Work From Home Couple

I remember the predictions: The Internet is going to be a boon for freelance writers. Just look, everyone said, at all the new markets for writers it will bring.

Well, the Internet has been around for some time now, and I certainly don’t see too many writers — a few, maybe, but not many — getting rich from it. Instead, I see a lot of writers pumping out a whole lot of online content for not nearly enough dollars.

That’s been the problem with writing for most Web sites. Sure, they need writers, but they’re not willing to pay much, if anything, to them.

I was reminded of this when I stumbled across two online job postings, one for HubPages and another for Helium. Both were looking for writers. And both promised payment.

For writers unfamiliar with the sites, both are filled with short, blog-like stories written by freelancers. Problem is, the payment — at least the vast, vast majority of it — comes from things such as page views, ad clicks, etc.., In other words, writers will earn pennies from their stories.

One writer who posts on HubPages mentioned that she made $210 so far for the 120 stories she’s written. She seemed excited by it, and thought it proved that the site generated income for writers. Well, $210 for 120 stories is pretty awful pay. Unless this writer was able to pound those stories out in half a day, and if she could do that, I’d hate to read those stories, then she’s getting ripped off.

If you’re trying to break into freelance writing, avoid sites like Associated Content, HubPages, Helium or Constant Content. Never agree to write for payments based on Adsense clicks or page views. Most times, you’ll get nearly nothing for your efforts. Better to approach your local paper. At least then you’ll get paid something. It won’t be much, but it won’t be pennies per story, either.

Most of my income comes from the freelance writing I do for magazines, newspapers and Web sites. I was hoping that 2009 would be a better year than 2008 turned out to be. In 2008, I wrote like crazy but made less money than I did in either 2007 or 2006.

That really wasn’t in my plans.

So my hope in 2009 was to target higher-paying pubs, like the one I’m working on a story for right now. That story will pay me more than $2,500, the most I’ve received for a single non-fiction story.

Problem is, that very publisher sent an e-mail to its freelance writers yesterday with the subject line “tough times.” With a subject line like that, you know you’re in trouble.

Sure enough, the message said that from now on, thanks to the nation’s terrible economy, the magazine would not be assigning as many freelance stories and would not pay as much for the stories they do assign.

So, unfortunately enough, 2009 is starting out much the way 2008 went: My clients are struggling. That means I’ll struggle, too.

I’m still writing enough to pay the bills, but it seems to be getting tougher by the month. I’m fortunate in that I also have a full-time editing position that pays insurance for me and my family, so I don’t have to worry about that, at least for now.

I’m not giving up on my dream of writing less and making more in 2009. It just looks like it might not be either that less or that more.

Last year was a tough one as far as freelance writing goes. I took on more assignments than I have in any other year. Yet I still made less money last year than I did in either 2007 or 2006, my two best freelance-writing years.

That stinks. I don’t like working all that much as it is. To do so without making enough money? That’s truly lousy.

So what will 2009 bring? I don’t know about you, but I plan on taking a new approach this year. Instead of writing like mad, my goal is to seek out higher-paying jobs throughout the year.

In 2008, I dabbled a lot in blogging. But blogs don’t pay all that well. That’s fine if it’s a blog that requires little research, but some of the blogs I ran in 2008 required me to actually speak to sources. That’s a lot of work for what, generally, is not a lot of pay.

Finding the higher-paying publications and Web sites is no easy task. And I don’t really have much advice on how to do it. So far, I’ve found one client that pays terrific, a regional city magazine in the Southwest. The magazine is paying me more than $2,500 for one story. It’s a dream assignment, too.

I want more of those. That way, I won’t have to juggle deadlines all year long. I won’t have to sneak in blogging late in the evening all the time. And I won’t have to argue with an editor over a story that pays a measly $75.

Will I be successful? In this economy, who knows? But I’ll try. And that’s all anyone can do.

This holiday season has been a bit rough because my family during its course has lost two people due to cancer. We had our second funeral in as many weeks today.

Both funerals were sad, of course. But today’s particularly struck me. Not because of the emotion involved, but because of the emotion it lacked. The reverend who spoke didn’t know the deceased. No one from the 25 or so attendees got up to say anything. And it was all over in under a half hour.

In contrast, the first funeral we attended, about two weeks ago, was packed. At the wake the day before, people had to wait outside in the cold to get a chance to view the body. On the day of the funeral, the entire church was filled, and at the reception afterward, people lined up for the chance to tell their stories about the deceased.

Is the funeral you have an indication of the type of life you’ve left? That’s a tough one. Both deceased were good, kind people. One was more vivacious, immersed himself in his family and his community and made everyone he spoke to feel like they were the most important person in the world.

It’s hard not to imagine your own funeral at times like this. It’s hard not to hope, either, that yours is like that first one I attended two weeks ago, and not the one where the only personal item the reverend speaking could include was that the deceased was feisty.

