I started off charging a flat rate. I can write around 1000 words per hour so was bidding at $2 per 100 words, or £10 an hour basically. The problem is, I am getting more and more work of a complicated nature, right now I have 2000 words to produce on:

Organisational Culture may be visualized as being an implicit set of references that guide and influence the behaviour of individuals within the organisation.

You see the problem? I’m probably going to have to spend more time researching this than actually writing it. The $2 per 100 words just doesn’t cut the mustard in this situation. I’m going to have to work out some sort of pricing structure based on the type of work I am asked to do, if a lot of research is required then I will have to reflect that in my pricing.

I have employed 2 people, and they could not be more different. The first one is a young guy who has a degree in business studies and produces very good work for me, the main thing I like about him is the speed in which he produces results, I get a 24 hour turnaround with him every time, always perfect.

The second person is a chap who writes well, better than the first guy actually, but he is unreliable, this is worse than not having anyone to help out at all. For example, today I have ha to take back some work from him as he has found various reasons not to complete it for the last week, this means I now have to do the work myself, thus causing me to delay my other work. Really this is no good at all.

I think what I will do is complete the stuff he hasn’t done for me and then send everything else to the first guy, at least he produces the work in a timely fashion.

On of the biggest problems I face as a freelancer is trying to work out the correct price to quote a prospective customer. In an ideal world I would just take the amount of work that needs to be done, divided it by the number of man hours to complete it than multiply that by my  hourly rate.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work out like this, there are all sorts of other considerations. Is this a possible long term repeat customer? If so I should quote keenly. Is it one of my friends? Can I really charge my friends full price? Do I actually want to do the job or should I price it high so that if I win the bid at least it makes the job more appealing?

As you can see things are far from simple, it has gotten even more complicating since I have started to outsource some of my work, I now need to factor in bank charges, employee rates, add a small percentage to cover jobs that don’t get paid due to the customer disappearing but that I will still have to pay my outsource people for, all sorts of things.

I think I will start looking around for some software to help with all of this, there must be something out there, hopefully web based that can deal with business administration. Either that or find another outsource person that can handle the administration for me but I have a suspicion that will just compound the problem.

I do have to write a review of each of them around 900 words in length afterwards but I am getting paid for it so I can’t complain. It would be very cool if I could get this kind of job every day instead of some of the really boring stuff I have to write about at times. Just now I finished a 1250 word article that discussed the plastic molding industry, what a completely boring thing to have to write about!

Well I guess it’s jobs like this that keep me living here on Koh Phangan so I cannot complain really.

The problem then is things get complicated, right now I have to organise a single work day, my own, looking back on my corporate days managing a team of people I remember how stressful it would get when I had to organise not only myself but my team.

Maybe I should just cut down on the amount of work I am taking on but sometimes it’s just too hard to say no!

I gave a quote out last week to a company that need 50 online gambling related SEO articles, I subsequently won the bid. Nothing out of the ordinary apart from the fact they are new to the whole article game so things are going slowly.

Today they came back to me and asked if I would be interested in reviewing a few online casinos for them, they propose to give me $50 to play on several well know websites and then write  review.

I have never been paid to gamble before, it is quite an interesting proposition and one I am looking forward to undertaking.

This is excellent news, it means the house building fund is starting to grow again, now all I need to do is finish off the dozen or so websites of my own that I still haven’t gotten around to yet and get the SEO sorted with them.

So much to do and so little time to do it in!

will provide you with well-written, grammatical-error-free, interesting-to-read, informative, well-researched and 100 percent original copyscape-test-passed articles within your budget and time frame. Please check PMB for sample articles and bid details. Regards, Irina

I’m sorry but that just makes me chuckle, somebody promising great English skills by posting a quote that demonstrates they obviously do not have great English skills!

Well last night I was sitting in my hammock and dictating straight into word on my PC from my headset, and I realised I have almost achieved this dream. But there is a strange twist to it, like most dreams I guess.

The problem is, in my fantasies I never actually saw myself doing any work, somehow there was this magical business that just ran itself and supplied me with heaps of cash. In reality it hasn’t worked out like this. I’m working harder than I ever did in the UK, 10-12 hours almost every day. They don’t believe in weekends here, forget having at least Sunday off.

So I thought I needed to do something about this, so I figured hey, I don’t mind working 5-6 hours a day, but I need the same income, simple solution, double my prices. Half the work for the same money. This backfired a little though as everyone I’m working for at the moment said it wasn’t a problem and they would pay me the extra. So now I’m making more money per hour and it’s even more tempting to burn the midnight (and early morning) oil now as the carrot is twice as big.

Oh well, visa run in a few days, time to holiday in Ranong for a couple of days, I wonder if I should take my laptop?

This is all a bit long winded so I started looking around today for something that will do it all in one application. The closest fit I have found is DupeFree Pro but it’s not a very comfortable editing environment. I’m tempted to develop something myself.