Actually, a better title for this entry would probably be something like, “Being so nervous she almost threw up on her dressing gown killed the radio star” but that doesn’t sound so good, and is way harder to sing, so let’s just stick with this one. Also, “radio star” is just a little bit of an overstatement, but let’s let that one slide too, because yesterday? Before I’d even had my first coffee of the day, checked my email or, indeed, got dressed? I appeared on the Vanessa Feltz show on BBC Radio London.
To be honest, the “no clothes” bit isn’t quite right, because at some point between the phone call from the researcher asking me if I’d do it, and being live on air, I managed to find the time to shrug off my ratty old dressing gown and throw on some clothes. I dunno, it’s just felt important that I be clothed for the occasion, somehow. It was only as I got ready for bed last night that I realised I’d been wearing my underwear inside out all day. Ah well, at least it wasn’t TV…
So anyway, I was asked onto the show to speak about shoes. Well, obviously. I mean, what the hell else would I talk about? Apparently women spend over £33,000 on shoes in their lifetime, you see, and they were looking for a shoe expert to talk about this. Yes, a “shoe expert”. Because I am TOTALLY one of those. GOD, I knew all those shoes would come in handy some day. (Obviously, the radio people were actually looking to speak to Gemma about this subject, but she was on holiday, so they got stuck with me. Sucks to be them, no? ) People may mock me and my obsession with footwear, but LOOK WHERE IT HAS GOT ME, people. (She says sitting in her spare bedroom in her ratty old dressing gown.)
Vanessa herself was on holiday yesterday, so I was interviewed by Lesley Joseph, which was kind of surreal for me, because I used to watch her on TV years ago, and then suddenly there I was, babbling nonsense to her about shoes. About halfway through, they brought on another guest and the producer came back onto my line and told me I was done, so all the listeners heard me going “OK then, bye!” and then everyone else going “Ooh! Looks like we’ve lost Amber!”, but that was totally NOT MY FAULT and they hadn’t lost me at all, although by that point they probably wished they had. I mean, this is the girl who doesn’t even like talking to people on the phone because of that whole “inability to speak and think at the same time” thing, so getting me to speak on the radio was just asking for trouble, really.
I haven’t been able to listen to it. Well, OK, I listened back to the first ten seconds when Terry played it back to me, then I had to stick my fingers in my ears and go “Lalalalala!” really loudly to block it out, because the sound of my voice is excruciating to me. I am comforting myself, though, with the knowledge that this was just BBC London, not the whole country. I mean, there’s hardly anyone lives in London, right?
In all the excitement of getting our bathroom back (seriously, it’s been like living in a hotel this past week, only one that you have to clean yourself), I realised that I completely forgot to mention Valentine’s Day, and, more importantly What I Got.
Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, Terry and I both opted to give each other gifts themed around the idea of "We’ve got a new bathroom and by God, we’re going to use it", so I got him a selection of stuff from Lush (Terry is actually a man, I promise, he just really likes Lush) and he got me this:
Yes, it’s a gel spa bath. It turns your bathwater into… gel. Because really, when you think about it, who wouldn’t want to sit in a tub full of gel? Well, as far as I was concerned, there was only one thing that would be better than sitting in a bath full of gel, and that one thing was blogging about a bath full of gel. Am always the professional. So I pressed Terry into action to act as my model for this quick guide on How to Have a Gel Spa Bath.
Step One: fill the bath to the halfway point
Lookit the fun he’s having already!
Step 2: Pour in the gel powder (for yes, ’tis in a powdered form)
Step 3: Stir it with your hands
I guess you could use, like, a giant wooden spoon or something for this stage, but that wouldn’t be as much fun, would it?
Step 4: Congratulations! It’s a blue bath!
You must now wait five minutes for the water to turn to gel. You must also pray to any God willing to listen that your sparkling new bathroom does not turn blue because of all of this. Because admit it, that’s totally what you think’s going to happen here, aren’t you? Well, it isn’t. Sorry.
