Tag Archives: writing

Uncategorized

Balancing Freelance Losses Due to Economy

1 Comment

My stable $400 a month gig has been reduced to… well, I’m not sure yet, but $250 or $300 a month. I’ve come to rely on that extra cash (it covers almost all of my rent, which is, by the way, going up from $612 to $670 in January) – so I’m exploring new cash-making opportunities and side projects.

The latest is a blogging gig that pays $25 a post. I’m starting out at twice a week with 200 word posts, and that’s pretty easy to do. Even if it takes 45 minutes a post, that’s $50 for less than 2 hours of work. I can write more too, if I have time. I like that, I just don’t want them to come to expect 5 or more posts a week from me. That’s why I left my blogging gig, and that paid a lot better.

Still, if I could make an extra $200 a month in blogging that would at least balance my losses. Supposedly I could make up to $500 a month – which would be good to strive for if I can do that and still maintain my 40-hour a week gig.

Plus, I need to keep writing things that I can share professionally (like, stuff other than this blog.) It’s good to stay in the writing habit. The analytical section of my brain needs to be worked out again. It’s getting flabby.

Uncategorized

What a Sweet Promotion!

2 Comments

As many of you know, I’ve been working a contract gig for the past few months that I really love. I feel like I’ve finally found a job that keeps me excited most minutes of the day and that can use my talents and ideas.

My contract is expiring in a few weeks, so my boss and I sat down to renegotiate the next part of my working with the company. It turns out that in addition to my liking the job, the people there, somehow, seem to like me too! Wow. Ok, so the only crappy part of the whole deal is that I’ve upped my hours to 40 a week, but I’m not considered “full time” because, as I’ve mentioned before, “full time” at my company is 50-60 hours a week. I’m not in the mood to work 60 hours a week (I’ll burn out fast) so I said give me 40 and an offer I can’t refuse. Well, I just said give me 40 on contract for another three months and make me an offer.

So I was making $3300 a month plus some small amount of stock options for 30 hours a week. That was fine, but in order to really make a living I needed to start working 40 hours a week. I figured I’d get offered $4400, without a raise at all. I’d ask for $200-$500 more, depending on what I was offered. So my boss decided to get rid of my stock options and instead give me more cash. That’s ok with me… I love my company, but I know the odds of it succeeding to the point where my stock options would be worth more than the paper they one day will be written on is slim. So he offered $4600 a month for 40 hours a week. That was a good offer, indeed. Still, it doesn’t include benefits, and I plan on my health insurance costing about $400 a month, with basic monthly payments and HSA savings (plus dental and vision). So I figured I’d ask for $200 more a month. The worst he could do was say no.

But he said yes. I probably could have gotten away with asking for even more than that, but I think I’ll try to raise my pay slowly over the time I work with the company. In three months, I might end up signing on for a full-time salaried position. It’s exciting to think what sort of offer would come out of that, given they’d be expecting me to work 60 hours a week! Well, I don’t know if I’ll ever want that, but it would surely be a nice way to save up some money for grad school and my potential house.

Uncategorized

Making a Living as a Freelance Writer

Leave a comment

As a gift to myself for reaching $30 in my AdSense account (after only 102 blog posts and more than 12k hits, heh) I purchased a copy of Writer’s Market 2008 at the local bookstore.

Filled with over 3,500 listings for various publishing opportunities, this book is a goldmine for freelancers.

I’m just getting started on my freelance career. I’m not a typical freelancer because I work one 30-hour-per-week job that pays the rent and the bills. But I’m hoping to expand my writing experience (and monthly earnings) by being published in numerous publications.

Sending out queries to publications is tough, especially because you likely will be rejected, or even worse, never hear back. I got lucky in that early on in my career I had the opportunity to work as an editorial assistant for a magazine and obtain numerous glossy clips. But it turns out, the clips that impress the few publications I’m trying to write for aren’t the ones I wrote for the mag. Instead, they like the style stories I wrote for a few local newspapers.

If you want to get started in writing and get paid for it, I highly recommend writing for a local newspaper. You might not get paid, but you’ll get a few clips. Don’t sign up for a full-time internship unless you’re in school or right out of college. You can try to freelance for a fee, you might make $50 an article. That’s a start.

