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I just had a thought: I used to write the company newsletters at my last job. We'd send these out to our client companies, roughly 90k of covered lives or so. Would that type of thing look good as a writing sample? Word count was usually between 400-600 words, depending on topic and length. And my name is on the form as the author, which is nice.
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Jan 25, 2022 23:48
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MEIN RAVEN posted:So I've been looking through this thread because I'm having something akin to a midlife career breakdown, and I'm not sure I can be a "professional" in my field much longer. Thankfully I have a really supportive partner who is far happier than I am in her work and able to support the two of us. She even offered to let me be a kept man. But I still have a few debts I'm paying down, and also I really feel like I'd need to make SOME money, so my question is: This is much different from what usually discussed here but If you’re able/willing to leave your house often you can probably make (profit) close to 25/k year flipping if you’re able to hustle. You’re making money online but sourcing your products will mostly happen at garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales, auction houses etc. You can test it out by selling old stuff lying around your house to see how you like it.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:39
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A buddy of mine does the ebay flip thing, once you pick a couple niches and know what you can a) find locally and b) quickly assess, it can be lucrative. It's also pretty feast-or-famine, at least here, because garage sales and stuff only happen part of the year.Astro7x posted:My friends that work for Writers Domain say that Writers Access is more lucrative, but yes, it is more work with fighting for open orders, getting on clients love lists, and a much slower start because of it. I really don't know much about it though. Yeah this is definitely true. It varies from client to client (some of them basically accept anything, some are really picky) but it's definitely more stressful. I will say that my friend who does significant amounts of work on WA says that most of the clients running love lists don't actually care about or read your application; she got on dozens if not hundreds of them just by clicking apply and sending in a blank application.
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Jan 26, 2022 00:43
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MEIN RAVEN posted:I just had a thought: I used to write the company newsletters at my last job. We'd send these out to our client companies, roughly 90k of covered lives or so. Would that type of thing look good as a writing sample? Word count was usually between 400-600 words, depending on topic and length. And my name is on the form as the author, which is nice. No, they want you to write a very specific style of article that meets their guidelines. I did that application like 8 years ago. What are the topics for the writing sample?
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Jan 26, 2022 01:04
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I live in Seattle and could definitely see flipping as a way of bringing in some beer money. I have an Ebay account from FOREVER ago and used to sell some things on there, so I could pick that up. I'm not at all against leaving my house, so much as I don't want to do anything that requires much in the way of responsibility. I swear I'm not a child here, I've just had an awful set of years in the healthcare field and I am....really tired. In a way I've never known before. Would be nice not to have to be responsible for anyone's needs for a while.
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Jan 26, 2022 01:05
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MEIN RAVEN posted:I just had a thought: I used to write the company newsletters at my last job. We'd send these out to our client companies, roughly 90k of covered lives or so. Would that type of thing look good as a writing sample? Word count was usually between 400-600 words, depending on topic and length. And my name is on the form as the author, which is nice. No, they want to see if you can write an article that follows their guidelines. They don't care if you've written novels, because that doesn't mean that you can follow their guidelines that they decided are optimized for SEO searches. Here is an example of a 600 word Dentist Article on teeth sensitivity that actually lives on a client site https://thewhiteninggals.co/blogs/news/what-to-know-about-tooth-sensitivity-and-teeth-whitening Here is a 400 word article that goes into some SEO blog that nobody reads. https://senbon-sakura.com/2016/11/29/have-sensitive-teeth-know-these-natural-ways-to-resolve-sensitivity/
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Jan 26, 2022 01:55
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If you're getting into flipping, try to make your niche one of smaller items, otherwise you're going to end up in inventory hell waiting for things to sell (and then paying out the rear end for shipping). I've heard fashion's a good route if you can learn to quickly identify the right brands and you check the right neighborhoods. I fell off Writer's Domain years ago when posts there were scarce and they started rejecting articles over piddly poo poo, but if it's good again I'll have to see if my account is still active. I made good money on there for a while, in the glory days of "write 400 words in an order that sort of makes sense and get $20"
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Jan 26, 2022 03:24
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Everett False posted:I fell off Writer's Domain years ago when posts there were scarce and they started rejecting articles over piddly poo poo, but if it's good again I'll have to see if my account is still active. I made good money on there for a while, in the glory days of "write 400 words in an order that sort of makes sense and get $20" It's has its ups and downs with the reviews. I feel like when they would bring in a new crop of college students around the Fall to do the editing/reviews, you'd get these people that just didn't understand what it was for and be overly critical. Then a month later it was back to normal once they realized the more they reject the more they have to review again. I also think they gave the reviewers the ability to change more stuff on the fly. It used to be that if there was a mistake in the title they'd send it back without even reading it. Now they'll just change the title if there is a small problem with it.