Step 5: Enjoy your gel-filled bath!
Also enjoy: looking like a disembodied head! And no, you’re not getting pictures of his naked body, no matter how much you beg and plead.
Step 6: Find a large blob of undissolved gel on your body
Urgh!
Step 7: Pour dissolving powder into bath and mix with hands. Then shower off the blue stuff.
Note: artist’s impression only.
Now, I also tried this myself, and let me tell you, it was a pretty strange experience, and not unlike sitting in a large tub of warm slush. Not, of course, that I’ve ever sat in a large tub of hot slush, but if I did, I just bet it would be exactly like that. Those large blue blobs were everywhere – in fact, I’m still picking them out of my hair now – but it was actually strangely satisfying to squeeze them. Yes. And no, we didn’t dye the bath blue, although we certainly deserved to.
So there you have it: our Valentine’s present, 2008. Recommended.
People, Dave Barry has linked to The Fashion Police from his blog. I am ridiculously exited about this because: Dave Barry! Read my blog! Or, you know, at least looked at it! His entry got 62 comments. Mine got… 2. But hey! Still excited!
Anyway, other than that, the lurgy has continued to dominate my thoughts today, although it does seem to be a little better than it was yesterday. And oh, while we’re on the subject of yesterday, and for the benefit of those of you who were totally confused about the reference to “Terry’s cat”, which was apparently making an odd, whining noise, it was in fact, Terry’s car that I was talking about. Not his cat. Terry doesn’t have a cat, and if he did have a cat, it should be obvious to us all by now that Rubinman would eat that cat. Or at the very least, would bite its butt.
So, in conclusion: no cat here. And the car seems to be fine now too, for those of you who care. And now I’m off to look for more pictures of skirts with “butt windows” in the back…
* Not actually true
It’s been a while since we had a good ole list-fest round here, and because I’m not ashamed to fall back on bullet points when I’m feeling lazy, let’s welcome with open arms the first Forever Amber Bulleted List of 2008!
- I have some kind of lurgy. It’s kind of disappointing, actually, because it’s not a proper lurgy. If it was, I’d be lying in bed right now, eating grapes and demanding that Terry drive down to the supermarket to buy me Lemsip and chicken soup. As it is, I’m just sitting here trying to work with a slightly sore throat, a slightly runny nose and a slight feeling of lurgy.
- I know beyond doubt, though, that while I am currently not ill enough to retire to bed until I’m feeling better, by the time the weekend comes, and there’s absolutely no chance of getting some guilt-free time off work, it will develop into a full-blown flu. Gah.
- I’m thinking of getting a fringe/bangs. Yes, again. Because that last fringe I got cut? Wasn’t actually a fringe. As soon as I finished uploading those pictures of it, I just swept it to one side, and my hair looked exactly the same as it had looked for the past twenty years. This time, though? Will be different. Oh yes. Well, maybe…
- As soon as my weird, possibly mythical, car problem resolved itself (by which I mean, "It hasn’t happened since, so we’re just not going to think too hard about that right now, thanks") Terry’s car started making a weird whining noise, so today we took it to the garage to have it fixed, and they charged us £110 for the privilege.
- We decided to walk to the garage to pick the car up.
- We thought it would be, you know, nice.
- It wasn’t nice.
- Actually? It was pouring.
- Because that’s what it does in February, dumbass Amber-and-Terry.
- I had to stand outside the garage in the rain for ten minutes with the dog, while Terry paid for the repair work/whatever it was they did to the car.
- And while I was standing there, some guy came out, got into his van and did a SARCASTIC WOLF WHISTLE at me. MEN! WHY?!
- I know it was sarcastic because I was wearing Ugg boots at the time.
- Before you all judge me on that, let me just remind you: February. Scotland. And let me just say, "Walk a mile in my Ugg boots before you try and tell me I shouldn’t own such things."
- The car is still making the squeaking noise, though.
