Yesterday, I wrote an article on Technorati detailing the Google-Verizon anti-net neutrality proposal. This proposal has been met with heavy criticism and rightfully so. A two-tiered Internet would harm our ability to earn a living online. Tell Google & Verizon to back off. Your ability to earn a living may very well depend upon it.

The Angelic Warrior blog is officially one year old. I’m happy to say that I’ve managed to attract quite a few positive comments. I’ve offered the best advice that I could and will continue to help freelancers all over the world make freelancing a practical employment option.

Because I’m year old now (at least on here) that means that its time to pay the yearly web hosting bill. Fortunately, I’ve found a much better company than the one I currently have. Its called Freehostia and they’ve been amazingly helpful even though I have only hosted free websites on them so far. I am pleased to announce this blog’s transition from crappy 2M host to awesomely wonderful Freehostia.

Key Changes

I will be removing the jobs and contest sections as I do not have the time to scour the Internet for them anymore. I am also too depressed to look at freelance job postings these days since it usually involves sifting through a bunch of low-paying, crummy garbage. However, I will post a few good job and contest sites for those that are interested in the near future. Please feel free to personally contact me for more information as well. I do stay current in industry trends and good job leads, at least in my field, and would be happy to offer any advice I can to you.

The sidebar with all of the ads is going to be changed. Simply put, these ads have not generated a lick of revenue and they’ve become an unfortunate eyesore. I’m simply going to use that spot to sell ad space in the future for $10 a month. Remember that freelancers often exchange services with each other, so if you’re looking for a partner or more biz ops, $10 a month for a side ad could easily pay itself back. Guest posts are also strongly encouraged and are PAID. Please email me for more information regarding guest posting opportunities.

I’m going to post once a week. That day is going to be heavily dependent upon my schedule as I am moving from Florida to New York and will be transferring from online college to SUNY. I can’t promise I’ll be consistent but I can assure you that I will do my best to keep providing quality information to the freelance community.

I’m going to do more to market this blog. I realize now that posting on FB and Twitter is not enough. I am going to do more to increase the amount of back-links I have to my posts, in order to ensure that this blog increases its readership and becomes the kind of open-minded, freelance community I originally intended it to be.

Other Changes

My copywriting firm’s website, Quill & Ink by Deborah is going to be moving to a paid host. Rather than being quill-ink.tk, it will have its own domain name which I will reveal after I make the purchase this upcoming Monday.

There are two discussions that I was always taught to avoid at the dinner table: religion and politics — not only because conversations surrounding these two belief systems are controversial, but because the inevitable food fight that would ensue would be a pain for the host to have to clean up. Unfortunately, a lot of freelancers take this tune with them throughout the entirety of their lives; with many so afraid to rock the boat that they would rather try to deal with bad clients themselves than get the power of the law on their side. But the law is there to protect us and we should be out there making our voices heard.

According to the Freelancer’s Union, we freelancers make up 1/3 of the work force in the United States. If you live in the U.S. and have traveled to other Western countries, you would know that U.S. citizens already have a very limited amount of government safety nets. There is no single-payer health care for us in the states which means if you’re self-employed and aren’t making tons of money and happen to get sick, you’re in trouble. Similarly, there is no unemployment insurance for independent contractors. Many freelancers work with one client for an extended period of time on a contract basis. Finding new contracts can be difficult but if a freelancer fails to find a new good contract before their old one expires, they’re in trouble. Taxes for the self-employed are also very high. We pay more just because we are self-employed, regardless of what our income is. In fact, someone who only makes 12K a year can pay as much as 35% in income taxes simply for the sheer fact that they are self-employed.

There are many organizations like the Freelancer’s Union, working to change the face of freelancing in the U.S. While it may be up to us to look out for ourselves, we should go out there and make our voices heard. Safety nets help keep people in their homes, food on the table during hard times, and help keep unscrupulous businesses in their place. I encourage my fellow freelancers in the U.S. to keep up with what’s going on in the political sphere and to take part in the legislative processes that help make our country great. It can be as simple as joining the Freelancer’s Union (which is free!) and fighting with them or voting in the upcoming mid-term elections. Remember: this isn’t the dinner table. This is your career. Make it count!

If you’re a freelancer, chances are you’ve come across the term crowdsourcing. You may have investigated the meaning of this obscure term or you may have had that inevitable feeling of dread that caused your stomach to turn so much that you simply didn’t want to know. Whatever the case, crowdsourcing remains a constant threat to the arts industry — primarily for professional designers and writers. It also does a great disservice to any client who expects a quality job. As creative professionals, it is our job to fight the menace that is crowdsourcing.

