Non payment, Sorcha Doyle, and a big pile of rubbish
As mentioned previously, it appears I've had my first non paying client. I feel it is only fair to say at this point, that it was in part my own fault that this has happened, as for some reason to do with being in need of the cash, I failed to protect myself.
To give you the big picture, I responded to a job on Freelancer.co.uk, to write an essay. The job entailed completing a draft for which I would be paid £100, then a further £100 upon completion. All sounds fair enough. Normally, I work for companies which means that one, my contact is not spending or rarely spending their own cash. Two, I have someone higher up the ladder to talk to if there is no resolution over an issue with my contact. So far, I have not had cause to do this.
With an individual however, there is no ladder, no chain, and other than the site you obtained the work from, no other point of contact other than the person you are working for. If that point of contact dries up, you are stuffed!
To surmise, here is a list of the crucial mistakes I made in this instance.
- Failed to obtain full contact details before working on the job. This was especially important as it was an individual that I had not worked with before. This leads us to
- Did not use the Escrow system. To be fair I did kinda need the cash and thought an escrow system would work on a monthly basis. Saying that, getting £200 at the end of the month is better than nothing at all
- Supplied the work in full without half payment. There was a deadline involved that I did not want to miss, and thought the client needed the essay ASAP too.
After emailing the client on numerous occassions, I have not managed to get anywhere. Subsequently, I am going to investigate a website that can find contact details if you submit an email address, and try and pursue the matter through the small claims court. I will keep you posted as to progress.
photo credit: Patrick Hoesly
Badcuts news
Welcome folks. It's been a while since a news update and this is for a good reason- we've been busy. Link-optimise's redesign is complete and live! So far so good and it looks particularly impressive. The site has a good feel about it and the focus of it has changed. It is now geared towards helping people SEO thier own site as much as offering packages to SEO a website. We feel the balance is a good one, and we've had positive feedback so far. All good.
Playgameshavefun.com, is also going from strength to strength. The site is doing well on search engines, and is doing very well in the English speaking world, with the UK, USA, and Canada regularly reading the articles. I love it. We're hopefully launching our first video blog on the site soon.
The freelance writing is rolling forward to. There is still plenty of work and I have landed a few roles lately which were good ones to land. Sadly, I could be facing my first non-payment dilema, and it will be interesting to see how that turns out. I will keep you posted as to the result. As an
optimist, I feel that is the best course of action!
More news soon.
photo credit: Aural Asia
A mad few months
Hi there, and happy new year.
As you have noticed there has not been a new post for a few months. This is due to the fact that over the last few months I have moved house, become busy with writing and decorating, and then, just to make it easy, Christmas. As a result, this blog and a few others, have not been updated as often as I would have liked to.
Now the chaos of moving, Christmas, and work has subsided to manageable levels, this blog and a few others should begin to take shape again.
So stay tuned, in what hopefully be a good new year for us all.
Spreading the word, tips for better blog promotion.
Once you have written a blog post you particularly like, it is essential that you spread the word of your blog by every means necessary. The predominant force in blog promotion is social media, but dropping a link here and there in other web mediums is advisable to. Once criticism people have of blog promotion via social media, is that it takes "too much time." The trick here is to link as many social media sites together as possible. This will save a lot of time, as a few posts can cover many social networking accounts.
For example, you can connect Facebook to Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and many others. Twitter is also linkable to many other sites to. So once you complete a post in Facebook, all the sites that are linked to Facebook automatically spread the word. It is as simple as that.
If you are unsure about which sites you should sign up for, I would recommend the following. It has to be said though, that any social networking site is worth joining, even if you do not visit them much yourself.
Digg
Delicious
Technorati
Mybloglog
These are not just ways to bring direct attention to your blog, but they also count well for back links, which gives you an SEO bonus to.
Word of mouth is ok, but you never really know if your friends read it because they like you. Or even if they just tell you they do. Feel free to test them for amusement.
Spreading the word is essential for blogging. You could be the next Shakespeare, but no one will know because nobody reads your work. So don't write a lonely blog, spread the word, and enjoy your results. You deserve it.
In the future, I will be experimenting further with linking social media, and how far one post will travel. I will keep you informed.
If you have any thoughts about blog promotion, why not share them?
Freelance writing tips for better web content
I read an interesting article about writing for the web last night, and what I found most interesting was that really the article was in the main, about grammar. The web writing tips were quite few and far between. Here then, is a few of the standard tips for writing for the web.
- Keep sentences and paragraphs short for scan reading
- Ensure accurate spelling and grammar
- Write for your audience and use appropriate language and sentence structure
- Keep content relevant, and succinct
This is all well and good, but these are only guidelines. The bottom line is that if you are writing for a client, and they want in depth descriptions of this that and the other, and that is how you should write the piece. Interestingly, I have recently submitted two articles for consideration with a writing company, who have rejected my application. In hindsight, I feel my article choices were good, just not quite as in depth as they would have liked. Sadly, I have articles I could have submitted which were more to their tastes.
I feel if there is an underlying principle of writing for the web it is this: Give the writing a smooth, flowing style, and it will be far easier for people to read it! Fundamentally, is there anything more important?
photo credit: jude_bird_86
Welcome!
Intrinsic, is one of my favourite words, and words are what I am about. The use of words is highly important, and this is recognised throughout many industries including web design. Words are manipulated by punctuation to give different meanings. Consider the following example.
Woman: without her man, is nothing.
Woman: without her, man is nothing.
Same words, different punctuation, different meaning. If your site is not performing as you wanted it to, or perhaps you want copy that strikes the right tone with the right audience, or want web content to promote your brand, or to engage readers, then I can help. Do not struggle with your commas or your apostrophes, get in touch, and tell me want you need.