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Jan 26, 2022 05:34
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Astro7x posted:No, they want to see if you can write an article that follows their guidelines. They don't care if you've written novels, because that doesn't mean that you can follow their guidelines that they decided are optimized for SEO searches. I actually really like those examples. It's delightfully mindless, which is something I might really like at this point in my life. Definitely something I'll look in to more during my leave.
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Jan 26, 2022 18:30
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Astro7x posted:It's has its ups and downs with the reviews. I feel like when they would bring in a new crop of college students around the Fall to do the editing/reviews, you'd get these people that just didn't understand what it was for and be overly critical. Then a month later it was back to normal once they realized the more they reject the more they have to review again. I also think they gave the reviewers the ability to change more stuff on the fly. It used to be that if there was a mistake in the title they'd send it back without even reading it. Now they'll just change the title if there is a small problem with it. That would explain it, at one point I think I recall refreshing wildly for hours just to get One article only to have it get docked stars/pay for something like not being engaging enough. At that point it was like, "you are definitely not paying me enough to write thoughtful, engaging copy" and I gave up. My favorite article I ever wrote for Writer's Domain was something bizarre about asphalt because I actually, weirdly, learned a lot about asphalt.
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Jan 26, 2022 18:47
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One time for Textbroker I accepted a project for a "total website rewrite" that was like 20,000 words worth of website pages they wanted spun out, I think it was about makeup and dermatology and stuff. I did it, and the ~4 days or whatever passed with no comment and it got autoaccepted and paid me for it. Then like two days later I got a long-rear end message from the client about how my content loving sucked rear end and how they were out of the office but they 100% would have requested revisions and probably rejected it because it sucked so bad. Also, would you be willing to revise it for free since it's past the revision period within the system, pretty please? Lmao hell fuckin' no dawg, that poo poo didn't pay me enough to be worth the time in the first place, and after you insult me? gently caress off with that. I later saw it in the open pool again with some preface like "our previous writer sucked and turned in garbage so we're forced to try again" and I was sorely tempted to accept it again, sit on it for a few days, then cancel it, just to further delay them. I didn't, but man I wanted to.
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Jan 26, 2022 22:21
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I've got a bunch of 2-3 hour Zoom meetings scheduled over the next few weeks that are mandatory, but only involve me for about 15 minutes. What would be the best way to make some money while trapped at a PC, but needing to keep an ear out for ~18 hours in 2-3 hours chunks?
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Feb 14, 2022 15:41
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Hey folks! Daily Transcription is looking for folks in Canada, the US and the UK! so if you're thinking you'd like to give transcription a try they're not a bad company to start with. For those that have worked with them before it looks like Sally has moved on and Ceci is now their project manager. Rates aren't amazing, $0.60-$1.10 for basic rate, but I've seen worse to be honest and to get your feet wet and generate a bit of money in the month they're not bad, and they do pay consistently and on time. Or at least that was always my experience with them. Have a good one folks! Oh, and if anyone has recommendations on good sources for voiceover work, I'm building my kit to branch out  Hope everyone is well!
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Mar 23, 2022 17:01
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Thanks for the heads up! I went ahead and gave it a shot.
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Mar 23, 2022 20:54
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Are they still a shitshow to work for? I'll never forget the time they decided to report one, and only one, of my paychecks to a different state, for no reason. v Of course they did. I'm sorry to hear that. ohnobugs fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Mar 24, 2022 |
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Mar 24, 2022 09:18
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Oh no loving clue on that account. I got the sack when they had that whole California says you have to treat people like people and they didn't seem to be keeping Canadians. But they've moved some people around it seems.
