The List

• Odesk – I’m not a fan of these “freelancing sites” as it is, but Odesk is the worst of them in my book – completely appalling from the perspective of a service provider.
  • Why They Made the Cut – For starters, most of the most awful gigs I’ve come across online have been with them (why I won’t include them in the freelance writing job listings here). Worse though is their Odesk Share feature – you share your desktop with the client, meaning they can actually watch you work. Why? Because then they can pay strictly by the hour rather than set project rates.

    What’s wrong with this? Well, where you live, maybe nothing. Here in the States, there are rules about what clients can do, and in my eyes requiring a shared desktop crosses a line (clients aren’t legally allowed to treat independent contractors as employees, supervising them and dictating working conditions in the same ways), and I find it completely inappropriate for a service to encourage that kind of behavior in any way. And they do encourage it – hell, their slogan is “Hire, Manage, and Pay remote contractors as if they were in your office.”

    Also, it’s a good way for better writers (who can write more quickly) to get screwed over in a deal, while a new or inexperienced writer taking longer can earn more. That’s half-assed backwards if you ask me.

    Remember folks – you’re the professional. You set your rates and your rate structure. Clients can agree to it, they can move on, or you can decide whether or not to negotiate and make exceptions. Absolutely no one else should be interfering with that process.

    Do you pay your mechanic less if he’s experienced and handles a repair quickly? I don’t think so. Do you look over your lawyer’s shoulder to account for every moment of their time? Umm, no. Respect yourself and stay away from services like this.

• Freelance Home Writers – These guys have been taking advantage of freelance writers for quite a while now, and they just won’t go away.
  • Why They Made the Cut – Long story short, they charge you $47 to look at job listings. Never (I repeat, NEVER) pay just for the opportunity to apply for a job or look at the ads! If someone wants to advertise, it’s their responsibility to pay any advertising costs – not yours.

    This company also has a lot of affiliates, so you’ll see misleading ads, other domains that look like something different re-directing to them, etc. So keep your eyes peeled, and don’t get sucked into it. They also have ads showing up in Chitika, Adsense, etc., meaning you may see ads thinking the bloggers you read support them (because those ads are contextual and not hand-picked), when in fact they do not.

• DigitalPoint (and other webmaster forums) – This is a tougher one for me to include, because I love this forum (and am also a moderator there). Regardless, it belongs in this list.
  • Why They Made the Cut – Let me first of all be clear that you can in fact get excellent, high-paying gigs from webmasters, including at this forum (I do regularly).

    The problem is with the advertised gigs, where advertisers honestly don’t understand that there’s more than one market – they expect quality writers with lots of experience and excellent English language skills to write for the same price as a brand new writer with no specialized experience who can barely write a coherent sentence in English. It just doesn’t work that way.

    If you advertise “real” writing rates there, you’re likely going to get some heat, and you’ll find it’s not worth the time when you can be pursuing work elsewhere.

    That said, it is an excellent forum for networking, and you can find clients who respect your work and are willing to pay for it. The problem is that they rarely advertise there publicly, because if they do they know they’ll be bombarded with requests from the penny-per-word crowd who are unqualified for the project, but attracted by the higher rate.

    If you want to make the most of these communities, don’t do it solely for the jobs. Make it a part of your networking instead (it’s also a great place to visit to get help if you’re new to blogging, setting up a professional site, or are new to selling your own informational products like e-books).

    The more time you spend there actually contributing to the community, the more fellow writers you get to know, and the more reputation you build with prospective clients, the more likely it is that you’ll break into the underground market there where the good gigs come predominantly through private referrals.

Never waste time in any place, or on any strategy, that can’t earn you the best results. In other words, avoid the time drains and the crap sites filled with gigs outside of your market, and instead spend your time networking, improving your professional site (and marketing it to attract prospective clients organically), and working to improve your skills and marketability.

Normally when I’m considering a design change, I announce it early. Then I get wrapped up in other things and procrastinate in any way you can imagine. So this time around I wanted to majorly freshen things up in time for the new year, and I figured I might be quicker about it if I just kept my mouth shut! :)

There are big changes and small. I’ve tested everything I can think of repeatedly and worked out any bugs I found, but it’s very possible I missed something. So if you have any problems at all, please comment here and I’ll look into it.