You’ve probably already checked out freelancewritinggigs.com, a website that lists daily freelance gigs. There’s occasionally something good there. But generally, you’re going to want to send queries to the editors of different magazines. Come up with a few ideas (you might think they’re stupid and they might love them!) and send off a cover letter with your pitch, and attach a few writing samples. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, all this will cost you is your time… not even $.37 for a postage stamp.

Whatever you do, if you’re just getting started, don’t think of writing opportunities as being below you. Even though I make $50 an hour for some of my freelance gigs, on average I make about $25 an hour. Sometimes I’ll do work for free because I know how valuable that work will be as a portfolio piece in the long run.

I’ll write more tips on becoming a freelance writer as I go through my own trial and error process. Thus far, I’ve been assigned one 600-700 world Q&A for a magazine. The pay is $100. I’ll probably spend 4-5 hours on it, including the interview, so that’s a good $20-$25 an hour. Hopefully the interview will go over as planned, and I’ll have a good article on my hands.

Uncategorized

Found My Dream Job… But Why Must it Require 60 Hours Per Week?

3 Comments

My contract gig is going very well. In fact, it’s going better than expected. In the past two months, my 30-hour-a-week gig has already expanded from that of “writer” to that of marketing assistant and community manager. In a meeting with my boss yesterday, we briefly discussed the possibility of my staying on past the end of my contract in mid-Feb, and he seemed to want me to stick around. Great. Here’s the catch — to be considered “full time” I’d have to work about 60 hours per week.

Yes, that’s how life is out here in Silicon Valley. 60 hours a week is the norm for a full-time salaried position. Maybe I don’t need to be “full time.” I can be “part time” at 40 hours per week. Basically that just means that I’d be sans benefits and I’d get paid a bit less. And I might end up working 60 hours per week, but I won’t be required to do so.

I’m not sure that’s the end of the world. I’d rather have flexibility compared to having to be a slave (albeit a paid one) to a job (albeit a job I really like.) I want to have a life outside of work… even if that life is working other freelance gigs… I like the diversity of freelancing, so I think I’ll stick with that. Or maybe I should actually find myself a job that’s salaried at 40 hours per week.

But I tried that and I was miserable. I’ve been so happy lately, and it’s all because of my flexible schedule. I’m making a bit less money, but in time I can fix that. I’m marketing myself and getting new freelance writing gigs. An article here, a marketing newsletter there, and pretty soon I’m making $50k a year, all with time to keep enjoying my “hobby” of directing theater in the evenings and on weekends. I just don’t sleep.

I just wonder if I need to suck it up and take on a 60 hour per week job in order to advance in my career. I know that’s the norm here, and it seems like I’ve got one of those generation Y sense’s of self entitlement if I don’t just agree to that kind of life. But I’m worried if I do that I’ll quickly slip back into depression. And that I don’t want at all.

Uncategorized

Lacking Charisma: Social Anxiety and Work

4 Comments

I’m bad at small talk and, despite my desire to be well-liked, I lack adequate amounts of charm and grace. Looking back on my job positions over the past five years, I see a disheartening trend: my failures are more or less due to my desire to limit human interaction as much as possible in any given period of time.

Silicon Valley is all about the small talk. The inside jokes, the laughter. I probably seem like I’m stuck up because I don’t know how to just chat. Either I feel like I’m talking too much, or I feel like I’m boring the person I’m talking to with questions.

I feel like I do well on my job interviews. I seem personable enough. Then it comes to the actual ‘work’ part of a job… and I just want to work and be done with it. Well, that’s not entirely true, I love collaboration… working in small teams… when my ideas seem to be worth something and I can help contribute to a final product. That’s when I like talking to other people. But otherwise… I just crawl back into my shell.

It really, really sucks. I just want to be that girl that’s always smiling who everyone likes. Maybe I’d annoy some people because I’m just so perky, but when they figured out that the perk was genuine they’d have to like me, at least a little bit, right?

But instead I have trouble making eye contact and forming sentences that seem to resemble phrases that might generate some sort of interest.

I don’t know if there is something ‘wrong’ with me or if I’ve turned myself into this anti-social monster. Sometimes I wonder if I have some kind of autism. I’ve never been good at socializing. When I was a kid, I’d only want to talk to adults, and that wasn’t because I liked talking to adults more, it’s just they’d forgive me for being awkward in exchange for accepting that I hadn’t reached puberty.

How much of growing up ‘the cootie girl’ influences ones ability to succeed down the road? There are so many voices in my head telling me that I’m a failure, and it’s hard to shove them all out and achieve some sort of clarity.

