Gasp! I May Be Slammed With Projects Next Week!

Such good news for me. Elance business is picking up. It's almost breath-taking, all of a sudden. In fact, I may find myself making a living full-time if this keeps up the way it has all month. It's lovely. Lovely. Lovely.

It's also a little scary. I've been bidding and expecting to get about 4 to 5% of what I bid on, but suddenly the percentage has jumped up by quite a bit... so it becomes a balancing act: How many bids are too many for one month? Suppose everyone accepts me as their service provider on a particular day and I've said I can deliver in a week? ACK!!!

So far projects have been coming in almost perfectly -- just as I finish one, another one or two come my way. I try to bid on "short" jobs -- things that take at most a full day to complete. That way I can be sure to not overwhelm myself or get behind. So far this strategy has worked.

But there are times when a buyer decides he or she wants me to do another project, too, and that one may be shorter or longer. It's not something I figured on, so it's a surprise project. Or someone sees my profile and portfolio and asks me to bid on their project when I already have a lot of bids out there...

As I say, so far it hasn't been a problem. It has all fallen into place nicely. No one has been inconvenienced or had a project deadline delayed (at least, not as a result of any malingering at my end). Any project deadlines that have been extended have been the result of the buyer's decision and response time, or because the project was added to by the buyer.

It's kinda exciting! It's also a little nerve-wracking, because I want to keep my 100% positive rating at Elance and so I am a little nervous, now that it looks like projects are falling to me a lot more often. But this is a good problem to have! I am certainly not complaining. BRING 'EM ON! I'll deal with them as they come.

A couple of buyers are trying me on short projects to see if they can use me weekly on other projects. If those happen, I'll have a stable, predictable weekly income for at least half a day's work every day. That would be terrific, because I can invest the rest of the time on other short-term, fast turnaround projects.

Perhaps my primary USP (Unique Selling Point) is how fast I can turn a project around. I was so good at doing that at my last job a year ago that the owner of the business and his wife were "flabbergasted" and wanted me to teach it to the other two copywriters. (We never got around to it; too busy.) And he was an ad exec who had written for radio for nearly 25 years. He had never seen anything like it.

Call me a deadline slayer. I have never missed a deadline yet. I usually beat them by an astonishing number of days! This kid is not a procrastinator when it comes to writing. I love it! I'm never happier than when writing something.

I walk twice daily, too, for about 40 minutes each time. I take an ipod shuffle along.

On the ipod is a bunch of music, but my Treks in Sci Fi podcast interview with Rick Dostie from 2006 or 2007 is on there, too. (Here's a link to it, in case you never heard it, or want to hear it again)

http://www.treksf.com/podcast/Treksf.com_79_Real_McCoy.mp3

Up until yesterday, every time the interview came around, I just scanned past it to the next song, but yesterday I decided to listen to it for the first time since it aired in September, 2006 or 2007. I was only halfway home at that point and figured I had enough time to hear most of it before getting to the front door. And I was feeling nostalgic for De and brave enough to hear myself talk. (That takes guts, lemme tell ya!)

I expected to be embarrassed by it because I remembered an awful lot of "talking over each other" during the interview. But when I listened to it, I found that there was really not much of that. In fact, I hardly remembered most of the interview, so it was interesting to revisit it and hear it more or less as a radio listener would. It turned out pretty nice. I actually got home and then sat on the front porch steps and listened to the rest of it. I'm no longer embarrassed by the thought of it. It turned out better than I remember.

In fact, I ought to place the link on my Facebook page. It might sell some books! Ya just never know!

Yeah, I'll go do that now.

I've talked your ear off long enough for one night.

Blessings galore to y'all!