After my recent series, Is Demand Studios Worth It, How Demand Studios Works, and finally, Make Money Writing Online for Demand Studios, a reader emailed me and asked, “Why do you still write for them then?”
Uh, oh.
Demand Studios Is Good for Freelancers
Nothing kicks a writing pro in the teeth like writing something which does not communicate what you indented. In the case of misinterpretation or misunderstanding there isn’t always a lot you can do or could have done in the first place. In this case, I got too involved in the details to express my point of view.
After reading the email, I re-read all three articles. The truth is that all three are solid, well (enough) written, and accurate. What is wrong is the tone. That tone, however, was aimed at writers who spend their time foolishly and then complain about low pay, not at Demand Studios itself. Mea culpa.
Time is money may be a bumper sticker for most people, but for freelancers it is an undeniable truism. Every minute I spend writing this blog is an unpaid minute. That is fine, because I like doing it, and it seems like I am even helping some people, which is a triple bonus. Add in the fact that the blog seems to draw traffic, and thus attention to ArcticLlama, LLC and you have a winning proposition.
Still, when I write for the blog, I write fast and furious. I do my best to re-read my work once, correct any grammatical or spelling errors and I post. Quick, quick, quick. The reason is simple, I have a thriving business and a family I love and adore. Add in a little time for myself and you have a total number of hours rapidly approaching the maximum amount of time a human being can stay awake each week. In other words, my free time is a precious commodity.
If I insisted on the same level of quality for this blog as I do for my professional (paid) writing, the posts might be better written, the language would be tighter, and the overall quality would be higher, but at the expense of less frequent posting.
I feel that my head is bursting with ideas for this site and others and I would rather get them out there, even if it means they aren’t absolutely perfect. Don’t get me wrong, I want this to be a quality site, and I want what I write to be well crafted, but the time table is compressed.
Which incidentally, is where Demand Studios comes in. As a professional freelance writer, my work time is spent either writing or finding new writing business. Like all businesses, some things are long-term investments (like this blog), and others pay off more quickly. The difficult part is that, as is always the case, not all investments are winners.
If I spend two months trying to land a huge project that would represent half of my annual revenue and it doesn’t come through, that is still a good investment, but it does leave a whole. That two months could have been spent finding and writing 10 small projects instead.
Demand Studios helps smooth out the small business rollercoaster.
The life of a freelance writer comes with significant freedom, but with rare exceptions, there are still many requirements for success. Some jobs require some time on-site, others require periodic conference calls, still others take lots of research or emails back and forth, and almost every gig comes with a deadline.
What Demand Studios does for the professional freelance writer is provide no-strings attached, no on-site time, no conference calls, no emails, no deadlines writing projects. As an added bonus, the projects are very small which means that you can wedge them into those narrow blocks of time that add up to big chunks of time, but are hard to fill with productive efforts.
When I have a conference call scheduled at 2:00 PM and I finish another project at 1:40 PM there aren’t many useful tasks for that 20 minute block. Only the simplest of research or writing could be completed in that amount of time, and you certainly wouldn’t want to start anything that you need to get into the flow of because once you go there, it would be time for the call.
Cue Demand Studios. I can log in, bang out two assignments, make $30 and be on my conference call by 2:00 PM. Do that every weekday and your income goes up by $10,000 a year. Even more importantly, when a client suddenly decides to pull the plug on a project you anticipated going for another 6 months, you can hit Demand Studios hard while you find your next gig and keep from having to eat into your savings. No, it doesn’t pay as well as other writing gigs, but no other writing gig allows you to ignore it, and then come back and ask for a full plate.
Besides, I can’t think of a better (or easier) way to increase my income by ten grand without too much effort. Can you?
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Thanks for this tip. I am doing the research on Demand Studios and wondering what the prerequisites are for getting hired as a writer and your blog popped up. I haven’t touched a pen (or keyboard) in a long time for the purpose of writing. I am just getting back into it and came across this Demand Studios. I started blogging a month ago and am enjoying the heck out of it! I have a small background in journalism- wrote for my school paper and then eventually started working as a newsroom coordinator for our city newspaper. I stay home now with four kids which disabled my limbs but now the phalanges are working! I am going back to school for a mortuary science degree and thought I would freelance. I am going to just send my resume and see what happens. Thanks for the blogvice!!!!!:) Amy