I know a bit about real estate: I’ve written about residential real estate for more than a decade, for newspapers and trade magazines. During this time, real estate agents — and everyone involved with the buying and selling of homes, actually — have been quick to remind me just how important they are.

Agents help buyers purchase homes for a fair price. They help negotiate with sellers. They … Well, I’m sure they do something else. I just don’t know what it is.

As the rains keep coming here in the Midwest, I have this to say in response to all those real estate agents: You’re wrong. You’re not important at all. In fact, you’re rather useless.

I say this because my basement is flooding today. Again. We’ve owned our little house for three years now. This is the fifth time our basement has flooded.

As you may or may not know, sellers are required to disclose when their homes have basements that flood. Our sellers did not disclose this. In fact, they checked a box on the sales contract that said their basement was dry.

Well, either they were incredibly fortunate during the eight years they live here or they’re liars. I opt for the second.

Fine. Problem is, not one of the real estate professionals who helped us buy this house has been able to help us remedy this situation. Our real estate agent did come over the day after our first flood and frowned, tsked and sighed. But she didn’t know what else to do. We contacted the real estate attorney the state of Illinois requires in every housing transaction only to be told by him that it’s probably not worth our time to try to prove in court that our sellers lied. The home inspector who’s supposed to help find things like this was quick to cover his own butt, saying quickly that it was a dry day when he did our inspection. I’ll make sure to schedule our next home inspection, should we buy again, during a deluge.

The frustrating thing is that none of these people — most of whom we paid to look out for our interests — have done a thing to help us now that we actually need them. Sure, they’re all peppy and “helpful” when they’re completing the routine tasks that go with the buying and selling of a home. But when you actually need them to do something they don’t do 1,000 times a day, they shrug their shoulders.

The advice we’ve gotten is that we should just suck it up and pay to have the basement waterproofed. That’s what we are going to do, unfortunately. It’s just a shame that people in the real estate industry are so useless. I guess it’s no surprise that the housing industry is falling apart. For years, the people who worked in it were unethical, corrupt, lazy and stupid. Of course the industry is going to fall apart.

My wife had a sobering experience on our snowy Christmas Eve here in the Midwest. All of us — my 9-year-old son, my 14-month-old son, our 9-year-old niece, my wife and I — headed out to lunch. My wife had to make a quick stop, though, at the office of one of her bosses.

She showed up at the restaurant after the kids had ordered their pizzas and I had ordered everyone’s drinks. Turns out, she’d had a heart-to-heart with her boss. The woman is older, but not old, maybe in her mid-60s. She’s busy, and active in the community. She runs her own theater.

But she was dreading this year’s Christmas. Her mother had passed away earlier this year. And though her kids were coming home for the holidays, they were bringing along boyfriends, friends and pets. My wife’s boss wasn’t in the holiday spirit; With her mother’s death, whom she missed terribly, she would suddenly become the oldest person in the room. That kind of stinks, I’d think.

She told my wife: “Christmas is for the young.”

I wonder if that’s true. Leading up to Christmas, I certainly felt that way. It’s a drag, isn’t it, fighting the crowds at stores, running around for that last-minute gift? It’s even a pain to get some lottery tickets to throw in a stocking. (I never play the lottery and had no idea you couldn’t pay for them with a debit card. Who knew the lottery cared so much about the customers they fleece?)

But today, after the holiday parties, the shopping and the slow traffic snarled by snowstorms were all over, it was a wonderful Christmas morning here. My 9-year-old son loved his gifts. Our 14-month-old loved the wrapping paper and the empty boxes. My wife and I exchanged some nice, and relatively inexpensive, gifts. We won’t have a huge credit-card bill this season. We spent the day overeating and playing games. So it was a nice, relaxing day.

But I do understand the lament of my wife’s boss. There are times when we all wish we were kids again, right? It was nice to sit back, let the gifts come to you and not worry about any of the added stress and responsibilities that come with Christmas.

Regardless, the holiday season is just about over. New Year’s is left, and my wife has scheduled a New Year’s Day get-together at our house. But somehow New Year’s, no matter what you’re doing, never seems quite as stressful as does Christmas.

Can you imagine if we all handled our household finances the way state governments handle their budgets? There wouldn’t be a person alive who wasn’t in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure.

I live in Illinois. We’re lucky enough to have been guided for the last several years by Gov. Rod Blagojevich. You might be familiar with the name. He’s just been arrested for several things, including trying to sell to the highest bidder the vacated Senate Seat left behind by president-elect Barack Obama.

That’s embarrassing enough. Now we get the news, as reported in this story in Crain’s Chicago Business, that Illinois is nearing financial disaster. Hooray.

