Tag Archives: working online

June 3, 2022 · 6:53 am

Job Hunting Ain’t What It Used To Be — Part 4

May dawned, and with it, more job hunting. I’d gotten desperate and clicked on some Facebook and Linkedin ads. I also sent some other links to my son, who has been job hunting along with me. 

One recruitment site had me jump through all sorts of hoops. On the application, I was instructed to write “Apple Pie” to answer a question about attention to detail. Then I had to take a picture of my workstation and myself holding a sign. There was a short video component to be recorded via Zoom and some screenshots that needed to be jpg, not png. Then there was the interview. That was something else, let me tell you. 

This lovely lady asked me some questions about my experience, my morning routine (which at the time did not involve any work tasks), how to prepare the meal I eat most often (chicken milanesa with rice, beans, tortillas, and salsa that my sister-in-law made), and what color I was (I picked yellow, green, and purple). 

Although I felt good about the interview, I apparently did not answer something or other right because I received an email the next day to inform me they would not be “pushing on with my application.” 

The same day, I had another interview with a realtor in Illinois. This was actually the second interview for the position. The first was with a woman who explained the job (tracking down real estate leads) and asked me a bit about myself. I do have office experience. I know a bit about buying and selling as I both bought and sold a house in the U.S. I’m also fluent in Spanish (and a native English speaker) and met the requirement of living in Mexico. However, the pay was abysmal, and I think the young lady was embarrassed when she told me that I would be earning $100 pesos an hour ($4.94 USD). Well, beggars can’t be choosers, and I went ahead with the second interview. That interview didn’t have as good of feel to it, and I wasn’t surprised to receive the rejection email.   

I guess I don’t interview well. I’m an introvert, believe it or not. And these video interviews are extraordinarily challenging for me. Yes, I know I’ve been teaching online for the past couple of years, but when I’m teaching, I move to that flow state and am no longer bothered by being on screen. Of course, I must not have gotten to that state during those demo classes I failed last month because I was also REJECTED for that position.  

Even though I don’t seem to be alone in this struggle to find online work, I’m not really into this misery loves company mindset. (Study Shows That 47% Of Frustrated Job Seekers Searching Outside Their Field)(Why everybody’s hiring but nobody’s getting hired) Once more, into the fray….

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A Woman’s Survival Guide to Living in Mexico series

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November 11, 2019 · 6:46 am

Failing at Your Own Business–Online Summit Presenter

I know you are probably thinking “Give it a rest already” the Work Freedom summit is OVER. But, to be true to form, I must write and share my latest epic income-generating disaster. 

If you’ll remember, I participated in the Work Freedom Summit a few weeks back. I spoke about publishing eBooks, something I know a bit about. Of course, I could have also presented information on freelance content writing, teaching ESL online, affiliate marketing, creating online courses, blogging, overcoming insurmountable obstacles, and finding your passion. However, when the hosts got around to my application, apparently everything had been taken but the eBooks topic, so it was a take it or leave it situation.

So let’s talk about the interview first. I thought it went ok, until I went to share my slides. Just before the call, I had been practicing and forgotten to reset the slides, so I began with the end in mind or something. Being flustered, it took me a few minutes to even figure out why the slide I was looking at wasn’t the title slide. To make matters worse, instead of typing 1 and hitting enter to return to the title slide, I SCROLLED through them backwards looking in panic for the title slide. 

Then there was that oversight on my part about the link to the handy worksheet I had prepared. I was supposed to send the host a copy of that document erroneously believing that it would be included in the bonus section or at the very least, a pdf link after my bio. Nope. It appeared absolutely NOWHERE because I FORGOT to send it!

So today, feel free to download this document about the steps on How to Turn Your Blog into a Book (which is an upcoming eBook).

Another issue that I’m sure was all in my head was that I sort of felt like the kid sister in this whole experience. You know, the one mom said you HAD to let tag along but you really didn’t want to because somehow I was left off the initial contact list and missed the first few communicants from the presenters. Then I was supposed to get an email to check my profile page but didn’t so had to ask the host about it. But it all worked out.

I was able to attend a few of the sessions during the summit and listed those in a previous post. I just wanted to make a commentary on the communication styles of the presenters here.

With one notable exception, the women presenters participated in a dialogue with the host and the men expounded their thoughts at the host. I know that’s not really a new observation on the differences between male and female communication styles, but seeing it in these back to back sessions really brought it home to me. The communication styles also influenced how I, as a female observer, absorbed the information presented. I was more interested in, hence felt like I learned more from, the dialogue rather than the pontificating, naturally. 

I also noticed that not one of the presenters in the sessions I attended used slides! WHAT? I thought that conducting my session as a class would be the most natural way to provide the information to viewers and as a consequence, spent some time on slide creation. ALL of the presenters were just talking heads, no additional graphics, nothing in the background to spark creative interaction, NOTHING! They might as well have been podcasts (which I also recently did for that first time and you can find that here.)

Now for the nitty gritty. It would have been nice to have received some monetary compensation for my time and effort in promoting, but as no one signed up for the paid version of the Work Freedom Summit via my affiliate link, I earned a big fat goose egg. I’m not as disappointed as you might think, since I went into this as a learning experience rather than expecting to make the big bucks, but still….

