Guest post: Smart Money: Time Management Tricks

Guest post submitted by Doreen Martel; syndicated courtesy of Freelancing and More

We need to be honest with ourselves when we are self-employed and make sure that we are making the most of the hours that we invest in our business. There are some tasks that simply do not provide a good return on our investment of time and in some cases, they will never provide a good return for the time that we invest. In order to make the amount of money that you need to make, you need to make sure that you are managing your time well and investing the hours that you have well.

First set income goals

One of the first things that you need to determine is what your monthly income goal need to be. If you need to earn $1,000 a month and someone else needs to earn $2,000 then your time management techniques are going to be significantly different. If each of you is working 40 hours a week, your “hourly” earnings have to equal $6.25 (net) hourly for $1,000 a month but $12.50 for $2,000 a month. This can be problematic if you have to scrape around for assignments to meet that goal.

Set your hours

Clearly if you need to work 40 hours a week, you need to have some sort of schedule. There are so many things that can distract you during your typical work day including social media, email, Skype calls and so much more. You have to set your work hours and make a plan to stick with them in spite of any distractions that you may encounter. Do not forget to include time for sensible breaks, social media and other interruptions.

Pick your poison

There are countless ways to make money online, if you are careful, you can do fairly well. Make sure that you watch out for work at home scams and people who will take advantage of you. Find writing assignments that match with your own personal style of writing, participate at revenue sharing sites where you can write and earn ongoing revenue and find personal clients or use freelancing sites.  If you find the right “mix” of assignments between content farms, revenue sharing sites and micro tasks, you will be able to earn steady freelancing income.

Do not put all eggs in one basket

Too frequently, writers find themselves lulled into a false sense of complacency and think they can make all of their income from one or perhaps two websites. Do not do it!  If you do not take the time to expand your horizons, chances are that you are going to run into problems. Many writers suffered at the hands of Demand Studios when the First Look program went into effect, others took a beating with Suite 101 and still others lost out when Helium stopped paying up fronts. Try to make sure that you plan your time so that you have a steady stream of income coming in at all times. Your schedule might look like this:

       •  Monday – Private Clients
       •  Tuesday – Revenue Sharing Sites
       •  Wednesday – Blogging
       •  Thursday – Paid to write sites
       •  Friday – Micro sites

Using this type of a mix will allow you to keep a flow of income for both long and short-term needs. Using the micro-sites at the end of the week will allow you to play “catch up” if you have fallen a bit short on your other earnings goals or will allow you to make a few dollars to go out and play on the weekend.

Remember that only you can set your own time frames and schedules, you are going to have to find out what works best for your individual time and earnings needs.

About Doreen Martel

Well-rounded freelance writer who contributes to various blogs, paid to write sites and revenue sharing sites. Doreen is legally blind and has worked at home for more than 10 years. She uses the lessons learned from this experience to enhance her writing and share information with others.

Newman Fisks it Here

I've been reading John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua for a book club. The Apologia is Newman's account of the development of his religious beliefs, culminating with his conversion to Catholicism, written in response to a charge of mendacity by the hot-headed Charles Kingsley. I've only been able to get as far, so far, as the Newman/Kingsley correspondence, and while reading it I was thinking of what someone in my club had mentioned: how like a blog exchange this is. Kingsley's ill-considered, intemperate rant is exactly the sort of thing one might read online (minus the elevated language and complex grammatical structure), and Newman demolishes him in the comments box. But what caused me to laugh out loud, and made several other mothers waiting outside dance class glance at me oddly, was Newman's fine fisk of Kingsley's "apology", in which Newman gives a side-by-side comparison of what Kingsley says, and what the British reading public will take him to mean. I suddenly imagined a Fr. Z-style fisking, with the emphases in black and the comments in red.

VI

The Rev. Charles Kingsley to Dr. Newman

Reverend Sir, Eversley Rectory, January 14, 1864.

I have the honour to acknowledge your answer to my letter. I have also seen your letter to Mr. X. Y. On neither of them shall I make any comment, save to say, that, if you fancy that I have attacked you because you were, as you please to term it, " down," you do me a great injustice; and also, that the suspicion expressed in the latter part of your letter to Mr. X.Y., is needless.

The course, which you demand of me, is the only course fit for a gentleman; and, as the tone of your letters (even more than their language) make me feel, to my very deep pleasure, that my opinion of the meaning of your words was a mistaken one, I shall send at once to Macmillan's Magazine the few lines which I inclose.

You say, that you will consider my letters as public. You have every right to do so.

I remain, Reverend Sir,

yours faithfully, (Signed) Charles KINGSLEY

VII

[This will appear in the next number]

To the Editor of Macmillan's Magazine

Sir,

In your last number I made certain allegations against the teaching of the Rev. Dr. Newman, which were founded on a sermon of his, entitled "Wisdom and Innocence," (the sermon will be fully described, as to¹ ... )

[ I Here follows a word or half-word which neither I nor any one else to whom I have shown the MS, can decipher.

