Huey ... chillin'.

My dog, Huey, has a past. But don’t we all?

His past, however, may not be as checkered as the rest of ours.

Before we purchased Huey, we were looking for a very small Jack Russel Terrier (JRT), like the one on the old TV show Frasier. We already had Elle, a very small JRT that weighed less than 10 pounds, and wanted to mate her.

On our quest to find a mate for Elle, we combed through local newspapers, online pet-selling sites, Craigslist and dog rescues. We found an ad in the KC Star that caught our attention, but it was way out in the boonies of Western Missouri.

As we started our trek to the home of the dog we later would call Huey, we found ourselves driving late in the evening through winding roads that led to a dirt road on which the property was supposed to reside. The seller told me her home was about 1.5 miles off the paved road. She said we’d have no trouble finding it, because she just added on a huge wraparound porch.

Assuming it was a large home, we drove that 1.5 miles without seeing one home with a “huge wraparound porch.” After retracing our tracks two or three times, our eyes finally fell on a small home set quite a ways back from the road with a small added on porch. Wraparound, it was not. Huge? Far from it, but we did find it about 1.5 miles off the paved road.

My husband approached the front door to find that this was, indeed, the home of the seller who said she had a huge wraparound porch — I guess those things are all relative. It made me wonder, though, about her perception of size.

When I called, I was clear that I only wanted a small Jack Russell, not over 10 pounds full-grown. She told me the parents (of the puppies, that is) were only about 11″ tall, maybe 20″ long and maybe 12 pounds full-grown. I was okay with that, since Elle was so small.

After entering the home, we noticed two fairly large adult dogs and two other dogs that weren’t much smaller than the adults — the puppies were supposed to be only 12 weeks old. My husband was a talker, so after maybe 15 minutes of chatting, I finally asked the seller about the whereabouts of the puppies. As I feared, the puppies were the humongous monsters running about under our feet.

I felt deceived. She led me to believe she had SMALL adult dogs, a HUGE wraparound front porch and SMALL puppies. Not one adjective she used was a true description of any of those things. Those puppies looked like they were full-grown JRTs, except for their over-the-top energy and exuberance.

Michelle, our youngest.

Though shocked and confused, I tried, as politely as possible, to excuse myself to make a phone call to our teenage daughter, Michelle. She was the one who really wanted a puppy as Elle’s mate. I was hoping she would be so disappointed that she wouldn’t want either puppy.

To my surprise, she said she wouldn’t mind having one. I did not want a puppy that large and told the sellers that we really were looking for something smaller. On our way to leave, the sellers told us they’d sell both puppies for the price of the one. My husband responded that we did not come all that way to leave without one, so we ended up purchasing one of the puppies. I couldn’t believe it.

We left with this 7-pound “puppy” that was thrilled to be out of that place.

Honestly, the family could’ve been featured on the TV series Swamp People. I’m not sure that they had all their teeth and I got the feeling the husband was kind of abusive — not that any of the Swamp People are abusive, but I just got a feeling about that guy. With that in mind, I chose the puppy that seemed most abused. I knew my daughter would lavish love on him and make him feel very loved.

The registration papers they sent with us were for a UK JRT, which are much larger dogs that American JRTs. He was such a large puppy, I thought his registered name should relate to his size, so I named him Baby Huey. If you remember, Baby Huey was an extremely over-sized baby duckling cartoon character, so we thought it was only appropriate to register our new puppy with the same name — only we called him Huey.

That was almost 10 years ago. In his younger years, he gnawed through the expensive antique wood trim on our bedroom door frame; ran across the street to bark at children at school thinking they were in his “yard;” and incessantly chased motorcycles, cars and large trucks. He tipped the scales at 31 pounds, a far cry from either of his parents — I’m thinking his mother had an illicit affair with the milkman’s dog.

Not a day went by during the first two years of his life that I did not want to get rid of him.

In 2004, our youngest daughter graduated from high school and left home … without Huey. We gave Elle to our oldest and Huey was the only dog left in the home. It was not immediate, but over the next few months I gained an affinity for Huey. He became the only dog for me. He was my protector and friend.

He stopped chasing cars, kids and people a couple of years ago … finally. He still barks at things that he knows shouldn’t normally be there — a motorcycle parked in our driveway due to a visitor, a car parked along the street that usually isn’t there and the trash can set out on the curb on Thursdays. Like I said, he’s my protector. He isn’t always the smartest about what to protect me from, but he tries.