At my job, I go into the office, I basically run to my desk, and then I work all day, and then I go home. I’m too afraid to even say goodbye to people. I just appear and disappear. That’s no good for making employers want to keep you on as a worker. And don’t even get me started about why I should have never attempted to pursue a career in journalism with social anxiety…

Do you all think that charisma and charm are traits I can take on, or should I just try really hard to learn some super-specific geeky skill that pretty much requires me to be a recluse?

Uncategorized

Cue the Trump Theme Song

4 Comments

I didn’t expect this blog to bring in any extra pay, but I put up some Google Ads to see if I could make some extra cash off of those. Income from the Google Ads turns out to be really random. Some days I’ll get a lot of clicks and other days they’ll be worthless. I think a lot of people are just so numb to Adsense ads these days. I don’t blame them. Then again, if I see an in site ad that is interesting to me on someone else’s site, I often click the ad. Rarely does it amount to me making a purchase on whatever it is the advertiser is selling, but I’ve visited sites that I found through advertising before.

Anyway, I’ve been contacted by a few advertisers lately who want to put ads on my page. I’m flattered, really. It’s certainly encouragement to keep up on this blog, as apparently there is some value to write all there is to know about my oh-so-exciting personal finances. Thus far one ad has gone up, and I’m currently in talks with a few other advertisers that may or may not work out.

This post, though, is to note that as of today, I’ve made my first successful ad sale for this site. I’m amazed, because I wasn’t even fishing for advertisers yet. I mean, I planned to later down the line when I had the site actually looking good and more content that would be useful to people. Right now, this blog has kind of turned into my quasi-anonymous bitch fest with a few useful entries splattered about. I really want to change that and make this site more about looking at what I’ve learned about personal finance and job hunting, and help others with what I know.

I’m not really sure how many readers I have right now. I get a decent amount of traffic, but according to my feed reader button only 13 people have signed up for my feed. I say “only,” but really I think it’s pretty cool that 13 ‘strangers’ are reading my blog on a fairly regular basis. My public blog, which is now mostly friends only, has tons of readers… but it’s over on livejournal and any money made from adsense ads there goes directly to LJ. I do like how Blogger seems to be pretty open to advertising, or at least splitting ad revenue with bloggers. What have they got to lose? Google makes most of the money from Adsense anyway. But I don’t mind that. At least I feel like I have the opportunity to control whether I want ads on my site, and if I do, make some money from them. I mean, enough to buy a few cups of Starbucks per month.

Uncategorized

I Need a Job.

3 Comments

Welcome to the world of unemployment. It’s not that bad of a world, minus the whole losing money every second of the day sort of thing.

The good news is that while I’m officially unemployed (sans unemployment insurance, since I resigned), I’ve picked up a few random freelance gigs here and there. My uncle always needs random work done for his e-marketing firm, and he seems really happy with the work I’ve done for him thus far, which makes me feel really good. Yea, he’s my uncle, but he’s also a really talented marketing entrepreneur and I know he wouldn’t be hiring me for more jobs if he felt like I didn’t have the chops.

I have a steady income (1/3rd my rent) each month from ongoing writing assignments from him, with occasional extra work for the firm. This month, in addition to my normal copywriting, I did my first official web page design assignment for him. I guess he liked how the design looked but wasn’t thrilled that I turned a pure HTML document into one with CSS. Oops. I was so confused by the original HTML document, given that it was causing Dreamweaver to have a hernia or something. Half the code turned GREY and I couldn’t edit it. Now, maybe that was a template that I was supposed to work in, but there was still some weird code that was making the layout all wonky. I kept the layout exactly the same, except I revamped it in CSS. Hopefully that’s not too awful. He wasn’t exactly clear on the directions, I was just told to take a pre-existing site and make it look better, and that I did. Oh well.

I’m also writing a bunch of copy for a start-up social networking-esque company. It’s all contract work, but who knows, it could lead to something more. So this week is booked solid with contract work. Next week, my sister comes to visit and I’m “taking the week off” to show her around town. Then I’m going to start focusing on my job applications. Well, I’ve been applying for jobs left and right, but am not sure anyone is going to consider hiring me full time since I was only at my last job for 4 months. That looks really bad in the eyes of a potential employer, and I can’t blame them for doubting me. It’s just frustrating because I know I have so much to give, it’s just my last job wasn’t right for me. I’m not a newshound. I’m somewhat socially anxious, which doesn’t really align with a career in journalism. But how do I explain that to potential employers? “I quit my last job because talking to strangers makes my heart explode.” Yea, that’s going to help me land a great job, for sure. šŸ™

In any case, I’m hopeful that something good will come along if i’m patient and bide my time with contract work. If I can manage to turn the contract work into a full-time profession, all the better. But for now, I’m crossing my fingers that I can manage to pay for my rent, basic bills, health insurance cobra, and food until something full-time comes along.

