lwidmer | Words on the Page

Guest Post: Crafting a Freelance Writing Portfolio That Gets You Hired

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Sometimes a great idea lands in your email. This guest post is a prime example, in fact. When Jenn Mattern told me to expect a message from Monica Shaw, little did I know that the message would result in this great little post you’re about to read. The back story: Monica runs WritersResidence.com, a site…

How I Boosted my Freelance Career (and how you can, too)

Posted on by lwidmer

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the freelancer I was and the freelancer I am now. They are two different people, my friends. The old me was a hit-and-miss freelancer. I lost my job suddenly and had two kids to support. So my freelance career back then was pasted together. I’d take whatever gig…

How to Fail at Freelance Writing

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If you’ve been freelancing for a while, you’ve seen a lot. I’d bet you’ve seen something like what Randy Hecht shares with us today. Randy is the moderator of the popular LinkedIn forum LinkEds & Writers, which has a large population of working freelance editors and writers — the site’s target audience. As you might…

How to Lose $$ with Bad Freelance Marketing (and how to fix it)

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Freelancers, are you killing your chances of gaining a client or a network connection? Do you know if you are? Hint: you are if you do anything like this: Writer Jane submitted a thread to a writers’ forum. The moderator, another writer, turned it down because it was promotional, which is against the forum rules….

The No-nonsense Freelance Negotiation Tactic

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If you wait long enough (five minute usually), the universe will hand you a blog topic. In this case, it was a fellow writer who sent along her own scenario that serves as a reminder to all writers that you can — and should — stand up for your freelance writing business. Here’s the scenario…

When is a Freelancer Not a Freelancer?

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Looking for writers with a background in digital news reporting to write for us on a freelance basis. We would need 40 hours per week and the hours would be 9-to-5. See anything wrong with that? You should. And your obvious follow-up question to the job poster…

Freelance ‘Anti-Niche’ Niche Boost

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I’m going to say something that’s a little controversial — We’re all niche writers. We’re also all generalists. No matter what you start out writing, you eventually end up with two things happening: You start to write a lot of the same topic or writing form (blog posts, ghosted articles, case studies, etc.) You write…

AI and Freelancing: The Good & Bad

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I was on YouTube the other day and I saw a series of videos about the glories of AI and how this “new” technology is going to revolutionize work and the way we live. And of course, the comments were doomsday-style warnings about how it’s going to kill freelancing. Here’s my thought about AI: AI…

Freelance Rates & Raises

Posted on by lwidmer

Sometimes you go online and for some reason, you simply don’t expect to see the stupid shit people will say in public let alone the tangle that is their thought processes. I was on a writing forum yesterday when I saw what has to be some of the most absurd thinking I’ve seen in a…

Writers Worth: This Job, Not That Job

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You know, someday I hope that the world will sort itself out and that freelancers will shun the crap that is posted on job boards. Alas, that is not happening today. Thanks to Paula Hendrickson, who shared this particularly ridiculous job listing that came to her via a friend. And while this one pays better…

Jenn Mattern

I have to admit I have mixed feelings on this one. When Paula sent us the job lead yesterday, I got bored (and admittedly distracted) and couldn’t get through the whole ad. The self-importance was weird and off-putting. But I didn’t realize how bad that element alone was until you broke it down here. Just… wow.

I’m fine with the rate on this if we’re talking short-ish blog posts on non-complex topics, which would take an hour or two for even a newer writer. Better than a lot of early-career gigs out there.

But…

1. They don’t mention the word count targets, so there’s no way to estimate what you’re actually earning per hour. Given the AI involvement (which I’m also 100% OK with as long as they aren’t crossing the line and directly posting plagiarized AI-generated content, which it doesn’t sound like they’re planning to do if they’re hiring writers). My concern is they could be over-estimating AI’s efficiency and expecting these to then be very long pieces.

2. The weird ego bit is another red flag, but it does make me wonder who’s behind the site. There are plenty of SEOs and other webmasters already making huge amounts of money with AI content, so they could be experienced enough with this that they’re right. Or they could just be some BS-artist kid who heard this is the answer without fully understanding the AI environment right now, and when they don’t get rich quick with your help, they’ll blame the writer. No way to tell, but if anyone reading this ends up taking this gig, I would love to hear more about what’s going on.

3. The other thing is they mention AI generally. Are they expecting the writer to work with something like the free version of ChatGPT? That would be a problem because it’s already famous for “hallucinating” non-facts, it isn’t connected to the internet, makes up sources, etc. Now, GPT-4 is a completely different story. So are some other specialized tools. They can provide actual source documentation, are much better at vetting facts, and can even give you a list of what needs to be fact-checked before publication if you know how to write ai prompt sequences properly. But those are premium tools, some with limited access. Is this client going to provide, and pay for, that access? I didn’t see that mentioned either.

4. The real cringe moment when I stopped reading the ad completely was when they said it would take 4 hours per article. Just, no. Any client who tells a freelance pro how much time their work should take is not the kind of client you want to work with. Either they’re underestimating and really saying “this is all the time I’m willing to pay for, and if it takes you longer, it must be your fault,” or they’re overestimating and they’ll look for a reason to cut pay later when they realize you’re earning more than the $25 / hr they think you deserve (which is half what I recommend even the newest freelancers charge in the beginning given freelance pay is massively different than employee pay structures with all things accounted for).

So in general, this would fall in what I’d call a low-pro market (which is often mid-level to high in just the types of gigs that are publicly advertised), there are far too many questions to know if this would be a good deal, if it would be an ethical use of AI or not, and if this client would even be a good source to learn about AI as a tool from. But the ego oozing through is hands-down the biggest red flag for me.

1. Lori
  
  The whole thing put me off, Jenn. This mystery person who’s all but promising the writer’s success, the “mulitple thousands” whatever that means, the use of AI to do “most of the work” and the feeling that this is yet another posting where the poster gets rich and the writer gets the shaft.
  
  My take: Those four hours will be spent res-pinning someone else’s work (multiple someones — maybe that’s what they mean by “multiple thousands” 😉 ) into a bastardized version of the original. Let’s hope that person who is about to be grossly underpaid for “four hours” of work understands fair use and copyright law.
Paula Hendrickson

Along with all of the ick factors you both already mentioned, I focused on the bit where he (and sorry for assuming, but it feels like a safe bet) decides that saving time by using AI means paying writers less. Saving time is an advantage to the (effective and ethical) use of AI in large part because it boosts productivity, which should in turn increase your earnings potential. But instead, he’ll expect more work for the same hourly rate.

Puke.

1. Lori
  
  Great point, Paula. How is that a bonus for anyone?
  
  Puke is right.