This month has been exceptionally busy for me and I had almost no time to put against anything but my day job, unsurprisingly so my blogging debt started to grow at a pretty good pace. There were a plenty of articles published in the blogs I follow, many industry news worth discussion knocked on the doors daily, and despite serious slowing down in the rate of posts I saw a notable increase in traffic.
When it comes to blogging I face a few serious challenges, first of course being ESL. As a matter of fact ESL has been a huge mental obstacle to overcome, it took a lot of internal and external pushing before I could step over the fact that I won’t be able write to even my own standards of quality needless to say to the benchmarks established in technical blogosphere by top notch professionals.
Other ones were concerns so typical for a techie:
- I can talk at rate of 100 words a minute with occasional gusts of 250, but when I put my thoughts on paper the productivity drops 100 fold.
- Talking towards invisible audience and literally no feedback and total absence of control over that audience really freaks me out.
- Concerns about spilling the beans in so many aspects of our work and educating vendors and competitors.
- Copyright / IP concerns. Many of the items I cover related to projects I’ve done as work for hire – how far can I push that envelope without compromising my integrity – which is by far one of the most important aspect of our professional image
- Position concerns – what if I change my opinion tomorrow? Image concerns, and many many others…
Of course like anyone else I also have to deal with shortage hours in a day, occasional writer’s blocks and gazillion of other challenges any blogger deals with.
When I realized how much time blogging is going to take from my day and how unproductive I was my visceral reaction was to follow my management approach: do what you do the best – delegate the rest. And I decided to hire a ghost writer. In theory it appeared like a great idea – I just tell a ghost writer what I think about a particular topic and s/he will write it up… In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is. My fabulous idea did not work out, not for the lack of offers though:
I put a project request on several freelancing sites (see those plus more on my list of places to find freelancers). I got more offers that I could look at in just a few days. The price varied from $2 to $50 an hour. Many of writers who replied to my post did not even red the post, some did not understand it. The remaining minority either asked for rates I could not possibly afford or after a brief discussion with me bailed out. After I went though ~100 bids there were a couple still standing, and they only made me realize that time-wise I won’t see any savings and the only thing I could benefit by using a ghost writer would be grammar, SEO, and other important yet secondary aspects.
So I ended up in square one with a notebook in my laps blogging away while BARTing. The last couple months brought more and more to my plate. Isn’t it strange that poor economy, slower business and a fewer opportunities do not mean less work? So even my office commute doesn’t offer much time for pragmatic outsourcing. But I have no intentions to stop, at least yet. There is still so much to cover…
March 24, 2009 -
Posted by
Nick Krym |
News, Articles, Thoughts and Comments | Freelancing
No comments yet.
The Pragmatic Outsourcer series consists of 5 volumes, each covering a different phase of the outsourcing process. Volume 1: Making the Decision is available today for your free download. Volumes 2 through 5 will be available during 2010.
Read more
Slowing Down, no Intentions to Stop
This month has been exceptionally busy for me and I had almost no time to put against anything but my day job, unsurprisingly so my blogging debt started to grow at a pretty good pace. There were a plenty of articles published in the blogs I follow, many industry news worth discussion knocked on the doors daily, and despite serious slowing down in the rate of posts I saw a notable increase in traffic.
When it comes to blogging I face a few serious challenges, first of course being ESL. As a matter of fact ESL has been a huge mental obstacle to overcome, it took a lot of internal and external pushing before I could step over the fact that I won’t be able write to even my own standards of quality needless to say to the benchmarks established in technical blogosphere by top notch professionals.
Other ones were concerns so typical for a techie:
Of course like anyone else I also have to deal with shortage hours in a day, occasional writer’s blocks and gazillion of other challenges any blogger deals with.
When I realized how much time blogging is going to take from my day and how unproductive I was my visceral reaction was to follow my management approach: do what you do the best – delegate the rest. And I decided to hire a ghost writer. In theory it appeared like a great idea – I just tell a ghost writer what I think about a particular topic and s/he will write it up… In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is. My fabulous idea did not work out, not for the lack of offers though:
I put a project request on several freelancing sites (see those plus more on my list of places to find freelancers). I got more offers that I could look at in just a few days. The price varied from $2 to $50 an hour. Many of writers who replied to my post did not even red the post, some did not understand it. The remaining minority either asked for rates I could not possibly afford or after a brief discussion with me bailed out. After I went though ~100 bids there were a couple still standing, and they only made me realize that time-wise I won’t see any savings and the only thing I could benefit by using a ghost writer would be grammar, SEO, and other important yet secondary aspects.
So I ended up in square one with a notebook in my laps blogging away while BARTing. The last couple months brought more and more to my plate. Isn’t it strange that poor economy, slower business and a fewer opportunities do not mean less work? So even my office commute doesn’t offer much time for pragmatic outsourcing. But I have no intentions to stop, at least yet. There is still so much to cover…
March 24, 2009 - Posted by Nick Krym | News, Articles, Thoughts and Comments | Freelancing