Those of you who are building your own freelance writing portfolio or producing a freelance writing blog to help increase your web presence may be interested to know that WordPress has released a new version. This update moves WordPress out of the 2.9.x realm that it has bee occupying for the last six months or so and brings with it numerous new features. As is standard operating procedure here, we’ll wait for a little while and see if there is any outpouring of angst before upgrading to version 3.0.

If you want to make the move to upgrade WordPress 3.0 right away, just log into WordPress administrator account and look for the link at the top of your dashboard that says Upgrade to WordPress 3.0. You should back up all of your posts and database before upgrading.

If you are like me and not very savvy about the little databases that WordPress uses, you might find it more useful to get a backup of your posts and then just restore one of the backups provided by your webhosting company.

Quick Writer’s Tip About Web Hosting: If your web host does not provide an automatic backup and restore feature by default via the control panel or dashboard interface on your website, it is a garbage webhost with terrible service just waiting to happen. Find a new host as soon as possible. (Of course, disregard this note if you are using some advanced hosting system with all of your own scripting and shell accounts and you think that web control panels are for babies.)

To get a backup of all your posts and images without having to mess with backing up and resorting the actual databases involved, use the Export menu item in Tools. If something goes wrong, you can re-install a 2.9.x version from your webhost back (or from scratch) and then do an Import to get your posts back.

That’s a little bit easier for a non-DBA like me to work with.

Happy Writing.

I’m not going to get all emotional or anything, but something a little bit sad happened today that happens to hit home on a personal level for me as a successful freelance writer.

When I first started my freelance writing business a few years ago, I did not really know how to go about finding freelance writing gigs without cold-calling businesses or waiting for someone who knew I was a good writer to ask me to write something for them. Obviously, this is a good way to both starve to death (waiting) and to crush your soul (cold-calling). For months I scoured the Internet looking at job boards, message boards, forums, and Craigslist, looking for ways to find freelance writing jobs.

I understand enough about business and the world in general that it is easier for me than some others to smell a rat. A lot of people just assume that whatever they read or hear must be true. The axiom that if it is too good to be true, it probably is, comes up short just enough times to make them wonder if maybe, just maybe, this time is different. Unfortunately, there are plenty of rats out there on the web, and a lot of them are all too eager to prey on entrepreneurs or beginning freelance writers. Luckily I was able to avoid them and succeed in starting a writing career on my own.

I also can read between the lines and know the difference between respect and envy. Many of the top bloggers out there are good at building traffic and selling ads and getting people to sign up for email lists and selling ad space on their websites. That does not mean that they are necessarily good writers. It does not even mean that they want to be writers at all. Many of them view writing content for websites as a necessary evil to keep from getting penalized by Google search results. Obviously, these are not good resources for those of us who actually aspire to be writers and want our success to come from the quality of our writing, not from begging other webmasters for links with the right anchor text to our keyword targeted webpages.

Freelance Writing Gigs

When I first found Freelance Writing Gigs at freelancewritinggigs.com I was skeptical. Why would someone give away lists of jobs being posted for freelance writers instead of selling access, or at least making people register and end up on a mailing list?

As it turns out, Freelance Writing Gigs was legit. It was run by a writer who just liked helping out other writers. (Sounds like someone else I know <grin>.) I never told anyone about the website even though it was one of the easiest writing job boards to find online. I figured, that filtering out the dumbest ones, the ones that couldn’t see how it was the best site out there, lowered the amount of chaff that needed to be sorted through for clients to find good freelance writers.

Like many websites and online businesses, it started out as a side business, one of those things that you hope pays for itself someday, but that you don’t really expect to ever get to use to pay the bills. Over time, Freelance Writing Gigs grew into a solid community of writers and a great resource for freelancers. I got my first writing gigs thanks to links from freelancewritinggigs.com and, more importantly, found numerous other online resources that I had not previously been aware of.

This week, the owner of FWG as it has become known around the online writing community sold the site to Splashpress Media.

I don’t harbor any ill-will toward the owner of the site. How can you complain when someone doing something valuable and time consuming for free decides to stop? However, I will be sorry to see it go. Splashpress Media indicates that they intend to carry on the FWG tradition, and they may well, but no matter if it is better or worse, it won’t be the same.

So long, FWG. You will be missed.