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Mar 24, 2022 12:04
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Yeah, I gave them a ping when some of my other clients slowed down and I saw an ad saying .75-.85 a minute, which isn't *terrible* nowadays, but the first file they threw me was verbatim transcription at .60/minute and I told 'em I had to pass. They weren't bad to work for when I worked for them, but that was back in the 2012 range so things might have changed. If you do go with DT and you're US-based, do a couple of months and then start watching Craigslist like a hawk. There are still outfits hiring at $1 a minute or thereabouts, but they want demonstrable experience nowadays.
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Mar 29, 2022 13:10
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I applied yesterday to DT. I'm shocked to learn today I didn't pass their transcription sample test. I spent a couple hours pouring over that four-minute sample video to get the transcript and formatting as perfect as possible. I passed their test years ago in 2016 and did a few months of productive work for them before quitting (due to finding other, more lucrative work at the time), so I know I'm capable. This sucks; DT was gonna be my fallback for being unable to find any other online work I was decent at.
Curvature of Earth fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Mar 29, 2022 |
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Mar 29, 2022 22:24
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Wow, found a new bottom of the barrel. TranscribeMe lists on Flexjobs at $15 per hour. Any transcriptionists can guess what they actually mean.
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Mar 31, 2022 02:25
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Hey guys, I have a question. Is it possible to earn just an extra $25 a day online? If so, what would you recommend. Reason why I'm asking is I love my current job and I have no real desire to leave it at the moment, however, the industry I'm in has been very heavily impacted by the chip shortage around the world. While I personally am expecting things to recover back to normal or close to it sometime next year, hopefully first quarter, maybe second, in the meantime I would like to supplement my lost earnings by doing online stuff. I chose the 25 dollar mark just because when I was first thinking about it I thought that I would prefer 50 dollars a day, but decided that might be too unreasonable for someone just starting online work. So I halved my expectations, but I do want to preferably get into something that I could either take or leave at my leisure (when the recovery happens in my field most likely), but also possibly pivot to doing full time in a year or two. I'm open to any and all suggestions.
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May 12, 2022 18:58
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$25 a day is pretty doable with writing through the content mills, especially once you get established, though it can be feast-or-famine starting out before you get on a bunch of teams. Textbroker looks pretty thin on the ground since they moved everything to team orders so you'd need to apply for those. Writer Access uses casting calls the same way but may be more accessible. I dunno firsthand though about any of them these days, I've been out of the content mills for years now. For reference at Textbroker's pittance 4-star rates, 1,000 words is $14, though a lot of the teams are a bit higher rates than the public pools. Writer Access is generally a bit higher, I think. You can also try Verblio, Constant Content, maybe even Zerys if they still get work.
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May 13, 2022 18:04
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Definitely recommend verblio, 600 words is $23 (though you’ll have to start with 300/$11 until you’ve written a few dozen)
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May 14, 2022 16:29
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Does Verblio have you responding to a prompt like Writer's Domain, or is it one of the more "throw an article out and see if anyone bites" type?
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May 14, 2022 22:43
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I believe it's kind of a hybrid? Like, companies come in and post prompts and guidelines, and you write something for it, but other people can also write something for it and the company can buy however many of them they want. I have no idea about the practicality of it or how often a person gets passed over (or if companies generally just buy the first things that come in) though. I signed up because a friend of mine said they had a rush order paying her like $400 for a 1200-word post, but I haven't seen anything of the sort, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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May 14, 2022 23:31
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I don't really like writing on spec, but I suppose you could repurpose something you wrote for another site? What is an example of Verblio's articles to get an idea of reasonable expectations?
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May 15, 2022 01:09
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Thank you guys for the advice. It sounds like Verblio is what I'm looking for? My next questions concern both registration and expectations. Doing a small amount of research about the site, I'm seeing that only 5% of applicants get accepted, which is rather low, do you know their criteria for acceptance or is it needs-based ("they need more writers, so they accept more applicants" deal)? Second, what deadlines do they set or is it client based? Again, at the moment I'm looking for just a small side thing I can do in my free time (being able to pivot to doing it more frequently after a year or so is icing on the cake ofc), having strict deadlines is kind of a bummer, but not a dealbreaker. Also +1 to Astro's request.
