Freelance Hiring Sites Are Depressing

So Bright Hub is no more. They say that Google has made changes to their page ranking system that makes it so that they can no longer maintain their business model within the channels that most of their writers were working in. No more Home Improvement, Automotive, or Engineering channels. Supposedly Engineering isn’t scientific or technical.

So I’ve been looking at sites such as Freelancer, Elance, and a few others. Depressing. These are sites where the freelancer bids on posted projects. But they’ve opened them up to “emerging market” freelancers. People that can live on an income of less than $10 a day. Most of the people/companies posting projects on these sites don’t want to pay anything more than $2 for 500 well researched words. At the absolute maximum. In other words, they want you to spend 3 hours for $2. Absolutely insane. What adult with bills can actually live on that? I don’t know anybody that can. Do you?

Fourth of July Weekend

“Back in the day”, as the younger generation would say, we’d be preparing for the big block party in the neighborhood that we were going to have tomorrow. We’d be having fireworks, but maybe not sparklers this year. We’d be having a huge buffet style meal, lasting pretty much most of the day. A number of families would be bringing barbecues down and doing hamburgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob and a variety of other tasty treats. There’d be socializing and game playing. Everyone would have a great time.

Flash forward about 10 to 15 years, move across the valley and my family and I would be spending most of the night of the 4th under a table, hoping the people shooting the guns are pointing them  in other directions than ours. Sometimes we’d hear one coming back down hit our roof and roll off somewhere.

What ever happened to those “good old days”, when all you had to fear was maybe a roman candle tipping over or a butterfly spinning your way. I speak with people I know 5 and 10 years my juniors, as well as my kids’ ages and they have no idea what a block party is, what a potluck is. Personally, that’s a shame. The purpose of this holiday is the celebrate our Country’s Independence as a neighborhood, as a community, as a Nation. Together. Not as a single family, having a barbecue and beers in the backyard, alone. Maybe heading out to the park or the pond or the lake and watching fireworks. It’s a time to forget partisan politics and remember one thing, and one thing only, we’re Americans, we’re proud of it and we’re proud and thankful for our Freedom.

I plant this seed knowing it’s too late for this year. Let’s bring those days back, when neighbor knew and liked neighbor. When neighbors would talk over the backyard fences or in front of each others houses, maybe going inside to finish talking because it’s too hot or cold out. When the planning for big weekends like the Fourth and Memorial Day there’s a big get together and fun times are had.

Inbox Dollars-Waste of Time? Liars?

Most likely if you’ve known me for awhile, you received an invitation to join a site called Inbox Dollars. This is a site that sends emails to your inbox and when you click the link to verify you read the email, you earn 2 cents. They also send surveys that can earn money, plus partnering with companies like Disney, BLockbuster, Netflix, etc to earn you money for joining those services. Well, when I joined they required minimum earnings of $20 before you could request payment. Of course, by the time I got to $20, they decided to raise that minimum to $30. However, when I cashed out my first $30 worth of earnings last year, I was charged $3 for the privilege of being paid the money I earned. I was told that since I had made it to my first payment level, I was being upgraded to a Gold Account and could now be paid out no matter how much money I had earned to date. Welp, lo and behold, wouldn’t you now it, I requested payment today and was told I had to earn the first $30 again. And I was told that if I don’t want to lose the almost $22 I have earned 2 cents a pop, I have to keep my account until it accrues $30 again. You can bet that I’ll be canceling that as soon as I earn the $30 again and receive my check.

Blogging Tips

It’s important to remember that as in all things, quantity isn’t everything when writing a blog; whether you’re getting gripes of your chest or letting people know about new products your company is going to introduce, you shouldn’t write just to write. A hundred words or a thousand, nobody’s going to read you if what you write doesn’t grab and hold their attention. For this reason, you should have a pretty good idea of what you plan to say before you log in to the system and start writing. Of course, as the words flow onto the page, you may think up a better way to say what needs to be said. That’s fine. Just remember to keep it pertinent and don’t change your subjects mid-sentence or paragraph.

Once you’ve written your blog, you’re going to want people to read it, right? How do you get that to happen? Well, you can cross your fingers and hope that someone stumbles across it, or you can help yourself by adding Tags. Tags are keywords that people use in search engines and on the site to find topics and subjects with blogs to read. As an example, since this particular posting contains some writing tips, I would use words such as: tips, writing tips, blogging tips, writing help, blogging help, tutorial, blog tutorial. See the idea? Now if someone needs some tips on how to write crisply and they type in writing help, this post will more than likely show up pretty high in the search results. That’s it for now folks. If I come up with anything new to tell you, I’ll be back. In the meantime, keep up the writing, keep that content coming!

Here I sit……

Here I sit, tired and broken-hearted,

Sat down to write and get started.

But, alas, what should my eyes view,

but a terribly empty and lonely queue,

yep, once again, I’m waiting on you know who.

Ok, that’s my terrible play on dramatic poetry. Just finished the draft outline for my WP Quick Start and submitted it for approval. I was hoping to spend some time writing while I wait for my girlfriend to come back from lunch and have some time to chat before she heads off to pick up our daughter and go home for the night.  Since I have some free-ish time, I’m going to head over to LiveMocha and get some of my Brazilian Portuguese course work completed. Até!

Today’s Project

Writing a Quick Start Outline for WordPress of all places. After I get that approved, I’ll be able to write the guide. I’ll be doing some more DIY stuff for houses and cars after I submit my draft outline.