Article Writing on oDesk

Have you found yourself wanting to do some quick article writing for some extra cash? Thought about giving freelancing a shot? Well please look further--than oDesk.

I love oDesk. This site has kept me actively thinking and learning for months after graduating, and gave me real purpose during the last semester of school (when I most felt like a failure to humanity). So when I took a job writing articles, I really didn't realize how much I'd grow to hate something that I did wonderful in in Intro to Journalism.

See, I love to write. I love to read. I love to do both so much that I constantly find myself either getting writer's block because I couldn't write fast enough and lost my train of thought, or losing interest in a story because there are so many MORE to read, and not enough time. And I love to cite everything, enjoy putting in-text citations in the appropriate places, and look forward to verifying my sources a few times.

On oDesk, all of my hard work and addictive nature goes to waste. I landed a job writing about black hair care, giving content for a blog attached to a website selling hair products and weaves. The problem: the site was for traditional black hair care, and I'm a natural. For those who don't know, "traditional" in this context means chemically relaxed, weaves and synthetics, constantly ironed and processed, and the products to keep the hair from falling out from all the stress. As a natural, my hair is not processed, so the products and tools I use amount to a whole $5 from Walmart for the entire year. A whole different scheme of products. Writing positively about TERRIBLE hair practices was difficult for me, to say the least.

Something else that was difficult was writing articles as fast as some of my Filipino and Indian counterparts. For someone as thorough as I am, it could take upwards of 4 hours to produce a quality, referenced article for publishing. For others, it would take 10 minutes to produce just some content for a site--what employers on oDesk want. There are many people that are willing to write 10 articles for $1 immediately. That's ridiculous.

I, somewhat thankfully, got $5 per article. If I had been, say, someone from the Philippines who could write legible articles in minutes and still get a perfect rating from my employer, I'd be rolling in it. Either way, after a few weeks, I told the employer that I thought they'd be better off finding someone to write content only, quickly, and cheaply. The employer agreed, and we peacefully parted ways. I got amazing feedback!

Experience: SEO, Article writing, black hair care