Back in January of last year, I sold a bit of narrative fluff I'd written and made $25. It wasn't the money so much as it was that someone thought my words were worth something. Sadly, they never used the piece, so I was back to wondering if I really had any creative talent beyond being told by a relative handful of the population that I did. What do friends know, eh?
A few days ago, my fingers were doing the keyboard and mouse wander of the land of HTTP and just for the helluva it, I typed in "freelance writing". Quite a few links resulted from the search, but I only checked out a few out of idle curiosity. I decided to open an account on one site and see what I found. If this site is any indication of what's out there, then writing for internet sites clearly isn't going to supplement my income to any significant degree. While the categories were many, the articles needed were either not in my areas of knowledge or were not in the level I was allowed to look at. I found one topic, though, and was able to write a little 350 word blurb in about an hour, and the next day I found out it had been accepted for use. Yee-haw. Notice the lack of exclamation points.
The reward for my work? All of two dollars and thirty-four cents. Now, really, when was the last time minimum wage was $2.34 an hour? The point of writing for such sites is to write more articles and the money will accumulate. In addition, as you write more, your classification will go higher and you'll be given access to categories of higher caliber and pay.
So, let's put this into perspective. There's very little on the site in my classification that I could write about without needing to do research first. Let's face it, I've got lots of life experience and book learnin', but I don't know everything. The research would take extra time on top of the time that it would take to write the article. So, let's say I had to research the piece I wrote and that research took an extra hour. My $2.34 an hour just turned into $1.67 an hour. I think I made that back in the late 1960s on my very first job. But, hey, if I continue to write articles, it will slowly accumulate and my classification will go up, allowing for a better pay rating. You know what that means? Double! I'll be making $4-5 an article! The yee-haw is still lacking exclamation points.
Even the best writers start slowly, with poor pay and and more than a few moments of rejection. Full-time paid pursuit of wordsmithing may eventually come, but don't give up your day/night job. I have no daydreams of making it big in any corner of the writing world, but I'd like to think that somebody would again pay me $25 for one 600 word piece so that I can once again think I really can write a little better than average.