• Crowdsourcing drives down wages even further. Think $5 articles are bad? Just wait until until they want to pay you a meager 50 cents an article. It’s already happening and its frightening.
• The odds of your work getting chosen are slim. Crowdsourcing is nothing more than one, big contest designed to screw over the professionals, cheat the clients, and make the crowdsourcing sites a killing.
• Crowdsourcing breeds copyright issues and that is harmful for everyone involved. Well, you know what they say about beggars not being choosers. Do these people honestly believe that they are going to get quality, original work for free? Most “creative professionals” on these websites simply plagiarize or copy material. No incentive = lazy work.
• The client loses the most. If the client is unaware that they are using copyrighted material as a logo, there could be a lawsuit against them. Even if the client doesn’t get bogus work produced, chances are that the design or ad copy really suck. I mean, we are talking about people doing free work, afterall. You can’t take shortcuts when it comes to labor and expect to have anything good come out of it.
• It destroys industry. Photographers, illustrators, and designers have been hit pretty hard by the internet slave trade known as crowdsourcing. The wages have been driven so low, that several truly talented creative professionals have permanently left their businesses behind. When people talk about the American dream, its difficult not to sigh and declare with a bitter smile “What American dream?” Indeed, the corporate quest for cheap labor has destroyed more than just industry.

I am saddened when I hear of fellow freelancers perpetuating this crowdsourcing trend. Its even more destructive than the East Asian outsourcing. Now instead of cheap labor, people want free labor. How long will we let corporations and their greed make slaves of us?

Efficiency is a necessary component of successful full-time freelancing. After the craigslist fiasco, I took a very, very long break from bidding for work and even working at all. In fact, all of the work that I’ve had the last few months has been from repeat clients. I am very happy with where I am today. I made progress because I was efficient. As I end my summer vacation and get back into the swing of working full days, I’d like to make some notes as to how you can be an efficient freelancer as well.

Eliminate waste. Waste can come in the form of unproductive time (such as chatting when you should be working), subscriptions to job sites that aren’t landing you any work, and other things that can slow down your day and lessen productivity. Most freelancers are contractors – not hourly workers. Its important to keep in mind that unlike at a traditional job, when you aren’t working you aren’t earning. It helps to create a schedule for yourself and set aside a certain amount of time for working, marketing, networking, business maintenance, and so forth.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you’ve landed a huge project and you feel like you can’t do it alone, there should be nothing stopping your from outsourcing. After all, someone had to outsource us so shouldn’t we do the economy some good and give another hardworking freelancer some much-needed work? It’s the right thing to do.

Don’t wait until the last minute. Its a habit for some of us to procrastinate. We may have a project that isn’t due for another week so we say we’ll get around to it. Its a good habit to get whatever work you have done while you have it. The quicker you get it done, the quicker you get paid and the better you look to your clients. Clients love a freelancer who cares enough about their work to get a head-start on it.

Of course, there are other ways to be an efficient freelancer. These are just some of the most basic things that you can do. An efficient freelancer is a successful freelancer and successful freelancers get better work.

Recently, I made the personal decision to stop writing for Suite101. It was part of a larger decision that I made to stop chasing the residual carrot, so to speak. If I want to earn passive income, I’d rather take a more stable approach like writing a book or selling my art prints. I only speak for myself when I say this but there is a lot that led me to this decision. I wanted to share some things about Suite101 that I do not think are talked about very often and some things that people may find controversial. In no way am I attempting to say that Suite101 is not a good company. They are a solid, stable web company with a highly responsive support team and an excellent revenue model. However, there were some deal breakers for me and these are as follows.

• Suite101 has an overzealous, almost cult-like crowd that hangs out in the forums a lot. No one can question anything about the company without being viciously attacked in the forums. Even innocent questions are sometimes grounds for ganging up on someone. Some people even make a special attempt to send hate mail to you just because they don’t like something you said. Its a good reason to stay the heck out of the forums.
• While most editors at Suite are helpful and friendly, there are some that use chat-speak and make silly requests. I had a request that was almost DS-like, which was frightening. That type of thing should not be allowed at a site that boasts “quality” and only hires a small handful of editors compared to most large content websites. Obviously some editors need to be reevaluated, but one can argue that online editors, unfortunately aren’t always the most diligent bunch.
• Revenues continue to plummet. At 29 articles, I don’t even make payout each month. At 15, I started making payout each month until about four months ago when it declined day after day. Although, I seriously doubt this is Suite101’s fault. Adsense is down everywhere. Then again, its not really fair that writers only collect adsense revenue. There are several other advertising programs (infolinks being one of them) that pay far better than adsense. Again, some consider this a non-issue but those are the people with 1000s of articles and tons of spare time. Obviously, I am not one of them.
• You’ll never get your content back. Once its up, its up forever and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. This doesn’t bother me as much as the other issues but it can be problematic for writers who always write their best and/or have articles in specialized subjects in which they would like to sell or place elsewhere.
• They say write “evergreen” articles so you can keep earning but if you stop writing, your revenue dwindles — sometimes your revenue will even be halved. This is what happened to me when I took a three month break due to the extremely low revenues and my depressed state of mind because of my lack of funds.