So, basically you’re all up to date. It exciting being me, it really is. Now, back to my regularly scheduled lurgy…
It’s done. Yes, folks, I know most of you probably assumed that we finished redecorating the bathroom weeks ago, and just forgot to mention it (as if!), but no, it really has taken us THIS LONG to get it done. Given that I started writing about this on January 8th, and the bathroom, hall, living room, kitchen and spare bedroom have been like building sites ever since, you can only begin to imagine the torment I have been through with this.
There has been blood (no, really – Terry cut his hand and bled all over the wall. If the next people to buy the house ever remove those tiles, they’ll think they’ve bought a House of Horrors). There was sweat. There were tears. There was an entire weekend when I had to drive to the gym just to shower (literally just to shower – well, you didn’t think I’d actually work out while I was there, did you?). And now, there is a shiny new bathroom to show for it all. A bathroom which isn’t actually totally finished yet, but let’s just pretend it is, mm’kay?
Anyway, it was only as Terry put the finishing touches to said bathroom last night that it occurred to me that, hey, we totally should have taken some "before" and "after" shots to be able to compare it. Then I could have called this entry A Tale of Two Bathrooms. But we didn’t, and so you’ll just have to make do with the crappy title I did give it, plus this silent movie I took earlier today, the bathroom being too small for me to take actual photos in it. Watch out for a special guest appearance by The Radiator-Come-Towel-Rail.
Props to Terry for his mad bathroom redecorating skillz. We’d like to thank all our family and friends for their support during this very difficult time. Next month, join us on another crazy journey as we attempt to replace the kitchen without losing our minds or breaking the house again. No, I’m really not joking…
Tagged decorating
 There are, of course, certain conventions to writing a press release, and in a moment we’re going to discuss just what they are. First, though, I’m going to let you in on a secret:
It doesn’t really matter.
Or not as much as you might think, anyway. The most important thing is the story. If your story is good enough, it will get published. No journalist or editor in their right mind will turn down a great story just because the press release they received wasn’t laid out properly, and didn’t follow the standard format.
Remember, the newspaper, magazine or website you send your press release to is just as interested in printing great stories as you are in giving them one. So don’t get too caught up in worries about the way your press release sounds. That said, if you bury your great story under a pile of badly-written, unfocused rubbish, you could find yourself without the coverage you need. So here’s how to set out your press release:
>>> The Headline
The temptation here is to try and make your headline something clever and witty – something creative that will make the reader smile and think how clever you are, and to maybe use a pun or two if you can come up with them, just like newspapers do.
That’s the wrong way to do it.
The most successful headlines – for press releases at least – are ones which tell the story as succinctly as possible. Ideally, you should try to sum up the entire release, or as much of it as possible, in the headline. So, if your press release tells the story of how your business has won a national award, make your headline something along the lines of “Local business wins national award”.
No, it’s not going to win you any prizes, or impress the editor with your writing abilities. They’re probably not going to offer you a job on the subs desk. But none of that matters. The purpose of a press release headline is not to show off your writing skills, but to inform. If the newspaper wants a witty headline, they’ll write one themselves – that’s what they’re getting paid for, after all.
Remember what we said about those busy journalists, who don’t have time to read every last press release that lands on their desk? Cut them some slack here. Help them out by making sure that they know what your press release is about at a glance. Don’t make them guess what your story is about.
Of course, if you’re able to be informative and clever with your headline, so much the better. Go for it: write a great headline and you save a sub-editor the job. Just make sure it tells the reader what the story is about.
>>> Embargo
An embargo prohibits anyone from publishing your press release, or the information in it, until the date you specify. It goes underneath the headline, and it tells the editor whether they can print the release immediately, or whether they’ll have to wait.
In most cases, your press release will be “For immediate release”, so write those words under your headline, and you’re good to go.
There may, however, be some occasions when you’ll want to use an embargo. Say your press release names the winner of a competition you’ve been running – but the winner themselves won’t find out about it until the prize ceremony, which is after your local newspaper’s deadline but before the paper is published. You’ll still want to get the press release to the media in time for them to print it, so you’ll use an embargo under the headline, stating “Embargoed until 7pm on Thursday, May 9th” or whenever the winners will be announced.