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May 15, 2022 01:15
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Almost everything on cheatsheet.com, motorbiscuit.com, or sportscasting.com is from Verblio. Just standard SEO fare crammed with keywords. You’ll start by writing on spec but all that stuff is direct assignment meaning there’s no competition or risk of decline as long as you follow the style guide. It can take a while to start getting assignments but assuming you want to do it long term I’d say it’s worth putting a little time in
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May 15, 2022 02:32
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Astro7x posted:I don't really like writing on spec, but I suppose you could repurpose something you wrote for another site? They do explicitly say that if a client doesn't buy what you put up, you can reuse it for a different client with a similar request, or you can use it as a profile sample, so I assume you can also just take it and list it on Constant Content's marketplace or something like that too. I also hate spec writing, so I feel you there. Gologle posted:Thank you guys for the advice. It sounds like Verblio is what I'm looking for? My next questions concern both registration and expectations. Doing a small amount of research about the site, I'm seeing that only 5% of applicants get accepted, which is rather low, do you know their criteria for acceptance or is it needs-based ("they need more writers, so they accept more applicants" deal)? Second, what deadlines do they set or is it client based? Again, at the moment I'm looking for just a small side thing I can do in my free time (being able to pivot to doing it more frequently after a year or so is icing on the cake ofc), having strict deadlines is kind of a bummer, but not a dealbreaker. As far as registration, Deadlines seem client-based but admittedly I don't have any first-hand experience actually writing for them. I was out of the mill game before Verblio rebranded from Blogmutt and changed up their back end, and even then I didn't actually do any work for them before either. It kind of looks like a lot of clients don't have deadlines, which is good if you don't want time pressure, but bad if you want some consistent idea of when they'll swing back in and buy something. Their dashboard looks like this:  Picking a client gives you something like this:  Or this:  Or sometimes this:  And below that you have a chart like this:  Along with the text box to write and submit. Disclaimer: This is all at their 3-star just-registered baby level, things may be different once you've done some work and increased your ranking in their system. Fake edit: Spokes posted:Almost everything on cheatsheet.com, motorbiscuit.com, or sportscasting.com is from Verblio. Just standard SEO fare crammed with keywords. You’ll start by writing on spec but all that stuff is direct assignment meaning there’s no competition or risk of decline as long as you follow the style guide. It can take a while to start getting assignments but assuming you want to do it long term I’d say it’s worth putting a little time in Yeah as with any content mill like this, once you get skin in the game and start getting direct assignments it all becomes a lot more consistent/lucrative/potentially flexible, as desired. But, it can take a bit to get established to that point. How long, I don't personally know. Nighthand fucked around with this message at 02:49 on May 15, 2022 |
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May 15, 2022 02:44
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Some of those instructions seem way too involved for $11.50. While others seem perfectly acceptable. Writers Domain pay like 14.75 for 400 words, so $11.50 for 300 is in line with that (slightly better per word actually) I also have a collection of nearly 15,000 articles I've written for Writers Domain over the past 9 year, so I am sure there would be plenty of old stuff I could just rewrite with the same ideation. How do they screen for plagiarism? I know that WD runs the articles through Copyscape and then an internal check against stuff in the system that has not been reviewed, and I've learned that if you rewrite anything, you should try to stick below 10% duplicated content without it being flagged for someone to look at it. And I've only ever had one article come up with a plagiarism flag in all that time, and it was based on a piece of content I didn't even use. So I probably rewrote something that someone else rewrote from that article.
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May 15, 2022 17:26
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As far as I know pretty much everywhere just uses Copyscape, or has a disclaimer and tells clients to use it themselves. I have no idea personally what Verblio uses though.
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May 15, 2022 19:29
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Yeah, I was surprised that WD was so open and honest about what flags for plagiarism. I started running stuff through the free Copyscape "Compare Two Documents" tool and haven't had issues since https://www.copyscape.com/compare.php
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May 15, 2022 21:51
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Speaking of writing tools, can I just say I hate Grammarly with the burning fire of a thousand suns? One of my clients requires me to run everything through it as a final step, and they're utter masters at monetization-- it's absolutely free, BUT you can't tell it "ignore this issue" unless you pay for the loving thing. So if I do an hour-long transcript, I then have to click "dismiss" like 250 times to get it to ignore all the bad grammar or inefficient wording the subject used. I'm considering subscribing just for the ability to shut the loving thing up.