Even though his life with us had a rocky start, he’s turned out to be the best dog ever … because he’s mine. Huey. The dog. The legend.

Do you have any pet stories you’d like to share?

In the wee hours of January 23, 2012, I lost not just a friend, but my best friend and the love of my life. We were married over 28 years and have two beautiful grown girls. We had the type of marriage where we could be together 24 hours a day and it not be enough. We had our occasional quarrels, but mostly we simply enjoyed spending time together.

He had an infectious laugh and the best sense of humor. Not only was he handsome, but he was one of the most brilliant men I’ve ever known.

In regards to his health, Willie had a couple of diseases that disabled him, but not to the point of causing his death. It was a surprise and devastation for me and our girls.

We did not know for three weeks after he died – until the toxicology report came back — what he died from. Although he had one artery going into the heart that was 80% blocked near the entrance to the heart, the coroner ruled that it was an accidental overdose of Fentanyl.

Like many sufferers of advanced interstitial cystitis (a serious debilitating bladder condition), Willie used a Fentanyl patch for pain relief, among other oral prescription pain killers. Fentanyl is the same drug terminal cancer sufferers use to help manage pain while awaiting death.

Apparently, the patch leaked allowing a high toxicity level of the drug into his bloodstream and that is what caused his demise … and our great loss. The patch used to have issues like this, but was taken off the market for a while to correct the issue. It appears there may still be a problem with  it.

For the first four-and-a-half weeks after his death, I could do nothing but cry every day and wish he’d taken me with him. I accepted a brick-and-mortar job in early July of last year, because my writing jobs were not paying enough. I was working evenings until just this week when I go to days, so I was not even there when he passed away.

My girls and I still question why, but are working hard at finding our new “normal,” whatever that is. Friends and family are doing their best to help that along. I couldn’t ask for a stronger support system at home and at work, and I’ve always been able to count on our blogging membership here for support. Please know that you can count on me, too.

To combat the grief, I’m keeping myself busy with activities and cultivating relationships I did not have time for before. It helps pass the time and I think it will help the healing process along.

It is now that I need my blogging community more than ever. I need your prayers and support to get us through this. I need your friendships to continue and will definitely stay in touch and keep you updated if you are interested. If you need something from me for which I can assist, please don’t hesitate to ask.

I want you to know that if I will help if I can.

Thank you for all your wonderful support and encouragement in the past, and I look forward to continued relationships going forward.

To all of you – God bless!

In short, you are a hero to someone — maybe even a lot of someones.

Let me give you some examples:

• Do you leave occasional comments on other blogs?
• Have you smiled at a stranger lately?
• Do you show respect and shake hands with people you meet professionally?
• Do you sometimes hold the door for others on the elevator?
• Have you bent down to the level of a child and acknowledged them?
• Do you occasionally give to charity?
• Do you offer to open the door for the handicapped?

Not only do you need a standard introductory email ready, but have you heard the old cliché “the early bird gets the worm?” This is literally true in the freelance job application world. The first app’s received are the ones that get the most attention from hiring companies.

Increased competition makes it necessary to provide a stellar introduction and be one of THE first responses to a writing job ad that a company receives.

Introductory Email

The contents of the intro email are critical for the hiring company to quickly decide whether they are interested in your writing talent. Keep in mind, these companies receive literally hundreds of applications for each writing position posted. They typically peruse responses they receive to see if any peak their interest. You want yours to stand out.

Create a standard introductory email (see an early one of mine here) you will tailor for specific job ads as follows:

• Begin your intro email noting your interest and where you found the job ad (include the link to the ad and modify for each response to a job ad).
• Briefly define your professional freelance writing experience — include writing experience in jobs previous to freelance writing — e.g., if you wrote on technical topics or produced user manuals in a previous position, include that in your intro email.
• Include three links to articles you’ve authored for other companies.
• Include the link to your blog or website at the end of your closing (after your name) – subliminal promotion.
• Try to limit your email to five paragraphs and 400 words — my standard intro email has 440 words.
• Copy the entire intro email into MS Word. Do a thorough proofread and spell check. Correct all misspelled words and grammatical errors — the content must be impeccably articulated and punctuated.

Modify Intro Email

Every writing job ad is different, so you’ll want to tailor your intro email to the writing job advertised.

