Informercials and Advertising yourself

I love informercials. We don’t have cable right now, though mom is pushing for it, so my Saturday morning programming consists of watching early cooking shows and lots of really nifty informercials in the afternoon. So far I’ve watched three of them, the shark steam mop, Nu-wave Oven Pro Infrared Oven, and the GT Xpress 101 and I‘m acting just like the average consumer looking to blow my money on as seen on tv products!  Keep watching I’ll be adding more to this post!

Let’s All Finish Ziggy the Blobfish’s Story!

I’ve noticed that only five people have continued the round robin story about Ziggy the Blobfish. Be sure to click on the link and help him out of his quandry. Don’t leave him hanging man!

Also, I still need a little help deciding if I should keep the superman image from The Organizational Quest post I wrote in September. It’s still bringing in a lot of hits, but not a lot of readers are sticking around. : (

Don’t forget about Ziggy!

The Organizational Quest: Pt 2 Willing to Change

I’d just like to thank everyone for helping my little blog reach over a thousand page views.

There has been a recent increase in activity on here. A small flurry of comments have started up on 101 Reasons to Continue Freelancing on the topic of getting a second job while working as a freelancer. I’d love to hear more from other visitors if you’d like to drop by.

I’ve also completed my seven day time log trial and calculated the results, to make the big change in my working life.

As you’ll see in the nifty charts below I worked anywhere from about 2 to 5 hours a day of real work and ended up with about a 26 hour workweek. The equivalent of a part time job, which makes sense since I’d only been earning the equivalent of a part time job in pay…

I also worked on 3 to 7 different projects a day. It seems like a lot but I’ve got a lot of little long term projects going on now so they don’t take up that much time. The problem seems to come in when I don’t get to those little project as soon as I wake up in the morning. I kept putting them off, so I never made it to the larger money making projects and ended up not getting to those little projects until close to midnight. On my little chart by the way days 6 and 7 would be my bad days by the way. Although none of the days were particularly inspiring.

Anywho, I also noticed when looking at my time log, which I don’t have shown here because it’s very big and embarassing, I wasn’t efficient with those projects I did get to. Meaning I could have gotten more work done on each project I got to and I could have finished my smaller daily projects much faster most of the time.

For instance, there is a blog that I post to daily for some clients. On some days I found it only took me about 15 minutes to get the research and the blog post done, on other days it took me up to an hour because I was caught up in surfing the web or watching television. So in my new schedule I compromised and gave myself half an hour each day to get it done.

Making up a daily schedule can seem really high school-ish, but it helps set the mind and body to a specific routine. Thus if I stick to it, I’ll be more efficient and get done sooner each day.

To figure out how long each work day will be for me I calculated the average amount of time I spent on each of the projects I touched on during the 7 day time log period.

My ideal average day came to about 6 and a half hours. However, I can’t expect to work solidly 6 hours without a break. Even a 9-to-5 job usually gives about 2 hours in breaks over the course of the day. So I interspered my new schedule with breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack breaks. Since I work at home the ‘working’ day can run longer with longer breaks between projects. My lunch break is 2 hours long, hee, hee, hee. : )

This also gives me some free time during the middle part of the day, which was a time period during which I noticed I ended up having to run a lot of family errands.

I started the new schedule on September 28th so its been about a week and I plan on trying this for 30 days to see how it goes. If you want to learn more about the 30 Day Plan check out StevePavlina.com. Already there is an increase in efficiency and productivity, even though I’m still adjusting to it. To be honest, I’m still not waking up at exactly 8:15 am each day, but I’ll get there.

Hello world!

Greetings,

This is the first post of my new wordpress blog.  I was getting fed up with Blogger, having trouble linking, couldn’t find the right template, and just confusion in general so I decided to come here.  I’ll be transferring posts from the other blog over the next few weeks so be patient. 

I’m still cheap so there aren’t going to be a lot of original type upgrades, widgets and/or my very own template.  Just starting out after all.  Try to have fun though and I welcome comments. 

Look for my next post on how to write a story.  Its my attempt at a kind of metafiction.

Benefits of a writing journal

A writing journal is a great way to create and explore tons of new ideas and articles.  It’s a beneficial tool for the fiction writer, poet, novelist and even a freelance writer, especially if you are currently pitching ideas to lots of different magazines.

I have a couple of different journals.  One is set up to help me keep track of the places I submit my short stories and poems too.  The other is just for writing my ideas in, story starts and little exercises I try out from time to time.  I’m also in the process of organizing an excel file just to keep track of all of my poems and their subsequent drafts. 

As you can see there are a number of uses for the writing journal.  You can:

• work on writing exercises
• write out your stories and poems by hand
• jot down quicky ideas for everything from articles to novels
• track your submissions
• organize your work

Writing journals don’t have to be physical books either.  You can set up a document on your computer if you feel more comfortable using it to work.  I like both for different reasons.  I like to put my thoughts in a simple spiral bound journal because it’s something simple and quick that I can open and it’s highly portable.  I also keep a hardcover spiral bound book to record my submissions because I can quickly flip open the book to see how many times I’ve submitted to whom and what pieces are currently out in the mail. 

If you haven’t used a writing journal before I suggest starting off with the simple spiral bound book for all of your needs.  Should you start sending out story submissions you can log them neatly on the back page of the journal and reserve the front of the notebook for your ideas and exercises.  Once you fill that notebook you’ll have a better idea of what you’ll use your journals for and whether you want to keep more than one for certain purposes.

blogging for money

This isn’t the only blog I’m working on. I won a project last month for blogging on this website called, www.gosmelltheflowers.com. Its not bad I get to post two very short posts a day concerning fun stuff, motivational qoutes and so on until the beginning of May. My clients are working on a book and they’ll pop in from time to time to write on their progress.

I have noticed that blogging and writing on forums is one of the more common projects that show up on the service provider directories. It won’t pay a lot but in general its fun and easy.

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Other Freelance Sites I’ve Come Across

I just wanted to mention that there are lots of other freelance work directories out on the internet. Some that I’ve come across are:

• www.sologig.com
• www.ifreelance.com
• www.guru.com
• www.writersneeded.com

I’ve been to these other four sites and a couple of them even let you sign up at a basic level for free and bid on certain available projects. However, I’ve bid on projects with these but haven’t had much luck getting any interest from buyers. Not to say that they don’t work, I may not be bidding competively enough or have enough experience.

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Greetings!

I hope everyone who finds this blog enjoys reading it and learns just a little bit about what its like to get started writing for a living on the internet. I will soon be graduating from college with a degree in Creative Writing and let me say, I’m nervous. Did I pick a career famous for creating the ’starving artist’ or what? Its a career that is tough to make a decent living at! For the past four years I’ve been taught a lot by my teachers, but they continually reiterate one thing, its hard to get published and even harder to find a regular gig with health insurance as a creative writer.

In the hopes of earning a regular and more stable living with my degree, I’ve turned to the task of developing my freelance writing skills via the electronic world of the internet. In the ten months since I’ve started working freelance through a website called, www.elance.com, I’ve picked up a lot of need to know information required to operate as a freelancer online.

My goal with this blog is to record what I’ve learned in the past and what I learn as I go along, basically to keep myself from forgetting anything important. Maybe you’ll find something helpful here too.

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