Many people have written on this topic for freelance writers, and I thought I’d toss my two cents in the ring. Specifically I wanted to talk about those bidding sites like GetaFreelancer.com. I’ve tried using these before and haven’t really had much success, but I thought I’d give it a shot this week. Since I’m just starting out and I really want to get some paying gigs under my belt, I figured it was a good idea to see if I could find anything worthwhile on the site.

Sifting & Sorting

Who knew I’d have to spend so much time sifting and sorting through all the projects to find any that were worthwhile? Impressive. For every bid I put in (and I put in 7 of them this afternoon), I had to read at least 5 other project listings. Most of those are of the “$1 for 500 words” variety, which in my opinion aren’t worth it. I mean, even if you can churn out 2 or 3 articles an hour, that’s still less than minimum wage! You might as well go deliver pizzas, at least that way you’d get out of the house and see other people. Just kidding.

Seriously though, I can’t believe how many people are out there soliciting the services of freelance writers and then only pay them $1 or less for each article. And then they don’t even bother to proofread their own listings, so they’re rife with spelling mistakes and typing errors. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I want to work for someone who can’t spell “writer” correctly, what about you?

Phase 1 Complete

For today the first step is complete, in that I submitted bids for 7 projects (or was it 8? – I looked at so many this afternoon that I’m not sure anymore.) I should find out about them in the next week or so, and one of them was even an actual technical writing project! That was pretty rare, considering I was using the search term “technical writing”.

Phase 2 – The Waiting Begins

Now I just have to wait and see if any of my bids are accepted. A few of the projects were looking for multiple writers, so hopefully that bodes well for me. But if not, no worries, as I’ll just keep on with the rest of my marketing plan. I’ll keep you posted!