SweetSimpleJoys

If you’ve been applying for months in oDesk but still haven’t landed a single project or job yet, then this post is for you.

Before I enumerate the reasons, let’s take a look at the oDesk Oconomy. As of this writing, there are almost half a million providers competing for available positions in oDesk. And there are only about one to two thousand new jobs posted every day. You don’t even have to be good in math to figure it out – there’s just too many online service providers. No wonder that first job is so elusive.

But the ratio of providers to job openings in oDesk has nothing to do with your inability to snag a job.  While it’s true that competition is steep and the market is overly saturated, one fact remains: other people (including myself and my husband) are able to thrive in this arena. And if living off the online income is any indication of a successful online career, then there are a lot of individuals inside and outside of oDesk who are making a living out of this and are reaping success.

“So why in the world can’t I find an online job?” You’re probably asking. Any one of these following reasons could be the culprit:

1. You’re new and you don’t have a feedback yet. In an online job community like oDesk, reputation is built on the previous employers’ feedback gave on your performance. It is like a grading system by which potential buyers will gauge how likely you are to do a good job in the tasks that they will give you. So naturally, if you’re new, you don’t have the advantage of a feedback.

2. Your online profile is not selling you and your skills. Being new and without a feedback yet, you will have to rely on other factors to get a job. And one of them is your profile. Think of oDesk as a selling market, and your profile as your sales pitch. And if it doesn’t say much about what you can do and how good you are at what you can do, then buyers are least likely to buy it.

3. Your cover letter fails to impress the buyers. There’s more to a cover letter than just stating your interest in the offered position. In fact, if your profile should sell, the cover letter must pre-sell. It must contain information that will entice the buyer to check out your profile.

4. You have enough skills but others have more. Ah, this is where competition kicks in. You may have an impressive cover letter but when buyer checks out your profile, you’ve got nothing to offer but a typing skills of 50 WPM and a dime in a dozen proficiency in MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint. In a tough competitive world that is oDesk, those skills won’t get you anywhere.  You have to expound on your skills but be careful not to  exaggerate to the point of claiming to have skills you’re not really familiar with.

5. You’re not acting quick enough. Have you noticed it sometimes? A lot of new job openings already have 30 or more providers applying during the first few hours that they were posted in oDesk. Early bird still catches the worm.

6. You didn’t read the job description thoroughly. Some buyers are tricky. They will include some instructions in the job description, to test you sort of, if you’ve read the post thoroughly and to measure how competent you are in following what you’re told to do. These instructions can be so subtle that you will miss them. And when you do, don’t expect to hear from the buyer.

7. You’re asking for a high rate. Sometimes, the only reason why buyers would hire newbie freelancers is because their hourly rate is relatively lower than the more seasoned ones. When you’re applying for a position, look at the average bid of the other providers and don’t go beyond that. It’s better if you can bid lower (but not lower than $1 please).

8. You didn’t pass the interview or test. Nowadays, buyers are inclined to test applicants aside from just conducting an informal interview. Speed and accuracy, these two are what they are most likely testing for. It’s just like in any regular interviews. If another provider fared better in the test or interview, you wont’ get the job -unless the buyer decides to hire more than one freelancer to do the tasks.

But don’t lose hope. In my succeeding posts, I tell you tips how to turn the tables and make these reasons work to your benefit. Other successful freelancers are also most welcome to share in their own tips and suggestions on how to bag an oDesk job. Let’s help each other out, shall we?

Fly high freelancers!

We got married, D and I. And I’m proud to say that 75% of the funds that went into the wedding budget came from our online income. Yup, the money that we earn from working at home online. It wasn’t much, but considering that we ran into some emergency expenses before the wedding, I can conclude that we did pretty well financially last year. Hopefully, this year will turn out a even better one for us.

