Writing and Stuff by Anthony Chatfield

Facebook is an interesting thing for me. I was never one of those people who decided early on “never” to be a part of social networking. I had a Facebook account from the start – when it was available to college students across the US. But, I’ll be honest in that I almost never used the site. Sure, I would approve requests, reply to messages, and occasionally say “happy birthday”, but I would almost never actually use Facebook for anything.

That is until now. These days, it’s different. As a 26 year old guy with friends scattered across the country, Facebook lets me keep tabs on people, which I sometimes do. But, as an entrepreneur with a new business, it lets me do so much more – accessing prospective clients and other business owners across the globe.

And that’s why I actually use it, and why you should be on there too.

Facebook is entirely too powerful to ignore if you have a brand on the Internet. It might be a blog, your business, a short story you wrote – whatever it is, Facebook is the way to stay in touch with people who like you and like what you do. If you’re not using it, you’re wasting a tremendous opportunity.

To top things off, Facebook is super easy to use. You can hook it up to your Twitter account or your blog and have automated posts uploaded every day. You can then have comments and wall posts forwarded to your phone for quick, on the go replies. I might spend a grand total of 15 minutes a day (at the most) on Facebook, and that’s on a busy day.

I think my answer to the title question is pretty obvious. Should you be on Facebook? Absolutely. Should you spend hours of your time on Facebook? That’s a whole different question – one that usually ends with a no.

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When you’re just getting started as a freelancer, which I know a lot of you are doing, there don’t seem to be many options. You can either work for $0.50 an article on Elance or roll the dice on Craigslist and hope someone accepts your email out of hundreds they’ll get for that single post. It’s a tough road.

I, on the other hand, kind of stumbled into it by working on so-called “micropay” sites like Associated Content and Helium where I generated my own topics, wrote at my own pace and got paid only if the content I wrote was useful to the site. Of course, that was also in 2007 when Associated Content’s stringent guidelines were not quite so hard to get around and you could get the occasional $20 offer for an article.

And to round out the story of my flirt with Micropay, it only lasted the better part of 6 weeks. I got up to about 20 articles a week with Associated Content and promptly realized that Elance was a far better place to test my talents – quickly obtaining a far greater supply of work per month than I would have been physically capable of writing on the Micropays.

So, Does it Work?

I will say yes. It might not be the most exciting thing in the world, but over the course of the first few weeks as a freelancer, you need something to do. You might spend 2+ hours a day carving out a name for yourself on forums, on your blog, or at Elance with bid after bid, but if you don’t actually sit down and write an article or two, you’ll never gain the experience you need to succeed.

It’s hard to be good at this job. You must not only be a good writer, you must be a fast writer – capable of adapting to numerous styles and tones instantly while shifting between dozens of topics. Only practice will give you the skillset needed to succeed.

So, where does that leave us? If you need a jump start to your career and some practice writing content that will help you hone your skills, get on the micropay sites. Until you actually get a real paying job on Elance or Odesk, it’s your best bet for getting some experience, feedback and much needed pay.

Don’t Forget Blogging

Regardless of your decision on micropay, though, don’t forget the value of a good blog. If you haven’t done so yet, get a blog started on Blogger.com or WordPress.com. You may not get a single reader, but the chance to sit down and write something that is dear to you and send it to the world is as good a way to build confidence as any. Just take a look at how many posts on this blog are from 2007 when I first got started. Whether you’re getting paid or not, you have to be writing, so stop reading and start writing.

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Every now and then someone asks me where I find my work. I usually tell them “Elance” even though I actually get about 75% of my own work from repeat clients at this point. But my partner gets most of his work through Elance and if I’m out of work for any reason I start bidding too. 

So, what is it about Elance that makes me willing to pay $40 a month and almost 10% in project transaction fees (that’s more than sales tax almost everywhere)? It’s a necessatiy. No matter how you look at it, if you’re a freelance writer who makes their money on the Internet, you need this website to survive. You might go three or four weeks without using it at a time, but when you need it, you really need it. 

The nature of writing freelance (or programming, designing, or translating for Elance’s many other users) is that you never know for sure that the next month is going to bring in enough work to pay your bills. You could line up more work for the next six weeks than you’ve ever seen in your life and you could still end up broke a month or two later. It’s just how the job works – you never really get to relax. So, having a profile on a website where you’re trusted, respected, and have plenty of experience is an absolute must. Think of it like your safety net – you hope you never need it, but you damn well better make sure it’s there.

And while there are other websites out there that offer services very similar to what Elance provides, none of them do it quite so well. In any given week, the Writing and Translation section alone will have more than 8,000 unique jobs. That’s a huge volume of content. If you have a good profile and bid realistically, you can usually expect to land around 15% of your bids – you’re going to get work. If you just sit back and wait for repeat clients, craigslist ads, and poorly posted projects to get back to you from the other websites, you might be so lucky to get enough work to pay your bills.

It’s expensive, it’s a bit confusing (they redesign that site every other month it seems) and it can be incredibly frustrating to outlast the underbids from overseas or the project listers who think Elance is a place to get where they can get $1 articles, but the site will keep you afloat when you need it. If nothing else, it’s just nice to have a security blanket of sorts to keep you semi-comfortable with your work because there’s nothing more frustrating than constantly having to worry if you’ll be able to pay your bills or not.

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Launching late last year, PayU2Blog is another new entry in the growing realm of sites and programs that offer chances for bloggers to add sponsored posts to their blog for a decent payment. While it was not the first or necessarily the best of any of these type of sites, it has become a very popular option because it is simple, doesn’t impose a wide array of different restrictions on its bloggers.

