THE CHIX RECOMMEND

Wing into Spring in style! (Nearly) all the Chix's awesome resources are a whopping 50 percent off. Details here.

~~~~~

Hey Fellow Writer,

We've been busy beavers this spring attempting to keep up with the flow of freelance work coursing our way. I hope you've got a ton of work lined up as well. We hear whisperings of tough economic times but so far, none of us has been deeply affected by this so-called bad news.

That's probably because when economies tighten, people who know how to market get in more demand.

We hope you've sharpened your marketing chops so you can cash in on this new wave of marketing oportunities. If you're looking for some new avenues for freelance work, just sit tight and read ahead. Victoria's got a great article coming up.

Our “Wing into Spring” 50 percent discount on (nearly) all our products will wind down soon. If you've had your eye on one of our valuable resources... Elements of Persuasion, Building a Coaching and Consulting Biz, The Business of Freelance Writing Copywriting Contracts: The Good, Bad, and Ugly, and How to Get All the Business You Can Handle. 

'Til next month!

The 3Chix, Donna Doyle, Victoria Rosendahl, and Beth Erickson

~~~~~

Ways to Find Work

By Victoria Rosendahl

www.3chix.com

www.rosendahlwrites.com

In this month's issue we're going to chat about signing up for online freelance databases where you can apply for projects. There are a couple of good ones and you'll need to test them to see which one works best for you.

Let's take a look at the two leading sites, Guru and Elance.

GURU

Guru.com started its online life as Creative Moonlighter.com back in the nineties.

Five years ago, when I left my full-time job to be a full-time writer, I found out about Guru as a place to post a profile and look for some freelance jobs.

At the time I started the membership price was about $50 for three months. There was also a free basic membership.

Back in 2003, if you had a basic membership you could bid on most of the jobs posted. Now, that's not the case. Guru has a lot of projects that get posted daily in all forms of freelancing. From design to writing to performance arts, Guru has a little bit for everybody.

But there's a catch.

The catch is that you can no longer bid all on the majority of projects as a basic free member. Membership these days is running around $80 for three months. As a Guru member I picked up a lot of good projects that gave me samples to put in my portfolio. And that was the name of the game back then.

Well, heck, it's still the name of the game.

In fact, I met one of my good friends on Guru. Back in 2004, I submitted a bid on a project to ghostwrite a book for a guy in Colorado. He's a retired attorney like I am and we found that we quickly spoke the same language. After bidding on the project I heard from him and thought we were going to have a deal in place.

Then about six months went by before I heard from him again. I figured that he had awarded the project to someone else or that he had decided to hold off on writing the book. Well, that was four years ago and the book is now complete and getting ready to be published. The cool part of the story is that Steve and I are really good friends and I am the copywriter of choice for his business and his clients. That one job turned into a lifetime friendship as well as a lifetime of writing opportunities.

Back when I was just starting with Guru I had heard about a site called elance.com. Since I was happy where I was I didn't go exploring any other options.

Recently, though, I decided to supplement some of the bigger projects that I'm working on this year with some smaller things so I can keep the money flowing and keep my hand in writing sales letters and e-books.

ELANCE

On Saturday, April 19, I joined Elance. On Sunday, April 20 I submitted a bid to write three mini e-books on organic gardening. On Monday, April 21, I got the job.

The thing I like about Elance is that the membership fee is quite a bit less than Guru. And you only have to pay monthly.

An individual professional membership is $9.95 per month and allows you to bid on 15 projects per month. A basic free membership allows you to bid on three projects a month. You can also stop and start your membership based on the months you're available to work. I like this kind of flexibility better than having to sign up for three months at a time with Guru.

Elance does require you to pass a basic test on your knowledge of being a good provider. No, being a good Elance provider does not have anything to do with how well you provide for your family -- although, in some cases it would because the better the provider the more money you'll make and the more projects you will be awarded.

Being a good provider at Elance has to do with what they require of people who submit bids for projects. The test is 20 questions and those questions have answers that are mostly common sense. There are a number of tutorials you can look at before you take the exam and, if you don't pass the first time, you can take it as many times you wish.

Elance has a number of good projects posted in lots of areas. In just the writing and translation section, there are a number of subcategories like creative writing, copywriting, or editing and proofreading. They also have categories of Web design and technical assistance.

An additional thing you can do as a provider is take a skills test to give you more credibility for the projects you're interested in. The new project I just received will pay me less than $500 but it won't take long to do and it fills in a gap before my next big project starts in May.

While it's true that you may not make thousands of dollars on one project going through the Guru or Elance, you will create samples for your portfolio as well as fill in some monetary gaps between projects.

Go to Guru.com or Elance.com and check out what they have to offer. I think you'll find either of them to be a good tool to have in your arsenal.

That's it for this edition and I hope you have a great spring. We’ll see you back here in June!