Despite these issues, I would still recommend Suite101 for certain people. For some people, the positives far outweigh the negatives. I’d recommend it for new writers or people with full-time jobs seeking side income. I’d also recommend it for writers who specialize in a particular subject such as natural health or personal finance since Suite is very friendly to specialists. However, if you are a general, academic, technical, or copy writer I would personally do some serious thinking about joining. You aren’t likely to earn very much from your efforts and a lot will be expected of you for very little return.

If you watch TV, chances are that you’ve seen that commercial where all the various business owners are asking “How do I get paid faster?”. I never really thought about that until I ended up waiting what seemed like forever to get paid from a few clients this month. I’m still waiting, actually. Because I’m a problem-solver, I sat down and thought about this question for quite a while and the following is what I came up with.

How do I get paid faster, anyways?

Well, one thing I’ve noticed about potential clients over the past year is that you can generally tell who’s who and how serious they are about working with you and paying you in a timely manner. For example, if it takes them a week to respond to each email you send you may not want to accept work from them. I understand people are busy, but if you can’t communicate effectively with your clients that can cause problems down the road. If they don’t look at their email at least once every few days, how are they going to get your invoice and pay it on time? That’s just one example.

Another issue for most freelancers, especially online freelancers, isn’t just getting paid in a timely manner; it’s getting paid at all. If you’ve ever been stiffed, chances are that you’ve taken precautions to protect yourself since then. The following ideas can help keep you protected against non-slow-or-partial paying clients.

Aside from choosing projects wisely, a freelancer needs to tune into their intuition. Its understandable to want to jump at a project after you’ve been through a dry spell but you have to resist that urge. You don’t want someone to end up taking you for a ride and not paying you the full project price. Even if you collect a deposit, chances are you’re going to want all of the money you worked for and you’re going to want it before the power company shuts the lights off. I know because I’ve been there. I got ripped off a lot when I first started out. You can usually tell by your gut whether or not a client is worth the trouble. If you’re looking at an ongoing gig, make sure that payment terms are stated clearly within the contract.

You should also get client phone numbers rather than just email addresses. That way if you have to play bill collector for a while you’ll know that it will be harder for them to ignore a phone call than to delete an email like they’ve probably been doing. If you run a business that’s based on the privacy of the clients, then be sure to hand them a copy of a privacy policy.

Something else that works well is honesty. If you are having severe financial difficulties and are being threatened by bill collectors and you aren’t collecting when you need to, be sure to let the client know that you’re having financial problems and you’d appreciate it if they would forward a payment as soon as possible.

If you deal with a lot of different clients, you should invest in Prepaid Legal Services. They’ll come to your aid if a client ever tries to stiff you and membership costs are low. Before you say you can’t afford it, ask yourself if you can afford to get stiffed. Usually, all these guys need to do is write a letter for you and the client will typically pony up the money. If you have a particularly difficult weasel on your hands (like that piece of work James Clemmons I found on Freelancer.com) then you may need to ask for more assistance.

If you’ve got some ideas about getting paid faster, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to share any ideas that have worked for you.

After becoming fed up with chasing no-response, low-paying, questionable looking jobs on craigslist; I’ve migrated to other job boards. Some of the job boards I am with charge a membership fee. For many freelancers, paying a fee to look for projects is a no-no. Just as many projects can be found for free. However, sometimes it may be beneficial to pay for a membership. Here’s why:

• Less competition. Most freelancers hate extra expenses because their income varies so heavily. This means that few full-time freelancers are willing to pay for memberships, giving you a better chance of gaining visibility and the project.
• Employers will take you more seriously. Employers will take freelancers more seriously if we are willing to put the time and money into improving our businesses.
• You’ll land better projects. One thing I’ve noticed about websites that charge membership fees is their dedication to screening all project posts thoroughly.
• No sifting through crummy projects. This is pretty much the same as the one above but with a few differences. Free job sites are plagued with spam, repetitive job posts, and low-paying nonsense. Paid sites will treat their freelancers with respect and dignity.

