I haven’t posted anything new for a while, to this blog or to my drum blog. I’ve been a busy guy, not that that’s an excuse, but it is a reason. And, as I had forseen, I simply took on too many projects to be timely successful at any one of them.

As of yesterday, I finished my first week as a freelance writer, approved to write for Demand Studios, a content provider for places like Travels.com, LiveStrong, eHow, and others. I was leary at first, but after reading some reviews I decided to go for it. I can’t tell you how many of these Internet opportunities I’ve looked into and, ultimately, decided to pass on either out of a lack of financial security or promise, or because I was just scared I’d get screwed over. Well, this time, I decided that if I want to do things I enjoy to help pay the bills, I’d better start taking some risks. Calculated risks, of course.

Before taking on this venture, I had (and technically, still have) a very part time dayjob at UC Davis evaluating peaches, almonds, their respective trees, and doing basic casual farm labor. It’s not a horrible gig, but it gets old and uncomfortably dirty (not that there’s anything wrong with dirt, depending on the situation). But I, being a late bloomer, have finally started to do more of the things I wish I’d started doing when I was 10 years younger (not that I’m old now). Therefore, in an attempt to do something that more resembles my likes and wants, I applied to be a copy editor and writer for Demand Studios.

I got passed for the copy editor job. I don’t have the qualifications. But, I got approved to be a writer, and that seemed like a good step.

The way Demand Studios works is that there is a pool of assignments of varying topics to choose from, from tips on how to choose a good family camping tent to how to increase the horsepower on a 2000 Chevy S10 on the cheap. You claim one of these assignments, and newbies are allowed to pick up to 10 flat-fee articles and 15 revenue-sharing articles. This number increases as your standing with the Studio gets better.

The articles you write are work-for-hire, which means once your article has been approved, Demand Studios owns it. You no longer have anything to do with it. You’re supposed to get a byline with your articles, though, so you’ll get the credit (of course, depending on what the editor does to it, you’re getting credit for the edited version. I supposed this is typical practice for “journalistic” work). The pay per flat-fee article can be $3, $5, or $15. Revenue-sharing articles give the writer an opportunity to earn royalties on their writing as their articles receive more and more traffic. If your flat-fee articles are approved before midnight on Wednesday (technically Thursday, huh?), you are to be paid for that work late Friday. Revenue-sharing articles aren’t paid out immediately, but rather on a monthly basis and the amount you’ll earn depends, once again, on traffic to your article.

Starting out, I decided to stick with the $15 articles as my goal is to replace the earnings I would normally take home from UC Davis. This is technically not supposed to a full time job. $15 per article is pretty low, considering there’s also research involved and writers must make sure they follow specific style guides and offer up helpful content. Since my Davis gig was part time anyway, and I wasn’t earning a mint, I figure if I can write two articles a day, five days a week, I’d earn $150 a week; Demand Studios pays via PayPal, and I believe PayPal takes out a small fee when transferring money to your bank account. I haven’t done it yet, so I don’t know how much they’ll take from me. In any case, $150 a week isn’t what I would earn in a good week at Davis, but then, it wasn’t the most steady work and there were taxes to consider. With Demand Studios, because it’s freelance work, you only have to worry about taxes in April. Plus, I’m working at home, saving on gas, and as I get faster with my process I’ll have more time to do the other things I need to do. The other part of my goal is to be able to write both articles in three hours, thus, in effect, earning me about $10 per hour. As I get faster with the process, I can attempt to write more, thus earning me more.

My first week wasn’t bad. Some days were quick, other long. I didn’t do anything comics related because I started work right away in the morning, figuring I’d move comics to the afternoon, then onto other things. That didn’t happen because each day I was researching and writing articles for different lengths of time. Next week, I’ll be doing comics first then doing a drum-teaching gig, then the following week I’ll do comics first then the freelance writing as my morning schedule.

Of all the articles I submitted, three were sent back for rewrites, and you only get one chance to do a rewrite before it’s rejected. One was my fault: I pasted the wrong text in an article. Dumb. The other was due to a weird categorization: identifying your iPod’s generation has nothing to do with travel, does it? After some inquiries and advice, I rewrote the introduction to make the article more relevant to preparing for a trip. The third regarded an omission of information on my part. All in all, not bad.

The copy editors look over submitted articles for content and for also spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Unfortunately, my take on grammatical correctness does not always jibe with the editors’; I’m of the school that if a period or comma is not part of a phrase that is inside of quotation marks, the period or comma belongs outside of the quotes, just like a question mark would. A while back, I looked this up to see if this method is correct, and it is… but so is putting the period and comma inside the quotes. I have seen my approved articles where corrections have been to fall in line with the latter. Ah well. A difference in grammatical schools, I guess. Is that the American method? I’m not sure.

The weirdest part of signing up with Demand Studios, so far, is that, when I applied and subsequently got approved, I received no personal contact. Then I had to submit my W-9, and that was a little scary since I never spoke with a live human being, but after taking security measures so I can watch for suspicious activity on my credit, everything turned out okay. I have already been paid for four articles, so everything seems legit so far. I’ve received some professional and friendly responses to my forum inquires. That’s a good thing, too. Never heard back from my email inquiries, though… one of them to the “editor-in-chief”…

I’m hoping that with time, my process will become streamlined and allow me time to pay attention to my other projects. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy seeing how this adventure works out for me.