I just remember, a week after the wedding, I got a call from a company where I applied some 3 years ago. And I was almost tempted to go back to having a regular day job again. Almost! But when I imagined myself

• getting up so early
• having a hard time picking what to wear
• going through the morning traffic
• sitting in an office all day (although that’s a welcoming thought nowadays, with the sweltering summer that we’re having here right now)
• going through each day wishing that I would be home soon
• and feeling so drab and wasted by the time I finally get home

Waaaah! I felt tired just thinking about it. So I declined, sort of. I didn’t attend the next interview.

So here I am, enduring the migraine-causing summer heat in my room, sitting back to back with my now hubby, and telling myself: Freedom is priceless, especially when you’re working.

And it is.

Up now on the wedding blog:

Check out the complete instruction on how to do this DIY hair vine.

I was scurrying yesterday to find a suitable phrase for my post at the wedding blog. And you know where the search led me?

Pablo Neruda.

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

I was lingering over the others, E.E. Cummings or Emily Dickinson. But, “Nah! They’ll have their turn. It’s Pablo’s today.”

That was yesterday. And today, I’m yearning to read a book. I mean really read. Curled up in bed. A book in my hand. Breathing its pages. The smell of paper.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh,  I remember those days. And I miss them. It’s been a while since I updated my collection. And now bookstore trips have been mostly about books on DIY crafts, weddings, photography. I wish I can read a book the way I used to read a book. Just like before.

Early this year, one of our hard drives died on us . Yes, it literally just crapped out. My dad said that some drives do expire after certain number of years. It happened on some of his computers as well and the only thing that we can do is contact the manufacturer and ask for support. As if that’s easy.

I was really upset because most of our files were housed there. Our photos, our movies, our MP3s, our softwares. The demised hard drive was our storage disk.

But months later, we forgot about the lost files and seamlessly moved on without them.

So while I was going through my files and folders, imagine my delight when I found some photos that I thought were lost forever. (I also found scanned images of D’s drawings which I posted here.)

Among the photos were those of our first trip to White Beach, Puerto Galera together. These are not the original pictures, but smaller and edited copies of the hi-reso images. I was probably going to use these somewhere that’s why they were re-sized and tweaked and stashed away in some forgotten folders. But I am glad that I still have these photos saved. A reminder of how beautiful the place was. Especially because D was there with me.

Trivia: D claimed that he would have proposed to me in Puerto Galera had I not “ruined” his plan. (Huh? It wasn’t my fault. Hahaha.) But we had the lying-on-the-sand-under-the-moonlight moment and I can only imagine now how it would’ve been utterly romantic if he proposed right then and there. But whichever way he proposed, it doesn’t matter. I love him just the same. Even more now.

This was D’s offer to appease me after we got into a little “misunderstanding” two days ago.

Pasteleria Ilustrado’s Sans Rival. I ate this together with 2 orders of  Siomai House’s siomai (what else!). Yum yum!

I think I’m having a sweets-craving phase. Two weeks ago, we trooped to Festival Mall in Alabang to buy Pasteleria Ilustrado’s Baked Cheesecake, another favorite. Sadly, they ran out of it. But instead of settling for the sans rival, I decided to sample one from Cravings’ dessert spread. I haven’t tasted any of their cakes so I asked for the bestseller. Hence, the Choco Caramel Cake.

The first bite was both heavenly and sinful. After that, it was just flat out sickening. It’s too sweet for me. And D bailed out early so I had no choice but to finish off the whole mini cake myself, while being regretfully reminded of the delicate and balanced taste of Ilustrado’s desserts. For someone who has no sweet tooth (craving for sweets occurs rarely for me), it was torture. And it didn’t end with the last bite. I woke up the next day sick in my throat, perhaps because too much sugar has coated it.

I might still try their Devil’s Food Cake though. The marshmallow icing looks promising. But yeah, Pasteleria Ilustrado’s Sans Rival is definitely a treat!

I love you D!

While I was rummaging through my file folders looking for some photos, I found these:

These are D’s early inked drawings of the comics character, Spawn. Spectacular, isn’t it?

