Real world sucks!

in life •  5 years ago  (edited)

I’ve been spending some time looking for writing jobs in the real world… well, not the real real world, still online jobs, only, you know, outside of the blockchain area…
Looks like a scary place and a there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on… First of all, people wanting you to prove your identity and, for instance, schedule an online interview for a lousy editing job… temporary, too. I can send you a sample of my work, take a test if you want - but a whole video interview for a simple job?? It’s not like we’re getting married or anything… (I skipped that site, obviously!)
Then the jobs themselves - what I’m looking for is something I know I’m good at - providing content for some website, editing, translations… that sort of thing.


source

But I found all sorts of weird stuff… people seem to need help with writing all sorts of things - like the guy that wanted someone to ghostwrite his speech as best man at a friend’s wedding! Really? Can’t you manage to put together a few words about your friend? What sort of friends are you?
Somebody else needed an apology letter.. didn’t bother to look into that… but would you forgive someone who is incapable of writing his own (presumably heartfelt) apology?
Oh, and I almost put in a bid for a ‘freelance writing’ job that turned out to be about picking up something from a location close to the Hong Kong airport! What’s that got to do with writing? How hard can it be to put the correct tags on an add? I was going to ask for $5000 for the whole job, as I expect tickets to Hong Kong to be quite expensive!
Actually, lots of people seem to have trouble with understanding a simple job proposal and you see people from Africa or Asia bidding on a job that clearly specifies it is intended for European writers - not something racist, I’m sure, it was a job where being in Europe was actually important to the job.
Otherwise, I found things we’re very familiar with here on the blockchain - spammers with little knowledge of English bidding for jobs that required fluent English… why bother answering for a job you clearly cannot do?
And the bots, they got bots, too. Literally every job posted gets at least three bids from ‘agencies’ that promise minimal prices and the shortest possible terms…
Fortunately, there are still people fighting the plague of bots and I’ve seen job proposals clearly specifying they don’t want to work with ‘agencies’!
Oh, just as I was writing this another great ‘article writing’ proposal popped up - it involves shipping ‘pills and medicines’ to ‘customers’… ‘someone I can trust!’ the guy says… well, speaking of trust, I’m not interested in shipping any sort of drugs to anyone….
I hate real world!

Thanks for reading!

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yes, yes it does

maybe someone here has an IRL contact that could help you get a paying freelance job

and I haven't looked at fivver.com in a long time, maybe there are some one-off jobs there

I'm waiting for some answers at the moment... hopefully something works out...
I've tried Freelancer.com for the time being, as on fivver.com there was an issue with verifying my phone... I'll try that again in a few days...

ugh...you could also try getting a burner phone and see if that helps with verification

Have you considered editing for indie self publishers? There are many editors making a full time income (a good one) doing this. You should check out the Writers Cafe on the Kboards as one place to test the waters, or Dirty Discourse.

https://www.kboards.com/index.php/board,60.0.html?PHPSESSID=4e3095e664ea21aa26de30f567596100

http://dirtydiscourse.com/

Dirty Discourse is behind a paywall, but has more successful self publishers there. To give an example of one of the writers (she frequents both sites) writes successful Jane Austin Fanfic and a couple of years ago she paid 4k USD for an edit on one of her novels.

Obviously you wouldn't command that kind of fee without a rep, but if you offer low cost jobs to prove yourself many of the proven editors rarely have openings they are booked months ahead. There is good money in self publishing. I still make residuals from my days of writing and haven't written in several years.

Thanks a lot for the tips! I will check out both sites. In the meantime, I wrote some crap for someone and I'll see if they liked it...

it sucks but its hard too but slowly we need to pace it out

  ·  5 years ago (edited)Reveal Comment