Although it was not my intention when I started writing a blog for freelance writers and businesses who hire freelance writers, a lot of the new readers here at the ArcticLlama freelance writing business blog come from people searching for advice on where to write online for money. In particular, people search to find out whether or not it is worth it to write for Demand Studios and if Guru.com is worth it, and lately, whether or not writing gigs on Elance.com are worth it.

(I have a review of a how to make money on Elance ebook coming up very soon to update that last one with some more information.)

Of course, I am happy to help out my fellow writers whether professional writers or those just starting up their home based writing business. After all, that WAS my intention when I started up this writing blog. Actually, it was that and to help provide some SEO juice to my freelance writing business website since everyone knows that Google rankings love blogs.

Which brings us to today’s introduction to Examiner.com. Unlike other writing website reviews I have done in the past, I am writing this one prior to using Examiner.com, and even prior to being approved as a writer there. It is written this way because I have never written for Examiner before. However, their relentless barrage of “job postings” is driving me crazy. I figure I should find out who they are and what value Examiner.com provides before I scortch the proverbial earth and make them disapear forever.

Is Writing For Examiner.com Worth It?

I will do my best to be impartial in my review of Examiner.com, but in the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that they are currently on my sh*t list.

Like many writers, I use various freelance writing boards, job websites, and writing gigs newsletters in order to keep my business pipeline full. I get several email subscriptions with listings of writing jobs that are posted on major job boards like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com. For a while now, however, these lists have been clogged with writing “jobs” from Examiner.com. I have no problem with any business advertising and marketing their business and products regardless of what they are. I do, however, have a problem when these efforts are not entirely truthful.

Check out my latest Capital One NoHassle Miles Rewards article.

Technically, the “jobs” at Examiner.com fall under the contractor or freelancer category. There is no salary or basic pay rate, and there are no benefit. While this is a perfectly acceptable business arrangement between a freelancer and a company, it is not a job. I don’t like that these multiple postings (and repostings, and re-postings, and…) clutter up job searches and job search results.

Again, I have no problem with Examiner.com aggressively marketing itself and I certainly have no problem with businesses actively seeking to hire quality writers. The issue is the nature of these postings and the company’s refusal to keep in them in the appropriate category (freelance, contract, or temp, but not “jobs”) and, even more problematic, it’s constant posting of multiple entries for what is essentially the same job. All of their job posts are for the same kind of “Examiner” with the same qualifications and responsibilities. The only difference is the topic. Thus, there can be 14 results from Examiner.com that are all the same job. Even worse, they are constantly re-posting those jobs to keep them “new”. This wastes valuable time and resources of freelance writers and other job seekers.

I do my writing job searches these days by entering in the job title keyword and then going into “advanced search” in order to refine the search to not include those that have “examiner.com” in them. However, I resent having these opportunities crowd off actual jobs or contracts with actual pay rates from my job board emails.

However, I have found good money making writing opportunities online and elsewhere that did not fit the traditional definitions of jobs, contracts, or freelancing, so I am going to investigate before passing judgement.

In the meantime, I will be unsubscribing from my job alerts from those websites that do not provide me a way to filter out listings from Examiner.com without also filtering out all contracting, temporary, or freelance listings.

Happy Writing! – By the way, don’t forget to check out my parenting skills for dads website.

Have you added the Facebook LIKE button to your website or blog yet?

Multiple big name websites, respected media outlets, magazine websites, and more have added the Facebook code snippet that publishes a "Like" button on your stories or websites. I even added them here on the freelance writing blog, although I did not add them on the ArcticLlama freelance writing business website. Having like buttons all over a professional business website just didn’t seem the way to go.

I also added the new LIKE button, which can also be set to display RECOMMEND instead, to some of my other websites that I will now shamelessly plug in the spirit of this post (You’ll see what I’m talking about in a minute.) The LIKE button is part of Facebook’s F8 initiative which before the whole Facebook privacy debacle drowned it out was supposed to be the amazing Internet changing Google killer. It isn’t really turning out that way, but the technology writers have moved on to fresher ground, like the new Apple iPhone 4 which is a major Google killer…um, wait a sec–

Adding the Facebook like button to websites such as my parenting skills from Dad website at Undefeated Daddy was easy. Like many of my sites, my personal financial tips website and my site dedicated to helping people make money by writing online, are build on the WordPress platform.

