Media, Freelancing, blogging Comments (0)
More and more, companies are turning to online freelance writers to fill their web content, blogging, sales writing, and copy writing needs. The Internet has opened a whole new world to those who dream of making their way in this world as a writer-for-hire. Not everyone, however, likes it or thinks it a good thing.
Take Matt Richtel, of the New York Times, for instance. This guy believes he sees a similarity between the modern freelance blogger positioned before his computer screen and the sweatshops of the industrial age. Richtel writes:
They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.
A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.
Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong…
Of course, here is a man with one of those rare, hard-to-land jobs, writing for one of the world’s leading newspapers, casting aspersions on the market that opens doors for the millions not as fortunate. Richtel’s take is, in this writer’s opinion, a continuance of the pervasive superiority complex so many in “mainstream” media exude.
Richtel’s sweatshop comparison falls flat because we live in a world where more employment and educational options exist than ever before. People choose freelancing, even with its long hours, hard work, difficult deadlines, and sometimes hard-to-meet quality demands because it gives them a sense of ownership, of fulfillment.
Richtel’s illustrations of a few prolific bloggers who have died of heart attacks are incredibly cheap shock value. They could have as easily been prolific joggers! As more people blog, more bloggers will eventually die. That’s what we do. We live, we work, we try to matter…and sooner or later, we die.
As traditional sources of information find themselves more and more marginalized and battling to remain prevalent - or just relevant, look for more articles and editorials from them lambasting the freelancers markets.
So, keep writing, my freelancing friends, you have their attention!
Write away. Write now.
D. Gene Strother @ June 2, 2008
Writing Tips, writing Comments (1)
Sometimes you get more irons in the fire than you can manage. OK, switch those two “you”s to “I.” Is it just me, or is it pretty doggone easy to say, “I am passionate about (fill in the blank),” and then let everything in the world get in the way of doing it?
Ostensibly, we are passionate about writing around here. After all, the wonderful world of writing is what The Write Crowd is all about. Yet, here my blog sits…unattended. I could blame it on many things. I could excuse myself by telling you that I work a day job, maintain a moonlighting ghost-and-copy writing business, and own three other websites. But you don’t want to hear that. You’re busy, too!
I have learned through the years that more often than not, writing is about 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. There are those rare times when the ratio is reversed. That’s when the words flow, a mighty torrent of epic, passionate, irresistible power. That’s when writing is easy, rewarding, and fun!!! Those times, at least for me, are less common. More often than not, I find myself somewhat inspired…and then obliged to toil and strain and bleed and sweat to turn that dab of inspiration into something worth reading.
About a year ago, I launched an online writing service through my personal website, writedaddy.com. It took six months to land my first job. When I did, others followed close on its heels, and pretty soon, I found myself inundated with requests. I was writing web content, sales letters, white papers, marketing emails, blog content and various other pieces for a growing - and diverse - clientele. I soon learned that writing is WORK! HARD work.
I owed it to my clients to deliver a quality product. They were paying for passion and wit and charm and poignancy and…I needed to deliver. Consequently, I found myself elbow deep in research. I was reading articles on a litany of subjects, watching videos, listening to audio, camping out at Wikipedia and Google. I always wanted to work as a writer…and be paid to do so. I just hadn’t figured it would really be work.
It is.
Lessons learned:
Sometimes, writing is murder. (He wrote.)
Write away. Write now.
D. Gene Strother @ April 22, 2008