I have at p. 23 filled in for Mr. Kingsley what I understood him to mean by " fully.", -J.H.N. ]

Dr. Newman has, by letter, expressed in the strongest terms, his denial of the meaning which I have put upon his words. No man knows the use of words better than Dr. Newman; no man, therefore, has a better right to define what he does, or does not, mean by them.

It only remains, therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having so seriously mistaken him; and my hearty pleasure at finding him on the side of Truth, in this, or any other, matter.

(Signed) CHARLES KINGSLEY

VIII

Dr. Newman to the Rev. Charles Kingsley

The Oratory, January 17, 1864.

Reverend Sir,

Since you do no more than announce to me your intention of inserting in Macmillan ' s Magazine the letter, a copy of which you are so good as to transcribe for me, perhaps I am taking a liberty in making any remarks to you upon it. But then, the very fact of your showing it to me seems to invite criticism; and so sincerely do I wish to bring this painful matter to an immediate settlement, that, at the risk of being officious, I avail myself of your courtesy to express the judgment which I have carefully formed upon it.

I believe it to be your wish to do me such justice as is compatible with your duty of upholding the consistency and quasi-infallibility which is necessary for a periodical publication; and I am far from expecting any thing from you which would be unfair to Messrs. Macmillan and Co. Moreover, I am quite aware, that the reading public, to whom your letter is virtually addressed, cares little for the wording of an explanation, provided it be made aware of the fact that an explanation has been given.

Nevertheless, after giving your letter the benefit of both these considerations, I am sorry to say I feel it my duty to withhold from it the approbation which I fain would bestow.

Its main fault is, that, quite contrary to your intention, it will be understood by the general reader to intimate, that I have been confronted with definite extracts from my works, and have laid before you my own interpretations of them. Such a proceeding I have indeed challenged, but have not been so fortunate as to bring about.

But besides, I gravely disapprove of the letter as a whole.

The grounds of this satisfaction will be best understood by you, if I place in parallel columns its paragraphs, one by one, and what I conceive will be the popular reading of them.

This I proceed to do.

I have the honour to be,

Reverend Sir,

Your obedient Servant,

(Signed) JOHN H. Newman

Mr. Kingsley's Letter Unjust, but too probable, popular rendering of it

Mr. Kingsley's Letter I. Sir,-In your last number I made certain allegations against the teaching of the Rev. Dr. Newman, which were founded on a Sermon of his, entitled " Wisdom and Innocence," preached by him as Vicar of St. Mary's, and published in 1844. 2. Dr. Newman has, by letter, expressed in the strongest terms his denial of the meaning which I have put upon his words. 3. No man knows the use of words better than Dr. Newman; no man, therefore, has a better right to define what he does, or does not, mean by them. 4. It only remains, therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having so

2. I have set before Dr. Newman, as he challenged me to do, extracts from his writings, and he has affixed to them what he conceives to be their legitimate sense, to the denial of that in which I understood them. 3. He has done this with the skill of a great master of verbal fence, who knows, as well as any man living, how to insinuate a doctrine without committing himself to it. 4. However, while I heartily regret that I have so seriously mistaken the sense

On the more serious side, I was reflecting that many people wail that public discourse has become more debased over the years, yet Kingsley's shrill Know-Nothing-ism rather proves that the haters will always be with us. His expanded set of accusations, What, Then, Does Dr. Newman Mean? don't serve to vindicate him. As I was reading his quotations from Newman's sermon, I found myself nodding in agreement with Newman's interpretations of scripture verses on how to speak the truth.

On Kingsley's accusation of Catholics all being loose with the truth, and the throwing around of the term "Jesuitical" -- I remembered something that a professor of mine had spoken of when we were reading MacBeth. He had some interpretation of the porter's speech that proved that Shakespeare was a closet Catholic which was based around the porter's references to equivocation:

Knock, knock! Who's there, in th’ other devil's name?
Faith, here's an equivocator that could swear in both the
scales against either scale, who committed treason enough
for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O,(10)
come in, equivocator.

This was supposed to be a reference to those Catholics who were ambiguous or "equivocal" about their Catholicism when questioned so as to keep undercover during the horrible persecutions of the sixteenth century (the standard execution for a priest was being drawn and quartered, after God knows what other tortures). The Jesuits were especially noted for encouraging this kind of nicety with language, and heck, they still retain that "equivocator" image to this day.

On Meeting Bloggers

As MrsD mentioned, we had the pleasure of dropping in to hobnob with several of our fellow wizards in the blogging world during the recent Darwin family travels. At various points in the Great Ohio Trip we spent time with:

Entropy
Fr. Fox
Jay Anderson
TS
Betty Duffy
Rich Leonardi
Scott Carson

And on previous occasions we've had the pleasure of meeting:

Tito
Blackadder
Jenn
JulieD
The Opinionated Homeschooler
LitChic
The Bettinellis
Cranky Conservative (and the missus)

(My apologies to whoever I have forgotten. It wasn't intentional!)