For those of you not familiar with WordPress, it is an open-source blogging platform that allows writers to focus on writing and WordPress handles everything else like formatting what that writing looks like on a webpage when someone reads it in a web browser. This writing blog is published on WordPress and I am continuously searching for the best WordPress theme for writers but haven’t had much chance to try them out lately.

Click Like on Facebook Button

Ironically, many of my readers are apparently not the click the Like button types. Most of my posts go unloved in the like realm. That isn’t a focus of mine, and I’m not sure if it has any value considering the sheer volume of likes that I see on any given day on my Facebook account which is not exactly filled with Facebook junkies.

However, that has not stopped me from liking my own writings no matter where they are published. If I see a LIKE button on something I wrote, whether on my own websites, or the websites of clients that I write for, I click it.

I can’t help but wonder how many other writers are clicking to Like what they write either. In the end, does this undermine the whole system?

As long time readers of this blog know, I’m a big fan of writing for Demand Studios for certain things. While I don’t think that it is worth it to write for Demand Studios as your sole source of income, or for even a big part of your freelance writing business revenue, Demand Studios assignments offer a unique combination of flexible scheduling, fast pay, and ease of projects that is tough to find elsewhere. That makes Demand Studios good to write for when you get those 2:00 am can’t sleep nights. If you can’t sleep, you might as well make some money while you are increasing your sleep deficit.

However, the entire value in writing for Demand Studios comes from being able to do it fast. Writing fast for $15 an article isn’t enough; you have to write really fast to make writing for Demand Studios worthwhile. I shoot for 4 articles per hour. Do the math and that works out to a freelance writer making $60 per hour. That obviously is not the best hourly rates freelance writers make, but it is good enough to make it a place to keep in your back pocket for emergencies or just for those slow weeks.

Constantly striving for speed in writing and making more as a freelancer has its drawbacks. It can feel more stressful than it should. Everything gets more stressful when there is a timer counting down, whether real (I use a little digital kitchen timer) or imagined. Also, by dropping in and out of the Demand Studios community at seemingly random intervals, one ends up missing some things along the way. Occasionally, I have numerous messages waiting for me on my "Work Desk" and I just end up clicking close without reading them so that I can get going. That means that sometimes I miss things.

Don’ miss the Guru.com update about Freelancer Rank

New Pay Rate on Demand Studios Articles

Today, I logged onto Demand Studios to claim a queue full of articles for the upcoming pre-Memorial Day period when prospecting for new freelance writing clients and looking for projects to fill the business revenue pipeline becomes a low return time investment. When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a bunch of article titles, and a new price tier.

I haven’t had any time to investigate it yet, but there is now a $16 per article pay rate on Demand Studios. Again, this is not even close to what a professional freelance writer is worth if you can’t crank these suckers out by the handful in a short period of time. However, assuming one could continue to meet the rate of 4 per hour, a $16 rate of pay works out to $64 per hour instead of $60 per hour. That doesn’t seem like much at first glance, but it works out to something like a 6.5% pay raise if you filled your claimed article queue with $16 articles.

It may turn out that this new tier is worthless. There may be extra work involved that would slow things down too much. There may be just a bunch of lame titles that would be either too painful or too involved to write. However, when I clicked on the filter for $16 and then clicked on Business and a couple of other categories, it seemed like a decent sized list popped up. I’ll let you know more when I know more.

Check out the latest credit card rewards review.

Writing For Elance as a Professional Freelance Writer

Recently, I had the opportunity to review an ebook about getting freelance writing gigs (and other work) via freelance project bidding site eLance. As I have mentioned in the past, there have always been just too many ifs, ands, or, buts, that go along with getting freelancing work on Elance. However, this how-too book lays out a path for successfully getting high paying freelance jobs on Elance. It was recently referenced by a successful Elance user who credited it with his success.

I’ve read it over and am now in the process of trying the ideas mentioned. Some of them are basic, and others are ones I pretty much already figured out for myself as a successful online entrepreneur, but there are some pointers that I have never tried before on Elance or anywhere else.

Look for an upcoming review here on ArcticLlama professional freelance writing blog once I have a chance to ascertain the value of the advice. Or, do yourself a favor and just grab the freelance writing RSS feed.

