Another stage in my free wild freelancer life: how you can find decent, reliable and constant sources of work? As a beginner freelancer writer, at the very beginning, every single writing challenge is a good test. And, if you are paid - modestly, at least for the moment - you can enjoy the pleasure of learning and being paid. An option which is more than tempting. This was the positive paragraph sending good waves and encouraging other writers-in-the process to leave their boring non/anti-writing jobs and to start their new life.
But the life of a freelancer is not a carefree experience on a work in the pinky cloudy office. Or, in the beginning, it is not at all. One of my most difficult experiences lately is financial planning. Please don't blame me for being so messy with my budget. Honestly speaking, since I have started my full freelancing experience a couple of months ago, my monthly revenues can hardly be considered enough for a modest survival. Long life to the careful saving!
In the beginning of my full-time freelancing life, last December, I started by using Freelancer.com: a lot of offers, but the prices are ridiculous sometimes - I was offered $0.40 for 500 words, an opportunity that I did not consider honouring at all. After a couple of months of intense presence, and 1 person per month that did not pay - a student, a scam another scam - Freelancer.com continue to be my main source of medium and long-term profits: through them I started to work in the domain of customer support - the subject of my next help-book, I learned a lot about SEO, Wordpress and online marketing and even tried the taste of some modest translations. The main problems are:
- the low prices - for instance, I saw people offering for an academic editing and even substantial rewrite around $70.
- the high risk of scams - be sure that you communicate exclusively via the website because in case that you do not receive the money the perpetrator could be blocked; when you accept. However, I saw a couple of days ago that they intend to remove many doubtful profiles.
Curious to test new opportunities and to find long term working opportunities, I tried Elance.com. An elegant design, incredibly interesting opportunities, but if you are not a native English speaker, no chances to be accepted. Elance displays a high concentration of professionals in English writing, with competitive credentials. I hope that one day someone will accept by bid. As in the case of Freelancer.com, you need time and energy to build your credibility and for that, you need to be offered the opportunity to do so.
Another opportunity for freelancing is oDesk where I made an account a couple of days ago, but did not have the time yet to create my profile and explore the market. Being a freelancer is not easy, but every time I am about to finish a new project, I am happy to discover my new skills and the improvement of my writing style.
The freelancing experience goes on and I'm getting ready for new opportunities.
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