Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Freelance crash and burn

Back in June, I signed on with a company to do some freelance writing.  The pay was $8 an hour and they require writers to work at least 15 hours per week.  I did okay at first, but it soon became a huge struggle to hit the 15 hours a week (3 hours per day after working for 8 hours at my regular job or cramming a bunch into the weekend) and I was getting extremely stressed out.  Plus, the work was boring and the place was basically a link farm trying to increase traffic to its own websites by making writers put in a certain number of links to other articles on their sites.  Boring and sketchy.  Not really something I wanted to do on a permanent basis.

So this week, I terminated the contract.  And I feel better.  So much better!  Don't get me wrong, this job would be great for someone who doesn't already have a full time job and who doesn't care what they are actually writing.  Someone who doesn't take it personally when several different editors are nitpicking different things in different ways (sometimes contradicting each other in the process.)  But not for me.  Especially not now.

So my first trip into the freelance world was not a positive one.  But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying.  I have discovered that there are many other companies out there who employ writers remotely.  When it's time for me to stay at home and work, I will check those out.

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