Signing up for PayU2Blog is fairly simple. Upon visiting the site at PayU2Blog.com, you’ll find a few options. The website features a FAQ for those new to writing blog posts for money as well as a company blog, testimonials and all the usual website features such as contact links, about us pages, and a forum to discuss the site with other bloggers. Basically, PayU2Blog wants to make sure you always have all of the information you need to know that they are legitimate. It is a good step above the features offered by many sites that have popped up in recent months.

After signing up and having your blog approved (it takes between 2 and 5 days to get approval, depending on the back log of sites), you will gain access to the members area of the site. In this section, you are immediately shown your assignments, a list of keywords and URLs that you must integrate into a blog post of at least 100 words, a very easy task most of the time. Depending on the page rank and quality of your blog, you will be given a variable amount of assignments each week, usually between 1 and 5 per blog you add to your account.

The set up is simple, payment is done every two weeks through paypal, and the keywords can be integrated into posts in whatever manner you want (occasionally there are rules attached to a project, but very rarely). Payment is $5 per post and with an average of 3 per week or more, that’s a quick and easy $60 a month you can make for writing about 1200 words on your blog – something you’ll aready do. You don’t have to mark your blog as being sponsored and you do not have to write about a specific topic – just integrate the keyword and link.

Among the bevy of services like PayU2Blog, this one is a good choice. It doesn’t offer the highest pay or the most options in your account, but it is solid and consistent and a good way to supplement income over time.

Freelance Sites

Among the first websites to offer the “micro-pay format” Helium.com has been one of the more interesting to watch as it has developed. I originally signed up for Helium.com about a year ago when I was researching and testing the various sites on the Internet which claimed to offer pay for writing. Unlike Associated Content, the concept behind Helium was originally based on the forum style writing that so many Internet users were used to.

Upon entering the website, Helium introduces its visitors to a variety of channels and front page content. The articles are listed by a specific title and topic within which multiple actual articles might appear. Writers can choose a topic which already has articles written and write their own “take” on that topic. Other writers and visitors then vote on which of the multiple articles might best represent the article title. Helium is unique in this regard as no other website allows members to compare and vote on paid articles in the same manner.

The money comes in when writers create articles that generate large sums of traffic. Helium places ads throughout their website and on each page. When a visitor clicks on an ad, you get a small percentage of that advertising money. The money adds up depending on the amount of traffic your content generates and how much content you are able to generate. Obviously front page content gets more traffic and occasionally, if you have written a particularly high ranked article, it can hit the front page.

Unfortunately, the main problem with Helium is that the site pays very little for page views. It’s not because they are keeping money for themselves as much as the multiple articles located under the same title do not all show up at once. To really make money on Helium, writers need to consistently rank in the top one or two spaces and hit the front page repeatedly.

Because of an ample advertising campaign, the site has grown to exorbitantly large proportions in recent months and reaching the top can be harder than it once was. To make solid money on Helium, it can take a lot of time and investment.

Of course, the point is not necessarily to make money with these articles. Instead, Helium has now integrated a marketplace that allows writers to make real money. Through the marketplace, companies and magazines will post article requests for writers to fill. Additionally, there are plenty of contests for writers that allow top notch Helium members to make a few extra dollars for their posts.

Ultimately, Helium is a great place to start for anyone wanting to get in contact with writers and practice their craft for a few extra cents every couple days. But, for a freelance writer hoping to make a few extra dollars for their articles, it is definitely not the most viable option. Even sites like Xomba pay a little better as they reimburse writers with all of the adsense payments. However, for a full feature set and a marketplace option. Helium has a slight edge.

The final verdict: when first starting out, check out Helium and write a few articles. When trying to actually make a few extra dollars, start with Associated Content and work your way up.

Freelance Sites

Despite its simple nature and essentially non-existent growth in the past decade, About.com has become a very popular source of common knowledge and how-to articles on thousands of topics. With a high page rank and a few dozen quasi-experts in their fields, they consistently show up on the top of search rankings for any number of topics.

With the money About.com makes from those search rankings and the amount of traffic that tends to pour in from Google and the like, they have a bit of capital with which to ensure they hire quality writers to keep up their columns.

Basically, it’s a living, constantly adapting news encyclopedia with real freelance writers operating the switch boards for the topics that you can so easily find at random. Each article has a real name and picture attached to it, unlike so many other amalgamated news sites and for that reason, there needs to be several hundreds writers on staff at any given time.

Because About.com has built up such a steady, repetitive traffic source, it can afford to pay decent dollar to its writers on a regular basis. It doesn’t hurt that the New York Times owns the site now and tries its best to keep the quality of writing as high as possible.

Anyways, the point of all this is that About.com allows freelance writers (or just plain unemployed writers) apply to be guides on their site. In the lower right corner of any About.com page is a link “Be a Guide”. This takes you to a section that lists the available guide positions and the compensation, hiring process, and a few other choice details.

Basically, About.com pays you on a sliding scale for the traffic you generate as a guide. You write a few articles every month, upload links and track changes in a given field and About.com pays you a minimum of $700 a month. The contracts usually span a year at a time and if your page views explode enough you can make much more money eventually – About.com claims some of their guides make as much as $100,000 a year.

As a freelance opportunity, About.com borders on being a part time job more than anything. You must apply to work with them, complete a 2 week prep course and write sample materials. However, if you get chosen (they usually have around 30-50 open topics at any given time) you can essentially cover half of your monthly workload with a single job – a nice touch of security in the frantic life of a freelance writer.

Freelance Sites, Freelancing