Just sayin'
But, since we're already on the topic of unemployed writers, if you know of anyone who needs one...
Asking for a friend, of course.
Just sayin'
But, since we're already on the topic of unemployed writers, if you know of anyone who needs one...
Asking for a friend, of course.
Asking for a friend as in a friend who happens to possess qualifications roughly equal to yours?Originally Posted by Acid
Last edited by Tortilla; 06-17-2009 at 09:25 AM.
Acid, try looking around the Absolute Write forums. They have a section for 'paying gigs' and whatnot. Of course, the entire genepool there is made up of writers, but I don't know your qualifications or specialty, so for all I know you might find something useful to you without too much competition in your particular market.
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php
Thanks!
Kraaze: Something like that.
There's no need to be coy about being unemployed. It's the in thing right now! Sorry to hear about it, though.
When I got laid off a few months ago I was a bit bummed but have used the extra free time to start a new exercise regimen and finish a novel. Oh, and look for work, of course. Stay positive and network like crazy.
Extremetech has been shut down. :(
Not just Joel, but Loyd, Jason, and the rest are out on the street, another ZD casualty. Good luck to everyone.
You'll all be missed. Fantastic work over the years, and I listened to the podcast every week.
What!?! Nooooo. Man that sucks.
Oh. That stinks, too. I guess anyone still with ZD at this point should expect the same, but still. Not fun. Good luck to all involved.
Yeah, that bites. Good luck to everyone affected in finding new work.
Heck, I remember *buying* Extremetech when it was an actual magazine. What a disaster the management from ZD has been.
I really enjoyed that site too and will miss the content. I hope every one of you lands on your feet quickly.
I hope everyone finds jobs fast. At least as fast as they want/need too. You guys were the best. The only tech site I visited daily.
Oh man, what a bummer. Let me add my sympathies to those that have already been expressed, and my wishes that everyone involved lands on their feet.
Yeah, but to be fair, print is really struggling right now and people still haven't come up with a good formula for monetizing internet content. Even with better management, ZD would be struggling.
Newspapers are struggling too. There was a recent meeting of newspaper publishers and there was a lot of talk about newspapers putting their content back behind a paywall, which will never work. We're in the middle of a revolution in the way we get content, and it's a mess right now. The old structures are coming down but the new structures aren't visible yet.
Good essay by Clay Shirky about all this.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03...e-unthinkable/
There is no print at Ziff-Davis any longer. That ended when EGM was shut down. PC Magazine went all digital back at the start of the year.
It does suck, but I was at ET for nine years, so I'm actually looking forward to moving on. (Ask me how I feel about this in four months, though.)
Loyd Case
Best of luck, gentlemen.
9 years? Now I feel old. I still think of ET as some new start up.
All I can suggest is http://www.indeed.com
Since it aggregates Craigslists from around the world, you may find an "editor at large" type position: something you can do where you are, but that's not necesarily posted on your local Craigslist. For fun, you can even filter by pay and find some jobs over $100,000 a year.
It's bloody out there now. Lots of editors and writers looking, so write a snappy, funny cover letter to get attention.
Also, apply to Examiner.com for a blog. Msg me for details on that. It's not a lot of money, but if you can pimp your blog, they pay per hit.
Poopy :(
What's so ironic is that it seems like there's never been a time where content was more in demand, but the internet has created an oversupply of creators. We are all creators. We are all willing to blog. We are all willing to write for free. Crazy times.
Yes, no matter if you're doing tech reviews or a webcomic you have to find a niché and be first or convince a group of people to pay for quality. You could also go after being biggest, but that a longshot and still being biggest means lots of content made by underpaid writers, so that's only cool if you're the owner.
Tough thing is that a lot of the good creative people don't know how to market themselves and get the eyeballs/revenue that they deserve. It's the same problem they had in print, too bad the web doesn't have as good of a way to generate revenue as the old media did. hopefully that's a yet.
Mark you have to admit that a LOT of the content out there is subpar. I read my blogs all the time and ask why the hell I've subscribed to them. The web needs some better editors, which is actually pretty much what the most successful blogs are.
Blogs suck.
Anyhow, in other, unrelated news, I started a blog. I'm going to link to it in my final ExtremeTech column, which will appear on Thursday the 25th.
It's live, but it's in hibernation for a few more days. It's just a way that my 2 or 3 fans, if I have that many, can follow me as I freelance, which I'll do until I (hopefully) land another FT gig.
I'll write for porn!
I've got some great plot ideas!
I don't wanna ruin it, but it's about a guy who answers the door.
Oh, wait, and yeah, there's this other idea I have, where this chick, she answers the door.
Aww, man, you totally ruined it.
Oh I know -- there's a lot of poor content. There's even a lot of professional content that people get paid to write that isn't all that interesting. The internet has opened the floodgates. Stuff that would never make it out of a print publication's slush pile now gets top billing on a blog site.
Orangebloods.com, a site I pay $10/month for, is making money. It's small-scale, but it gets its money by simply being the best reporting on Longhorn Sports available. They even managed to steal Chip Brown away from the Dallas Morning News, which benefits both us subscribers and Chip (especially now that the DMN has cut its staff so heavily).
The key to its success was the War Room, a weekly subscribers-only article that gives up-to-the-minute high school recruiting information that was unavailable anywhere else. Now granted, only the hardest of the hardcore fans go for this sort of thing, but then due to the substantially smaller overhead of running a site vs. running a print organization, you don't need to appeal to such a large market.
So I think the future of media is this: Exclusive information for subscribers only that appeals to smaller market segments. Like Consumer Reports' archive access, or The Economist's research data.
Yeah now we know what a million monkeys typing for a million years would really produce.
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