Elance Still Trying to Drive Me Insane

I haven't had to use Elance that much over the past year, but lately work has been drying up all over. I went back to Elance last month to start bidding on freelance jobs. I thought it would be an easy way to drum up some new work. WRONG. They are again trying to creating the most complicated site every known to man.

If you've never used Elance, you can probably imagine how it should work. You should be able to bid on jobs and then you should have an account area where you can see what you've bid on and what jobs you've landed. WRONG.

Bidding on jobs is easy. Finding them again afterward in your account, however, has been made difficult to the point of ridiculousness. There are so many statistics, workspaces, pages of portfolio options and other crap that it's impossible to actually find anything. I was actually in tears once trying to find a project that I was supposed to be working on but couldn't find.

Elance has also started some type of Sunday report crap that they never really explained. I keep getting emails about sending Sunday reports for projects that have been over for weeks. In addition, they put up a bunch of tests that they encourage you to take to show off your skills. I thought that did sounds like a better idea than just self evaluation. WRONG.

I started the grammar test, getting partway through before I realized that it never said whether this was for MLA, AP, APA or any other style. The questions were ones that you would expect in a high school English class, not from anyone working in any professional capacity. The questions were extremely style specific, so I thought I could just get the answer from the site. WRONG. I emailed, asking which style the test was for. No response. Follow up email. No response. Screw it.

As much as Elance bothers me and is increasingly treating its users like kids, I simply was not prepared for the email that came today. Here's just one quote from this masterpiece: "Elance is introducing a new way to display your activity in a section called "My Stats" (short for My Statistics)." I do have to thank them for clarifying that, though. I would have been up all night running Google searches trying to figure out what "stats" meant.

Now, because the site just isn't crushingly complicated enough, with rankings and ratings and placement based on about 10 factors, they are now starting a points system that will affect your placement in their search as well as your credit rating, your medical history and whether or not you get laid. I am assuming. The points are based on feedback, getting repeat work, earnings and other stuff that already affected your placement.

So, why all of this? Because they have too damn much money and no real reason to spend any of it. I have an idea. I need patio furniture. Bad. If Elance will pay for my patio furniture, I will plaster it with the Elance logo and give myself a point every time I sit on it. Then, I can test myself as to how long I sit and report back with pages of statistics about it. I will rank where I get to sit on it based on my points. Then I will create pages and pages of information about what it is used for and submit a detailed report every Sunday about its use. I am seriously thinking of submitting this idea to them. I don't expect a response.

Holy Crap

So, last night the big threat of the swine flu was that there was a big outbreak in Mexico and people are warned not to go there right now. Check. I wasn't going there anyway. Then a few minutes ago I got a call to tell me that all of the schools in the area are being shut down until next week because two kids that go to a school five minutes from my house both have swine flu. Seriously. So, we're pretty much going to die. Or take Tamiflu. Either way, I can see that I'm going to get much less writing done this week than I had planned. Thanks, pigs!

UPDATE: Ahhhhhhhh! I'm getting emails, phone calls and Gmail Chat pings about the swine flu. Thank God I don't have Skype. Schools, daycares and businesses that cater to kids are shut down and now other businesses are closing. My brother has to work from home tomorrow because his whole office is closed. Local museums and other things are announcing closings until at least next week. People are freaking out and sending me press releases about hand washing(?) and articles about face masks.

I'm pretty much thinking pandemic barbecue- let's all get together and roast the bastards that started all this.

Blogs and Blogs and Blogs

So, I was a blogger for Today dot com for awhile. They eventually let me have two blogs and were paying pretty well for the posts. After awhile they started lowering the price for each post. Then it happened again. And again. After awhile, they stopped paying for them altogether and went to a pay-per-pageview model, though they never bothered to email me to tell me. I had to email them and ask why I wasn't being paid.

Since that time, I have heard from at least 30 or 40 other people that this has happened to. And like many of them, I am not being paid for the posts I made after the cut-off time, even though they didn't notify me about it ahead of time, because I didn't make their minimum payment amount during that time. The minimum payment is very high- far higher than on any other site I have ever written for, and I can't legally prove that the site knows that its bloggers will likely not reach it on the current payment schedule. No! They probably have no idea at all and would be shocked if this were called to their attention.

