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Just the other night I received an email inviting me to join a Provider Company on oDesk.

Regular readers may know that I have already decided that I like being an independent contractor, but I decided to open the email anyway.  It was an automated invitation saying that person ‘x’ had invited me to join company ‘y.’   Maybe it was someone who was overloaded with work who had a little extra to throw my way.

I didn’t recognize the name, so I decided to do a little digging.  Research never hurt anyone, at least not really, unless you count Marie Curie but that was different.

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By polishing your image, I don’t mean cleaning the mirror so you can see yourself better in it.

I mean you should always try to make yourself look more appealing to buyers. Don’t make it seem like you are better than you really are, though. The key is to actually make yourself better and allow that improvement to show through when you’re interacting with people and working with them.

People in the States are especially bad about this. People of the younger generations are even worse about it. There’s this nasty misconception that people should like you for who you are. That you’re unique, special, and anyone who doesn’t appreciate you is just jealous.
Your Mother Was Lying to You
If you’re a blithering idiot with absolutely no ability in your chosen field, people won’t like you. You’re not special, you’re hardly unique, and the reason people don’t appreciate you is because you’re rubbing them the wrong way in ways you can’t even imagine.

The good news is that you can change that. It won’t be easy, but you should do it.

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I was writing a post about the oDesk community when I saw something that made me realize there was something more important I needed to focus on first:
Money.
I bet that got your attention; it gets mine.

We’ve talked about rates before, but what I want to discuss today is setting them.  One of the best tools for setting your rate on oDesk is the oConomy.  It lets you see just how much people in your field are getting paid so that you can see what the market can actually bear.

I’m a writer, so let’s look at the writing category:

This graph shows how provider’s hourly rates break down against the number of jobs.  I got this information from the very useful Rate Distributions by Job Category section of the oConomy.   If you haven’t looked at it already you really need to.

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When I worked in a Call Center I had a supervisor who always used to talk about the importance of “Being in Integrity.”

I didn’t always agree with his English, but it’s hard to fault the sentiment.

If you’re a long-term reader of the blog, and I hope you are, some of this may sound familiar.  That’s because I’ve posted on a similar subject before.  The reason I’m posting again is that it’s a topic that keeps coming up in the oDesk Community and I wanted to bring it to people’s attention one more time.

Let me put it another way:
Don’t lie in your profile
Don’t lie to your buyer.

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In my first post, I talked about why you should consider editing and the general skills needed. This post is about what you are likely to see.
Native speakers
Native speakers of English are prone to different problems than foreign speakers. Here’s an example of something I edited that had already been purchased for an article job:
An intense study on toxins has come up with the very fact that toxins tend to make a significant alterations in the hormonal regulation of the body weight. Toxins play a pivotal role in altering the metabolic activities of the thyroid hormone and receptor function, thus giving rise to a much-reduced metabolic rate. In fact toxins can cause the body to gain an excessive over-weight. This is the main reason as to why toxic lifestyle and obesity epidemic are interrelated.
Detoxification is basically the process of removal of heavy and toxic materials from the body, more specifically from kidneys and liver plays a pivotal role in the effectual weight management. The prime reason that contributes to an obesity epidemic is the fact that in the current fast-paced life, we rely on the consumption of junk food and the maximum utilization of the automobiles that tend to make us the prime victims of the obesity.
The first thing that jumped out at me was the run on feel of the sentences. The writer has something to say, they just try to cram too much into each sentence. Removing some of the excess verbiage led to this as the corrected first paragraph:

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The Need
I’ve noticed a trend on oDesk and other contract writing sites. The trend is to hire as cheaply as possible and then either the buyer edits the material into something usable or hires someone else to do it. (And when they get someone else to take a second look, you can bet the posting will include the phrase, ‘easy job’.) In other words, some buyers set out knowing they won’t get a good product out of the box and hire writers based only on the lowest hourly rate. Editing is part of how they are thinking about the job.

