Writing...Just because!

In my role as a freelance copy writer I am constantly reviewing and evaluating the rates I charge. I talk to other freelancers, I read advice on how to set your rates, I calculate how many hours I want to work and how much to charge hourly or per word in order to make a "decent" living (in a recent discussion on a LinkedIn group we talked about peanut butter verses caviar). It’s a real tight rope walk, especially if you’re an expat living overseas. I’m a Canadian living in Dubai . It’s tough to set rates when the range is as dramatically broad as there are myriad types of writing. When you’re based “globally” what is a fair market price? Do you set prices based on the US dollar (which is scary considering the direction it’s going) or the currency of the market in which you’re currently based? I’ve seriously contemplated having multiple rate sheets depending on the client’s location. That seems to me to be the best approach. Right now, being based in Dubai ,...

I am now officially a self-proclaimed social networking junkie. I’m on FaceBook (managing both my own personal page as well as a non-profit group for which I volunteer). I’m on Twitter, Linkedin, Plaxo, Classmates.com and more. I’m following more people on Twitter than I could ever truly keep up with, am a member of numerous “groups” on all of the above mentioned networks and could spend 24/7 just reading and chatting. I could go on but I’ll stop there since I’ve decided it’s time to pare down and only manage what I truly have time for and is fruitful in any way. So, the challenge becomes, how do you “separate the wheat from the chaf?” Fruitful can mean different things to different people. Sometimes little intriguing nuggets lead to bigger nuggets and you’re following link after link and spiralling down a dark tunnel of information overload with no end in sight. The first step is to define what “being fruitful” means to you. What is most important to yo...