Ninety percent of what I do is ghostwriting. Most of the stuff that I put up under my own name was started so that I can show clients- "Hey, see that? I wrote that stuff and I can write your stuff too." I don't worry about rights that much because ghostwritten stuff is sold for full rights, and I don't call attention to it or anything because that's just rude. I hate it when ghostwriters do that- I see some who actually link on their sites to stuff they've ghostwritten, and I'm thinking, does your client know you do this? Maybe they want people to think they wrote it. Maybe that's why they bought it!

Anyway, the question of rights has really struck me now because the rights to that entire blog are gone. And, it's under my name. I can't keep building on what was there and expect anything in return, and they can do whatever they want to it like put bacon on it or unicorns. I'm seriously considering starting another Blogger blog on that topic just because I can. That way I could keep adding to it and create an impressive body of information on the subject, or, you know, a big ole wad 'o posts, that might actually bring in something. But I already have blogs that are neglected, and I lost the password to one that I love, so I'm not sure what will happen there. Taking on a new blog is like taking on a new puppy- be sure you know how much time it will take and how much whining will be involved.

If you are thinking about blogging for Today, I can't prove that the owner is a jerk. That's simply my opinion. I can't prove that he has been nasty to his bloggers in his own forum, since "nasty" is subjective. I don't whatsoever think that people should avoid the site like the plague until they treat writers like real humans. Writers are filth and should be treated as such. I've heard that the owner eats kittens, also, but I don't believe that whatsoever.

WUI

The insecurity that comes with writing, well, that I sometimes get anyway, has a few cures. Unfortunately, the only one that I know of is alcohol. I have noticed over time that when I've had a few I actually write pretty well. I have fewer stilted sentences and the whole thing flows pretty well. Too much of course, and you forget about what you're doing and wander off to see what's in the freezer. Cake! But just one or two and suddenly the fear of shredding a sentence is gone and you don't develop that stiffness that can sometimes occur with too much thought put into exactly where every word is going to go.

There has been the odd time, however, when too many did indeed occur and I wrote something that ended up strange and yet not as strange as you might think. I literally don't remember writing this. That's a weird feeling. You log into your Blogger account and think WTF? Have I been hacked? By someone who loves Shelley? Probably not.

Luckily, having a few too many only occurs during those rare recreational times and not when I have client work to do. I do love creating weird essays and Hubs for my own amusement, though, during those occasions. I think they're actually a lot closer to the type of writing that I'd eventually like to do. Don't we all get into this because we eventually want to write fiction? That seems to get further and further away as time passes.

Freaky Sunday and Blogs

Ok, so you think you pretty much have the contingencies covered most of the time. You try to get your research done early in case a home emergency comes up. You keep an extra, crappy computer on hand in case your first one self-destructs, which has happened twice, and an even-crappier computer waiting for when the crappy one blows up. Check. You have steeled yourself to work through household commotion, screaming, the flu, strep throat, two bouts of head lice (What? When you have offspring, it happens!) and slumber parties.

So, I had a nice long list of stuff to do last night, all scheduled out nice and neat on a scrap of paper, and then a FREAK WINDSTORM blew up suddenly and knocked the power out for more than three hours. Seriously. Even a cat 1 hurricane rarely knocks out the power, but this sucker was merciless. I've never seen anything like it out of a hurricane, and it lasted just as long. I figured the gods didn't want me to keep my schedule- they wanted me to pace nervously for an hour and then read a book by candlelight. So, I paced nervously for two hours and didn't read a damn thing.

On the upside, I was able to interview the Fug Girls recently! I got their final responses back today and put it all onto a Suite101 article. I freaking love the Fug Girls. I actually sent them a fan email about a year ago, which they were kind enough to answer. I am also happy to be back doing a few interviews, which I have missed since leaving newspapers. Most Web articles come from Web research and perhaps your own knowledge on a subject.

Q: Why put it in question/answer format? A: Because like I said, most Web articles don't rely on original interviews. Putting a few quotes into a Web article, as is done with newspaper articles, can make it appear that the quotes are lifted from other articles or from press releases.

