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Doghouse posted:Ha, yeah, I saw that Goonerotica thread. No way I am doing that, but it is a clever way of making money. It seemed from the Self Publishing thread that goons have not made a lot of money from non-erotica stuff. I love writing fiction and that seems really neat but I am highly skeptical. Also writing good fiction takes a lot of time. To make a lot of money, you have to write FAST. Putting out something once a year will not make you rich. Once a month or once a week, might. The Reddit threads I linked to are about an author who made their money with fiction, not erotica. Most were short stories or novellas sold at $2.99.
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Jun 8, 2012 02:21
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Nighthand posted:different states may have different 1099-related tax laws they have to work around I'm pretty sure it's this. I'm almost certain that you can move and keep your job with LB/LF unless you are moving to one of the places that they don't hire in.
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Jun 8, 2012 02:51
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Dear Textbroker Client: If you want "thoughtful and well thought out revisions" when all you give me as a comment is a grammar change, shove off. I'm not spending an hour revising an article you're paying me $5 for, especially not when it was a challenge cramming in all the info you wanted anyways. Also, there's the 5-star level if you want better next time. Sincerely, Passive-Aggressively Posting on an Internet Forum You'll Never See.
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Jun 8, 2012 04:24
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Doghouse posted:Ha, yeah, I saw that Goonerotica thread. No way I am doing that, but it is a clever way of making money. It seemed from the Self Publishing thread that goons have not made a lot of money from non-erotica stuff. I love writing fiction and that seems really neat but I am highly skeptical. Also writing good fiction takes a lot of time. The don't ask for your bank's address on the direct deposit form, do they? I have never been asked that for any job when filling one out. Its just bank name, routing and account numbers. There is no way for them to know unless you use a regional bank with the specific city or state in the name.
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Jun 8, 2012 04:56
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Nighthand posted:Dear Textbroker Client: If you want "thoughtful and well thought out revisions" when all you give me as a comment is a grammar change, shove off. I'm not spending an hour revising an article you're paying me $5 for, especially not when it was a challenge cramming in all the info you wanted anyways. Also, there's the 5-star level if you want better next time. I keep getting docked by TB's editors for my comma usage, but ~my girlfriend~ got the mother of all insults today. Her client rated an article as low as they possibly could and left a comment akin to "You, should, review, your, overuse, of, commas!" with a suggestion she sign up for Grammarly (which turns out to be horrible, expensive, and the sample edit she did gave her a virus). I'm looking forward to getting some stuff done on Constant Content. As an aside, has anyone writing for Monachy heard from him lately?
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Jun 8, 2012 05:40
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RabbitMage posted:I keep getting docked by TB's editors for my comma usage, but ~my girlfriend~ got the mother of all insults today. Her client rated an article as low as they possibly could and left a comment akin to "You, should, review, your, overuse, of, commas!" with a suggestion she sign up for Grammarly (which turns out to be horrible, expensive, and the sample edit she did gave her a virus). He sent me an email a week ago saying that his most recent bank deposit was "being sat on" and that he would "let me know the minute things cleared up." I emailed him this morning about it, still waiting on a response. He's paid up several times for me so I'm not totally without hope (yet) but yeah we'll see.
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Jun 8, 2012 05:46
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RabbitMage posted:I keep getting docked by TB's editors for my comma usage, but ~my girlfriend~ got the mother of all insults today. Her client rated an article as low as they possibly could and left a comment akin to "You, should, review, your, overuse, of, commas!" with a suggestion she sign up for Grammarly (which turns out to be horrible, expensive, and the sample edit she did gave her a virus). I've gotten a looooot better about commas because of this site. I used to overuse them a lot as well, and I still get docked for them occasionally. At least most of my TB editorial reviews are either no comment or "great job pleasing this client!" I find the TB editors far more constructive than I've ever gotten a comment from a client. Which stands to reason, of course. Clients are stupid.
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Jun 8, 2012 05:52
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The March Hare posted:He sent me an email a week ago saying that his most recent bank deposit was "being sat on" and that he would "let me know the minute things cleared up." Yeah, I heard about the bank hold about two weeks ago...and nothing since. I sent an e-mail a few days back to get an update with no reply yet. I get bank holds but the lack of updates is a little worrying, since I'm still owed money. Hopefully he's just busy and things clear up soon. As far as commas I've reviewed their style guide and apparently I'm still not getting it. At first it was too many commas, then it was too few, then it was commas in the wrong place...now I'm just getting 3-star ratings without comment, so I'm assuming commas are still the problem.
