You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'GURU' category.
Still no response from Guru client. I’ve sent her an email over a week ago and have not heard anything. I will attempt to contact her through Guru. I’ve never had a client that I’ve had to get a third party involved in dealing with, however I will if I have to.
It is so frustrating when you believe you have developed a level of trust with a client and then they disappear off the face of the Earth. I put a lot of work into this editing project and I expect to get paid. I just hate to have to play the “angry freelancer” role.
I’m in the middle of an odd situation regarding an old project. I accepted a project in mid-to-late January for a Guru client. The project entailed the editing and proofreading of a memoir, basically prepping it for potential publication. The client and I spoke a lot via email and developed what I felt to be a good repertoire. Due to the nature of the book’s content, I felt comfortable with this client. The length of the project was agreed to be approximately four weeks, with some level of flexibility. I fully edited the first 2 sections of what I was told would be a 4 section book. All of a sudden in mid-February I stopped hearing from the client. I was sick at the time and a week passed before I followed up regarding the status on her end. She assured me that she was busy with rewrites on her end and would be sending me the next portion within a few days time. The last contact I had with her was on 22February.
So today I sent her an email letting her know that I have other projects on my plate and my time is pretty much accounted for. I asked her where we stand with her project and I’m waiting for an answer. I am hoping we can just cut our losses and she will pay me. I had no problem finishing this edit job for her, but we have gone way past our deadline with this and I’ve since taken on other projects.
What would you do in this situation?
Are you fluent in another (or several) languages other than English? If so, you should consider translation jobs. As I scour the Elance (and sometimes Guru, though not as many translation jobs are listed there) job postings I am constantly seeing jobs that require translation services. It seems like for every language imaginable there are clients who need some kind of written information translated either from English or to English.
Why not turn your second (or third…) language into another source of income? Obviously the more popular (i.e. the ones most people learn in school) languages have the most applicants (think Spanish, French, Italian). However, if you are fluent in a language that is more obscure, you will likely face less competition.
It might also pay to either take a foreign language class to learn a new language or brush up on one that you might be rusty with. Consider it a business investment. There are many DVDs and other learning materials available to refresh you on the basics. For quick results, immersion methods are recommended.
What languages are you fluent in? Have you ever worked on a translation project?
Photo courtesy of Jupiter Images
I’m sure everyone whose ever tried their hand at freelance writing can relate to this particular pet peeve of mine: clients who do not value our services as writers. This may be a common issue across a wide spectrum of careers, but it is especially prevelant in the world of writing. Case in point, I am surveying Guru today for leads and the headline of one job says “On Call Writer: Super Low Budget”. This particular person is looking for a writer to churn out up to five page articles with a word count of between 300-500 words/$1-$5 per page. You do the math. This comes out to anywhere from $25 (at best) and $5 (at worst). AND the buyer wants anywhere from 24 hours to a maximum of 3 day turn-around. In my little-experienced mind, the only way you could get me to do this project is if they paid me $25 for a 300 word article on a subject that I had to do zero research on with a turn-around time of 3 days. Speedy, cheap and decently written (he wants bidder to include sample), he’s not looking for much, is he? Surprisingly, at post time, job has zero bids.
I’ve consciously decided that I will limit the amount of projects that I bid on in the month of February on Elance. Mainly because I do not want to shell out more than $10 for connects. This will mean that I can only bid on 15 one-connect projects. Thus, I need to be very picky about what kind of work I choose and the amount that I charge for my work. While I’ve spent a lot of time in January working on projects, many of them were under-bidded (by my own doing) and I felt like I did a ton of work for little profit. Whatever supplemental work I need, I will bid on through Guru.
Also, this plan will allow me to 1) work on the current long-term editing project for a wonderful client, 2) do more reading (which has really taken a back-seat as of late) and 3) produce more articles for Suite on subjects that I am interested in.
February will be my official “work smarter, not harder” month (is it any coincidence that February is the shortest month of the year??).
I’m getting a little concerned that I have yet to get any jobs through Guru. While I don’t bid on as many jobs there as I do on Elance, I tend to bid a lot lower on Guru, just to see if someone will pick me so I can build up a reputation on that site. As far as I can gather, my bid proposals are solid. I throughly explain to the buyer how my experiences & qualifications make me the perfect candidate for their project, etc. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.
Since we’ve been discussing Elance & Guru I thought I’d take it a step forward and explain my own personal reasons for choosing to use a pay-to-bid freelance job site.
The first reason is that I am looking to build clips. Because I am desperate to make a name for myself, anything I can compile in an online portfolio medium is guaranteed to show my work and get me more exposure.
The second reason is that I will not do work for free. Unless by some amazing freak occurrence of nature someone from Conde Nast offers me a job on an intership-basis, than all bets are off.
