Freelancer.com: the best place to freelance

Before I resigned from my previous job I already started skimming through freelancer.com. A colleague of mine said this was a great place to find client's who pay reasonably and rightly. So I spent hours of office time, browsing the website, searching for possible employers.

After 3 months of searching and not being up to par, I finally got an employer. Because the competition to get a project is brutal, I had to lower my fee t0 a 1/5th of the regular price. I had potential employers before this one but never followed through with the requirements due to the lack of time (spent by reading manga). What I've seen though is that people with great reviews get higher pay and get jobs easier.

There's tons and tons of jobs to find in Freelancer. I want to get a transcription project but I still need to get some great reviews first. Right now I get tests for writing articles but its such a stressful job. All the thinking, editing, and researching consumes my day. What I could earn in transcribing calls in an hour is the same I would after writing articles for three hours.

Still, looking at the jobs available on Freelancer can be fun. People look for the craziest things. My personal favorite is reading articles in a certain accent for a dollar per article. But Freelancer make it easy for you to search for jobs. It doesn't take a for a day to get used to the site and bid on projects.

I particularly like the amount of bid they allow you to have when you start. You get 30 bids which refreshes after a month. The detail of the description of each project make it easy for you to distinguish which project to bid to. I only have used 15 bids in 20 days.

If you have a specialty or are really good with softwares, it gets easier. People search for people who can edit, create, support their website and the pay is big. I'm thinking of getting some html classes too.

What I like most about Freelancer is that they do not impose a fee for posting/ accepting projects. You can get several employees with one post and do not have to pay the website a commission.

I visit Freelancer more often than I do Facebook.

The yellow digital road so far

It doesn’t take much to discourage me. When I first didn’t get the love of my 12 year old life, I thought I would be forever single and never have a wonderful life. 2 dozen years later and thousands of heart fragments missing, I realized life is not on my side.

I had a great childhood, but I guess I’m, just a wimp who immediately cries with a scratch. I get up and try my best after whining to anybody at reach. That’s why people around me has stopped giving me bad news or treat me to great food before dropping the bomb.

I’m 1st week in my attempt to dominate some corner in this digital world. The result s were ugly. Nobody accepts my bid to work for them, when I get tested I get turned down for crappy work, and I’m spending without earning. My yellow brick road to success seems grayer today.

I stopped applying for jobs. I was too depressed, I needed space and time. I became the little boy again who has to cry before moving on. I hate myself.

What I appreciate about being turned is being told as why I was turned down. My jokes were perverted, what I wrote wasn’t catchy, my work smelled so amateur they hired the next not so good guy who applied for the same job.

It hurts not being acknowledged, but I tell my self that if I were to hire someone for the jobs applied to, I wouldn’t have picked me as well.

During this time I had to move out of the City I lived in and go to the country side to minimize my expenses. I found a relative willing to take me in. I would use this to time to hone my skills.

My whining is over. Get ready Internet. Here’s my second try.

How much should I save before I retire

When I quit my job I thought about permanently retiring. If I had won the lottery then you wouldn’t be reading my blog. I would have traveled in a heart beat to some foreign country where a translator is a requirement. But you aren’t hallucinating, and are reading my blog so that means I have to get my millions first.

Now I’ve decided to try freelancing/ I-don’t’-really-know-what-I’m-doing, my financial status have changed. True I never know when I would get any money, but I have less expense now. There is no need to commute from home to office and no more over priced lunches. Still I want to retire someday. I want 20 years of no work before I die.

I read somewhere before you retire you have to take account your current expenses and adjust it with inflation then multiply it to the number of years you plan to retire. My monthly expenses cost 10,000 ($250) when I was still working. I’m still single now and I plan to have only two children (any more and I would consider parricide). I’m guessing I need to multiply my current expenses by three adjust that to the inflation rate then multiply to the number of years.

I know a lot of people don’t like math. But I like teasing people so I made a table of how my computation looked like.

30,000 (estimated expenses with kids involved) x 110% (5% inflation for the 22 years I would work before I retire) x 12 (months in year) x 20 years (my retirement time) = 151,200,000 ($3,360,000).

Wow. Damn the inflation. Damn future children. I had to wash my face after computing. I had a computation once that did not factor in the inflation. It was a third of what is written above. The good news about this is that I now know how much I need. So if I get that number, god knows how, I can stop working.

Now we go to the meat of this blog. I now compute how much I need to earn in a selected time frame.

Total amount divided by time frame = (((151,200,000/22)/12)/30)

In a year I need to earn 6,872,727, or 572,727 in a month, or 19,090 a day. I need to earn 19,090 tomorrow. How the heck do I do that? Plus I just realized I might need to kill myself if I am still alive 20 years after retirement. I never understood why people hate Math, until now. My parents never earned that much money. I fear its not in my genes too.

I am now not above in asking for donations. Please message me if you want to be my friend who will love you and your money.

What my skills are and what jobs can I do best

I started working during college. I was an assistant to the school book store and while that may sound great to my fellow bookworms, the bookstore I worked for had more dust than books. Luckily my allergies to dust haven’t triggered during this time or else people would have left the store with spit rather than books.

During those experiences I realized that certain tasks were easier to accomplish than others. Coincidentally, the tasks I finished sooner were done later by my colleagues. I was better in organizing events, researching materials and getting people to join a cause. I also learned I don’t like being kept in the dark or working for a stupid leader.