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Jun 6, 2022 16:43
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I pay for Grammarly and it still fuckin' sucks. You can tell it to ignore certain issues but it's broad categories of issues, so if you wanted to keep one of them but ignore the rest, get hosed. Also it's frequently just wrong. For example:   I basically just use it for a bunch of colored outlines on sentences I should take a look at when I'm editing for my writers, but make judgment calls myself because its suggestions are so awful so much of the time. The "best" part is, I've tried a couple of the other grammar check AI systems and they're worse.
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Jun 6, 2022 17:29
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I get what this is trying to do, but the grammar is wrong with it being AI generated an trying to put it in the opposite order. I forget which grammar rule this is called off the top of my head. WD also dings me all the time on passive voice and dummy subjects, and I hate it.
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Jun 6, 2022 17:44
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kazmeyer posted:Speaking of writing tools, can I just say I hate Grammarly with the burning fire of a thousand suns? One of my clients requires me to run everything through it as a final step, and they're utter masters at monetization-- it's absolutely free, BUT you can't tell it "ignore this issue" unless you pay for the loving thing. So if I do an hour-long transcript, I then have to click "dismiss" like 250 times to get it to ignore all the bad grammar or inefficient wording the subject used. I'm considering subscribing just for the ability to shut the loving thing up. What the gently caress why? What would be the point on a transcript?
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Jun 7, 2022 15:25
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Slightly Used Cake posted:What the gently caress why? What would be the point on a transcript? No clue but it's a freaking nightmare. I do know that the first test transcript I turned in I didn't run it through Grammarly and they knew. The only thing I know it constantly wants me to do is manipulate commas and hyphenate terms, so maybe when they realized their run-through was finding a lot of poo poo like "first time" and "second place" and stuff without dashes they figured it out. Of course, I can't just hit "accept" on everything because it'll put commas and dashes in really stupid places, so hey. But yeah, any time I'm doing a transcript where the want it remotely verbatim I know the stupid robot's going to scream at me that they used the word "really."
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Jun 8, 2022 05:59
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For those who want to do the whole writing thing, check out ClearVoice as well. You do need some prior published content to build out your portfolio before you get approved though. I started out with 500-600 word articles for $40, but do randomly get 600 words for $97.50 from this one particular client. Everything else is anywhere in between that. It can get thin at times just like every other site though. e: I still do LionBridge, which is now Telus International. But they must have a worker shortage because they are offering weekly bonuses of $75 for hitting 15 hours of rating. dms666 fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jun 17, 2022 |
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Jun 17, 2022 21:14
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Really getting frustrated with Writers Domain these days and the lack of work. I knew the endless work wouldn't last forever.... but it's a struggle to meet my personal quota for the day these days. It involves waking up at like 5am just to grab a single task, and then a mad dash in the evening to write/submit as much stuff as possible in 45 minutes before all the tasks go away. On the flip side... it certainly motivates me to write faster and I feel like I'm spending less time writing the same amount. Just because I'm like... gently caress it, not even proof reading this poo poo. Submit and onto the next one.
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Jun 17, 2022 23:36
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The funny thing is, I found Telus after I asked my question and applied, but I haven't yet bit the bullet and taken the exam yet because I hear the exam to get accepted to one of the Telus jobs are super hard, way more difficult than the actual work you do.
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Jun 17, 2022 23:45
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dms666 posted:For those who want to do the whole writing thing, check out ClearVoice as well. You do need some prior published content to build out your portfolio before you get approved though. I started out with 500-600 word articles for $40, but do randomly get 600 words for $97.50 from this one particular client. Everything else is anywhere in between that. It can get thin at times just like every other site though. Huh. I've actually got published stuff under my pen name. The bad news is it's Demand Studios content-mill poo poo. The funniest thing I ever saw was when I Googled my pen name and found people citing me. It's turtles all the way down.
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Jun 18, 2022 06:39
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