Here are some of the changes, to help you find your way around:

The Big Stuff

Here are some of the biggest (and potentially most confusing) changes, so I want to review them a bit more in depth:

• New Theme – AFW has a new look. I’m pretty sure that everything you could access before is still available – recent posts, archives, multiple subscription options, etc. If you absolutely can’t find something that used to be here, please let me know and I’ll add it.
• Sites Merged – This is the biggest change, especially regarding subscriptions. All Freelance Writing and All Freelance Writing Jobs have always been essentially one blog, but for a while they were on two different domains. This was for two reasons – 1. Readers wanted to be able to subscribe easily to just the jobs and not the rest of the posts, and 2. People were having trouble with job listings over-running the search results, making it difficult to find archived blog posts other than the jobs.
  • While the sites have been merged again, I only did so after making sure it wouldn’t cause those two previous problems.So… fortunately no existing subscribers should see any changes. If you subscribed to just the jobs either in your feed reader or via email, you should still get only the jobs. If you subscribed only to the main blog, you’ll still only get the non-job posts. If you subscribed to both, you should keep both, as they’ll continue to run through separate feeds. New subscribers still have the same three options – subscribe to posts, subscribe to jobs, and subscribe to comments.
  • The search issue also seems to be taken care of. I removed the job category from the search results function so when you search (using the search box at the top right-hand section of the site), you’ll only be searching the main posts / articles. Considering the past issues, I couldn’t come up with a good reason to keep them included – gigs get filled, so looking at just the last few listing posts is best anyway if you’re looking for writing jobs (and that’s very easy to do by visiting that category).Everything seems to be functioning OK along these lines, but if anyone comes across some gremlins in the subscription or search processes, do let me know.

The Rest

• Categories – I rearranged the categories a little bit – there are a few main ones (in the top nav bar) and the rest are now subcategories under them (put your mouse on the main category and the others drop down). For those who like them all in one place still, or for when you’re scrolling halfway down the page, the categories are also all listed in the sidebar. A few of them have name changes too, but they shouldn’t be unrecognizable. All of their old URLs should be directing to the new ones automatically, so you shouldn’t come across broken links.
• Subscribe to Comments – You’ll now see a little checkbox below each comment form allowing you to receive email followups if someone else comments on a post you commented on.
• Live Comment Previews – Another adjustment to the comments is the live preview. When you’re typing your comment, it will display below that text block as it will appear on the site once it’s approved (meaning you can see how any links or other code you add will be displayed before submitting it with possible errors).
• Adsense - Adsense should be completely removed from All Freelance Writing. If you stumble across an ad of theirs, please let me know.
• Job Search is Back - We used to have the job search form in the right column. It was removed in favor of the job board. That job search option is now back (the job board will probably be back as well, but is temporarily absent). Want to search for gigs? You can do it right from the sidebar.
• Post Ratings – Below each post you’ll see a star-based rating scale. You can now rate any posts on the site, and the top-rated posts will serve as one group of featured posts in the right column (you can see what others liked the most).
• Most Visited Posts – Also in the right column is another set of featured posts (designed to highlight older posts that some readers may have missed) – they’re the most-visited posts on the blog at any given time.
• Related Posts – You can now find links to related posts below each post on the site.
• Social Bookmarking – The old drop-down bookmarking option is gone, and you can find direct links to popular sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and Twitter below each post if you want to share them or save them to come back to later.
• 10 Posts Per Page – You may remember I recently cut the blog to three posts listed per page because of Adsense rules. With their ads gone, you’ll now be able to browse more posts per page again.

More to Come

While I felt the changes were launchable, they’re not quite complete. Obviously I’ll be keeping a lookout for problems with the new features for a while, but I’ll also be adding some more – some minor, some possibly major. Here’s a preview of what may be coming (feel free to offer your feedback):

• Forums – I used to have forums attached to this blog. Not too long ago I ranted here about the person I gave them to (who committed to maintaining them), because he instead sold off the domain name. I do still have the database, and have been toying with the idea of re-establishing the forums for a few months now (since I found out what really happened regarding things being shut down before). The issue is this – I’d like to setup a forum on a specific platform if I do it, and I don’t know if the two platforms are compatible (whether I can import the old forum into the new system or not). If not, then I won’t be investing the time into launching a new forum from scratch. If I can, then I’ll hopefully get that figured out after the holidays at the latest.
• Contact Form – Not a biggie or anything, but I want to get the About pages merged and add a new contact form to make getting in touch easier.
• Free Job Listings – While I’ve accepted job listings in the past, I haven’t really done much to promote them. So for those of you hiring writers, I’ll soon have a page up with details on how to submit ads and what types of gigs I will and won’t advertise here in that format.
• Networking – I’ll be adding some networking details to the site (like my LinkedIn info and Twitter stream), so those wanting to get in touch with me off of this blog will be able to do so a bit more easily.
• Expanded Writer’s Market Database – I recently started making some new additions to my writer’s market directory, and that will be growing quite a bit moving forward. I’ll also be looking at trimming some of the sections there to keep it a bit more focused – nothing certain yet.
• New Logo – The old logo just doesn’t work with the newer site, so I’ll be re-doing that as soon as I have a chance.

I think that about sums it all up. If I missed something in the list that you have questions about (or if you have questions about anything here), just let me know and I’ll try to clear it up. :)