Frustrated as an American writer...

Hi Jedeiahd,

I would get a domain and start a blog. Your blog entries [articles] can be about anything you like and categorized in any manner you define. Domain registration and hosting will cost between $50-$140 a year. Popular free blogging software -- WordPress. You will need a Linux web hosting service.

There are a myriad of free templates for WordPress. Once you get your site set up -- include the link in signatures-- for promotion.

Check out some of these writers blogs-- http://thewriterslife.homestead.com/Writers_Blogs.html.

btw: I offer web hosting services -- hosting-q.com

Q...

 

The whole freelancer issue is going to be stalled in the court system for years to come but everything I have read seems to come down to the issue of control meaning due the customer/i.e employer control the time of the service provider/employee?. If the customer/employer does control the time then you will be considered an employee if not you are a freelancer and will be required to pay all the additional taxes and meet all the legal requirements.

 

There's a bit more to it than just time. Again from the IRS site directly:

 

Yes you are correct with the IRS point of view, the point I was trying to make is everything I read in the paper the courts are using the time factor to decide if the person is an employee or independent contractor.

The IRS can say whatever they want and so can the employee's & employer's but the final decision is going to be decided by the court system and so far they are using time as the critical factor.

 

This is an excellent point. As a freelancer, you have to pay FICA (15.3% of your earnings--which was $367 from the $2,600 I earned last year after expenses), and for those that don't have the benefit of being under their parents/spouse's insurance, you also have to pay for medical insurance. Not to mention advertising your services and all the other expenses that go with it. But I think jhmattern has already covered this in depth.

Now, the obvious benefit of freelancing is the ability to be your own boss and work from home, as well as the flexibility. These are the things I love about freelancing part-time. As a college student who plans on doing volunteer work this summer and who needs flexibility, this is a great thing. A job at the local fast food/retail joint would not be right for me, but working from home, writing about things I am interested in, and getting paid a decent wage is the right thing for me. I'd imagine other young writers feel the same way about it.

I'm not looking to make a huge wage right now, just enough to pay the bills. Will I end up doing this full-time and working professionally? Probably not, since my degree is actually in CIS and I think I'll probably be doing something relevant to that. But it's nice to know that should the need arise to make some decent money part-time, I have freelance writing to fall back on.

Thanks for the compliment. I'm actually 19, but I did start at the young age of 18. I do agree with you--there isn't always a quality-price correlation. Some writers just charge a really cheap rate in order to attract business while they are still establishing themselves.

I think many people assume that when you're paying $5 for a 500 word article, it's always going to be poor quality. But the thing is, that's not always the case. Yes, there are some poor writers who charge this rate and you could make the argument that "you get what you pay for". But what about those writers who charge the same rate, yet deliver excellent articles? Is there still a quality-price correlation there? I think not.

What is annoying to me is the bad rap all of us get due to cheap foreign writers who either (a) copy and paste or (b) write stuff that, grammatically speaking, makes no sense. We're not all incompetent writers. Some of us are just honest people trying to make a decent amount of money doing something we're good at.

Even though I've been writing for a couple years now, I still don't think I can get away with charging as much as a full-time professional could, since I'm so relatively new to it. Would I love to make $50 from a 500 word article? Of course. But I think I need to work my way up a bit before that is possible

 

Now I am eagerly awaiting my article from mcar!

 

A quality writer such as yourself would do well to be a corporate blog writer. they are paid good

 

Well, my thought is that even though higher quality comes at a higher price, it's more worth it. Yeah, I'm sick of working for one cent or less. I've done articles at two cents, but it's still barely worth it. We should all band together and refuse to be paid less than a certain amount.

 

Banding together won't do anything, and it's been discussed a LOT over the last year or two. The fact is that all writers have their own motivations and skill levels. Higher paid, more experienced writers have no reason to try to help lower paid writers out, increasing their own competition without matched skills (in other words, why should I help someone earn more just because they can't market themselves effectively like I have to be able to do?). At the same time many low paid writers are content b/c they're amateurs, hobby writers, or targeting clients who really don't care about quality.