Meanwhile, i’ve decided to focus my free time on getting into shape and figuring out how to be healthy inside and out. I’ve stopped taking the anti-depressents (wow, I took them for a whole 25 days, and now, I’m done) and am looking into herbal stuff instead. (Yup, I bought some St. John’s Wort.) I can’t figure out if all of the nutritional supplements end up costing me more than a psychiatrist and Lexapro, or if they end up costing about the same. In any case, I figured out that my lack of energy and dizziness is probably caused by iron and other nutritional deficiences. This week, I even tried eating red meat (I’ve been a vegetarian for about 10 years, though I started eating fish a year ago) – but after downing a half-pound hamburger yesterday I got sick to my stomach. Let’s just say an hour or so after eating that burger, I only digested about half of it. The rest? Don’t ask. (Yuck.) So I’m done with red meat (again) for now. Instead, I’m looking into other supplements to help the cause of mission get healthy (without – getting broke.) Think I can do it? Well, I certainly hope so.

Uncategorized

Successful Shoe Return; Job Stress; Understanding Economics

2 Comments

Please pat me on the back. I walked into Macyā€™s to return my non-functioning shoes that I purchased for $45 last month (the heel of the right shoe somehow deflated each time I put any weight on it) and by some miracle of miracleā€™s I managed to walk out of the store, return receipt in hand, without making another purchase.

(Although I admit, I did eye the earring display by the door and have dirty thoughts about buying half of the items shimmering in my view).

Now, before you get too pat-happy, prepare to punch me. Five minutes or so after my accomplishment, I walked into Borders and spent $36 on two books. I felt like the books were worthy purchases though. Sure, I could go to a library to get books for free, but on the rare occasion I manage to motivate myself to read anything, Iā€™m the type that loves to take notes in the columns. The librarians donā€™t really think my notes add value to the books, so itā€™s best for me to purchase them up front.

My goal over the next few months is to actually start reading. I have terrible ADD and I rarely pick up a book and make it through from start to finish. Iā€™ve given up on fiction almost entirely, but non-fiction is worth my time and painful attempts to focus.

Since Iā€™m on this personal finance kick and slightly depressed/confused/bewildered about how Wall Street works, I decided to invest in some economics for dummies-type books.

So I bought:

1) Economics: Making Sense of the Modern Economy (by ā€œThe Economistā€)
2) Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery, by David Warsh

I like buying ā€œsmart peopleā€ books. My shelves are filled with them. Do I read them? No. But I do need to figure out this economy thing. Itā€™s one subject that Iā€™m embarrassed I know next-to-nothing about. As a business reporter, I owe my readers (and myself) a bit of a fast education on the topic.

Speaking of my profession, I wonā€™t go into detail (since I want to remain anonymous), but Iā€™m a bit stressed out about my new job. The job is awesome for so many reasons ā€“ flexibility, salary, the people I get to work with and meet, and above all, the ability to learn something (or a bunch of things) new every day. How could I ask for more? I know Iā€™m so lucky to have landed in such a great position given my age, my experience, and perhaps even my potential.

Well, thatā€™s the problem. I really want to do a good job, but itā€™s not like I can just complete all my projects early, take on additional projects, and seem like a great worker. Ultimately my success is dependent more on quality than quantity of my output, though quantity is important as well.

The sad thing is that even when I try to be careful with my reporting, I have a tendency to make little mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes once in a while, but I seem to do it all the time. Iā€™m looking into going to see a psychiatrist because Iā€™m thinking perhaps if I get on some drugs for my ADD Iā€™ll be less likely to miss my errors. But all that mental health care costs a fortune, even if my insurance covers some of it. Then again, if itā€™ll help me keep my job, itā€™s worth it, right?

In any case, Iā€™m confused about the whole career situation. More than anything Iā€™m frustrated with myself for not kicking ass at my job. I donā€™t want to let my anxiety hold me back from success. Then thereā€™s also the question of whether Iā€™m smart enough to be in a position that obviously requires a high level of intellect and ability to collect, analyze and re-hash complicated information.