Those are the negatives. There were some positives about this experience, however.

First, I learned that I could do this! Remember how I mentioned in a previous post that participating in a video summit was something way beyond my comfort zone? Well, it was, but I did it anyway. And it wasn’t so bad. Neither was sharing a graphic with MY picture on it all over social media. I mean, it wasn’t my favorite thing in the world to do, but I did it!

I also picked up a few useful tidbits from the presentations that I am planning on implementing beginning in the new year. So my time spent in viewing wasn’t wasted at all. (And neither will yours be if you choose to get the lifetime access pass now available. Wink Wink, Nudge nudge) 

Lastly, the summit deadline made me get on the stick and finish the publishing course I’ve been working on. It’s live. You can see it here: Book It: Everything You Need to Know to Publish Your Book on Amazon.

I’m looking for Beta Testers for the course before I make a big deal over it. If you, or anyone you know is brave enough to self-publish or has already self-published, I’d love for you to give me feedback on the material I’ve provided in this course. Please contact me with the form below.

All in all, my first summit presenter experience was a mixed bag of tricks. But I can say, I’ve been there, done that, and it’s time to move on to another venture. 

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March 23, 2019 · 7:33 am

Failing at your own business–Content Writing

ce writerThose antennas are helping some with the stability of the internet. It still goes out randomly. I’ve cut my online teaching hours to the bare minimum. However, if I ever want to get a new moto, I need to earn more money than bare-bones survival income.

In December, I made an effort to find another sort of job. I must have filled out at least a dozen online applications for virtual assistants, bloggers, copywriters, and freelance writers. Finally, at the beginning of February, I heard back from one.

The position was for a content writer. With Google changing up how things are indexed and classified and rated every few months, everyone needs more content on their sites just to get noticed, whether they are bloggers or merchants. So content writing is becoming the in-demand job online.

Even though I passed the initial screening, that didn’t mean I had the job. I was given two articles to write, one was about climate change and the other was about men’s bicycles. I had no problems with the climate change topic even though it was considerably longer than most of my posts at 2500 words.

However, I completely bombed the men’s bicycle article. I had a hard time finding information for bikes in the price range I was supposed to focus on. I had never written a Best of type article before, so my formatting was WAY off. Not to mention, this article was also 2500 words.

In order to turn it in, I needed to have a Grammarly grade of at least 90 percent.  Grammarly is like an online spell/grammar checker. Grammarly decided my writing was only worth 88 percent. Even after going through paragraph by paragraph, I couldn’t improve. I had to use the Grammarly Premium app to find those two unclear antecedents that were holding me up.

So now at 90%, I turned in my article and the boss was flabbergasted, not in a good way, mind you. He said I was totally off. He gave me some suggestions, cleared up what I was supposed to be researching, sent me a sample article and asked if I would do it again. He said that my writing was good and they normally didn’t give second chances, but he thought I could do this. Oh, and could I have it in by Monday morning?

So I worked over the weekend because I really wanted this job. When the internet drops, I can go and do something else for a while, and pick back up with my writing when it decides to work again. So much less stress than dropping connection in the middle of a live class!

I also tried out Hemingway Editor, which I’d heard about but had never used. Hemmingway will tell you what grade level you are writing at based on the complexity and length of your sentences. It will suggest ways you can “dumb-down” your writing since the average reader in the U.S. reads at about a 7th-grade level. Short and clear sentences, in the manner of Hemingway (hence the name), are the key.

Just as I was finishing up my revision, I accidentally deleted the file in Google Docs. That gave me about 10 minutes of pure panicked-induced adrenalin before I figured out how to restore a previous version.  Whew! I lost some information but not the entire article.

After more hours than I could count, I finished the article and sent it back. It was perfect. I got paid for both articles, a prompt Paypal deposit, not like that Canadian lady that still hasn’t paid me. Then I got two more articles.

One was another Best of type article, only this time on hot weather tents. I nailed it the first try! The second one was a review article, which I hadn’t done previously. This was a whopping 3,000 words on a prepared meal delivery program–you know, like Meals-on-wheels. I was confused about whether I was supposed to be reviewing the product or reviewing reviews about the product. My article was rejected.

The third week, he only sent me one article so that I would have time to redo the review article. Since my class schedule was so minimal I had no problem fixing the article and completing the new one, about water toys. There was a bit of a problem with a 4% similarity with another site that reviewed two of the same toys. I was introduced to Copyscape, which will search out any possible plagiarism issues online. Since my boss thought I didn’t mean to “copy” he asked me to reword the descriptions, which took like 5 minutes to do. 

I did so well with that, he sent me the second article, this one about train tables. I finished by Wednesday, averaging one article or rewrite per day.

This job has been wreaking havoc with my self-esteem though. Being rejected is never easy. Having my writing rejected was even worse. My best online buddy Daisy kept up a constant flow of encouragement–reminding me there was a learning curve for any new job and that I was more than capable of doing this one, with a little practice. My husband was supportive in his own way–he said it was good I’m learning new things at my age–whatever that’s supposed to mean!

I’m hoping that next week, I can complete both articles without a problem making me MASTER OF THE WRITING UNIVERSE or some such totally cool person. Meanwhile, since I’m done with those articles, I’m working on that book on Mexican healthcare that’s been taking me so long to finish!

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