>>> Introduction
Like the headline, the first few sentences of your press release are of vital importance – often, they’re all the journalist will read. Your press release can stand or fall on your opening paragraph: if it’s interesting and informative, and persuades the reader to read on, you’re onto a winner. If it’s filled with waffle, forget it.
This may sound daunting. You basically have only one or two sentences in which to sell your story. Difficult? Well, not really.
If you’ve got the right story, writing your introduction shouldn’t be too tricky. Again, the purpose here is to inform – so don’t worry about fancy language and flowery descriptions: just stick to the facts.
As with your headline, your introduction should summarise your story. Ask yourself this: what is the story really about? Is it about a competition you’ve launched, an event you’ve organized, an exciting new discovery you’ve made? Write two sentences (three at the most) explaining what your story is about. That’s your introduction. Everything else in the press release is just detail: the body of the release should simply expand on the point you’ve made in the introduction, filling in the who, where, why, what, when and how.
>>> Body
We’ve already touched upon what the body of your press release should contain. In short, you want to answer the 6 classic questions:
? Who
? Where
? When
? What
? Why
? How
In general, it’s a good idea to keep your press release as short as you can. It’s tempting to write screeds and screeds of text explaining the ins and outs of your business and how it works, but try to resist this, as it just means that the journalist who receives the release has to work harder to get to the salient points.
When you write, always bear in mind that one important question: why should anyone care? Imagine the story you’re telling has absolutely nothing to do with you. If you were a complete outsider, what would you want to know about? When you’re describing your new project or event, talk about the benefits it will offer to the people reading the story. Don’t talk about how it will help your business: no one cares.
A note on style: Press releases are generally written in the third person: refer to yourself using your name, rather than “I” or “me”. This is how the newspaper will present the story, and it sounds more authoritative.
>>> Using quotes
Now that you have the facts down, you may want to add just a little bit of interest to it. One good way to do this is by adding quotes.
Newspapers love to quote people. The main reason for this is that people tend to be most interested in other people, and what they have to say. Paragraphs filled with facts can be very dry: a quote from a real, live person adds credibility to what you’re saying, as well as adding interest.
It’s not compulsory to add quotes in your press release. You’ll have a better chance of getting it published, however, if you do. Look at it this way: if a journalists is interested in using your story, she’ll almost certainly want to find a suitable quote to go with it. If you’ve already provided one, you’ll save her some work: and that’s a persuasive way of getting her to use your press release!
But who should you quote?
Given that the press release centres around your business, the most likely person to quote will be yourself. Quoting yourself in a press release can seem odd, but don’t worry: just write down what you would say if you were speaking to the journalist in person. You can use your quote to add some extra detail to your story, thank the people who have helped you with whatever the subject of your press release is, or simply say how pleased you are to see your new project come to fruition.
If your press release involves someone else: another business or partner agency for example, you may want to quote them too. Let’s say, for example, that the project you’re publicising in your release was made possible thanks to sponsorship from another business. It could be a good idea to have a quote from them, too, saying how pleased they are to be involved, or something along those lines.
>>> Ending your press release
Once you’ve written the body of your release, type the word “Ends”. This indicates (surprisingly enough!) that the main part of the release ends here. But you’re not quite finished yet.
One of the most important parts of a press release is the part that’s most often forgotten: your contact details.
Even with the best will in the world, there may well be something you’ve missed out, or something you just haven’t thought of that the journalist will want to contact you to discuss. If you’re very lucky, they may want to contact you to arrange to take photos.
You can put your contact details in the body of the press release. If you’re running a competition or similar, you’ll need to do this anyway, so that people know where to send their entries. You should also put these details at the end of the release, though, so that they can be found instantly.
>>> Notes to Editors
The notes to Editors section of your press release is the very last thing you’ll write, and its purpose is to give the newspaper any background information that you didn’t include in the release itself.
