Comments on: Freelance Writing Jobs for Wednesday, October 24, 2007

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:23:16 +0000

Mark,

I’m familiar with OCR, have even written about it a few times. But

1) OCR is by no means fool proof, even if you use standard typefaces — almost error-free isn’t the same as error-free.

2) It’s still more labor intensive than accepting something online — so a company using that isn’t going to be price competitive with others that are more efficient, so they won’t be around for long, like other companies who have refused to upgrade to new technologies — after they’ve become proven and reasonable in price.

By: Allison

Allison — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:54:41 +0000

I write for 451 Press and make a worth-while amount of money. The pay per post method is PLUS CPM. It’s almost the same as b5 – you get rewarded for being there longer and for writing goo content. This is a change for how things used to be, just a % of the advertising because they wanted to treat their writers fairly. If you see an open topic that you love to write about, you’ll make money blogging here.

By: Mark L

Mark L — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:49:40 +0000

Phil asks “Are they going to rekey the copy?”

Phil: They use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. As long as it is typed in a standard font (Arial, Helvetica, or Times), double-spaced on white paper OCR will do an almost error-free job.

By: Phil

Phil — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:33:22 +0000

Richard,

I’d skip them, too. Are they going to rekey the copy? If so, money to do so has to come from somewhere. Those operations won’t be around long.

By: Tish Davidson

Tish Davidson — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:17:42 +0000

Richard,

I think they want snail mail submissions because the ease of sending e-mail submissions makes it easy for writers to send simultaneous submissions to many publications and to send submissions that are not appropriate to the publication. By requesting a submission route that takes the writer more time and costs money, I suspect they weed out a lot of the “oh well, I’ll try that market just in case my story works for them, even though it isn’t what they say they are looking for since it doesn’t cost anything and only takes a couple of clicks. As you indicated, many writers tend to skip the snail mail market. Unfortunately writers who scattershot e-submit make it harder for appropriate e-submissions to get an editor’s attention. (Note: I’m not suggesting that you e-submit inappropriately, only that a lot of usually inexperienced writers do, resulting in the no e-submissions rule).

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:45:58 +0000

Thanks for the heads up on 451 Press. American Profile appears in weekly and daily newspapers.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:39:13 +0000

In this day of computers, why do some magazines and publications still want you to use snail mail to submit stories or queries?

A few years ago, I wanted to submit a short story to a sci-fi magazine. They have a Website, the the editor has an e-mail address, but they want submissions sent through the mail. No e-mail submissions–not even the plain text ones that leave no threat for a virus from an attachment.

Publications like this are ones I’m inclined to skip. It costs me nothing to e-mail a query or a manscript, but snail mail is a whole new game.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:30:19 +0000

I don’t know of many who’ve made more than pennies at 451 press. However, when I wrote for them I didn’t know that there was a pay-per-post option. I was very disappointed with the whole experience, but perhaps my expectations were too high.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:27:13 +0000

Ann – they do pay per post now, but you have to meet minimum requirements for your post to qualify as a paid post, and it’s still very, very little. And there’s a cap on what you can be paid per post per month.

By: Ann G.

Ann G. — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:40:16 +0000

Those who look at 451 Press. I worked for them for a couple months – payment at that time was a percentage of ad sales only and I never saw a dime. Things may have changed, but for me it was a lot of work for no payment.