Do the following when adapting your standard intro email to respond to a specific job ad:

• If the ad includes a specific person to send it to, include that name in your greeting.
• In the job ad, many companies include the website or blog on which the content will rest – visit the site and pay attention to the type of articles posted and the style in which they are written.
• Respond to each of the job requirements in the ad – e.g., if the ad says experience in writing on a particular topic is critical, indicate the companies for which you wrote on that particular topic or your professional experience working in that particular field.
• If the ad does not include specific job requirements, include your writing experience relative to the topics on which the company posts.
• Includes links to articles you’ve authored that directly relate to the topic noted in the job ad or are similar to those found on the company’s website or blog – if gardening, then include gardening topics, etc.

Include Relative Past Experience

Don’t overstate your abilities, but don’t understate them, either. Many writers I know don’t take into account writing experience from previous positions, because it fell under a professional title not related specifically to writing. For example, as a project manager, I wrote about specific emerging technologies, created business cases and authored customer requirements. I include all that writing experience in my intro email.

Finally, allow your intro email to naturally evolve as your experience broadens. I think you’ll find it “matures” over time.

Tell us what tools you use to introduce yourself and apply for posted writing job ads.

First Stab at It

Take out a pen and paper — okay, you can use your computer — and brain storm about ideas you might use to write a book, ebook or short story for publishing or that you will later submit to a contest. If nothing specific comes quickly to mind, just jot down the first things you see in your office or surroundings. Visit another scene if you have to — a park or a library. Fill the page with random ideas. Insert a table in MS Word if you need more space and insert columns for your ideas.

Keep in mind the following:

• What type of books or stories do you most enjoy reading?
• About which ideas are you most knowledge or desire to be more knowledgeable?
• Is there a topic on which you’ve desired to write but never got around to it?
• Well-covered topics are okay to jot down if you think you can write on them from an unusual or not-yet perceived perspective.
• Don’t limit ideas the first time around — remember, you’re brain-storming!

Once you have all your ideas where you can see and assess them:

• Pick out ten that mean the most to you and make the most sense for your time, interest and resources.
• List them out on a separate piece of paper or Word document, numbering them 1 to 10 in priority — “1″ being the most important to you and “10″ as the least important.
• Rate highly the ones that stir a passion or sense of a cause in you.
• Consider the ideas for which resources are most readily available.
• Stay away from obscure topics, unless it is a passion and you are somewhat knowledge on the topic — CAVEAT: If you are passionate about something on which you are not knowledgeable, but have a strong desire to become more of an expert, then go for it!
• Delete the ones on which you are least knowledgeable and have the least interest on which to write.

Ready, Set, Write!

Now that you have your topic, it’s time to write about it. Most people have a difficult time getting started on a writing project for themselves. An accomplished writing friend of mine gave me some of the best advice for that, and I’ve added my own two cents, as well:

• The first thing you do every morning is write one page of your manuscript — about 500 words.
• Set aside at least 15 minutes to accomplish this.
• If you want to do editing on previous content, wait until you have the additional page written for the morning.
• Don’t seriously critique your work until you have a heavy first draft written.
• It’s important to keep your manuscript private until you have a heavily edited first draft — there’s something to be said about all those ideas percolating and simmering until the first edited draft emerges with them on paper.
• Once you’re comfortable with your edited draft, have a close friend initially critique it — someone you know is tactful and sensitive.
• At some point, you need a professional eye to critique your work and give you feedback — with all the pro writers that visit this blog, there might be some who would help each other out.

• Name the genre — action/adventure, fantasy, comedy, etc. — more extensive list at Writing.com.
• Know your audience — determine who your audience will be — great info here at Colorado State University.
• Decide on a timeline — she suggested six months for an average 300-page book.

You might be a writer that blogs or a blogger that writes for a living, but both of these scenarios require spectacular spelling and perfect punctuation skills.

Why is it so important to perfectly portend and punctuate your penned opinions? As a writer, everything you author reveals your skill to people. Include run-on sentences, leave out a period, write “there” when you should have used “their,” and your skills come into question.

Not only that, but it looks sloppy and implies that you don’t care about the quality of your writing.

In the writing arena, if you want to make top dollar for your skills, you must show you have top-notch writing skills worth paying the big bucks for.

Showcase Your Skills

A blog is one of the best venues to showcase your skills and advertise your expertise. What some writers don’t realize is that their blog is a showcase of their skills. Potential clients visit the blogs of writers applying for work to check out the:

• Quality of the writer’s skill.
• Topics on which the writer blogs.
• Tone and voice of the writer — e.g., Is the writer upbeat or contentious? Does the writer provoke controversy or deep thinking?
• Overall aesthetics of the blog — I believe this is more of a subconscious act — again, speaks to the perception of quality.
• Page rank and other SEO factors.