Now the next one is more like a destiny:

I love Kenshin and Kauro! And Samurai X (Rurouni Kenshin) is my all-time favorite Anime series. In fact, my usual nick is Shinta, Kenshin’s original name in the series. And I had this on my desktop as a wallpaper when I first met him online:

It’s written in the stars!

This blog’s been hurting from neglect since my last post. But I’m back now with some TLC to stop the pain and make up for days that it went un-updated. I’ll be a more doting blogger now. I’ll do my very best.

So for the comeback post, I’m sharing with you two images of a flower. A calla lily.

The first one is an image I got from the net along with a tutorial on how to create a calla lily vector. I didn’t follow the instructions (because I don’t have the software he used). I decided to do it my way.

Here’s the result of my stubbornness. Quite close, but not nearly as good as the copied image. I’m proud of this though. Creating a vector of an image is no easy feat. D even thought I downloaded it online. “No, I made it myself.” Because I couldn’t find a decent calla lily vector on the net. And happy that I was able to make one. I love this vectorizing thing. And blogging too!

Okay, that’s not fair. D has never liked my choice of colors. I reckon he’s just too conventional and safe. But when I realized what he was talking about, my heart sank.

He’s looking at his LCD screen, looking at my website–this website–and at the horrible, glaring colors of my invitation templates.

Wait! Glaring? What do you mean glaring?

I looked at the same website on my laptop. It’s not glaring. It’s the perfect shade of apple green and chocolate brown. Not glaring.

I checked my files, my JPGs, my AIs, my PDFs. The colors are what they should be. I copied the same files on a shared folder and viewed them on his computer. They’re glaring. We synced our computers with adobeRGB1998 profile for color management display setting (whatever that means). We rebooted [our PCs]. Then I checked again. On my side, it’s still apple green and chocolate brown. On his side, it’s still glaring neon yellow green and glaring neon chocolate brown. Yes, chocolate brown can glare.

My last resort was to go outside the room and check it on the computer in the sala. It’s not as glaring as on D’s screen. But the fact remains: that what I’m seeing on my screen is probably not what some of you are seeing at your end.

So what did it?

My poor ability to discern which colors look good together? My crappy laptop screen? My color mode? (I’m on CMYK when creating these templates. CMYK is for printers while RGB is for the web. D said it’s possible that my color concoctions are not web safe colors hence the glare. But why are they not glaring on my screen???).

But the meatier question is, “What should I do about it?”

I don’t know!!!

Should I take down all the invite images? Make two files for printing and web display? Edit the color mode of all AI files? Save everything as JPGs and PDFs all over again? Do I actually have time for that?

Should I just print each and every template? Take pictures? And post these pictures instead of JPG-fied version of the templates? Do I actually have funds for those papers and inks?

Or maybe. . . have you got any suggestions? I’m really stumped here. This whole color thing is dampening my assumed creative spirit. Arrggh!

So if you’re shielding your eyes while viewing my website and wondering why I’m using these shocking colors, (although bold and vibrant colors are no longer stranger to weddings nowadays), be more forgiving. I may not be THAT good with colors, and swirls and curls and flowers. But I’m not THAT terrible to use those colors glaring in your face right now.

I’ll sort this out. Hopefully.

As I’ve previously posted, I was excited about setting up and decorating the venue for my nephew’s christening party and called it my Project no. 1. And I thought creativity was enough! Apparently, it’s not.

So here are the lessons I learned from my brief event styling stint:

1. You cannot go from conceptualization to execution 3 hours before the event. You have to plan, plan plan.

2. You and your assistants must be on the same page. Brainstorming is ideal days before the event. If you only have a few hours to decorate, only one must take the lead and the rest should follow.

3. You must know your materials. In my inexperience with balloons, I used indoor balloons outdoors. The party was scheduled midday, just as the sun is shining in her full glory. Before the guests arrived, 50% of the balloons have already popped.

4. You must bring all the tools you might need. Since I didn’t plan ahead, I needed a lot of tools I didn’t have.

5. If you don’t have the luxury of time, stick to your FIRST idea and do it.