The wonders of the Dropbox

If you are a big company working with many freelancers, many of them located very far away, it is normal to try finding a way to quantify the amount of work spent for you. The culture of work is challenged dramatically by the latest work trends but, as usual, the mind patterns did not change over night. 

As I am working as a freelancer for over five years, I was faced more than once with the suspicions of my otherwise nice bosses regarding the way in which I do spent my time. Especially in the case of people not familiar with what exactly does it mean to be a freelancer and somehow envious of your freedom of spending an impressive amount of time home zapping websites and drinking your coffee all day long and having free hot homemade lunch. What for a freelancer this is the golden mine of freedom: the possibility of organizing your time up to your needs, without spending hours commuting and killing time in the company of nice or not so nice colleagues.

Anyway, regardless of how much you will write and say about how wonderful is to be a freelancer, you will always be the target of various suspicions. But in the world of 2.0., there are a lot of tools that will help your reluctant employer to quantify your work. 

Take, for instance, the Dropbox. It is a system that allows employers to share docs, organize and edit information. Either you are in Sydney or Buenos Aires, you will add there your work objectives, your plans and even your financial documents. There are versions available for phone and if you can install it in a matter of minutes on your desktop.

There are three available variants: Free - you can use 2GB, Pro - $9.99/month and a capacity that goes till 500 GB and Business - highly recommended for teams, with a lot of safety features, permanent phone support and unlimited deletion recovery. 

If you want to find out more about it and to get updated with news, you must follow their blog, updated regularly.

Now, your virtual boss will be more happy and you can impress him/her with your speed and the amount of reports produced daily. (Each document uploaded has a date and the mention of the last update).

Good luck Dropboxing!

Adventure in the freelance world: oDesk

Very often, I complained about the problems that a poor freelancer like me should face regularly when it comes to finding reliable work and most importantly, reliable employers paying their duties in time. 

Till now, I used Freelancer.com - with regularly jobs and a couple of unpleasant financial surprises - and elance - without being selected after more than 4 months. But as I want to improve my porfolio, experience and, not less importantly, my financial situation, I considered too the option of trying out other resources of jobs for freelancers. 

The newest on my list is odesk.com, where I opened an account a couple of months ago, but did not went further. Today, I had the pleasant surprise that, besides updating the usual details and porfolio, I was requested to confirm my ID. It means that the chances of working and not being paid are very slim. I need to wait for around 7 days until the identity is confirmed - the PayPal and Moneybooker type of checking - and only after that I can start browsing the offer. I am curious what the situation is out there and waiting impatiently for the latest news from odesk's team.

Challenges of a sleepless Freelancer

There are many advantages and disadvantages of the freelance work, but the good side of the story is that the more you are into this domain, the more you would like to learn and improve your portfolio of skills.

And I explain the above optimistic statement with the help of a couple of personal examples.

The decision of becoming a freelancer was the result of relatively simple and classical reasons: the need to spend more time doing what I want to do, in the middle of the family and with a flexible program. In addition, I am the kind of person that desperately wants to do something new every single day and thus, being a freelancer was an opportunity for more daily challenges. Last but not least, my passion for writing and nothing else than writing pushed me forward to projects that will help me to improve my writing skills (in English).

I started my real-life experience in this domain the last December and till now, it was - and most likely it will continue to be - a very interesting experience, with many downs and suprising ups. I experienced people that simply disappeared without paying or did not agree to pay any single cent for a hard writing and editing job. I learned how to recognize the fakes on Freelancer.com and how to better use my marketing skills for improving my credentials and online image. 

The conclusion is banal: being a freelancer is not easy and, in comparison with someone that is employed regularly, no one is paying for my rights of going on vacation. If I do not work one day, I risk to lose around $50 the day and as I consume what I produce, any delay will affect seriously my problematic budget. 

The only possibility to completely start your work as a fresh new freelancer and not starve is to have some savings. Otherwise, you should be aware that until you will have a stable porfolio of customers you will need for around 6 months or even more, depending of your speciality. As a writer and translator in at least 3 languages, I am still not too close from this objective. 

While working, you should consider as well expanding your skills. For instance, I am trying to improve as much as possible the reading and writing skills in another 2 languages and expanding as far as possible my computer skills. Building websites and learning how to use various editing systems - I will write soon in another post about my latest discoveries - are also on my priority lists. Very often, a good attitude - and again, your savings - could save you from the black days when you realize that you worked for two weeks and the employers forgot to make your bank account happy. From time to time, you might expect some 'thank you' notes, but you better get ready for the new assignment and hunt permanently the market for new good accounts and projects.

Despite all the disagreements and problems I encountered in the last months, I still believe in my shinning freelancer star!

Writing happiness

As a professional writer in the process, I enjoy every piece of advice about how to improve my writing, either it is about simple blogging or sophisticated literary writing. 

Thus, I enjoyed a pleasant lecture of the eBook by Marya Jan - Writing Happiness, How to write blog content that works. You can read this booklet very fast, for free, and if you are looking for some inspiration in-between posts or when you feel that the writers' block is around, it is the right lecture to lift you up.

In the words of the author, it is a "non-grammar focus guide for writers and non-writers who are in the business of generating content". This is the reason why, for instance, you are not scholarly advices that first and forehand your posts should be grammatically correct in order to achieve success. In a way it is obvious, in a world of words facing a very serious confrontation. 

The book includes a couple of very useful advices, more or less evident even for experienced writers. It includes a couple of insightful quotes, mostly from Stephen King's On Writing, a book which I highly appreciate. Regardless of your domain of writing activity, you will find for sure 2-3 tips.

Shortly, here are my lessons learned from the lecture of the Marya Jan's book:

- If you are a writer it does not mean that you should stop reading. You should be in touch permanently with what people from your domain are writing, but also for improving your style and looking for new sources of inspiration. My experience is, when I find something interesting, I prefer to blog about it as well and, eventually, share my impression with my audience.

- You need to find a reason to write. In other words, to find a clear reason to put your words in order. The reader needs to discover something new, and thus clarity is key. The organization of your blog post matter as well: the headline and the first paragraph are very important for a successful reading. The end matters as well as an incentive to encourage the reader to return or to go further to explore other writings published on your blog. 

- Related to the previous aspect, you should find your voice in writing. This is the reason why very often I preferred to put my intensive blogging on hold for a couple of weeks or even months, as I was looking to accommodate different voices and writing personalities.

- Add to the ingredients of a successful writing the proper connection with the reader. Do you know who are your readers, what are their tastes and interests? In many cases, your domain of activity is limiting your domain of activity and thus, creates the possibility for the development of your niche. For instance, if you are a fashion blogger, you will be interested in covering all issues dealing with fashion, but if you are into do-it-yourself fashion it will be even better for reaching a certain audience.

- As you are writing for a blog, you should take into consideration the limited attention and time of your usual writer. If you are interested in complicated writing, you should avoid blogging. However, there are many examples of successful bloggers addressing highly complicated issues with the help of clear expressions and short sentences. The book does not address the issue of multimedia support - podcast, video, 
pictures, but very often the visual aspects can add more readership.

The conclusion: a simple and useful writing for any kind of writers facing with the challenges of the 2.0 world.

Freelancer vs. Elance

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.