Writing Strategies

Some strategies I use to promote my blog and writing skills include leaving comments on other blogs, interacting on social websites and creating quality posts for my blog.

I try to comment on other’s blogs as often as possible for a variety of reasons:

• Over time, visits and comments help their page ranking – and they almost always (if not always) reciprocate.
• Allows backlinking to my own blog — if it’s a popular blog, then my blog benefits from it.
• It makes me visible to many who may not know me — they check out (and sometimes subscribe to) my blog, because they see my comment on someone else’s blog.

Interacting on social websites provides me many advantages and benefits:

• Promotes my work and brings in new subscribers to my blog.
• I’ve gained new clients due to interacting on these sites.
• Enables me to develop relationships with others in the same profession (networking) – I support other writers and they support me.
• I’ve developed many, what I believe will be, life-long friendships.

Creating quality posts meets a variety of needs:

• Presents content worth reading and revisiting.
• Showcases my talent – hopefully in a good light!
• Allows me to practice my writing skills.
• Creates a broader portfolio of work.
• I get to write on what I want to write on.

In doing the above, some strategies necessary to promote your writing and ensure your writing skills are always viewed favorably are:

• Write clear, crisp, concise content (3C’s).
• Pay attention to punctuation and spelling, even when leaving a comment on someone else’s blog.
• Write complete sentences.
• Pay attention to the use of homonyms — words that sound the same, but have different meanings — e.g., their, there, they’re and bald, bawled and balled.
• Don’t be negative and critical of the blog on which you comment, but do be factual — it’s okay to challenge information you find on a blog if you’re respectful in doing so.

Become very conscious and careful of your writing skills. It may seem tedious in the beginning, but you’ll get used to it in no time and feel like you’ve always written that way.

What strategies do you use to promote your writing skills?

• Exercise
• Clean my house
• Watch the boob tube
• Play my online games
• Take care of my gardens/yard
• Take my dog for walks
• Visit with neighbors
• Finish all the craft projects I’ve bought
• Read all the books I’ve started
• Sew
• And a whole lot of other things …

One thing I realize, though, is that when something is important to me, I find time to do it. In all honestly, I find time to do all of the above in measured portions, because they are all important to me.

Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S., associate editor at Psych Central, wrote a time-management article based on a book authored by Laura Vanderkam entitled 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. One of the people highlighted in the book is Theresa Daytner — wife, mother of six (including twins) and owner of a seven-figure revenue business. She’s even helping her 21-year old plan a wedding.

How does she do it all?

According to Daytner, we have time to do everything we want to do … if we learn how to manage our time effectively. We have time to take the kids to school, write so many articles a day, coach Little League, go on dates, work a full-time job, clean the house AND sleep at least 7 hours.

Who would’ve thunk it?!

Daytner firmly believes that time is precious and everything she does in life is a choice. I agree with that, but I think it takes a great amount of acting purposefully. We must be fully conscious of our time and how we use it if we want to do the things that matter most.

One of Daytner’s time management secrets is to hire some things out, so she can have time for family and important events and tasks. That’s my goal — to have enough income to begin hiring out some of my writing jobs, yard work and tasks that are not so pleasant or time-consuming.

I highly recommend reading Tartakovsky’s article and making note of the suggested tips. I am mulling them over this week to see where I can gain more time to do the things that matter to me the most. My favorite is “6. Spend your spare minutes doing joyful activities.”

What is yours?

Baby Declan Jace

Little Declan Jace

I have friends, Jason and Kim, who just lost their baby boy, Declan Jace, yesterday. My heart grieves for them.

You see, they found Declan in his bed not breathing several days ago, rushed him to the hospital, and the terrible saga began.

“How does this relate to writing?” you might ask.

Right after finding Declan, Jason and Kim created a Facebook group to keep all of their friends abreast of the developments. Over the past few days, they journaled Declan’s status and their family’s ups and downs regarding the incident, and ultimately Declan’s untimely and tragic death, through detailed posts.

All this relates to writing and how it can help heal those who experience tragedy and trauma in their lives.

Healing Through Writing

After doing an Internet search on the term “healing through writing,” I found a goldmine of relative and expert sources that support the notion that writing helps people heal from trauma/tragedy. They all say it’s therapeutic.

