Writing Career Update

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about my writing career.

Bandarputeri.com.my

I have been hired by the Bandar Puteri online community to contribute to their blog. For your information, I should be contributing 20 entries per month beginning this February. Due to technical factors, I am rather behind schedule. I’ll make up for the remaining entry today and tomorrow - just before February 2008 ends.

Concurrently, a list of proposed topics would be emailed to the team behind the community. The team of dedicated people doing their best to make this project a success. The list would be emailed by tomorrow.

Elance.com

Against the advice of Robert Bly, I registered with Elance.com. Elance.com is where clients post their projects for freelancers to bid. Certainly the lowest bid would most certainly win the contract. To make things “worse”, I changed my membership plan from basic to professional. This cost me US$14.95.

On Elance.com, I’m offering my services under “Writing & Translation” and “Sales & Marketing”. While considering the paid membership, I uploaded a sales letter I wrote some time back meant to promote my services offline. The sales letter incorporates hypnotic writing (as per John Vitale’s Hypnotic Writing). I’m also drawing up specs for another sales letter, a press release and a short 200-300 description.

Remember I said that I was going against Bly’s advice? The fact is that his advice was meant for those who intend to finda constant flow of work. I’m adhering to his advice in the book Getting Started as a Freelance Writer. He urged novices to get the first 3 paid projects from commercial clients irrespective of the cost. Why? To build a more persuasive portfolio and clients list. The two ingredients differentiating a pro from rookie.

Verified PayPal Account

In line with my efforts to ease payment and transactions, I opened up a Paypal account some time back. It was only last week when I registered my TuneMoney.com card to verify my account. While I added a debit card, or pre-paid Visa card as it is being marketed in Malaysia, it did not amount to automatic verification. I then authorized the charging of $1.95 to my account to complete verification.

The effect? My Paypal can now handle virtually unlimited amount of money. Having a debit card, now I can draw the money with ease.

TuneMoney.com’s Pre-Paid Visa & AmBank’s NexG Pre-Paid Master Card

When you’re going to venture into e-commerce, it’s rather important for you to have either credit or debit cards. Why? To perform monetary transactions. Realising this and other reasons, I applied for TuneMoney’s Card during the Youth Lifestyle Showcase ‘08 at PWTC. A few weeks after that, I bought AmBank’s NexG card at the 7Eleven near the Monorail station in Brickfields/KL Sentral for RM25. I’m waiting for the follow-up on the registration of the later.

Needless to say, I now have both Visa and MasterCard without the worry of having a credit card.