Notes to Editors are normally presented in a list, and can include facts, figures, website addresses and any other information which may help the journalist put the story together.
If, for example, your business sells accessories for pets, you may want to give some statistics on how many pet owners there are in your area, or in the UK. If you’re holding an event to support The National Kidney Association, you could include a link to their website plus some information about kidney disease (stick to the very basics though!)
This is also the place for any of those little pieces of information that you really wanted to include in the body of your press release, such as how your business got its name, and why you started it up in the first place. Try to stick to the bare minimum with this type of information too: if anyone wants to know, they’ll ask!
 “Prolly”. Let’s just take a moment to look at it. It’s a stupid word, isn’t it? Especially when you consider that the perfectly good word it’s so often used to replace – “probably” – is in no need of replacing.
There is nothing wrong with the word “probably”. It is not old fashioned, obsolete or silly. It has not reached the end of its useful life. The English language and the word “probably” have a long and rewarding relationship still ahead of them. Or theyprobably do, anyway.
You see, if the people who habitually use “prolly” to mean “probably” get their way, in a few years time I’ll have to re-write the sentence above to say “Theyprolly will.” This will annoy me because I HATE ‘PROLLY’. Hate it. It actually makes me cringe every time I see it written down.
I suspect the people who use “prolly” think they’re being “cute” when they use it. Maybe it’s the way they speak, who knows. Do the majority of people pronounce the word as “prolly” now? Probably. I mean, “prolly”. Shame.
Do you write “prolly” instead of “probably”? And if so: why?
Fran asks:
I’m thinking of setting-up my own blogs (on topics unrelated to your own), and I was wondering if you would be able to give me a rough idea of how much money I could expect to make from Adsense each month? I hope you don’t think me rude for asking, but I’ve struggled to find realistic figures on the web; they all seem overinflated
Hi Fran,
To be completely honest with you, the answer to your question is that there is no answer. I could tell you what I make every month from Adsense, but it wouldn’t give you any idea what you could hope to make from it because there are just so many variables to take into account. Your earning capacity from a pay-per-click program like Google Adsense, for instance, will depend on factors such as:
1. The niche you choose for your blog
Put simply, some subjects are always going to be more profitable than others. What you earn per click depends on how much the advertiser is willing to pay for that click, and that, in turn, depends on factors such as how competitive the niche is, how many other advertisers are also paying for adsense adverts, what time of year it is, how well the economy is performing and too many other factors to list here.
Our blogs are spread over a few different topic areas, but even within each niche, the cost per click, and what we earn per day/month/year can vary wildly. Traffic is also a big factor when it comes to earning from Adsense, and it’s clear that some topics will generate more interest and therefore more traffic than others. If you choose a very specialist subject to blog about, for instance, you may find that your Adsense earnings will be smaller, or will at least plateau more quickly than a more popular topic, which gives you the opportunity to reach a much larger audience.
2. How seriously you take blogging
At the moment I earn the equivalent of a smallish full-time salary each month from Google Adsense, but that’s because blogging is my full time job. I spend at least eight hours per day blogging, and often much more than that – for instance, I’m actually writing this post on Sunday afternoon and scheduling it to go live on Monday. Of course, if you’ve done any freelance writing or blogging at all, then you probably don’t need me to tell you this, but it’s hard, hard work. Because there are so few barriers to entry with blogging, I come across a lot of people who think all they need to do is set up a few blogs, update them occasionally and then sit back and watch the money roll in. In actual fact, if you want to earn a full-time wage from it, you have to make it a full-time job.
3. How long you’re prepared to keep on blogging, even when you see little or no rewards
My main earner is my fashion blog. It went online in August 2006, and we only started to see decent Adsense earnings from it once it had been online for around a year. For a long time, I had to keep on posting and promoting while seeing very little in the way from income from that blog, and that can be very disheartening – in fact, it’s the stage at which most people just give up. The reality is that most blogs take years to build a steady income, which is one more reason why it’s hard to guesstimate how much you could earn.
