skull in the hot sun.
I should have gotten a clue after about the tenth time I was told what a great job I did while being given still more responsibilities and yet no similar increases in salaries. I should have, but my parboiled and oxygen starved brain apparently wasn’t quite up to the task of deductive reasoning.
Luckily though, even the weakest neurons receive a signal now and then and my beleaguered gray matter eventually began forming some rebellious suspicions. A big part of this began to happen when I got my first crew chiefs position.
“Yay! I got a promotion! Oh boy, now I get to start making some money instead of killing myself for nothing”, I naively thought as I left the bosses office. Nope. What I got was a pitiful pay raise that was just enough to bump my tax bracket and result in a net weekly increase of $15.00 in pay. In return I got to be the fall guy for several alcoholics who ran mowers over expensive exotic plants and stoners who were experts in finding secluded shade-trees for afternoon siestas. Now I got the opportunity to not only pick up slack, but take the blame as well when my crew got drunk enough or hid well enough to keep me from getting any work out of them. This was an improvement? Now I understand the half assed grins on my bosses faces when they gave me the position.
Perhaps being a foreman would be better? Not a chance. The carbon monoxide was still taking its toll on my synapses although a couple of them were trying like mad to send a signal across.
Becoming foreman was no better than being a crew chief, but it was the beginning of real revelations. I was somebody now according to my title although you’d never know it by looking at paychecks. A job title can be heady stuff, especially when you’re operating at 50% of mental capacity, and I stupidly accepted it as though I was actually being given something of value. More responsibilities, more demands, and more blame for others screw-ups yet still being without so much as a cut rate dental plan wasn’t exactly progress, but I still wasn’t getting it.
When I made foreman however, I began getting glimpses into the reality of how many businesses operate. I was getting to see the numbers on job estimates and employee data sheets now and then. Other foremen were confiding their own decade’s long experiences with me. Property managers were talking with me about budgets and my company’s yearly contract costs. Even MY medium rare brain couldn’t miss the facts.
I was being exploited. I was damn good at my job, and I did deserve a hell of a lot more for my efforts. But as long as I allowed myself to be used, my situation would never change. When the realization hit me, it was like the clichéd thunderclap. From that moment on, I knew without reservation that I couldn’t continue working as someone’s employee. It took one small annoyance after this realization took hold and I did something I had only done once before in my life; I walked off the job. I haven’t gone back since.
I immediately started my own business, and in my first year almost tripled my income doing the same thing I had been doing for over 10 years. Talk about a duh moment when I did my first round of taxes! I felt like slapping myself for not doing it sooner, but I was enjoying having food on a regular basis too much to worry about self recriminations. Eating regularly can be heady stuff too if you’re not used to it.
Eventually though, earning my living through sweat and labor began to lose its appeal. Although I greatly enjoy working outdoors and with my hands, the enjoyment began to fade as 20 years of labor made itself known to my knees and back. I didn’t like what this way of living meant for the future either. I realized that if I didn’t get away from inhaling small engine exhaust every day, in another ten years I’d be lucky if I could remember my own name. I would spend my golden years connected to an oxygen tank while nurses congratulated me on making it from my bed to the bathroom by myself and remembering how to get there.
By this time the brain damage had mostly reversed itself and I was actually having some novel and halfway ambitious thoughts. Chief among these new thoughts was the idea that I could do something else besides planting someone’s petunias and azalea bushes.
Over the years I had been producing an endless stream of online gibberish interspersed with occasional flashes of coherency. These occasional flashes brought some very generous reviews now and then from very forgiving readers. It was those folks who led me to believe I could make a living online, and with my first sold article, my freelancing career was born. Now I write for a living and although it’s been less than a year and my income is not what it once was, I’m hooked. C’mon, carbon monoxide poisoning, 90 degree heat, and a daily dose of physical exhaustion just can’t compete with air conditioning, iced tea and a keyboard. And I don’t even have to deal with unexpected hordes of hornets exploding out of a bush when I cut through their nest with a set of trimmers. I’ll have to tell the story of how I got stung 28 times and looked like a carnival balloon for three days sometime now that I think about it. Imagine a guy in a hard hat streaking past you at 3o mph, gibbering like a lunatic and stripping clothing as he goes by.
Anyways…
Working online as a freelancer has opened more doors than I imagined possible, and the flexibility and possibilities exceed anything I had considered doing with a traditional career. I’m finally doing something I actually enjoy, that I can really put myself into, and I can even get paid to do it.
It’s no wonder the internet has become such a huge and diverse marketplace. No wonder there are so many entrepreneurs and freelancers. Some of the most coveted types of jobs are those that allow you to set your own hours, work from home, and really use your own talents and abilities how you see fit. And just about every person with a computer and an internet connection has that job just sitting there waiting for them to fill the position. But they never do it, because it just never occurs to them, or they think it’s too hard, or they don’t see how anyone could pay them to use the internet. It’s a shame really. I fell into this opportunity through a combination of dumb luck, basic abilities, and a serious aversion to hornet venom. I’m sure everyone else has their own story to tell, mine’s just a little more ludicrous than most. I’m just happy to be here and still coherent.
