Where a writer finds work

During my school days in the U.S., when I wasn't stacking books at the library, dealing with young blondes who thought War & Peace were two different books, trying to get a hang of cooking for myself, understanding the complicated code of American fashion, and thanking God for Karls Jr. burgers, I was trying to make money on the side. Freelancing is a wonderful world of banging your head on your laptop, downing enough coffee to send the world into a crisis, negotiating Google with the ease of a mariner... all this while you're trying to whip up 5-6 articles (300-500 words) a day that would sell at $5 a piece. Back then $30 was my ticket to a social life. But freelancing was a definite art... reserved for those who knew their subject from object, verb from adverb, and the usage of articles. And then I moved to India...
... and realized that young 18-year-olds, who could barely stitch a sentence together in propah English, were earning an average of 2000 Rs per day by simply spinning out works that would have made the Mary Poppins type of proofreader throw her pencil down and take enough Valium to leave a small village floating in never ending ecstasy. Which meant that the people who paid me $5 for an article when I was still in school, were now offering me $1 for that same type of work... and throwing my highly polished resume and portfolio at them didn't help in the least. The likes of me had been overthrown by some Meenakumari who was willing to write a full length essay for a dollar... and eagerly churned out 5 of those in a day! But I still persevere.... still knock on the doors of freelancedom, still demand quality rates for quality works... and feel like the heroine in Mother India. Sigh.
But for all you aspiring freelancers out there, here is a site that helped me find people who wanted serious writing and not seriously compromised writing. Happy Freelancing Sisters/ Brothers!

chillibreeze