500 words for $2 and a smack in the teeth

I know I keep going on and on and on and on and ON about it but I'm sick of seeing these "write 500 words for $2 and we will reward you with regular visceral flayings and hang you upside down by your ankles over a vat of boiling vomit until you reduce your fees even further, to like, $0.35 per 1,000 and we can't say fairer than that."

Look, I KNOW. It's a global thing. People can write cheap if their costs of living are cheap. In comparison to ours, that is.

And yes. I know. Avoid those cheapskates as you would a collection of festering buboes. Don't even go there. And I don't, unless it's to marvel at the scintillating people skills some of these buyers have. "You must have expertise! We want expert copy! No grammer [sic] errers! [sic]. NO PLAGRISM! [sic] It must pass Copyscape or we will come round to ur house and rip ur ears off and eat them and then roast ur children alive and eat them too!"

You just know that these vermin are going to bitch about your copy, question every invoice, refuse to pay you for your work (while keeping your articles for uploading elsewhere) and turn your life into a pit of writhing, venomous snakes with anger issues.

Every time I see one these loathsome things on somewhere like PPH or Elance I'm amazed by the number of people in the UK, the States, and Europe bidding for the damn jobs. They're paying the buyers, really they are. Factor in the costs of writing - even if you're doing it to make a few squiddlies here and there - electricity, heating, wear and tear on your computer ... Even if you live somewhere cheaper, you're intending to work for people who think you're one genetic leap down from a bucket of three-weeks-old mouldering giblets.

I blame Al Gore, since he claimed once to have invented the internet. The modes of supply, demand and delivery have forever changed the way writers find markets and buyers find commercial copy. Now we're all in the same wrestling ring and the only winning strategies are to either stick to print magazines and journals who haven't yet reduced their own rates to bowls of gruel every Friday, or find online buyers who appreciate a fine turn of phrase and rain cash down upon you in return for your glittering creative skills. Anything else is just a dentist's appointment waiting to happen.

Image: http://www.hasslefreeclipart.com

jeez .. $77 for a free list of writing sites?

So there I was, skipping round the web, updating my FB and making rude comments, and landed on this advert for freelance writing.

First flag o'danger? "No experience necessary". Yeaaaaright. 

Second flag o'danger? $77 membership per month. What the .. surely there is some marvellous new opportunity here of which we knew nothing. But no ...

Third flag o'danger: "Start Getting Paid To Write Today!" Today? You get paid today? You start writing today? You start thinking about writing today? You think about writing and start getting paid today? No, no, no, no, and errrr no.

See, what they're doing is suggesting that if you pay them $4.95 as an introductory fee, you will immediately begin a freelance writing career with no experience. Imagine that! What it actually is, is a resource list of websites where you apply and bid and take your chances, and if you're lucky and you can write, you can make money. So they get your money, and you get ..... nothing, particularly if you have no experience, apart from a list of sites that you can pick up anywhere free as air. (Check out my list further down the page on the right.)

To elaborate: in their Top Jobs of the Month they list Suite 101 as a possible source. Now, at Suite, you need to apply and be accepted before you can start writing. They have a strict vetting process and not everyone gets in, so that idea falls flat on its back, out cold, and doesn't get up before the count.

So, let us return to the drawing board. What's this? "Get paid to write at eHow". Well, since Demand Studios owns eHow and supplies all the material, you're going to have to apply to Demand Studios. See above for Suite applications and add "ditto".

Rinse, and repeat.

If I was a really, really cynical person I might suggest that these guys are fleecing people who  are desperate to earn money in the middle of a recession, by acting as a conduit to riches despite the fact that they're encouraging people with no writing experience. But I'm not, so I won't. That wasn't really me being cynical and wishing outfits like this weren't able to get their ads accepted so that people will get all excited about nothing and lose money in the hope that they will be instantly successful despite the clever little caveats on the site.I

If it was that easy, don't you think everyone would be doing it?

The Queen, Marmite, and the Face of Hate

Well whodathunk. Nick Griffin, Head Hoodlum of the BNP, has been denied access to Her Maj's garden party because guess what. He went round the meeja crowing about the fact he'd been invited. Her Maj's advisers decided that having the Head Hoodlum near the spoons and the other guests might prove to be a big issue. Not to mention, they say, that any guest who turned their invitation into a political event would feel an equerry's boot up their backside and be banned from the bunfight. So Griffin got all dressed up in his freshly ironed soup and fish for nothing. Awww.

