Update on eCopywriters

A quick update: they did Paypal me the $7 from the one article that was approved. I can therefore say that they are definitely not a scam. Just woefully inefficient.

eCopywriters - A Review From a Freelance Writer

I'll be blunt -- I'm writing this review based on very little information, but not for lack of trying.

When I signed up for eCopywriters, the terms looked great (better than Textbrokers), and I didn't see the harm in writing a few articles and seeing where they went.

That was well over a month ago, and I'm SO glad I only did two, because I'm pretty much ready to write them off as time lost. One finally got "approved", but only after I wrote support, who promptly responded telling me that, yes, their system is fail, and that there is no real deadline for clients to accept articles. Not in those words, exactly, but close enough. So, basically, they can just not pay you for work done, and eCopywriters does not penalize them in any way. I'm still not sure how support "got one approved" after about twenty minutes, but couldn't get the other approved. They still haven't, by the way.

eCopywriters is DEFINITELY NOT a reliable way to pay the bills. Maybe they will improve. Support was nice enough, but not terribly effective. There is no reason for a third party like eCopywriters if they don't even enforce a deadline on their clients' payment.

Edit: There is a followup to this post.

November 16th and writing

I'll be 29. Poor people should be able to skip birthdays, IMO.

If it wasn't for my dad and Janna, it would be a seriously depressing day (money and something). At 29, shouldn't I be buying my own best present? Maybe 30 is the magic number?

Bah.

I've been trying to keep up with what I need to do for Textbroker to pay the bills, but it just isn't happening. My mind runs dry. It's just hard to write 400 words for $6 all day, even though it's really fairly good pay. Hopefully I'll come around and be interested enough to do it again. Or my SEOing will take off.

I neglected it (on purpose) for about three months so that the domains would age, which is an important part of ranking in the search engines, and when I came back I succeeded in making my rankings DROP by cleaning up my home page. WTF.

Oh, almost lost the dog, or so we thought. She suddenly became unable to control her bladder. Seems to have been an infection, though, as with some antibiotics she's actually better. Only another $150 or so borrowed. Woot. If it keeps her around for another year or so (optimism+old dog+cancer=stupid, I know), it's worth it. I sort of blame myself. I've been home far more than anyone else (except maybe Jeanne)...I should be taking the old dog out more. I will now!

Allstate, writing, and Cymbalta

Yes, seriously, all of that. I figure if I make that the title, I won't forget anything.

Allstate didn't mess up the claim, everything is fine with Janna's car. It all went amazingly smoothly, in fact. After not calling me back when they called Janna and asked her to have me call them for whatever reason, they simply fixed the car and all is fine. It was even done mostly right, though the concept of replacing one tire still irks the crap out of me.

I've been writing for a website called Textbroker with the goal being $1200 a month before taxes. They pay $1.40 per word, and there are 300-500 word articles about things that I can basically babble through and still make a great article, according to them and the clients. Biggest problem is focusing, especially when I keep getting headaches and random sleep spells.

The theory is that if I can bang out a 400 word article in 15 minutes, that could be up to $22/hr for as many hours as I want to work. The truth is not as efficient. In fact, I'm behind right now and should probably be working...doot-da-doo...

I did my "Better than" search on Google for "better than textbroker" and found ECopywriters, which does offer more money per word but seems ridiculously slow to accept articles, and you have to work your way up to (what I'm assuming) is better than the crappy law related articles they have for the beginners. Well, crappy for me, maybe others like them. They make me stabby.

Which may be because I'm trying to back off on Cymbalta, one of the five prescription meds I take. Cymbalta is for depression, and is a SRI, which in very, very basic terms means it limits how much you think. Seriously. One of its side effects, however, is sleepiness. One of the withdrawal symptoms is headaches. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with that.

For anyone interested, since Cymbalta is cumulative in the system I decided to take my dose every other day instead of every day to see if I could cut down on the withdrawal symptoms while still using the bottle of expensive ass meds I have. It seems to be working. Tomorrow I go to the doc to get a scrip for the lower dosage to use every day...I guess I'll see then if that's easier or harder on the body than skipping every other dosage. I do know I'm feeling more energetic, but also more aggressive. Good thing I don't have to leave the house.

Related linkage:
http://www.textbroker.com
http://www.ecopywriters.com

Nebulosus updated on authonomy

Fixed some issues with older chapters and added three more. Check it out!

The book

If you would like to read some of Nebulosus, and I would certainly appreciate it, here's a link:

Nebulosus on Authonomy.com.

The more popular it is, the more people that view it and put it on their bookshelves, the higher its ranked...and if it's ranked high enough, the owner of the site, which happens to be a publisher, will take a look at it.

It's totally free to sign up.

Thanks to La Fleur, without whom I would've never known Authonomy existed.

Not done.

Yeah, I'm not done with Nebulosus. Upon going back and re-reading the beginning, it seems my writing style has changed quite a bit since I started it. Time to either edit, or rewrite the first 3-4 chapters.

Life decision, coming up

So I have a decision to make.

Nebulosus is either done, or nearly done. Tomorrow I'm going to email the manuscript to at least one agent, likely many more. I figure, by the time I finish whatever tweaking they suggest and it actually gets moving, an optimistic guess at actually seeing money would be this time next year.

In the meantime, we have to pay bills. Already we're going to come up short next month.

If the company that I'm currently working for decides I can't do part time, I'm considering delivering pizzas again part time, to make enough money to get by while being able to continue writing and pushing my writing.

I can't work 40 hours at my current job, which requires me to do tech support and hard sales on every call, and push a book, let alone write much of anything. It's just not feasible. Maybe I lack drive, or energy, or whatever, but I know it's not going to happen.

So...deliver pizzas, or give up on writing for a while except on the rare occasion that I have the energy to do something when not at work? Blargh.

All done!

Much faster then I had dared hope, I believe I have actually finished Nebulosus. I figured I'd know the ending when I got there, and I certainly did.

Now it's rejection time! YAY!