Some of the sites that articulated it best are as follows:

• Kaiser Permanente — Health Systems post — Healing Through the Written Word.
• Read My Story blog — Healing Through Writing.
• One Year of Writing and Healing blog — the entire blog
• Cinco Vidas blog — Can We Find Healing Through Writing?

There are many others that offer excellent information and advice on the topic, too. I suggest you do the search and check them all out.

Although Jason and Kim are in shock after saying goodbye to their baby boy yesterday, they continue to share their thoughts. They probably will for several days until after Declan’s memorials services.

The experts I found believe that doing this promotes healing in our emotions and even in our physical bodies. The words written on paper give voice to the experience and set us free to live, instead of staying in that place where the tragedy occurred.

The words help us move on. Not that we lose sight of the pain or the loss, but, instead, we learn to embrace the emotions of that moment, to experience every aspect of it … and allow us permission to eventually move on.

Right now, I believe the posts that Jason and Kim are sharing are a healthy expression of their emotions and have become an inspiration to others. It may also be that others are experiencing healing in reading the posts and sharing their own stories in the thread.

Jason, Baby Declan and Kim

I believe Jason and Kim are a great example of how writing can be used as a tool for healing.

The Challenge

Most of the people I know have experienced a tragedy or two in their lifetimes. Most of the audience reading this is made up of writers.

My challenge to each of you who have a traumatic memory or have experienced tragedy is to sit down, make an outline of the timeline of the trauma/tragedy and write a paper about it. You don’t even have to share it with anyone — just write it.

Below is a sample outline:

• Life before the trauma/tragedy
• The trauma/tragedy — events surround it — what precipitated it (if anything) and what actually occurred
• Life following the trauma/tragedy — how it impacted/changed your life
• How you responded to the change — positive and negative
• Summary of how you’ve healed from it — if not yet healed, your discovery of that and your next steps/goals to arrive at healing

Keep in mind, this is just a sample.

This YouTube video provides some good pointers for getting the emotions down on paper.

In writing an expression of your trauma/tragedy, please say a prayer for my friends, Jason and Kim, that they will be strong through this most difficult of times.

Please share with us your stories and what steps you took to heal from the trauma/tragedy.

Condoleezza "Condi" Rice

My husband, Willie, bought and read a book a while back written by Mary Beth Brown that he said I should read. The subject was Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State under the junior Bush administration. The title is Condi: The Life of a Steel Magnolia. Reading into it, I found some things that resonate in me as they relate to writing and life in general.

Regardless of your political affiliation, I think you might find them helpful.

While speaking at the Boston College commencement in 2006, Ms. Rice shared her opinion on education and listed “five important responsibilities of educated people.” I believe these are also responsibilities of those who want to achieve success in writing.

They are as follows:

1. Find Your Passion – you may not even be aware of what it is yet. I know writers often have a passion to write, so that’s why they do what they do. I also believe, though, that there is a passion within the writing that we all have but may have yet to discover it. For instance, I knew I had a passion to write about law, so I found a way to do that. I had a passion to write books, but never came up with a subject on which I was comfortable writing. An acquaintance knew I wrote for a living and asked me to write a book with him. After I started helping him, he referred me to a co-worker who has a great human story to tell and I jumped on the offer to write it for her. I realized my gateway to writing books on a broader scale may come from helping these two people write their stories.

2. Use Your Reason – I always tell my followers and those who will listen to use your head and your heart — reason AND passion. I believe there are God-given desires each of us have placed in our hearts that we need to fulfill. Exercise reason WITH passion and it will have a tendency to keep you balanced in life. Our emotions or passion may draw us one direction. When we reason it out, though, we may realize a totally new, more-balanced direction. Sometimes, however, our reasoning negates our passion, but don’t let it be THE overpowering force. I liken reason to the rudder that controls our passion. We may have a whole lotta passion, but that small rudder guides us to safety and our next destination, where our passion will be a little more satisfied.

3. Cultivate Humility – Reject false pride. No one is perfect and no one has arrived at success without a variety of mitigating factors. Don’t think that because you are successful that you have anything more to offer or are any more special than anyone else in the writing world. As Condi says, “Never assume that your own sense of entitlement has gotten you what you have or that it will get you what you want.” Be grateful for your status or success (regardless of what it is) and cultivate humility.