Over at Freelance Switch, there is an interesting article about Yahoo’s new stylebook being published in an effort to help establish writing standards for online content. As the article correctly points out, most sites currently follow the journalistic rules and suggestions found within the Associated Press Stylebook, or AP Stylebook. The conventions laid out within the book are collectively known as AP Style, although they do not formulate an entire style and layout like MLA style does.

Unlike MLA Style or other academic styles, AP Style is not so much a structure to be followed or grammatical rules to live by. Rather, the AP Stylebook is composed primarily of phrases, terms, names, and acronyms that have a real world use and standardization that may not be reflected in writing references like the dictionary or the Chicago Manual of Style. For example, how to properly refer to military titles is one section. (Capitalize and use the standardized abbreviation when placed before a name, but lower case otherwise.)

It is also useful for when the words of the world have outpaced the words in the dictionary. However, even the AP Stylebook falls short in the fast paced world of the Internet. If you are truly following AP Style, then web page is correct, not webpage. The same is true for web site, not website.

What is missing from all manner of references is how to deal with widely used terms that have not been standardized yet. For example, is it social media, social networking, social networks, or web 2.0, or Web 2.0.

Unfortunately, Yahoo’s effort is largely moot considering the necessity that most online content be readily accessible to and highly ranked by, the various search engines. In this regard, being correct or accurate can actually be a giant penalty. The correct title is The Associated Press Stylebook but if your article doesn’t say AP Style in it at least once, you will never get anything but a trickle of search traffic.

Until Google develops better algorithms for indexing and ranking websites, the only style guide that matters is the one that determines SERPs.

Post by Brian E Nelson – In an email notice to freelance members of Guru.com (also here), the company announced that it was ending it Freelancer Rank system. The notice says that “upon closer examination,” that Rank is flawed and out of date. Further, it states that there is no legitimate way to rank the wide variations in skills sets that individual professionals bring to Guru when the bid for freelance projects.

As most of you are aware, I have never put too much effort in to Guru. After considering is Guru.com worth it, I came to the conclusion that there were too many ways for me to make money writing online that pay higher than Guru.com in most cases, without the extra overhead (Never forget that time is an expense, too!) that goes into finding projects to bid on. Certainly, I have found plenty of high paying writing gigs without going through the process of bidding on writing projects at Guru.com. However, I have recently had numerous people contact me about re-evaluating the bidding for work sites like Guru, Elance, ScriptLance, and the like. It’s something I plan to do whenever I get enough spare time. (Hah!)

What Happened To Freelancer Rank At Guru.com?

The truly interesting part about the announcement Guru.com will phase out the Freelancer Rank beginning on May 8, is the methodology that they have chosen to replace the way freelance professionals are sorted at Guru.com.

If you are like me, after reading that careful consideration the company realized that the ranking system it was using could not possibly do justice the enormous array of freelancing professionals – including professional freelance writers – that use Guru.com, you might wondering how freelancers will be listed at Guru.com in the future. Since the Freelance Rank was an arbitrary methodology that favored certain types of Guru users over the other, one might imagine that the company would be looking for an impartial way to sort the ever growing list of freelancers without giving favored treatment to specific Guru users.

Guess again.

Rather than some impartial, perhaps randomly sorted listing, Guru.com will replace the maligned and over-simplified Freelancer Rank with sorting the list of freelancers by earnings as the default.

Wha–?

For Professional Freelancers Volume = Quality

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the attempt to algorithmically rank freelance professional on Guru.com by their skill sets, feedback, completed projects, and the like is just not multidimensional enough, but sorting freelancers by how much they make ON GURU is the answer.

The Guru Freelancer Rank announcement goes on to say that “…earnings provides the best view of the health, vitality, and promise of Guru Freelancers..”

Wow. I understand what spin is, but YIKES!

Guess who the biggest earners on Guru.com are?

High-powered freelancers who command premium rates for top of the line work, or those who spend an enormous amount of time (often outsourced) generating an inordinate amount of bids in order to win a large number of projects that can be mass produced (also often outsourced)?

Now, before anyone freaks out on me, I understand that there are exceptions. There always are. That is what makes them exceptions. I am sure that with little effort one could point to high-earning Guru Freelancers who do not bid on hundreds of projects per month, and who complete most of the projects that they win with the in-house writers that are either owners, employees, or legitimate over-the-table contractors. Of course, I am equally sure that the high earners on either side of that freelancing professional fall smack dab into the middle of the previous category.