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If you are a writer too, or are freelancer of some kind, every week I share freelance writing tips on the site. Many of these tips are universal no matter what kind of freelancer you are. I also share my experiences and provide updates as to what I am doing, what projects I am working on, and news in general about my writing endeavors.
Any opinions and feedback is welcome. Enjoy the read.
Teahon Freelance writer
This curious title is not me taking an ego trip but purely for SEO purposes. The hope is that Google will link anchor text in my website, "Teahon", "Freelance writer", and simply put two and two together, and make me climb the page ranks for searches under "Freelance writer". There is another reason for this post, and that is to knock down the technoratti tracking code at the top of the page. How embarrassing! Had to be done though, its all part of spreading the freelance writing word.
Copywriting seems to be in demand at the moment, and with a little luck I have landed a job from freelancer.co.uk. This will hopefully lead on to other work with the same orgnaisation. In the first instance, I shall be writing about team building.
Chris Satchwell of Digitpedia fame, liked most of my suggestions for "How To" guides, so that gives me good scope for at least another six articles or so. With the run up to Christmas, I am hoping he will need more of them.
Cowinkidink are still getting articles from me at a rate of two a week. They feel they are closer to launching and the screenshot I have seen is very clean, web 2.0, kind of look. Hopefully, the site will launch this year and earn yours truly a bit of cash.
That was the week that was for Teahon Freelance writer.
The amazing adventures of Teahon.co.uk/wordpress
Over the last few days I have discovered the beauty of plugins and sidebars. After a little experimentation I have managed to link this blog with Google Analytics, and webmaster tools. Make it more SEO friendly, and worked out a few work around to use pages more effectively. I have also managed to put ads on the site, apologies if they are a little in your face at the moment, I am working on it.
Also, the widget bar has been used more effectively, with social networking profiles on display along with link-optimise blog posts on the site to. All very clever. Apart from a little mishap that happened after I upgraded the theme to the to a more advanced version of WordPress that I use, all has gone remarkably well. It is quite amazing how easy it is to add and take away plugins that either do not work, or are actually of very little use.
The site too, has increased up the search engine ranks, it now sits at page 22 on Google pages for the UK. This is either down to the Link-campaign, the activity on the site, or the Platinum SEO plugin, or indeed all three. Either way, it is very good news for me and the site.
Writing wise, everything is ticking over, and it feels good to invest in this blog once again, now the SEO one is up and running.
The X-Factor! How it isn’t the be all and the end all!
photo credit: paddyeason
I've just been catching up with events in the talent TV show The X-Factor! Though there are some clearly talented singers, there are some really untalented singers in the competition too. What this out of key bunch all seem to share, is they can shed a tear or two on demand. They cry if they get through, they cry if they do not, they cry when they brush their teeth. In fact, they seem to burst into a state of emotional out pouring at any given opportunity:
Question for out of key contestant: So dodgy voice contestant, that's a trendy top your wearing.
Reply: wah, wah, wah do you really think so, this top is the biggest top of my life. It means the world, wah wah wah.
This seemed to be the pattern. With a few exceptions, nearly all the contestants used the phrase "The biggest day of my life". Many went on to say if I had to go back to the day job, etc, and though I used to share that sentiment, I feel it is a little out of place now, as this all or bust scenario, is somewhat false.
I to, want to quit the day job and follow a career, sadly there is not a TV show about freelance writers looking to make it in the writing world. In fact the writing world really is a question of starting at the lowest eb possible and grafting your way to a slightly higher eb, and so on and so fourth. It involves study, and follows a program of perseverance and continual improvement. There is no easy paths or big hits. Very different to the X-Factor.
What struck me when I was watching these guys go through the rejection ritual, was how be all and end all they seemed to think it was. No matter what the age group, they all seemed to have a now or never feeling. I felt this showed a clear waste of potential in many respects. Presumably, some kind of star quality was shown for the judges to pick them, and should this time round not be a success, a new avenue whether it be in the music business or not is out there, it's just a question of finding it.
Sadly, I can imagine some of the younger ones writing themselves off and going into accountancy.
I feel I should also point out a few facts about the judges. Two of them in particular. Mrs Cole, I thought was disgraceful leaving that young guy hanging while she deliberated about a decision that should have been in the bag. And Simon Cowell who seems to be the most contrived human being on the planet. His emotions, his looks, his little speeches, they all seem to be for the camera, and have no substance. They remind me of B-movie script writing. I know the genre of music lacks substance to, but he could at least take a few acting lessons, he can no doubt afford it.
I started freelance writing after I read an article about someone who was making a living at it. I gave it a go, and I am making a success at it, albeit, a little up and down at times. The point is it is never too late to try anything, and the X-Factor contestants that didn't make it over the weekend, should bear this in mind as they go back to the day job.
Results of the link campaign
As you know I have recently invested £8 into a link campaign for Teahon.co.uk. The campaign has begun and ended, and my site is appearing or due to appear on a 100 directory sites. Though this has made very little difference in terms of where I appear in search engine results, I am getting fairly regular traffic to the site from one of the directories in particular. I am now considering a further £8 to do another 100, I mean why not?
The sites are ticking over, and the quality of the content continues to improve. I have made up my mind not to write stale content, or content for the sake of it. This may mean a reduction in the number of posts, but 3 good posts, has to be better than 5 average ones?
Also, if I understand the results correctly, I have 5 RSS subscribers. One of which is me, but even so it is all good news. I know this is not setting the world on fire, but nonetheless an obscure little blog from Norwich, England, is doing fairly well. Cheers.
The Blackmark Trilogy
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