the weird and wonderful world of writing for the world wide web...
when kaleidoscope closed i lost my home and my job in one heavy blow. damn!
the past year has been difficult, but it's getting better as i've entered the weird and wonderful world of writing for the world wide web. writing content that is...you know, all that stuff that you read on every site when you go surfing the net.
it started slowly...my first project was an ebook for a site called hyperink. after being accepted as a writer, you go on a spreadsheet page and select three topics you feel confident to write about. one of my choices was iran, i remember, one is lost in oblivion in the nether reaches of my brain, and the one they assigned me was called "The Top Ten Rolling Stones Songs: Lyrics and Analysis." well, if you know me at all, you know i'm a huge stones fan, so this one seemed a no-brainer. but what are the top ten stones songs? by what criteria? i spent hella time researching the best-selling songs, reader's polls, etc. to come up with a list that could arguably be called the stones top ten. i wrote my ebook, got a few formatting revisions, and just like that, i was the author of an ebook. just today i got 64 cents in royalties deposited to my paypal account. watch out world! i'm gonna be rich!
it took me about 3 whole days to write my ebook for a whopping $90. i think i averaged about $3-4 an hour. when i tried to write another book for hyperink, they told me they were no longer publishing books written to order for them, but instead publishing people's blogs.....hhmmmm....hint, hint???
then i got a gig writing book reviews. now, i've written lots of book reviews for some pretty amazing books, but this was different. the books i was reviewing were ebook summaries of best-selling self-help, diet, and inspirational books. yikes. kinda like reviewing cliff notes. whatever, it paid decently--$25 for a short, 150 word review for amazon and two shorter (just a couple of lines) but different reviews for itunes and barnes and noble.
i was pretty horrified when i was told to review a certain book and it turned out to be by a televangelist. ouch! i didn't know what to do so i did the only thing i could, i shut my eyes and spewed garbage. the deal was, it had to be a five star review. i could have written a scathing one pretty easily, but praise? nevertheless, they loved the review and sent me a new title with the caveat that if it offended me i didn't have to do it. ha! nothing could have offended me more than the televangelist. i had to laugh though, turns out the new book was a how-to bdsm guide. that one was actually pretty fun. then the titles dried up and i was back to square one.
soon i came on an online agency called odesk that lists hundreds of online jobs. i registered, filled in my profile, took some of their tests so people could see how great i was, uploaded a few things into a portfolio (my rolling stones ebook!), set my hourly rate ($10) and applied for some jobs. nada. i was pretty gratified, though, when a couple of people approached me for work. the first one was writing short articles for $7.50 each. not much money, but i was desperate. the trial test article they had me write was "do's and don'ts for your trip to new york". ok. write it (in their template) off the top of my head, stick in a couple of links culled from 5 minutes of research, and i was finished.
they loved it. hired me right away. gave me great feedback. then promptly sent me six articles to write on emails. is there really that much to say about emails? like, one of the topics was cc in emails. then the next one was cc and bcc in emails. seriously? but i persevered and was relieved when they were finished with only a few formatting revisions. ready for the next batch, i envisioned writing about new york again, or really, anything but emails. guess what? the next six were on (drum roll) EMAILS!!!
aaaahhhhh......only this time i had to write on stuff like POP and SMTP and PHP in emails. how the fuck do i know? and with only a couple of key words and a template to guide me, i jumped in. i researched, i read, i concentrated and tried hard to understand, and i wrote what i thought were comprehendible short articles on the basics of POP, SMTP, and PHP in emails. turns out, that wasn't what they wanted at all. i ignored the articles for a while. they sat in my revisions folder while i worked on other articles. they instituted a new system where you could choose from a list and i chose a bunch of political stuff (go figure). then the editor they assigned to me started getting bitchy. i quit. i never got paid for those email articles because i never did the revisions but at that point i would only have been making about $1.50-2.00 an hour. they had reached a point of such diminishing returns that i don't give a fuck i didn't get paid.
now, however, i have traded in the $7.50 articles for $25 articles. they're shorter, they have clear instructions, they have topics that are in my field, and i even get a byline! so we'll see. i submitted my first one a week ago and have yet to hear from an editor. i went ahead and wrote and submitted the two more i could choose before an editor worked with me and now i wait. can't choose more. can't contact an editor. i wait. as i said, we'll see.
but there have been some other jobs along the way. i write about insurance for a really nice guy in australia. i write lead paragraphs for a study abroad site, i've been working with a really cool guy from suriname who's taking stanley jordan there for a concert this july in hopes of starting a new jazz festival in suriname. one of the pieces i did for him is apparently going to be in the surinamese airlines' planes.
see? weird and wonderful...