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Jun 8, 2012 07:27
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Sounds like there are a few people in the thread who are getting a lot of work from Textbroker. Is it a viable way to clear a living wage 1-2 days a week? The per-word rate for 3-star and 4-star articles seems low. I'm wondering if it's possible to gross more than $10-12 an hour before self-employment taxes at those rates.
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Jun 8, 2012 12:35
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tiny mint car posted:Sounds like there are a few people in the thread who are getting a lot of work from Textbroker. Is it a viable way to clear a living wage 1-2 days a week? It all really seems to depend on what's available, which is ever-changing. If you find a couple good $5.60 articles that you can write within an hour, hey, that's $11.20 an hour. But you might go a couple hours in between that with nothing you want to/know how to write.
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Jun 8, 2012 15:55
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Exactly. It's really variable. With a good selection of articles, I can clear $15+ an hour writing them quickly (4-star level). With a bad selection, it can take me a whole day just to find and write two $5 articles. I don't even touch 3-star ones. In the last week or so, there's been a lot more competition for the good articles, it seems like. I see them disappear a lot faster than I used to, and there's a generally lower number of available opps. So, at the moment I doubt it'd support as much as a part-time job would, but it works as a supplement.
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Jun 8, 2012 18:43
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Thanks a lot for all the feedback about LB and moving and so on.Cetaphobia posted:To make a lot of money, you have to write FAST. Putting out something once a year will not make you rich. Once a month or once a week, might. The Reddit threads I linked to are about an author who made their money with fiction, not erotica. Most were short stories or novellas sold at $2.99. This is a terribly tempting idea to try. I took maybe 3 creative writing courses in college and I love writing, but I just haven't done it in quite some time. I'm skeptical as heck though. Even if you could write good stuff, how do you get noticed?
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Jun 8, 2012 23:45
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Doghouse posted:Ha, yeah, I saw that Goonerotica thread. No way I am doing that, but it is a clever way of making money. It seemed from the Self Publishing thread that goons have not made a lot of money from non-erotica stuff. I love writing fiction and that seems really neat but I am highly skeptical. Also writing good fiction takes a lot of time. Dude, I worked in different states from where I was "located" for like 9 of the 12 months I was with Leapforce. I wouldn't worry about it. They'll get rid of you for other reasons first. On a side note, I applied for Lionbridge to make some extra money. Answered the application questions honestly and told them I have worked for LF in the past. They sent me an email to confirm that was true, and I'm going to respond honestly again. We'll see what comes of it. Here's to hoping...
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Jun 8, 2012 23:53
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I told them I worked for Leapforce. They were cool with that and I got hired.
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Jun 9, 2012 00:34
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Doghouse posted:Thanks a lot for all the feedback about LB and moving and so on. Writing a lot is the #1 way to get sales. The more searches your stories pop up in, the more sales you get. You can also get a Twitter, a Tumblr, and what have you. But most of your sales will come with a large catalog of stories. I have erotica about gay werewolves, pseudo incest (2 of the most popular genres), and I just wrote one about a bike with a dildo built into it. The bike one is selling VERY well for it just going live today. But I have 11 stories up, and I've been doing this for 2 weeks. You have to be prolific. And you do not have to be a phenomenal writer. Be slightly above average, with good grammar and formatting and you will be ahead of the pack. Especially if you go with romance or erotica, but all of this applies to all genres. Most people I've read about doing this the same way I did recommend just going for 'good enough' and I'm going to do the same. Good enough sells. Worry about amazing once you're making a livable wage, like Delilah Fawkes is (I think she's at about $6k a month now) and I believe Talks To Cats is as well. ETA: If you find that your work has finally reached a point where your older stories are kind of an embarrassment, Amazon will let you have literally as many pen names as you want. You can make money off your old, worse work while building a new catalog of better, shinier stuff. You also want to make sure your covers, titles and blurbs are REALLY good. Read the Goonerotica thread, regardless of what genre you write. The advice is the same for everyone, and it's invaluable. Cetaphobia fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Jun 9, 2012 |
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Jun 9, 2012 02:56
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How long are the stories you write? Is it more on the order of 2K words or 10K?