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Posted by paul novak on August 21, 2010 at 9:07 pm
There are some things I just won’t do. I don’t care how great ten of my friends swear skydiving is; I will never see the appeal in screaming hysterically as I plummet 10,000 feet from an aircraft that by all rights I should still be safely strapped into. The humiliation of putting on a pair of Depends under a jumpsuit is by itself deterrent enough without the thought of subjecting myself to a prolonged confrontation with my mortality. Soiled underwear, screaming like a girl and an unceremonious impact cloud of dust is not how I want to go out.
Similarly, I will not go for a ride in a hot air balloon. An obvious offshoot of the skydiving idea, hanging in a wicker basket while watching the sweet safety of the ground slowly transform itself into an immovable object that is just begging me to test the laws of physics against its hard surface, doesn’t inspire much enthusiasm. To make matters worse, I wouldn’t even be able to mitigate the danger with a parachute because I’d still have to deal with the whole adult diaper and 3 minutes of abject terror during freefall thing were I to end up using it.
Some of my refusals aren’t all about death. Some are born from lessons in embarrassment. As they say, there are some fates worse than death, although finding the originator of that saying is nigh impossible. Probably because immediately upon discovering cause to coin the term, they went into self exile in some remote wilderness and have yet to reemerge.
A few all too real personal examples come to mind here.
Like the time a waitress stood at our table and asked me several times if everything was ok, and when I failed to answer or even acknowledge her existence got huffy and demanded “Are you deaf or something”? To which my friends replied, “As a matter of fact, yes, he is.”
I learned what mortification really looks like that day.
No, I’m not totally deaf in case you’re wondering, just in one ear, and unless you’re in front of me or on my “good side”, chances are I won’t notice you talking unless I see you. Handy in some situations yes, like when attending the inlaw’s family reunion, but generally just an annoyance. Moral? Don’t act on an assumption out of irritation unless you’re 100% certain it’s justified.
Such embarrassment is all too easy with the internet. We’ve all seen the stories of Facebook and Myspace pages coming back to haunt people. School teachers who probably would have been better off not posting those Cancun vacation pics with the delinquent bikini top and beer bong. Or the police officer who thought using her patrol car as a background for a nude photo spread was a good idea. These are just examples of the obvious gaffes to avoid. Besides, unless your gym membership is well used and your mastery of photoshop complete, chances are the potential damage isn’t just to your professional image. Now you know why I’ll never wear shorts if there’s a camera around. Think toothpicks with dimples for knees.
For those who work online, the dangers are numerous and more subtle. It’s bad enough we have to constantly hustle and keep up with ten different projects at once, but we have to do it without allowing even innocent mistakes to torpedo our efforts. Like the time I sent a liberally slanted piece about Bush’s intelligence to a conservative client by accident. Doh! No more naming files 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, for me. From now on its descriptive titles and a quick overview before hitting send, period.
And if I ever have to go rounds with an Editor again, I’ll be sure to do my write-up in Word first. Making stupid spelling mistakes when berating someone else for their editing mistakes is just plain bad form and never leads to a good resolution. Editors really seem eager to jump on those types of things for some reason and will get maximum mileage out of a typo. Go figure.
I suppose there isn’t a great deal of advice to be taken from this post and for that I apologize. It began when I was reading the paper and noticing one mistake after another and foolishly forming a self righteous opinion of my own abilities, then realizing I have more than one big whopper of my own to keep in mind. I guess all I can offer with this one is, if you think something is a bad idea or might be a mistake, just don’t do it. That, and hide the evidence. Luckily for me, internet access is available even in the most remote wilderness should it become necessary.
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Posted by paul novak on August 14, 2010 at 1:18 am
While at the store recently to resupply my last remaining vice with more nicotine, small talk with the cashier produced an unexpected and somewhat amusing dilemma. The usual perfunctory questions about how you’re doing and finding everything you need were jarred by the unexpected addition of…..
“So, what do you do for a living?”
How do you explain web content writing to someone who most likely has no clue what the simple answer would mean? Since I’m not the most socially extroverted person you’ll ever meet, and just wasn’t up to a lot of small talk at 9:00 am, I just hastily replied that I write for a living. No smokes, morning, and half a cup of coffee make for a grumpy curmudgeon.
Now, granted that in person I appear more likely to earn my living running a backhoe than putting words together, I was still somewhat chagrined by the cashier’s reaction. Abject surprise is about the best I can describe it. “You can write? I’d have never guessed you for a writer!”
I know I look like a redneck. I didn’t realize I look like an illiterate redneck. After all, I buy a newspaper every morning and I don’t even have a bird. You might think I am overreacting, but it was one of those cases where you had to be there. There was a whole bunch of body language and facial expression involved as well that had nothing to do awe. I guess it was the “You can write”? bit that got me more than anything. At any rate, it brought up a problem that’s arisen before with me since I took up freelancing.
How do you explain what it is that you do for a living when your work is freelance and based online, without having to pull up a chair and pour drinks to make the next half hour comfortable? Worse, tell someone that you write for a living, and they’ll invariably assume you must mean novels or books and either respond in a suitably impressed manner, or in my case, with surprise. Go into detail and explain that you write for websites and you can almost see all respect disappear as if you’d flipped a switch. After all, the internet is for playing Farmville and sharing dirty jokes with friends right?
How about marketing? How do you explain online marketing to those out in the real world who know the net only as the place where they check their email and post to Facebook? How do you make them understand in less than two thousand words, that it’s work in every sense of the word when they seem to assume you “play” on the computer every day?
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