4. How much you know – or are prepared to learn – about promotion and search engine optimisation for your blog
As I commented above, how much you earn from Adsense depends to a great extent on how much traffic you receive to your blog. Blogging is not just about writing: to be successful at it, and to make money from it, you’ll need to know about how to promote your blog, and how to drive traffic to it, either through search engine optimisation, through use of social networks like Digg or StumbleUpon, or through using other promotional tactics, both online and offline. Promotion takes up a huge amount of your time, and how much you earn will depend on how good you are at it, or how much time you’re willing to invest in becoming good at it. You’ll also need to work out what the optimum number of posts you’ll need to write per day/week/month is in order for you to make the most from your blog – this is something that differs from blog to blog, and is something that you can really only learn through trial and error.
5. Adsense optimisation and placement
Earning money from Adsense isn’t simply a matter or placing the code on your site and making money from it. I spend a huge amount of time every week tweaking my ad placements, and experimenting with different ad sizes, types, looks and colours, in order to make sure that they’re making us as much as they possibly can. I also spend a large amount of time analyzing our earning reports in order to try and establish what’s working for us and what isn’t. Again, how much you can earn from Adsense will depend on where you place your ads, what they look like and how much effort you put into optimising their placement and appearance on your site.
In conclusion, I know this probably wasn’t the answer you were looking for, but all I can do is reiterate that there really is no answer to your question. How much you can make from Adsense really does differ from blog to blog and from person to person. The good news is that there is no real limit to how much you can make: there are people out there who are making thousands of dollars per month from Adsense, and there’s no reason why you can’t become one of them. The reality, too, though, is that there are a lot of people making very little, or nothing at all, and the only way to know how much you can make from yourblog is by constantly experimenting to find out.
I love working from home, wouldn’t change it for the world. The problem with that, though? Well, there are three.
1. It becomes very, very easy to just not bother getting out of bed in the morning
2. What clothes? This here dressing gown does me just fine, thanks very much. (Note to self: buy selection of dressing gowns. Maybe a black one. Black goes with everything.)
3. The house gets messy.
Yes, number three surprised me, too. I’d always assumed that those who worked from home would have perfect palaces of houses, given all that lovely time they have to clean. Yeah, I was clearly on crack when I thought that. People who go out to work have much tidier homes, and that’s purely because they’re not there enough to make a real mess. We are at home, and, by-God, we do make a mess. For this reason, we do not invite clients into our home.
See, my home is my castle, and by “my castle” I mean “My tiny little two-bedroom semi-detached house”. Unfortunately, my home is also my office, and this means that, from time to time, clients will try to invite themselves round. Normally we can put them off pretty easily, either by offering to come to them instead, or suggesting a halfway house of a meeting place. If the worst came to the worst, the local business centre hires out meeting rooms, and I’d honestly rather do that than have people come into the house.
It’s nothing personal: I mean, obviously I don’t start making gagging noises when they suggest coming round, or go “Eeewww! You’re not getting into myhouse!” I just casually suggest that I come to them instead, and, for the most part, this works out just fine. Sometimes, though: sometimes we get what I call “drive-bys”. Clients who call us from their car and say “Hey, guess what? It just so happens that I’m parked outside your house right now! Why don’t I come in and drop off that cheque/CD with images that Terry needs/totally non-urgent piece of paper that you didn’t even need in the first place?”
This happened to us last week, with one of Terry’s clients. It was horrendous. In the five minutes worth of warning time that we had (WARNING! THIS IS YOUR FIVE MINUTE WARNING! CLIENT INCOMING! CLIENT INCOMING!) we had to rush around the house, plucking knickers off radiators, hiding dirty dishes under the bed, checking to make sure Rubin hadn’t peed on that corner of the couch that he will keep peeing on any chance he gets, and generally trying to create the illusion that, why yes! As it happens, we totally are an organised, professional and – yes - perfect couple of business owners.