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Jun 9, 2012 03:31
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Everything is 3k. I have intentions to do longer works next month, since I'll be more secure in what I'll be making. My goal for my first full month is $300-$500, next month it's $1000. You'll find that's a very realistic goal since I put out at least 3 stories a week. But for erotica, yes, you can sell 3k works for $2.99 and they will sell like hot cakes. A person or two might complain, but it's the "industry standard" if you will, and if you sell them for any less you are losing out on a lot of money. Don't do that. For non-erotica, 10k-50k is generally considered best for $2.99, but you can always change prices to see what happens.
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Jun 9, 2012 04:14
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Cetaphobia posted:I have erotica about gay werewolves, pseudo incest (2 of the most popular genres), and I just wrote one about a bike with a dildo built into it. The bike one is selling VERY well for it just going live today. But I have 11 stories up, and I've been doing this for 2 weeks. You have to be prolific. I was just looking at that thread, and didn't that kind of stuff get pulled from Amazon and now Amazon is not a good place to self-publish erotica? Sorry, it's hard to establish a context for what's going on in that thread without reading it from beginning to end (which I plan to do, but I'd like to know right off the bat whether I should bother with Amazon). e: I think I was mistaken and that content was pulled from Smashwords and ARe. I think I also remember something bad about AmazonKindle Direct Publishing though. bleedbackwards fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jun 9, 2012 |
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Jun 9, 2012 18:14
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bleedbackwards posted:I was just looking at that thread, and didn't that kind of stuff get pulled from Amazon and now Amazon is not a good place to self-publish erotica? Sorry, it's hard to establish a context for what's going on in that thread without reading it from beginning to end (which I plan to do, but I'd like to know right off the bat whether I should bother with Amazon). Bookstrand stopped allowing indies at all. ARe is cracking down in ridiculous ways. Smashwords and Amazon won't allow straight up incest or beastiality, but pseudo incest and shapeshifters are fine. Barnes and Noble will allow literally anything. Seriously. There are legit dog loving stories on there.
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Jun 9, 2012 18:45
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Hey kazmeyer, how do you level up in the transcription business? It takes me like 3 hours to transcribe about 30 minutes. The people have the worst speaking habits. If you do the math at .60/minute, it's like six bucks an hour. How do you gain access to the big bucks work? Also, I'm with Daily Transcription and when I request work the turnaround is always next day or less than 24 hours but I'm not making more than .60/minute as far as I know.
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Jun 9, 2012 19:40
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Transcription is all about experience. As you do more of it, you'll naturally get faster, which will help your per-hour rate. But the most important thing is experience in media transcription. There are a ton of outfits that don't hire transcribers without experience, and their pay scales tend to start at $1/minute. Even at DT there are jobs they only give to experienced transcribers. If you get a rep for being reliable and turning things around quick, you'll get access to rush work there, which usually pays in the $1.25-$1.50/min range. The key, though, is getting into as-broadcast work. As-broadcast jobs involve finished episodes of TV shows, so the editing has taken care of most of the noise, and the pay rate can be phenomenal. Typical pay rates start at $30 per half-hour episode (an episode being anywhere from 22 to 30 minutes depending on the source) and go up from there. Technical transcripts, which involve timecoding and shot details, increase that by at least 25% and usually much more. ABS and technical work is where the real money is, but they don't offer those jobs to transcribers without experience because the level of detail/accuracy is so much greater. If you ever get offered an ABS job to try out, give yourself plenty of time to do it, double-check everything, and do the best job you possibly can. Lots of people bungle those, so if you can demonstrate the ability to do them right they'll keep handing them to you. So yeah, unfortunately, it's going to take some time slaving away at the lower-paying gigs before you'll get into the good stuff. But it's worth it.
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Jun 9, 2012 22:13
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That's cool. Thanks for the explanation. I'm going back to school and doing my best to stay out of retail slavery. I don't mind the work and so far the topics I've gotten are pretty interesting so I'll keep plugging away. I am getting faster. The most frustrating part is just getting the drat format down with all the headers and footers. Open Office was a nightmare and I switched back to MS Word which makes this way easier. I built up a template document with preset headers and footers and now that saves me tons of time and yelling at my computer. I wasted a lot of time on my first two jobs just screwing around with that stuff.
