Monday, January 08, 2007

Trying things on for size

I have been struggling with a few articles I promised to write - struggling to find a way in, a new angle, a point from which to make my point. Its never quite as easy as you'd think.

Of course research is what is needed, and lots of it, and where better than the good old internet - that veritable mine of both useful and useless information, and much of it inaccurate to boot! It was during my research, and I love that I can justify (get away with) procrastination and outright time wasting by calling it research, that I discovered there are communities out there where people write and 'publish' "articles" and reviews ...which are in turn rated by other people who write articles and reviews... and all in the hope of earning some extra money. But the most amazing thing about the whole process is the rates of 'pay' for this work.

Admittedly the standard of work produced is variable to say the least, but there are some half decent writers out there but they are having to churn out hundreds of artciles in order to earn a few quid...and when I say a few, the pay is between 0.5 and 3 pence...per article!

Nobody can blame the companies who run these sites, the terms and conditions (including rates of pay) are clearly posted for all to see, and every participant ticks a box to say they accept them...so nobody can say they didn't know... Apart from the idea of using these sites as a place to hone article ideas, I can't for the life of me understand why people who can write (and it is true that they are in the minority on these sites ) would post their work for the possibility of earning a mere pittance?

Of course one has to try these things out in order to be able to speak from a point of any real authority...and I am delighted to report than in total, over a period of five days, I 'earned' the princely sum of five pence from my two published articles. Just to confirm, that's a whole five pence in total as payment for two 'published articles.'

I guess I won't be giving up the day job just yet.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

New Year - of the brown bear

I read through my old blogposts this evening and am delighted to report that finally the tatty old green dressing gown of 2005/06 is no more. Santa brought me a new one this year...and slippers too...although the fact they match is pure coincidence.
Now I can lounge around a nice new fluffy brown gown and brown furry slippers...like a huge brown bear. Of course there is no actual fur in any of my furry things, they are good old fashioned acrylic based synthetics...sounds wonderful eh?

Synthetics are just about everywhere...even in tins of treacle pud. The proof really was in the pudding because my mother gave me a tin of microwaveable pud - she has no microwave because, as she will tell anyone who cares to listen, she has nowhere to put one . Anyway we compared the ingredients of this mystery brand pud with that of a well known (household name associated with Beanz) brand...and we were horrified to find that the no brand one contained all manner of synthetic and chemical delights - most of which were totally unpronounceable (by anyone without a degree is biohazardry). We took some comfort that the weel known brand does actually contain recogniseable ingredients of the kind one might expect to find in a treacle pud...even if they were diluted by the presence of chemical stabilisers.

Whilst mother and I discussed our findings with a combination of interest and horror, hubby simply asked if we'd got any custard?