Enjoyed these. Good article, Splinter. You will surely hear from a POTATO or two -

... and yet, progress IS creeping in. A year ago, the weekly itinerant markets dealt only in cash. Now cash payments are well in the minority, with people quickly paying through their cell phones.

The last paragraph definitively negates the thought I had entertained at the beginning of the column - that at least the UK wouldn’t be saddled with the new regulatory burdens. So much for the notion that there might be even one advantage of Brexit.

Quote from Splinter

Those damned EU pencil pushers again!

The EU Wants To Cripple The Internet

Good piece. I am certainly not against the way the European Commission has gone after big tech in recent years. However, as is often the case, it's the little people who will be most harmed by the regulations.

Sounds so simple. SOUNDS.

Jim the Aussie, according to our database, has published 1291 articles on Dave's Computer Tips to date! That doesn't include the huge numbers that were lost during the 2012 database debacle.

Thank you for your continued support, Splinter!

I joined a tech news website in 2016, left earlier this year. I wrote around 5800 articles during that time haha.

Really, there was a time when I was doing Splinter and Jim's article count in a few months across various clients. I used to send 100 a month to one insurance client, who I am still with but thankfully writing much less for without losing money.

I am writing 6-7 articles this morning.

What's interesting is I often presumed speed was always going to be a trade off with quality. In other words, speed automatically means errors and probably disinterest from high-paying clients. In some cases this is true. I will give you a breakdown of my morning (7am to around 12pm). So, I do five articles for a client I have. The general criteria for these articles is placing one keyword and anchor into the text. These articles are often on one subject and the keyword on an entirely different subject. Placing ths keyword is the hardest part of the articles, which are around 500 words.

I can write 500 words in around 30 mins and I am a stream of thought writer so what I think comes out. So, if I know the subject I reel off one of those articles in about 40 mins (arsing around with the keyword placement and editing). So, that will take me around 3 hours but probably a bit less. Each of those articles pays me $25, so $125 for the batch. A fairly awful rate to be fair, but I have been with the client years and he offers consistent work. It works out to around $40 per hour for this batch. Solid but unspectacular but the quality of the writing does not have to stand out (the keyword is the most important).

I will then write two 1000 word articles which will be more complicated. I spent an hour yesterday researching and "building" the structure of the articles, which are insurance. I am a specalist insurance writer so know the subject well. Today it's a case of putting down the words, which combined 2,000 will take me around 2-2.5 hours. These articles pay $60 each and are for a relatively big UK insurer so the quality cannot be average.

Ok, so today I will work around 6 hours (unless it all falls apart and I put YouTube on) and earn $240, or exactly $40 per hour. Not bad. My average daily work has now gone down to 2-4 hours because I changed my approach earlier this year and started charging more. I am now writing 3 or 4 articles per day and making more than I was when I was writing 15 a day. However, the thing stopping me continuing to write 15 a day and earn even more is simply a dip in available work this year. Also, I am writing 3 articles a day for a client who is extremely low paying but I have been with for years. I get just $15 a day for those articles, but they take me an hour to write them all so I tolerate it. The extra daily article is typically for an higher paying client that makes the 2-4 hours I work highly worth my time.

Over 10 years, a university degree, and just writing thousands of words each day I class speed as perhaps my best asset. I mentioned I assumed speed would mean high-paying customers would not be interesed. That's not true in my case because ultimately they don't know how long I take to write. For example, my main insurance client (which is Canada's largest online insurance websites and 70% of my income) gives me 7-day deadlines for a 500-1000 word article. I hand in the article on the 7th day (always do this if you're interested in doing freelance writing) and of course they assume I have been working on it through the seven days, researching, prepping, writing, and maybe even drafting. Instead, I typically wake up on the morning of 7th day, check what I have to write, spend half hour to an hour researching and an hour to write and clean it up. This company demands quality but has never complained so I guess my speed does not compromise the quality, at least when I ensure it doesn't.

I guess this post may belong in the humble brag thread, but I like to explain how this freelance writer thing works sometimes because people are sometimes curious. Also, you can add another half hour onto my work time today because I have just written 600 words here.

This DCT article helps clarify Argentines’ everyday economic and monetary problems, for people in parts of the world where these policies are unthinkable.

Interesting, I do a couple of small gigs with professional magazines based in the USA. I wonder if they will ask me for the same - just did 1200 dollars of work in the first quarter/ So I must get my invoice away pronto before Uncle Sam hits my nice friend in Florida for my details.