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Jun 9, 2012 22:36
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I feel you -- when I first started out, I was an Open Office devotee, but those little tiny formatting differences drove me batshit until I went out and bought Office 2007. You can always ask your transcription clients for a sample/template/whatever, and plugging your text into that makes things much easier. I can't remember the last time I set a document up by hand, honestly. I just did an ABS for Aaron Sorkin's new HBO show The Newsroom, and I set it up by pasting the text into an old Game of Thrones script I'd already set up with the right styles. (One of the many reasons I've stuck with DT so long, other than them just generally being a good outfit, is the fact they work with Food Network and HBO.) But yeah, hang in there and you'll get off the bottom rung. When I think about the jobs I was taking in 2008/2009, I just shudder. Business transcription gigs with 10+ speakers, completely shitbox audio equipment, taped in a noisy restaurant, "can you differentiate between speakers even though there's no video and half the speakers sound like Charlie Brown's teacher?" Nowadays I won't even look at that kind of crap anymore.
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Jun 9, 2012 23:33
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I've done affiliate marketing before - but I hosted a legitimate website to push CPA/CPC/etc. Forgive my ignorance, but is much of affiliate marketing effectively just the act of building landing pages nowadays? I don't have a whole lot of time to invest in maintaining a website, but I have enough to build a landing page and invest some money in AdWords traffic. How effective is this?
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Jun 11, 2012 01:20
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Just want to say that since Leapforce has been hit or mess for the past few days, I've been doing a lot more with Media Piston. Topics depend entirely on clients, but their editors approve stuff pretty quick, don't act like assholes, and move things along. I was working on a batch of short little 100 word blurbs and by the time I was done with #6, the first 5 had already passed through review. There's not a great selection of articles, which is the only downside. Upside is there's a lot less old school Demand crap.
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Jun 11, 2012 23:15
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What kind of money are you making with Media Piston?
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Jun 12, 2012 15:07
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kazmeyer posted:(an awesome, wildly helpful array of glorious Hey, so I've been tracking this thread for a while, and pounced on the transcription idea, pedal already ordered. Thanks for all the info on that; I've been derping around waiting for 'dedicated' transcription jobs (I've been on this poo poo for five years, just not self-employed) and there aren't nearly as many as I'd hoped. Waiting for a pedal before I put in anything official, though; I'm so used to having it for 'live' transcription that I'd feel naked without one. There is one thing I'm curious about. One of the things I used to do was taking dictation and 'revoicing' what I heard, using Dragon. It netted upwards to 200wpm (with only a 0.25 error rate) when it was properly trained to my voice. So the thing I'm wondering about that is: do you think using the revoicing method is one that's translatable to these particular types of transcription? It seems like the answer should be 'yes,' but there might be some nuance that I'm completely missing. I've had to revoice multiple speakers before, and can stay caught up without difficulty most of the time, but it seems like that could get a little hairy in this situation. I'm used to straight typing as well, of course, but it halves my output, so if it's possible or recommended to still use Dragon for this, I'd love to know. Also: how often are the business-type jobs 'forgiving' when it comes to poorly recorded audio? ie: How in-your-face do they get about it? I'd imagine this is a client to client thing, where some are more forgiving than others, but if this is standard, how crummy are they about 'well you should be magical and understand even the most fuzzy audio, that's what we're paying you for'? Sorry if this question's been asked before, but I looked through and I only saw anecdotes about how lovely the business contracts were. Additional thanks to the folks passing out links to the goonrotica threads. I'd noticed them before, just not the one talking sale strategies/marketability of self-publishing/etc. Old Boot fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Jun 12, 2012 |
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Jun 12, 2012 21:51
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By revoicing, I assume you mean running the audio through your headphones, speaking into your mic, and letting Dragon take it down? I don't see why that wouldn't work, because a fair amount of what you'd be dealing with is single-speaker audio. You'd have to figure out some cues for stuff like timecoding, [LAUGH], [CLEARS THROAT] etc, but it's definitely doable. (I've considered setting that up myself, but I never get around to it because I haven't used Dragon in a long time and I remember it being kind of a pain to train. Have to look into it again.) I also occasionally get people who ask if they could just feed the audio into Dragon and let it do the work for them. The results are always hilarious. poo poo audio is poo poo audio, and most of the houses understand that. They expect you to give it the old college try, but if it's just not doable, it's not doable. I had one the other day that was literally someone holding up a microphone to the speaker of a tape recorder and pushing "play" on a 10-year-old cassette of an interview; I think I averaged one [INAUDIBLE] tag every two or three sentences. I just pointed out how terrible the source was, and they said they and the client were both aware, and thanks for trying. Generally speaking, when you download an assignment, before you confirm you should at least skim it and see if there's issues with the audio. If you don't think you can do it, let them know ASAP and they'll bounce it to someone else; they might have bat ears or a mixing board and can get something out of it, or they'll bounce it a few more times until it comes back and they tell the client to stop trying to record interviews in a wind tunnel with Charlie Brown's teacher.