Best Paid Membership Freelance Sites

I’m sure you can think of more reasons than what I’ve listed. Now, don’t just go paying for any old website. You have to do the research to see if your investment will be worth it. The following websites have worked well for me.

• Freelanceswitch.com. The FS job board charges a membership fee of $7 per month. Their projects are high-quality and often long-term. While I have not personally landed any work from this site, as I have not submitted very many applications, I do know first-hand that its an excellent website and the response rate is very high compared to other job sites. The webmasters are also very professional and dedicated. One time I noticed a bogus ad from a design “company” that wanted free work. I reported it and within 48 hours the ad was removed. Now that is customer service.
• iFreelance.com. This website has been around for a long time. A basic membership costs $5 per month and allows you to bid on as many projects as you want. Most projects receive 5-15 bids. New projects are posted weekly.
• Elance. While Elance can be a free job site, it may be ideal to pay for a professional membership which runs at $10 per month. This membership allows you to bid on more projects. While Elance has recently become notorious for inviting low-paying buyers, filtering projects by price can often eliminate the buyers “on a tight budget”.

Always read multiple website reviews before committing to a membership. Do not simply take my word for it. While one person may have had a positive experience, others may have had negative ones. Read multiple reviews and if possible, contact the website’s admin to learn more about membership. The easiest way to find website reviews is to type in the website’s name + reviews in Google search.

It recently came back to me why I gave up freebie trading. I ended up being scammed yesterday. This one website was supposed to give me a free trial and ended up stealing $10 off my debit card. Then I got stuck going through this grueling phone process to cancel the service and get my money back. On top of that, the website that I was going through never credited me for the offer causing me to lose time and money. Another website I was on theived me out of the money I earned for successfully completing offers. What a mess…

You Know What They Say

Well, there are only two things that have ever worked for me when it has come to earning money online: freelance writing and having and online auctions. Nothing else has ever worked for me. I think I am just going to have to stick with what I know works and expand upon those things somehow. I have gotten more writing work lately but that usually means that within a couple of weeks, things will slow down and dry up again. I’ll keep searching for something that can counter the crazy writing seasons as I will be needing more income come fall when I venture out West again. Wish me luck. I’ll keep you guys posted on my experiments and adventures!

Its no secret that as thousands of new “freelancers” flood the online marketplace, it’s becoming harder to get work. Quite a bit harder, actually. May was the first month since I began freelancing that I did not have at least one private client. Thankfully, I had some companies to fall back on but overall its been a mess. Even after stepping up my marketing efforts, I’ve yet to secure any new project work on my own.

While, I am thankful for the companies that I can find little bits of work from while I await the call or email of a private client, relying solely on them is not possible. The first reason is that these companies are small — so small, that they don’t always have work. The second reason is that they don’t pay as well as my own clients pay me. While they don’t pay an outright insulting wage, the fee that I receive from my services is often not enough for the amount of time or effort that goes into these sort of projects.

This dilemma, coupled with not being able to get any outside writing work, has caused me to seek out freelance opportunities outside of the writing field. Maybe its for the best. Here are some things that I have considered doing myself.

1. Revisiting my art marketing. I’m also an artist. While it is possible to obtain a small commission here and there, you have to be some type of demi-God to live off of the art style that I have chosen to specialize in.

2. Online telecommunications work such as customer service or technical support. While this field is even more cutthroat and difficult than writing, its still worth a shot. After all, what have I to lose at this point?

3. Trading cards. Recently, I got lucky by finding some very valuable trading cards. I’ve decided to sell them and reinvest in a new set. If I’m successful, this could pan out into some very decent side income.

4. Freebie trading. Back when I first started working online, I was involved in freebie trading at freelunchroom.com. I’m not sure why I gave it up at the time but this time I think I am going to stick with it.

5. Building new affiliate websites. I’ve got some pretty good niche’s going for me right now and when I have the extra money, I’ll be making about three more websites to try to offset the cost of this one. We’ll see how it goes.

6. Avon, anyone? Yes, I joined the team. Before you think I am old-ladyish, I signed up with one of their child product lines called Mark. Mark is geared towards the younger-women demographic (16-25). Perfect.

While none of these things are super-powerful on their own, combine the right ones and you could be making a decent living at this thing we call self-employment. Wish me luck. Today is my one-year freelance anniversary. I wish you the best of luck on your personal freelance journey.