The third reason is that I am not really bothered too much about the membership fees and the percentage that Elance takes from you when you get paid by a client. Why? Because I am still making money. And my goal is to build a relationship with these clients where I can do ongoing work for them on a regular basis. As long as I come out above breaking-even I will be satisfied. I’m not planning on using these services for the long term, just until I am able to make connections, have references and compile a professional body of work.
This is a very hotly debated subject among freelance writers since many of them pose the question “why should I have to pay to get work and then pay a portion of my work back to Elance?” Well for someone like me who has too much debt, any ability for me to bring in some extra cash is a welcome opportunity. Sure, that extra money I have to shell out for membership fees and project fees would be better off burning a hole in my pocketbook, but hey. We each have to find the way that works for us and that helps us achieve our goals.
I originally signed up with Elance on October 2007
I originally signed up with Guru on December 16, 2007
On Elance, I pay a monthly membership of $24.95 which allows me 45 connects* with which to bid for the month.
Guru Annual Membership of $149.95 which allows 100 bids per 30 day cycle. (This basically brakes down as follows: $12.50 per month CHEAPER THAN ELANCE and almost 50% more bids/connects.
Too bad IMHO that Elance offers better jobs (not to mention I like their setup in terms of allowing writers to post their portfolio on their site).
Just an observation I made.
* connects are the equivalent to bids. Each project (based on the amount) costs a certain number of connects, i.e. lower paying jobs = 1 connect
Ok, that’s a bit of a lie. I joined Guru.com about 2 weeks ago because I was getting frustrated with the lack of projects I was being awarded at Elance. While many of the projects posted on Guru are the same as the ones at Elance, Guru is cheaper and offers me the opportunity to bid on more projects on a monthly basis. I have not gotten any work through Guru yet, but that’s because I’ve only bidded on a few projects. I’ve decided to use Guru to bid on the projects that are also posted on Elance, since I need to hoard all my bidding connects at Elance (I’ve already shelled out over $15 in addition to the monthly membership fees at Elance this month to bid on projects that have gone unawarded or to other providers). I plan on keeping my account with Elance since I prefer their portfolio structure and I’ve already amassed some feedback that I don’t want to loose, though I also plan on actively using Guru more frequently to look for projects as well.
For those who don’t know, freelancing for me is at the moment a part-time job taken on as a way to supplement my full-time income. Ideally, I’d like to be able to build up my reputation, contacts and experience to be able to pursue a full-time career out of it. I’ve only been working freelance since October of this year, so in many ways I am still a newbie.
That being said, it is extremely difficult to start out in the illustrious world of freelance writing. The supply definitely outweighs the demand. In order to land jobs, one must be a good writer who has exceptional skills and mastery of the English language and a tough backbone. To put it another way – consider yourself lucky to get a rejection in this industry. Finding jobs is the real challenge.
So what is a beginner to do? Well, first of all if you have connections USE THEM! This is precisely the kind of career in which it pays handsomely to know someone in the biz who can get your resume/query letter/proposal at the top of the pile on an editor’s desk. For the rest of us, our options are pretty much endless. We can query to our heart’s content, search the internet incessantly or (as I’ve done) use the services provide by freelance job bidding sites.
A general disclaimer up front: these sites are costly, they often charge membership fees in addition to a portion of the money you earn from each project you successfully complete. But first things first. Google “freelance bidding sites” and chances are good that you will come across some of the big ones (Elance, Guru, ifreelance). Do a little bit of research to see what kind of jobs they offer, what kind of categories (writing, website development, administrative services, etc.), how many projects you can bid on per month and what there fees are. You will be surprised that each site varies greatly in each of these areas. You are limited to the amount of monthly projects you can bid on depending on site and membership level. The basic way they work is much like Ebay. You search through lots of job postings and find ones that appeal to you. You are then able to bid on the job. You tell the buyer a little bit about yourself, why you would do the best job, provide some samples of your writing and post the rate you would charge for the service as well as the turn-around time on the project. Then you sit patiently and wait for the bidding to close. Unlike Ebay, the buyer has the option of choosing anyone who bids regardless of price. Than one of 3 things happen: 1) your bid gets declined (for any slew of reasons) 2) buyer chooses another service provider or my personal favorite 3) NOTHING HAPPENS ! This can be very frustrating for the bidder, but the reality is that this happens quite frequently.
By using a service such as Elance or Guru, you will gain some experience and you will have samples of work that you can use in your portfolio. Just don’t expect big bucks. In my experience unless you want to get stuck writing 300 SEO articles at a rate of $1 for every 100 words, your best bet is to look for single articles that you can put all your effort into. For a newbie on these sites the basic 500-800 word article will run between $50-75 which is probably the best jobs a newbie can get. By simply doing a few of these jobs you will earn some experience, samples, and ratings/feedback which will propel you to higher paying projects.
If your interested:
GURU’s website: www.guru.com
ELANCE’s website: www.elance.com
ifreelance’s website: www.ifreelance.com
Have any of you used these bidding sites before to look for jobs? How were your experiences?
