Website changes

If you browse through my website, you may notice some changes have been made. For one thing, I got rid of my Guestbook and Getting Personal pages. This is partly because the guestbook was a Doteasy feature, and since I transferred hosting it wasn't going to work anymore. I'm sincerely sorry that I lost all of those delightful comments that people left, particularly after my article ran in Writers Weekly, but I'm afraid it couldn't be helped.

The reason why the Getting Personal page is gone, and why I didn't look for a way to create a new guestbook, is because I want to make my site a little more business-oriented. I rewrote a lot of the copy to deliver a little more of a sales push, deleted some of the superfluous stuff, and eliminated the poorer examples of my work from my portfolio.

My contact forms have also been replaced, since that was also a Doteasy feature. I'm trying out a free outside service to see how I like it - if you feel like sending me a message, I'd love to know what you think of the system!

The new debate about respect for writers

There seems to be a new debate brewing about respect for writers.

It started with a post on Carson's Content Done Better blog, about the Freelancers' Union and the differences between a freelancer and an entrepreneur. Unlike me, Carson doesn't get up into arms about low paying employers or issues of professional standards in the field, but his post struck a chord with me nonetheless. Carson says:

Have you ever met a “freelance doctor?” A “freelance mortgage broker?” A “freelance therapist?”

Not really. But at some point, our language begins to shift. We wouldn’t think of calling a heart surgeon a “freelancer” most of the time, but we have no problem using the term to refer to a musician. You wouldn’t call your accountant a “freelancer,” but “freelance writer” seems normal.

It was like being socked in the gut. Everything suddenly became clear: why writers are all too often underpaid and underappreciated, why we have such a hard time establishing professional standards for the field.

Too many of us think like freelancers.

In his post, Carson also linked to an article by Liz Strauss that offers a way to determine whether you are a freelancer or an entrepreneur. I took the test and was unsurprised to find that I am both - and neither. As I commented on Carson's blog:

I don’t see a difference between the-work-supports-the-business and the-business-supports-the-work. To me, it’s an equal relationship - if you don’t have both you have neither. I also tend to divide my focus between the day-to-day work and plans for the future - when I’m super busy, I’m all about the day-to-day, and when I’m not as busy, I’m making plans to *get* busy. And although I love all the administrative stuff like planning my website, creating invoices, tracking income and expenses, etc., I have to say I still regret that it takes me away from writing.

I didn't start out this way. I think I've been trending more toward a business mindset as I add to my experience. For instance, I've noticed in the last couple of months that I've been starting to refer to the people I work with as "clients" rather than "employers." These are changes that have come about as my business has grown.

As if to feed to the debate, this week in Writers Weekly Pamela White published an article on the importance of business plans for writers. Her article also emphasizes the importance of running your writing like a business instead of a job.

But I'm still not purely an entrepreneur, and I don't think I ever will be. "Writer" comes first to me. I doubt I'm the only one, either - I have a feeling that there are plenty of writers out there who don't like to use the term "Freelance" in their title, yet still don't quite think of themselves as an entrepreneur either.

As I stated on Carson's blog, I think there is room for a third category there: writers who have the "client" mindset, but who focus on the writing as much as they focus on the business. But what should we term ourselves?

Personally, I don't think you'd call your doctor, lawyer, or accountant an entrepreneur, any more than you'd call them freelancers - but what would you call them? "Professionals" is what comes to mind. And I think that's what those of us are who focus on neither the work or the business, but a combination of both. Maybe if more of us start seeing ourselves as "professional writers" instead of "freelance writers," we will naturally start setting those industry standards so many of us crave.

Incidentally, though I agree with Kathy Kehrli's comment on Carson's blog: all of these titles, whether they be "Freelance Writer," "Professional Writer," or "Entrepreneur" are inherently boring. I think I'm going to put "Literary Goddess" on my next round of business cards...

Email is working!

GoDaddy fixed my email! The transfer is now fully complete, and everything is working properly! Hurrah!

Back at last: My domain transfer experience

After several days of being out of commission, my site is back! The domain transfer is complete, and my site is now hosted by GoDaddy instead of Doteasy. However, the situation isn't yet resolved - and the story will probably be quite interesting for anyone who is contemplating a domain transfer themselves.

Quite frankly, I hope I never have to do that again. It was a miserable experience. The GoDaddy site said the transfer would take 5 to 7 days, and they were right - sort of. Here's how it happened:

Day 1: I put in my order with GoDaddy and initiated the transfer. Later that afternoon, I discovered - oops! - I needed my website authorization code in order to truly start the process! I emailed Doteasy, my original hosting provider, to get it. Unfortunately, although GoDaddy has a very prompt customer service team, Doteasy's sucks.

I also manage to set up my outgoing mail to go through GoDaddy's server, thereby fixing my blacklisting problem.

Day 2: I finally get my authorization code from Doteasy and give it to GoDaddy. In the meantime, I'm trying to find out how to set up my email to go through GoDaddy before the transfer takes place. Somewhere around Day 2 or Day 3, I requested that Doteasy change the MX and CNAME records on my site so that I can start using my GoDaddy email accounts without any ridiculous interruption of service. You'll see in a minute how that turned out.

Day 3: I think this is about when my site goes down. It's still being hosted by Doteasy, since the transfer hasn't completed, and my traffic quota has been exceeded. Right about now I think it pertinent to mention that for about half of what my Doteasy hosting cost, GoDaddy gives me 125 times the traffic quota I was getting.