Once the client was in situ in the lounge, though, the fun was only just beginning! You see, business and animals? They just don’t mix. (Unless you’re a vet, or a zoo keeper or something, obv.) At the moment we have not one, but three animals. One is Rubin. One is Woody the Stick Insect. One is Pepe the Parrot. This is Pepe the Parrot:
Isn’t Pepe cute? DUH! Wrong answer! Pepe is NOT cute. Pepe is a little b*****d who screams the place down, making a noise that’s sort of a cross between a train going through a tunnel and a very large person being brutally murdered every time a) the phone rings b) he is left on his own for more than a few seconds or c) Terry leaves the room for any reason at all. He also bites.
This is Rubin. The Man.:
Isn’t Rubin cute? Well, yes, he is. But Rubin? Is mental. Crazy mental. It’s probably the wolf blood in him. What Rubin can’t stand is not being the centre of attention. If there is someone new in the house, Rubin feels that person’s attention should be focused solely on him and him alone. If it’s not? He will cry like a baby.
So, client is in the lounge with Terry. I am in the “office” with Rubin, Pepe and Woody the Stick insect. (You’re not getting a picture of Woody, OK? Just imagine a stick with legs. That’s our Woody for ya! He and Pepe belong to Terry’s mum, who is on holiday, by the way. We didn’t just spontaneously decide to get ourselves a menagerie or something.) Pepe is screaming like a train/murder victim. Rubin is crying like a very noisy baby, and also: scratching at the door. Woody is…well, Woody is being a stick. I got no beef with him.
Despite all of this, I think we managed to pull off the “We are professionals” thing OK. (Sorry, I’ve just realised you were probably waiting for a punch line here, weren’t you? You were thinking I was going to pour bleach in the client’s coffee, or pee on him or something, weren’t you? Well, there isn’t a punchline. Sorry. You just read all that for nothing. Please don’t hate me.) I did find one of Terry’s socks on the stairs after the guy left, but as the only reason the client would have come up the stairs would have been to use the bathroom, and as Terry was under strict instructions to say that, sorry, we don’t have one, we were good. Luckily the man didn’t ask. I would imagine the screams coming from the bedroom probably acted as a deterrent there. He probably thinks Terry has a mad wife in the attic or something, and actually? He sort of does, when you come to think of it.
Anyway, Pepe and Woody go home tomorrow, so at least that particular problem is solved. Other than that, I don’t quite know what we can do to put off drive-bys. As I see it, there are only three solutions:
1. Rent offices (Totally not an option, not only because of the cost, but because we just don’t want to. I hate offices with a passion)
2. Switch off all the lights and hide when they drive by. (Note: Let them in if they come bearing a cheque, though, because, God knows, getting money out of clients is like getting the truth out of Heather Mills…)
3. Become perfect people, whose home is always perfect, like the Fly Lady’s Chances of this happening: slim to nil.
Still. At least I wasn’t naked this time.
 The quote on the left was spotted in an advert for writers posted today at – where else? – Craigslist. The publication in question was a wedding magazine, and what really winds me up about this ad in particular is the idea it seems to express that there’s some kind of difference between a “paying job” and a “freelance writing job”. Clearly these people are taking the “free” part of “freelance writing”way too seriously…
This is also a classic example of the “we’ll pay you if/when we become successful” school of thinking that’s so prevalent among a certain type of employers.
This is such a dangerous route to go down as a freelance writer, not just for the obvious reasons (if they’re paying the printer, graphic designer and distributor of their magazine, then why can’t they pay the writers?), but because it requires the writer to make a leap of faith which is way beyond “reasonable”.
How will you know when revenue has started to made from this venture, for instance? Will the magazine tell you? Will they pay retrospectively, so that if they suddenly start to turn a profit in 2010, they’ll get in touch with all of the writers who worked for free in 2008? And again, how will you know they’re making a profit?
The simple answer? You won’t. You’ll just have to live in hope, and pray that this complete stranger you’ve given your work to turns out to be honest. Are you willing to take that risk?
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