I’ve never quite understood why state governments have been unable to run their kingdoms without running out of money all the time. My wife comes from Michigan, which is in even worse financial shape than is Illinois. Haven’t any of these people ever balanced a budget? Haven’t they ever had to figure out if they had enough money to go to the movies and dinner on a Saturday night? And if they decided that they didn’t, did they still go and put it all on their credit cards?

I know running a state government is incredibly complicated. But still … when the economy was thriving, when the housing market was booming, didn’t any of these idiot government officials think to save a bit for the inevitable slowdown?

Much of my writing income comes from the stories I write on residential real estate. When I started covering the home-selling business, the country was in the middle of a huge housing boom. It seemed that everyone was selling their homes and making tons of money while doing it.

That, of course, has all changed. Today, no one wants to put their homes on the market. Sale prices have dipped dramatically in most major markets across the United States. And, even worse, loads of people are now struggling to make their mortgage payments, and are now facing foreclosure.

I’ve run into a lot of people who have no sympathy for people in danger of losing their homes. They peg foreclosure victims as homeowners who were simply greedy, and who purchased too much home for their income. It’s true that some foreclosure victims do fall into this category. But the vast, vast majority of them are simply people who’ve run into tough luck: They may have lost their jobs. They may have suffered a serious injury or illness. They may have been talked into an unsound adjustable-rate mortgage loan by a lender who was supposed to be looking out for their best interests.

Unfortunately, stories like this one, which ran in a recent USA Today, and which I blogged about on one of my other sites, don’t help this situation any. The story talks about homeowners who are intentionally missing their mortgage payments so that they may qualify for federal housing assistance.

It is people like this, scam artists, who create the atmosphere of cynicism that causes people to regard all foreclosure victims as either greedy, lazy or dishonest.

Losing a home is a terrible tragedy. Even missing some mortgage payments is enough to cause homeowners serious stress, shame and angst. So remember, next time you grouse about the fact that “someone is getting something for nothing,” that most foreclosure victims are hard-working folks who’ve just gotten caught up in some bad luck.

Every year, the town in which I live publishes a community guide. Like 99 percent of the population, I immediately turn to the section that lists the average household income for the area to find out where I rank.

Well, as of this moment, our household is exactly average when it comes to annual income. I don’t know if I should be relieved or horrified. Because I’m a writer, our annual household income had generally been below the average. I’m not sure if the rest of our community’s households have suffered a big dip in annual income or we’ve just grown ours enough to hit the average.

My wife and I are above average in one category: age. The average age of a resident of our Chicago suburb is 36.6. I’m about four years over that. My wife — the cradle robber — is about four-and-a-half years over it. Sigh, as if my aching knees didn’t give me clue enough, I’m officially old.

The average income thing used to be a bigger deal for me. I remember fretting that my writing income wasn’t producing enough money to purchase big-screen TVs or long, exotic vacations. But whenever I get gloomy about this, my wife reminds of one fact: As a freelance writer, I’m able to work from home. Both my wife and I have always been around for our kids. And even though we don’t have great stuff in our house, we have good-enough stuff.

She makes a lot of sense. I think we hit the high-water mark this year as far as competing with the rest of our suburb. I’m fairly certain “average” is about as high as I can aspire to without a career change. But that average salary is worth a lot more when you figure in all those office meetings and cubicle lunches I get to skip.

One of my main work-from-home jobs (well, four days of the week, at least) involves editing a trade magazine that covers commercial real estate. It’s a drag, to be honest. And these days, it’s even more of a burden because everyone in the commercial real estate industry is struggling. As bad as it is for residential real estate agents, that’s how bad it’s becoming for commercial real estate brokers.

The one part of the commercial industry that’s really struggling is retail. Seems that no one wants to fill those strip malls with mattress shops, mobile phone stores or submarine sandwich huts anymore. Instead, the strip malls are attracting a lot of “For Lease” signs.

It’s hard to feel too broken up about this. Personally, I’m awfully tired of submarine sandwich, mattress and cell phone shops, especially because I seem to drive past at least one of them every two blocks in the Chicago suburb in which I live.

It’s the same thing if you travel to other mid- to large-size cities across the country. Everyone has the same shops. If there’s a Target, you can bet there’s a Kohls nearby. If there’s a Home Depot, you can bet that a Lowe’s isn’t too far away.

Why, why, why most every single city have the same exact retailers? If I plopped you down on the suburban edges of Cleveland, you’d have no idea you weren’t in Indianapolis or Minneapolis or Milwaukee.

Now, the downtowns of these cities are a different story. Here you can still find variety. But once you leave the downtown hub? You might as well be in Anywhere, USA.

To me, this is part of the reason why retailers today are struggling. We’re burnt out of seeing a Red Lobster in every city we go to. We’re tired of running into Denny’s after Denny’s after Denny’s.

Let’s have some originality back. Let’s seek out the homegrown options, the local joints and the places that don’t have giant “M”s plastered all over them.