Even in our increasingly wired culture, there's still a slightly spooky air to the statement, "I'm getting together with someone I met online." Not only does it make it sound like one of you has a greater than average chance of being a serial killer, it has a certain antisocial ring to it, suggesting that one spends most of one's time in a basement, smelling of old socks and lit only by the glow of the monitor. I must admit, I'm rather cautious to admit to non-blogsphere people that I originally met some of my friends and coworkers through blogging. "We knew each other in Catholic circles" tends to be my way of explaining it away.

Yet for all that I am hesitant to admit to seeking out chances to meet those we interact with online, I've found it to be a universally positive experience. Admittedly, the etiquette of meeting for the first time someone one has talked to for years can be a little awkward at first. But modern social relations are nothing if not challenging from a social custom point of view. (How as poor MrsD to navigate the traditional "nice girls don't kiss on the first date" stricture when we were both car-less freshman on the same college campus? Our first "date" was a number of months after we started "going out". But I digress.)

For me, the reason why meeting bloggers is so enjoyable is because one has already been able to find out a great deal about the other person through a less socially threatening medium. I am, by habit, a very cautious conversationalist. For all my online opinionating, I'm very hesitant to bring up politics or religion or indeed my more unusually interests in history, literature and languages with people I don't already have some indication would be interested and congenial. Indeed, I usually stick to discussing with people mostly those things in which they have already stated an interest. This leads to safe and low conflict conversations, but with other people who are equally careful in their discussion habits, it can result in never getting too far into any topic.

However, reading what someone else has written over the course of months or years (and reading their comments on my own writing) provides enough of a layer of familiarity that it seems possible to discuss a wide range of topics without too much fear of either alienating (or boring) the other person, or needlessly exposing myself to disapprobation. In effect, the blogsphere acts as a social sifting mechanism. It allows us to form sub-communities of people with at least a certain level of common interest and acceptance. And this commonality makes much more interesting conversation possible. And it also gives one enough information about the specific person to know of possible shared interests, or areas where one ought not to throw one's elbows around. (So for instance, I know not to issue any smack talk against rap when visiting with Jenn and certainly not to bring along a pet scorpion, lest she feel the necessity of instigating a throw down.)

For all that blogging is often knocked as one of the lower forms of communication, in my more self congratulatory moments, I like to imagine the blogsphere as a sort of modern equivalent to the 18th century coffee house culture. Not only did different coffee houses in the great cities like London and Paris and Vienna have different characters (in some people congregated to discuss business, in others philosophy and politics, in other literature, in others science) but there was a thriving genre of one to two sheet daily papers put out by individual writers or writing teams which were distributed to the coffee houses and served as both reading material and conversation topics. Addison & Steele's The Spectator was one of the early successes in this genre, and Samuel Johnson's The Rambler was a late one, but there were many others -- less successful and less remembered. At one point Boswell writes about his wonder at seeing Johnson dash off an issue of The Rambler in one sitting, longhand, and send it off to the printer without revisions. If only my own unrevised (or even revised) writing could be of such value.

Blogging in the Grudge-o-sphere

In the last four years I've learned a great deal about a host of topics, including my Catholic Faith, while blogging, reading other people's blogs, and participating in comment box discussions. And yet there are some notable dangers that come with blogging as well.

A few months ago, I did myself no great credit in a combox discussion on a friend's post. Someone against whom I carried paper left a comment I disagreed with, and rather than sticking with a basic refutation I went all out: questioned motives, brought up old arguments, put words in his mouth, the works. An hour or two later I got an email from my friend. "Wow. Next time tell us what you really think..."

But I knew I was right. I his reply and was pouring out the reason I'd been 100% justified in behaving that way at 70wpm. A year and a half ago, this other blogger and said such-and-such. And when I'd pointed out his obvious errors, he'd said that. And then there was that other time. And remember when over on that other guy's blog he's said this in the comments? And...

I took a moment to stare at the paragraphs I'd written and realized this would sound a lot more appropriate coming out of my six-year-old as an explanation for why she'd hit another kid than coming out of a thirty-year-old man who fancies himself intellectual.

As bloggers we sometimes live by the word in rather the same way that a duelist lived by the sword. And slights which, when explained to anyone else, would immediately sound small and petty, fester and become long term rivalries.

Given the source of my recent embarrassment, I've tried to make it a rule to think how I would feel writing an explanation of my behavior in any given conversation to a disinterested party. Given my pride, this is a strong incentive to charity, or at least calmness. Naytheless, the temptation remains. I suspect that it is a built in feature (or bug) in an avocation such as blogging.


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