This Remote Writing Gig made Me feel like I was in High School

Ask for clear standards from clients

Two years ago, a company found me as a freelance writer netting me $409. The odd thing about this assignment was the company was located overseas and they found me on social media.

It’s crazy how social media did a good thing for once.

The site I was hired from was LinkedIn in case you were wondering.

Let me tell you it wasn’t all bright roses as it sounds like I had a few thorns working with this company. I won’t mention the company by name but I will discuss some issues I encountered.

This will give you some ideas in case a company approaches you in the future, so you know what to ask them.

The Job

For this role, the company’s lead manager or recruiter found me on LinkedIn. I thought it was cool and would bring in a little extra pocket change. Personally, I wasn’t looking for a writing gig at the time but the gig found me.

LinkedIn can work in your favor if you have the right keywords in your profile. I won’t go into full detail on LinkedIn in this article but will I in the future. Recruiters are looking online for writers and LinkedIn can be the tool to help you.

Basically, I think I was very lucky to come in contact with the recruiter who was looking for someone at the right time through our connection on LinkedIn.

About a month after we connected online, she offered me a temporary writing position.

My Role

For this assignment, I worked with an editor for the company and we communicated over email and Skype since she was also located overseas.

Her English wasn’t perfect but I understood her when we talked or conversed over email.

Basically, I had to create templates for guests traveling to a new area for vacation or business. Some of the information I needed appeared on popular travel websites that I’m sure you have heard of before and possibly used.

I had to do the research from different websites and compile the information together in 500 words or so.

I blocked out about an hour or two at the end of the day so I could work on the articles.

After I would submit my draft, the editor would send back my document with corrections to make. This sounds easy so far, but now comes the hard part.

Articles to Create

The editor would send me a list of assignments and I would get started. She gave me a timeline and I agreed I could get them done in that window.

Basically, I was given a list of about 20 articles to create in 10 to 14 days. I figured I could write two or three articles a day and then have time to correct them.

All of the articles I wrote on Microsoft Word while I referenced four different websites.

The Issues

Do you remember when you were in school and the teacher put red ink all over your paper? Well, that’s how it was when I turned in my work.

I had to learn what they wanted to see in terms of how to fit their writing standards. Teachers liked to see their students write a certain way to fit their guidelines.

After I started to do this, then the editor picked out more things for me to correct. I believe there must have been another editor or two I wasn’t aware of.

Once I would make the correction after my initial draft, I would receive more corrections for a different part of my article.

Or they wanted me to correct part of an article I already corrected.

As you can guess, after a while, this was getting frustrating. The company kept changing the standard which I was used to. To me, they didn’t have a standard.

The Time

Researching and creating the article didn’t take long at all. I would estimate that I could put an article together in an hour or two at the most. Then I would move on to the next article.

After I would submit and recorrect the articles, I got frustrated since I was going back and forth with the editor to fix something with the article.

Normally there would be a two to three-day lapse after I submitted the articles. I’m sure the editor had other things to do and I wasn’t her priority which was fine.

I had to keep a good record of where I found the information in the article since I had to clarify the data sometimes. I had to verify the travel time between the airport to the hotel or if there were other ways to travel to the hotel if it wasn’t by taxi.

Things to Consider

Writing your own blog has some leeway. You are not tied down to too many rules even though some publications have a few you should make note of. But for the most part, writing for yourself is not easy at all.

When you write for a company, then you are working under their requirements. So you will be limited a little more.

Would I ever work for another company again as a writer?

Of course. I wouldn’t pass it up.

If I did work for another company, I would ask some more questions to understand my requirements a little better.

I do like the freedom to write my own articles but I wouldn’t turn down an offer to write for other companies.

Have you ever written for other companies?

What was it like?