4. Be Optimistic – Always. Are you struggling in your writing? Maybe you’re having difficulty finding good writing jobs or people tell you that your talent needs honing. I’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt and been there again. If you’re meant to write, it always turns around (exercise reason with that passion) – if you hang in there long enough, work hard enough and are meant to continue writing.

5. Serve Others. I find this to be one of the most fulfilling exercises in life. I serve my husband and children in any way I can. I serve my church, community, friends, several non-profit groups and my writing community in every way possible. This has a tendency to take the focus off of yourself and your own problems and help be part of the solution for others. I love that!

These five responsibilities resonate in me and I practice them every opportunity I get. What responsibilities do you exercise that fulfill you?

How Is Your Worth Measured?

As a writer, your worth is measured by what others are willing to pay you and by what you are willing to accept. Although you have the ability to reject what others offer to pay you, you also need to make an income.

Once I accepted a job to write 10 articles for $10 each. They were 300-word articles. That’s $.03 per word and not something I ordinarily do. So, why did I accept it? I did so based on three reasons:

• It enabled me to gain experience writing on law topics — I now use these examples to market my wares to law firms (love writing for law firms!).
• I had some extra time and didn’t mind writing for the law firm.
• It supplemented my income.

My Personal Current Worth

I don’t typically accept a writing job for less than $.05 per word, and currently receive $.10 per word. With all the layoffs in the U.S. and foreign competition, however, it is now more difficult to find great-paying writing jobs. The reason is that many laid off U.S. professionals, like me, turn to writing while they look for other, better-paying work.

Although I love receiving high wages for writing articles, that may not always be the case. With that in mind, what choices are there?

Strategies to Accepting Writing Jobs

I would like to think that I choose my own worth, but the market also dictates the worth of a writer. Although your skills may be worth a lot to some companies, others have fixed budgets, and some are just plain cheap and don’t want to spend much for a quality writer.

My advice is to only accept lower paying writing jobs if you:

• Are just beginning as a writer and need any experience you can get.
• Are desperate for the income and you don’t have any other writing jobs at the time — continue your search for better-paying writing jobs.
• Want experience in a particular field to add to your portfolio and this writing job provides that.
• Can’t find any other better-paying writing jobs and want to write until you find something better.
• Need to supplement your income.
• Are an authority on a topic and can kick out the articles quickly — results in good pay for some.
• Want the work, because it’s easy to produce articles quickly — marketing copy is sometimes the fastest and easiest to produce — key words are critical; quality is not.

I try not to bend when it comes to pay, but negotiations are everything in obtaining good writing jobs and better pay. If you are interested in writing for a particular company that offers you a job that doesn’t quite meet your pay expectations, consider these strategies:

• Some companies raise the rate of writers after they see the quality of articles produced – be open to negotiate with the company for better pay after you’ve proven your worth.
• Negotiate up-front with a company to receive better for better pay-per-article if they see your articles bring in high traffic.
• If you can bring in lots of traffic for a company, negotiate a PPC, along with the pay-per-article – pay-per-click (PPC) or –visitor has the potential to produce significantly greater income for you in addition to the pay-per-article.

Strategies in Applying for Writing Jobs

It can take time to find good-paying articles. My first writing job paid me $35 per article, but I don’t think that’s the norm. In contrast, I continue to receive offers from companies who don’t pay well, but usually reject those.

Companies don’t typically post their per-article or per-word pay in their ads for writers, so you don’t know until after you receive the offer that the pay is low.

So, how do you know for which jobs to apply?

That’s a good question and one that is not easy to answer.

Some strategies I use when applying to job ads are as follows:

• Look for industry names in the ads – e.g., Groupon, LegalZoom and other companies or websites you’ve heard of before.
• Look for links to the company’s website – click on the links and look through the articles on the site – if they are low-quality article, stay away – the company doesn’t pay well.
• If links in a job ad take you to quality articles on topics on which you enjoy writing, then apply.
• Stay away from simple ads with VERY general non-descript language – these are generally ads to obtain email addresses for sending SPAM.
• Set up iGoogle to receive regular job ads from Craigslist – my friend, Sam, has a great article on this. I’ve found good-paying writing jobs through Craigslist.

Use good common sense when applying for and accepting writing jobs. Think about how accepting the current writing job offer might impact future writing jobs offers. Don’t accept low-paying writing jobs, unless it will benefit you in the future.

Are there other strategies you use to find better-paying writing jobs or for accepting lower-paying writing jobs?