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Jun 13, 2012 01:09
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I'm at about $40 after 3 days of grabbing stuff on Media Piston. Not anything to write home about yet, but not too bad for something I do for cash between bigger gigs and am only doing for an hour or two here and there.
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Jun 13, 2012 01:25
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OK, i'm starting to get sketched out by textbroker. I was fine with them when they asked me for my drivers license. After I got that, I was cleared to start doing work. I found one job I liked, did it, and the client accepted it. I was browsing around on the site, and saw to payout you needed to use paypal. To set this up, you had to send in some tax form they have listed. I faxed the tax form to them, and a few hours later I get an e-mail stating that they need to verify that I am a US resident. They want a scan of my social security card, passport, and some other tax document they are supposedly sending to me. Why the hell would they want all this when they have my drivers license?
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Jun 16, 2012 00:34
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So has anyone gotten an update/gotten paid by Monarchy yet?
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Jun 16, 2012 04:28
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kazmeyer posted:So has anyone gotten an update/gotten paid by Monarchy yet? After not hearing from him for three weeks I sent him an e-mail a couple of days ago. He did reply right away, saying he thought he e-mailed me a while ago to give me an update, but I hadn't gotten anything. He says his partner's bank is still investigating the account, so there's no access to the money right now. So...I guess pretty much the same thing that was happening three weeks ago?
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Jun 16, 2012 04:35
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Monarchy has been really good at paying me previously, so I'm not too worried about it. How long has it been since you turned in your articles?
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Jun 16, 2012 13:06
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UtahIsNotAState posted:Why the hell would they want all this when they have my drivers license? Generally speaking employers will need EITHER a driver's license + social security card OR a passport in order to hire someone. I'm not in HR so I'm not sure exactly why it is that way, but in my experience most employers just ask for the first 2 items since they are the most common. It's weird that they would ask for those and also your passport.
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Jun 16, 2012 13:57
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Every Man Jack posted:Monarchy has been really good at paying me previously, so I'm not too worried about it. How long has it been since you turned in your articles? Three weeks. He did just send out another e-mail update to everyone, so that's good.
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Jun 16, 2012 18:21
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I never got that email, what did it say?
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Jun 18, 2012 21:21
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I failed the second part of that Leapforce exam thingy somehow, despite getting all the practice simulation ones correct  I have a feeling that pages that don't load now, but did before still require an answer, although I can't answer it since the page didn't load... PaganGoatPants fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jun 18, 2012 |
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Jun 18, 2012 22:39
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It said that he won't be able to make payments until the 27th of this month (maybe sooner, but he was being conservative in his estimate he said). Then they will be shutting down and then about a month later starting a new project and they will look to hire the people who have been working for him. Also, he said if you want to write a few more articles before the project shuts down to email him and you can write them and then he will pay you on the 27th.
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Jun 18, 2012 22:40
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drat, that sucks. I had just written my first set of articles for him before this happened, it was pretty much the perfect thing to supplement my tip-based day job. Guess I'll look into writing porn for Amazon. 
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Jun 19, 2012 00:43
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gabi posted:drat, that sucks. I had just written my first set of articles for him before this happened, it was pretty much the perfect thing to supplement my tip-based day job. I'm super bummed too! I just quit my main job and unexpectedly have to wait another couple of weeks for my new job, so I was looking forward to this being a source of income in the interim. But I'm really glad that he's going to be starting a new project; hopefully the new one will be more fruitful for him (and us) than this one was. 
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Jun 19, 2012 02:01
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