My boss recently criticized me for my lack of voice in my work. He said he hired me because I told him that Iā€™m a blogger. But my writing for work has been so boring and dry. Itā€™s lacking any sort of personality, I guess. I wonder what heā€™d think of this blog or any of the other blogs that I keep that are chalk full of personality. Itā€™s a lot easier to have a voice when Iā€™m writing about things Iā€™m intimately familiar with, but the topics I write about are not things that are easy to understand or to explain. Maybe someday Iā€™ll get to the point where I can write short, edgy posts with tons of voice that people would actually want to read. Until that day, I better get ā€œgood enoughā€ so I can keep my jobā€¦ and keep improving.

Career

Building Up a Freelance Career

2 Comments

There are tons of opportunities to make a few bucks here and there when it comes to writing. This blog, despite all of those AdSense ads, is not one of them. I seem to be making about three cents a week with AdSense, and thatā€™s on a good week.

However, with all of the magazines in the world, online and in print, thereā€™s plenty of room to pitch stories and freelance for some extra cash each month. Iā€™ve always been fascinated by the idea of working as a freelancer, but Iā€™m not sure Iā€™d be comfortable moving to a full-time freelance career. First of all, every month would bring in a different amount of money. Health insurance would be all up to me to figure out. I might ultimately make more money, but the uncertainty freaks me out too much to take that leap.

In the meantime, Iā€™ve been lucky enough to be doing some minimal freelance writing work for my uncle, who runs his own online marketing company. He develops e-newsletters for a company that are sent out each month. Included in those newsletters are summaries of related news articles. Guess who writes those summaries? I make $50 per month doing that, but that $50 covers one voice lesson. It actually used to be $100 a month but one of the companies he developed the newsletter for decided they were done with their monthly marketing e-mail. The extra $100 a month was really nice. It seemed to provide the extra cushion I need between overspending and just having enough money to break even each month. The job is nice because writing up the blurbs comes naturally to me and I feel like Iā€™m actually helping my uncle out while also making his life a little easier.

Iā€™ve done occasional freelance work for newspapers, but itā€™s a ton of work for $50. My cell phone bill for making all the calls ends up costing more than what I make. So Iā€™ve put a stop to newspaper freelancing for now.

Lately Iā€™ve realized that the real money to be made in freelancing is writing for PR and marketing. I donā€™t think Iā€™d want a full-time PR or marketing career, but I do enjoy spending my free time writing marketing copy. Itā€™s nice to spend my days reporting and writing hard news, and then getting a bit fluffy come evening. Of course, I have to be very careful not to run into any conflict-of-interest issues, which is always a very real concern for me as a journalist. Iā€™d only write marketing copy for a company outside of the sectors my magazine covers.

On top of writing, Iā€™m also trying to build up my freelance web design work. Itā€™s amazing how much money one can make designing a simple site for a person or a business. My uncle hooked me up with my first gigs, where he pitched me as a cheap alternative to other web designers. I guess most web designers charge about $1500-$2000 for a simple site. Iā€™ve charged about $600-$700 per site. I feel really weird charging people that much money, even though I realize my prices are more than competitive. Iā€™ve also worked for small companies or people who have a large chunk of disposible income, so my uncle tells me not to feel guilty about setting my prices in that range. He said heā€™d charge $2500 or more to do the exact same thing.

Knowing that, sometimes I wonder if I should really focus on gaining skills in web design. After all, it would be neat to either work full-time as a web designer or, ideally, to supplement my income as a reporter by designing about two sites per month. The extra $1200 per month, or even $600 per month, would really help balance out my budget.

As far as career goes, Iā€™m not sure what Iā€™m going to be doing in a month. My company, as Iā€™ve noted previously, looks as if itā€™s about to go down the tubes. But Iā€™m not too concerned. Some exciting opportunities have popped up. Itā€™s kind of nice how things seem to always work out. A networking contact of the past has contacted me about an opening at her company. Itā€™s not everyday someone contacts me about a job opening.

I definitely have tons more to say about job searching as both an entry-level candidate and now as a candidate with rather specialized experience. But thatā€™ll be another entry.

Do any of you freelance full-time or for supplemental income outside of your job? Any advice for a gal whoā€™s interested in building out her freelance work?