The good news is that sorting by earnings is only a default and going forward, Guru hopes to provide better sorting options for employers, starting with the ability to sort based upon reviews.

No word on what will count more, how MANY reviews a user has, or how high those reviews are. While the emphasis will be on the latter, look for the element that “corrects” the high reviews of those with “too few” winning bids and reviews to make them “more fair” with providers that have many more reviews.

While I have heard differently from other professional writers, until I see differently in the projects that are listed for freelance writing bids, it still seems that what one gets paid on Guru is less than what a professional freelance writer gets paid on non-Guru projects.

What do you think? Do you like Guru’s new methodology? Are you going to wait and see? Do you use Guru now? Let us know what you think in the comments or shoot me a message.

When Google released its Google Chrome web browser, it included a private browsing mode called Incognito Mode. When Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 it included a Privacy mode. When Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 it came with a Private Browsing mode. In all cases, these integrated browser privacy modes were met with almost universal derision. Most commentators called them Porn Mode, suggesting that the only potential use of private web surfing features was to hide the tracks of those who view pornography online.

At the time, I suggest that people dissing privacy modes were small minded and that, perhaps, if they themselves were not so obsessed with pornography online, there were actually numerous useful, and respectable, reasons to use the private browsing modes on these browsers.

It seems that I might finally be getting some company on my stance. The folks at the “life hacking” website called Lifehacker, for example, recently published a computer tip suggesting that using Google’s Incognito mode was a good way to use someone else’s computer without having to log them off of websites they are using. For example, if your friend Joe is logged into Google Mail, going to check your own Google Mail requires logging Joe off. On one hand, it isn’t that big of a deal. On the other hand, why should Joe have to get logged off for your benefit. Using Incognito Mode denies access to the cookies and browser sessions that are keeping Joe logged in, so Gmail must assume that you are not currently logged in. In fact, it has to assume that you have not been to the site yet. Thus, you can use Gmail and when Joe comes back, so can he.

Ironically, I use the same feature constantly for the same purpose, but not just when mooching some computer time, as the author puts it. In fact, there are tons of legitimate reasons to use privacy modes like Incognito Mode.

I use Incognito Mode or Firefox’s private browsing sessions (I actually use a Firefox extension that lets me use Firefox private browsing without my current session disappearing) to check Gmail on my own PC. I have numerous Google email accounts and sometimes I just need two seconds to see if something showed up in my inbox yet, so I don’t want to log out of my “main” email account.

The same feature can be used to submit links to Delicious or other social bookmarking websites on behalf of a client using the account setup for that purpose by the client, instead of having to log out of your own Delicious account first.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of legitimate reasons for private browsing modes. It’s nice to see some other writers noticing it too.

If you manage a lot of WordPress blogs, you might have noticed that TONS of your plug-ins had upgrades waiting today.  Wondering where all of the WordPress plug-in updates came from?  WordPress 2.8 was released, and the best plug-in authors and developers are on it, releasing new versions of their plugins to ensure full compatibility.

Just because the plug-in developers have already upgraded doesn’t mean that you should run out and upgrade all of your blogs to WordPress 2.8 immediately.  Just like any other software, there can be bugs and major issues that don’t creep up for a day or two.

Hold off for a couple of days at least.  If you don’t hear anything about real issues or big problems, then you can upgrade next week.

We’ve talked about whether or not Guru.com is worth it and if Demand Studios is worth it.

Today in my “test” email account that I use to sign up for all of those websites and services that require an email address before I’ve tried out their system I got an email from Elance listing their top paying projects.  I must admit that I have never done anything with Elance having filled out my available working hours before getting my profile completely setup.  However, I did peruse the “Top Budgeted Projects” list to some dismay.

Most of the freelance “writing” jobs on the list are actually translation gigs which is not the same obviously.  The  couple of writing ones were not promising.

• 1,000 articles – Pay “between $5,000 and $10,000”

• That might sound high paying but that is $5 to $10 an article.  That isn’t necessarily a terrible rate, but it is certainly not a high pay gig.

• A whole book for $5K? Maybe if you could write whatever you wanted, but this is about a real person and requires gathering “a tremendous amount of material”

So far, I’m not chomping at the bit to become more active on Elance.com.  How have you done with them?  Leave a comment to let us know.

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