Oh! And just to add a little kick to the occasion, there's a little aside in that article which reveals  that Unilever, who manufacture Marmite, and who were righteously displeased when Griffin used their product on his party political broadcasts, have successfully sued the BNP for £170,000. Griffin denies this of course. Well he would wouldn't he.

At least Her Maj and her guests can cluster round the cucumber sandwiches and scones without coming face to face with the Face of Hate. It could quite put you off your Darjeeling.

easy as falling off a horse

Is that the time? Doesn't life flash past when you're trying to deal with it .. ho hum.

Anyway. After listening to the budget, and then yesterday watching England play marbles (badly) at Bloemfontein, there needs to be only one more thing to complete the hat trick to make it a truly flamin' June for the UK. Then July will be simply spiffing.

Been on the sick list for a while and am slowly crawling back into the saddle again. I may need to tie myself on just to be sure - just for a while - but these Fingers of Fun are limbering up ready to hammer out words of various lengths interspersed with carefully selected punctuation and drizzled with just the right amount of pith and moment. Time I started earning again after a few months of near inactivity.

This is a lovely quiet area. I have a lovely quiet flat. There are no crazymakers around (fans of The Artist's Way will know exactly what I mean). Library up the road, shop around the corner.

What is so odd is that writing is the only thing I ever want to do and yet - after this gap - I can barely put an article together. It's only temporary. Fear probably. That fleabitten, sadistic old hag of an internal editor making the most of the fallow period. However. I have plans for her. As well as some strong duct tape and a gag.

stop press! cameron grasps age-old concept of elections

"If we don't deliver our side of the bargain, vote us out in five years' time."

Thus is good old Dave attempting to win the trust and votes of a swathe of householders being targeted by the Tory Party in a last ditch rush to secure the comfy chairs in No. 10. Such is his utter faith in his ability to get real and grasp the fundamentals of what the populace really want, he has persuaded himself that his "contract" with the electorate, i.e. that they can vote the Tories out in five years if they don't get things right, is nothing short of groundbreaking. Actually it's nothing short of the bleedin' obvious.

Photo credit: Christian Guthier
CC Att.

They probably don't teach this sort of thing where he went to school, but here's the thing. That's the whole point of elections. To vote out the fools who've made a mess of things, to make way for a (hopefully) better shower of blighters. You don't get in and stay in by some kind of droit de seigneur.

It's that entitlement thing coming out, isn't it. That whole thing about the Conservatives being the only ones who know how to run a country (perhaps whilst leaning over a crenellation, declaiming to the peasants). Old Dave may not yet realise this yet, but privileged backgrounds do not a natural leader make, and if he thinks he's offering those householders something brand new and squeaky clean, he's either completely solid between the ears or he thinks they are.

Those of us who grew up the normal way, i.e. without using cutlery polished to a high shine by the butler, know what a democracy is supposed to be about, how it works, and how you get rid of the people who are making a complete pig's ear of running the country. That is, of course, unless the party you're trying to drag out of the front door is shored up by big business, millionaires, the banks, the aristocracy, and anyone else in whose interests it is to keep their collective feet on the necks of the lowest paid and least privileged, and to keep their own purses fat. Look how long it took to shift Thatcher.

Look at the legacy she left - and it will be more of the same but with different labels if old Dave gets the keys. Shudder.

BNP smears Marmite - shock horror probe

The party of hate has had its collective chin well and truly smacked. The BNP having commandeered Marmite, the love-or-hate-it yeast spread beloved of and reviled by swathes of Brits, and slapped it on their election videos as a sort of pathetic attempt at humour (don't give up the day jobs, guys), Marmite has got up on its hind legs and has said categorically that it is not aligned to any political party and the BNP should take it off their campaigning materials forthwith. Immediately even. If not sooner. And how dare they.

Not only that but Unilever are considering taking out an injunction against Griffin and his little racists.

I'd like to say Griffin's little mob is toast because a joke is there somewhere .. smear?  something to do with smearing Marmite's good name? oh never mind. But yes, if Unilever could see their way clear to slapping on costs for defamation or character assassination by association or loss of business because of negative publicity that would be fine by me.

write like someone's life depended on it ..

Writers, artists, bank managers, secretaries, gardeners, social workers, shop assistants, doctors, everyone. Seize your keyboards and get the Amnesty Vid WORDS up to the top of the Webby Award hit parade. Oh and watch it too. Write a letter. Write six.

Vote on the Amnesty site.