I guess everybody has a rough estimate of their strength and weaknesses. What I have found to work in starting any job is to use my strength first, then, elevate the behaviors that may be considered weaknesses to tolerable level. With my previous employment I slept a lot during working hours. I can’t help it. I sleep whenever I want to. What I did to alleviate the complaints of my supervisor was to volunteer more with social events for our department. I spear headed costume events, planned team buildings, downloaded songs for the team and made sure everybody I worked with liked me. I had to bribe to get my sleep. And yes, still meet the quota.

There are also skills acquired through repetition. After listening to probably thousands of calls of North Americans, I’ve become familiar to the different accents from that other side of the world. I can differentiate between the rushed New Yorker and the charming always shouting Texan. My English also improved during this time (which was near dead due to lack of usage) and now I can write on friends Facebook wall comments that are half insult and praise, leaving them guessing with what I really mean.

I decided to learn Japanese once, however there was nobody to talk with. I would have liked to fly to Japan and learn the language by immersing to the culture but alas, I was born a poor man. I would have probably learned it through hard work and dedication, but I have learned that in learning, some educations are made easier by money.

Some of my hobbies are even considered skills. I have been used to be in front of a computer for at least 8 hours a day, any less than that then I get fidgety. Now most people can’t withstand even at least 2 hours in front of a computer. This puts me to an advantage. Because there might be a job out there that asks you to just be sit and stare at the monitor for 8 hours a day. Like an online security guard.

At this point it would be clear I would be in some field of communication. I like writing, I love word play and I heard it pays great. I might also try transcribing calls as I have acquired the skills for it. I wouldn’t also mind being an English tutor to a very cute Japanes girl.

What I’ve read for my ascension to the Internet market

I grew up with teachers for parents. Every kid who grew up the same way I did learns to read about an endeavor before doing it. That way if you get it wrong you can always blame the book, or how you interpreted it. Example, before exercising I had to read, where, how, when and why most people were doing it.

So I read guides in making money through the Internet. I must have read some of the materials I was reading again, but the presence of purpose makes the difference. The first thing I had to do was download materials. Topics covering ranged from blogging through advertising, writing e-books, home businesses, tips on Ebay and more on blogging (the one I was most inclined to do). I had to take in as much tips as possible.

Now, I don’t believe everything I read. That behavior stems from reading erroneous textbooks and notes of jerk classmates trying to punk me in getting a failing mark for an assignment. As a counter measure I have learned that getting numerous sources allows you to cross reference the accepted truths from the made up lies.

There are different approaches to blogging as I’ve read. Preferably you start one with a theme with which you are comfortable with. I like ranting and documenting my exploits for public entertainment, thus this blog. Some people are blessed and are inclined towards more profitable topics like “digital photography” or “simple programming”, and so earning more money. The more academic you’re blog is the more people would click on it. Some people do not even care about what they blog about as long as they get results. If things get dreary for me after a year, then, yes I will blog about Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber or whichever brat is famous by that time.

I also read tips with using Ebay. Seeing I have hundreds of items I need to dispose, why not earn doing it? Proper item description, active participation in community forums, buying cheap and selling high and patience in searching I read was the key to success with Ebay. I’ve started sorting my things from the things I need and don’t. It’s fun and my room has more space now (hopefully for that additional desktop I need for gaming)

Apart from what I need to do I have also been reading posts and asking friends where to find part time online jobs. You wont believe the things people ask other people to do (adult chat model anyone?).

All this reading is making me confident I may make it after all. It’s not much now and I know this blog has years to invest before it gets famous but I read that things get better.

Trying it Dig-ital

So I decided to quit my job and venture into the internet for money and fame. Hey, who would have though it would be goddamn hard. Not Mark Zuchenberg I tell you. With my old job I could have just drone into mundane tasks and let the hours flee away, knowing that even if I didn’t do a great job by the end of the month I would be given money.

I couldn’t really stay in that company. Everybody in the upper management seemed to hate me. I hated each of them too. It wasn’t my fault I just hate “the man” by default. What’s the point in surviving poverty if I’m just going to do the same thing a rich pampered kid would to rise up the corporate ladder, which is to kiss ass. I need to show some integrity, and crap, their jokes were never funny. “I’m prettier than her, laugh mindless followers!” said the once unsociable teenager turned manager.

I wish I could have won the last “6/55 lotto” lottery which piled into a whooping 400M pesos (90M dollars), then I wouldn’t still be in front of a computer, destroying both my eyes and hands so that I could still pay the bills. There is that option of retiring to the world of Bumnasia and be its king. The problem with that scenario is that I love having money. I love the security it brings, the feeling of superiority gives me over to those whi have less than me and its ability to attract beautiful gold diggers.

Thus, I am faced with plethora of tasks I need to do. I will enumerate them by level of difficulty. I have to post my resume (strictly for online jobs), register myself to various websites needed by a digital person (Ebay, Paypal, etc), update my contacts directory, read hundreds of terms and agreements, organize my computer files, think of the next big idea and manage this goddamn blog and even create another one.

What I do love about having all this free time is that it gives me time to see things in perspective. I do not have to push myself each morning to get out of bed, clean myself to be presentable or pretend to like people at work. I get up, open my door and see the world outside. I step out to smell the fresh air and hear the birds chirping sweetly while a cold morning breeze wakes me fully. Then I immediately get back in to check my Facebook wall and scrounge some possibilities in the internet.

I am decided to make this year my make or break year with the digital world. If I wake up one day enslaved again by corporate rules, pestered by people assigned to seek next to me and confined to a specific place with a specific time, then I would accept that state. Because I know I have clicked everything I could, scrolled over all promos I could and exhausted myself in finding my 3D corner in the digital world.

I’m going to try every possibility offered to me in this digital kingdom. If that means content writing, answering surveys, modeling for adult chat, I would do it. I would even sucker punch somebody’s grandma for a dollar now.