Day 4: Doteasy sends me a form email saying that they've received a request to transfer my domain. The letter says to contact them if the request is not genuine; otherwise they'll approve the transfer in three days. If I might point out two things here: 1) I'd told them on Day 1 that I was transferring my domain, so this ridiculous form letter wasn't even necessary, and 2) it took them three days to send out the form letter after GoDaddy contacted them for approval.

Also on this day, I find out that emails others send to me are bouncing back intermittently. I contact GoDaddy, who I believed was now handling my email, to find out what the problem is.

Day 6: Email still problematic. I find out from GoDaddy that my MX and CNAME records have in fact not been changed. I email Doteasy regarding the problem.

Day 7: Doteasy tells me that because my hosting plan went over, my email was reverting back to the original settings. They resubmit the record changes.

Later this night (Monday night), my email fails completely. I can send email out, but nothing gets in at all. This time, I think it's GoDaddy's fault - even though the MX records have been changed, my email accounts at GoDaddy still say "awaiting MX."

I also find out that my website is back up, even though the transfer hasn't completed. I think it's because my monthly quota at Doteasy was being reset.

Several hours later (about 2am Tuesday morning) the transfer completes. I spend half the freaking night uploading my site to the new servers, as well as working on changes to the site (which I haven't posted yet, not having finished them).

Email still problematic.

The end... Well, not quite. I'm still waiting (rather impatiently) for the email problem to be fixed. (Hel-lo... it's my livelihood, people!!!) I'm also still working on the changes to the site, which I hope to post later this week. And, having neglected my work all evening, I'm finally about to go to bed.

Website transfer update

It sounds like my website should be transferred within a week from now. However, I've now exceeded my hosting limit with Doteasy, so my website could go down at any time.

In other words, if you get an error message when you try to load my blog, please try again in a couple of days!

The Query Challenge

I haven't written about it before now because I've been so caught up with my workload and email problems, but I'm participating in Kristen King's 2007 Inkthinker Query Challenge. The goal is to send off 120 queries or submissions in 2007 - 10 each month, basically. For a full-time freelancer that shouldn't be a problem, but it's more of a challenge than you would think - I don't consider responses to job ads to be queries, unless the "ad" is a call for submissions, and responses to job ads are the vast majority of what I send out.

So far this year, I have sent off five queries. The first one was a query to Write-From-Home.com, offering a reprint of my Writers Weekly article - and I'm happy to say that the query was successful. The next three queries were snail-mailed short story submissions, and the last one was a query for a real estate story. The last one didn't work out, as the publisher didn't want to guarantee anything and I'm too busy right now to write a very custom story and chance not getting paid for it, but hopefully at least one of my short stories will see publication this year.

I encourage everyone to sign up for the query challenge. It should be interesting, trying to come up with 115 more queries. Here are some of my ideas:

* More of my short stories: I have about half a dozen completed short stories that I would like to see published.

* My NaNoWriMo novel: Once I finish revising and editing my novel, I'll start making the rounds with it.

* Ebooks: I have ideas for several ebooks, and a couple of publishers in mind who might be interested in them.

* Articles: I have a whole favorites folder full of submission guidelines pages. My goal is to start going through that and querying for article assignments, in addition to all of the jobs ads I respond to on a daily basis.

This week's edition of Writers Weekly published an article on getting writing assignments that I think might be helpful for other interested in accepting the 2007 Inkthinker Query Challenge. The author has also published an ebook for writers who want to increase their business, which I just might buy.

Good luck to those of you who accept the challenge!

In the spirit of "Screw You!"...

In the spirit of Kathy Kehrli's blog Screw You!, I can't resist the temptation to direct your attention to a pathetic example of a low-paying client who expects the world at bargain prices.

I've noticed with Writerlance that if I post a bid - or a critique, as I did here - before anyone else, what I say or bid will have a strong impact on how people post after me. For example, if I bid a decent rate, fewer people bid in rock-bottom range; likewise, if I comment on the client's insultingly low budget, others will follow suit.

In this case, "tallyho" not only wants a professional writer for cheap (i.e. $5 or less per 700-word article), he also wants one with impeccable feedback. I thought that odd, since his rating was a 3 (out of 10), so I checked his feedback... And guess what? The only person who had given him any yet said she didn't get paid any more than a fraction of what she was owed! Her story was much the same as many other freelancers who find themselves in similar situations... He loved her work, continued accepting it, and then when it came time to pay, said it wasn't of a high enough quality.

In my opinion, there's nothing worse than a client who thinks that complaining after the fact about a writer's work is grounds enough to refuse payment. Clients, if you don't like someone's work, end the project, but you are still obligated to pay your writer for the work he or she has already produced!

Actually, there might be something worse: clients who try to deceive writers. When I saw this project, I entered a fake bid. The bid was for $450, the absolute minimum I would have charged for 30 700-word articles (and even that was probably too low...). Of course, the entire point of bidding was to leave a scathing comment, which read:

Not only are you offering writers slave wages to work for you, you also have the audacity to ask for bidders with good feedback ratings when YOURS shows a track record of not paying! BIDDERS BEWARE!

An hour or so later I checked back, and found that several other writers had commented in a similar vein. However, I was appalled to see that the client's feedback had been erased - he was hiding the fact that he hasn't paid his last writer! I added to the end of my comment:

BIDDERS BEWARE - HE HAS NO FEEDBACK NOW BECAUSE HE HAD HIS FEEDBACK DELETED!

Of course, there are always those writers who see these types of situations as an opporunity to move in and "steal" the job from us self-respecting types. As a result, "tallyho" will get what he most likely is really after - a dirt-cheap writer who will turn in substandard work and enable the client to once again justify his refusal to pay.