Feeding into this same trend are first-time or amateur authors (of web sites, sales letters and content) who realize, after struggling with a project, the results aren’t what they imagined. They are also looking for editing services.

Finally, a still rare but growing area is ‘freshening’ a website. An older site has gone stale over time; the company or product has evolved or the website just gets a worn-out feel. Although I consider a new set of clothes rewriting, these jobs are seen by some buyers as simple editing.

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I was browsing the oDesk Community recently and I came across this thread on low wages.  Threads on low wages are nothing new, and normally I’d hesitate to bring another to your attention.  However this one got me thinking about the issue in a slightly different fashion, so I thought it would be worth exploring in a post.

One of the contributors posted a well-thought argument, complete with supporting figures that showed how low rates on freelance sites tend to drive out high rates.  The basic point was that if buyers see the same kind of job being done for $0.50/hr they are not going to pay $15.00 or even $5.00/hr.  It doesn’t make economic sense.
That’s a great description of how a commodity market works.
oDesk is not a commodity market.

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I was recently reading a post of Nelson’s where he was talking about developing yourself and not losing sight of your goals just because you’re focusing on your day-to-day existence.  He made some very good points, which you can read about here.

His biggest point was that the only way to keep your dream alive is to actually do something, that just wishing and hoping isn’t enough.
He’s absolutely right.
Having said that, I do want to take a jump sideways and look at both serendipity and the so-called ‘power of positive thinking.’

Serendipity has an interesting history, being a word coined by Sir Horace Walpole from a fairytale called The Three Princes of Serendip, and referring to the kind of good luck that leads to making beneficial discoveries by accident.
It’s what my mother calls ‘The Luck of the Prepared Mind.’

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I was reading an article on the Inquirer the other day that was talking about how the graphics chip maker Nvidia was responding to a spate of problems they’ve been having with some of their laptop chipsets.

The thrust of the article was that Nvidia is blaming everyone from the chip foundry to the companies that make products based on their chipsets and even end users for a problem with their chips that appears to be their fault.  The basic problem is that a number of their notebook chips are running very hot which leads to a greatly increased failure rate.  Some of their desktop parts may also have the same problem.

Now hot-running chips are nothing new in the computer industry.  One look at the aftermarket cooler industry shows that they’re very common.   The more transistors they pack in a single chip and the faster it runs the more heat it has to dissipate.  That’s why computers come with heatsinks and fans and all sorts of other cooling gear built-in.

The problem is that according to this article Nvidia does not appear to be accepting any of the responsibility for the issue itself.
That’s a big problem and it directly reflects on both you and I as freelancers.

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There’s a couple ways to look at doing commercial work:

1) A way to make money while you’re trying to hit it big. That’s the way a lot of people choose to see it whether it’s commercial writing, commercial art, or doing tedious copypasta database programming for Meglocorp Inc. Usually, people get into freelance fields because they have entertained the idea of being the next Hemingway, the next Rembrandt, or publishing the next World of Warcraft. It’s an admirable dream, and it’s not as far away from coming true as you feel deep down. It’s also not as close as you keep telling yourself it is every day.

A bit of encouragement is in order though. You can do what you want and get paid without Goin’ Out West. My friend just sold off his third screenplay and made six figures off of it. He’s just a delta-accented punk who put his nose to the grindstone and kept working at it for years. He doesn’t even see himself as anything special. The key, though, is that he put his head down and hands up–kept fighting. It worked for him in just a few short years.

2) The Valley of Broken Dreams (TM) (C) (XYZZY). This is where a startling majority of freelancers end up. I sometimes like to think of the commercial art fields as the place where dreams go to die. You always wanted to be a novelist or a painter, but you get caught up in the money and “just surviving”. Let me tell you: the years can go by very fast when you’ll start on that novel tomorrow.

I settled for survival until I had a wake-up call which told me that I don’t want to be limited. I’ve got something to say, and I’m going to make sure it gets crammed down the throat of as many English-speakers as possible whether they like it or not.

So, here’s some extracurricular activities which will both boost your freelance career as well as your dream career:

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