The article is part of a larger series of articles that I've been working on about bloggers who get book deals. I have a list of some of the blogs that have been turned into books and I have another blogger interview here.

My point with these is to counteract the notion that you have to have serious subject matter or that your blog has to be informational in order to have a blog that is hugely popular. I was inspired by a particular blogger who continually tells her readers that you should never start a blog without carefully researching the subject matter first and then must engage in non-stop promotion of that blog if you want to be successful. The more I delve into the subject of popular blogs, the more I find out that this couldn't be less true. All of these bloggers start with an idea to amuse themselves, they never research it beforehand and they never engage in promotion. If you wonder about the success of your own blog, you may find some inspiration in them.

Pen Names and Privacy

I have been writing under a number of pen names for as long as I've been a Web writer. I didn't think it was that unusual at first. I usually choose Beaker or some variation of it whenever I can, and that's worked fine so far. Many times I choose Beakerwriter, which is my user name on Elance, RentACoder and Constant Content.

While a lot of Web writers were discussing using their name as their brand, I figured Beakerwriter was my brand. I even put pictures of beakers on my accounts instead of one of those gross business pictures that so many people use. On one site I wrote over 125 articles that are all attributed to a random letter combination that I came up with. The only time I've used my name has been when a site disallows the use of a pen name. That has happened with two sites that I write for, and one of those sites gave me permission to use my first initial instead of my first name. It's been fine.

Of course, that's the thing- it's been fine. It hasn't been spectacular, well, perhaps once in a while it has, but on the whole, I can't seem to grab those big whales. Is it the pen names? Is it that people are seeing my work and not connecting it to the cheesy person who comes knocking and asking for assignments? Are the pen names holding me back? I've seen people link to my blog posts and mention that they don't know whether I'm male or female. Is that wrong?

I sincerely don't know. I value my privacy dearly. I think that's it, anyway. Am I just hiding? Am I so afraid of people knowing who wrote something that I am keeping potential clients from seeing something that might be good for my career?

I've been seriously considering letting go of all of the pen names. Perhaps for some it wouldn't be a big deal, but to me it would be like parading down the center of town naked. Trust me- no one wants that. Or would they? Are our flaws really so terrible that we have to hide them in perpetuity? I may have a bad article here or there and occasionally espouse politically incorrect ideas. Does that mean that I should hide it all lest it be ridiculed and used as proof of my incompetence? Ick. I really don't know.

Vacay, Email and Layoffs

We recently got back from a week of vacation, something that I wasn't sure I wanted to do, and indeed wasn't sure we could do since the L word was first spoken in our house. No, not that word. This one. We actually get an extremely good accommodation deal, sometimes completely free, through having connections. That sounds really Mafia, not that there is one, but it's just dumb luck on my part. Anyway, I discovered several things during my foray into Florida:

Being able to do actual freelancing work is a tenuous thing when you're out of town. Away from home, everything becomes infinitely more complicated all of a sudden. One of the offspring was injured during the trip and it took forever to find out what to do about it, What doctor to see, where to even find one, etc.

The main thing that you can generally count on being able to do is managing email. Even when I didn't have much time at the hotel to actually try to work, there is always time to read and respond to emails, which doesn't take that long even if you have a lot of them. Even just a few minutes in the morning and again at night is enough to manage email, stay in communication with ongoing clients and answer questions sent to you. In the end, that's most of what I could do while away this time.

A number of people really are clinging to the mid-80s idea that the tanner you are, the more attractive you are. This isn't the case.

Every part of the offline economy seems to be having problems. Even the place that I went, generally a hugely profitable place, is in the middle of layoffs. The shops, usually bustling, were empty. Virtually all of them were having sales, something I've never seen in all the trips I've made there over the past mhhmmmm years. There were items available as much as 75 percent off, and people weren't buying.

Upon returning, I was super glad that I work almost exclusively online, which numerous reports have shown to be a growing sector of the economy. And then I read this. So, the apocalypse is pretty much around the corner. This sucks on many levels, one of which being that I recently applied to be a Google Quality Rater, and now I won't be able to afford any of the pre-apocalypse sales.