Suzannah over at Write it Sideways has a very good article about Demand Studios (my former sponsor) discussing whether it is a scam or legitimate freelancing. Her opinion is similar to mine. Demand Studios is not a scam. The worst they can be accused of is a bit of hyperbole in their advertising and PR, and I have yet to encounter a company that doesn’t do that. The pay at Demand Studios is low, but not rock-bottom, and it is possible to make a living writing there. Make no mistake, you won’t get rich, but I think it is a great place for writers who don’t have a lot of experience and want to build up both their skills and their portfolio. Everyone has to start somewhere. Her article is very in-depth, I recommend reading it if you want to know more about what it is like to write for them. For those who don’t like them, I am working on an article about how bloggers can effectively compete with Demand Studios and other content mills in the How To / Evergreen content market. Look for it soon.

Freelance writers live and die by their time and task management skills. This is especially true of freelancers who write for sites such as Demand Studios. Demand Studios gives writers at least one great advantage. Writers don’t have to spend time marketing themselves and landing clients. They have thousands of assignments to choose from at any one time. Writers can focus on content creation rather than marketing and publicity. That is a great advantage, but there are also challenges that come along with that advantage. The key challenge is time and task management. As a writer you will be juggling multiple assignments and you will have to complete these assignments quickly and efficiently if you want to make a living.

To begin with, we should define exactly what time management and task management are.

Time management

The process of scheduling and organization time to determine how much time is required to complete multiple direct and indirect tasks, and when such tasks are required.

Task management

Task management is the process of managing a series of tasks or projects through their life cycle, including planning, tracking and reporting.

Time and task management are very similar concepts. The main difference is emphasis. In time management, creating and sticking to a schedule is the primary goal. In task management, the completion of projects is the primary goal. These two types of organization can be used separately or combined together.

Using time management for your projects

Step One: Make a realistic assessment of how you spend your time

You can choose to use time management for just your work day, or for your whole life. For freelancers, who generally work at home, work and life tend to merge together so it is a good idea to assess your whole life. How do you use your time and how can it be improved? Tom Johnson of I’d Rather be Writing had this to say about how eliminating one thing has improved his life.

My biggest time sink by far was television. When you look at statistics for the amount of time people spend in front of the TV, it stacks up to about the same as a part-time job.

Why do we watch so much TV? Usually we think that the only way to relax or decompress is to turn on the television and escape the world for a while, but it’s not true. You can relax and decompress in more productive ways, such as tinkering around with your website, playing a sport, or reading a book. I wrote about this here: http://idratherbewriting.com/2009/10/16/forms-of-play/.

We recently started an electricity fast at my house, which means we aren’t watching any more television (no more hulu.com, basically). We’re about 5 days into the fast. At first I dreaded the absence of television, but now I appreciate the quiet. When I need to zone out and escape, I read, write, or fall asleep. I wake up earlier and I am more refreshed. I really didn’t need that TV zombie time to rejuvenate at all. Without all that time spent watching TV, I have more time to work on other projects.

Take a look at how you spend your time, especially your work time. Do you tend to spend time on frivolous items such as checking email, FaceBook, and Twitter every few minutes? Do you wander to the kitchen whenever you start to lose focus? This not only subtracts from your time but adds to your belly. Try to identify the ways you waste time, both little and big, and resolve to cut them out of your work day.

Step Two: Create a Schedule

A schedule can be general or very detailed. At the bare minimum, you should be setting deadlines for your writing projects. Sometimes your client will have a specific deadline for you. Claimed assignments at Demand Studios, for example, have a deadline that you can check in My Work Desk. When your deadlines are not set by clients, it will be up to you to set reasonable times for yourself.

There are many tools that you can use to track your time. A good desk calendar or organizer will do the job nicely. Computer based tools such as Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook are also good.

Beyond just listing deadlines, you should use your organization system to plan out your day. Set aside time for specific projects or for related tasks. For example, you could schedule an hour to write a specific article, or you could schedule an hour to do research for multiple articles. You can also set aside specific breaks in your day to relax, exercise, eat or do other non-work tasks. Having that time scheduled can help alleviate the feeling that you “should be working”. As long as you are following your schedule and working when you are supposed to, there is no reason to feel bad about the non-work items that you have scheduled.

Step Three: Track your Time

Once you have a schedule set, you need to stick to it. Sticking to a schedule can be a challenge. Track your actual day and see how close you come to your schedule. When you stray from the schedule, be sure to note the reason why. When you accomplish a task (whether you did it on time or not) note that as well. It is good to keep track of your accomplishments. Knowing you have completed something helps clear your mind for the work that is still ahead and a feeling of success is always a good thing.

As part of the time tracking process, try to identify whether or not you are devoting the appropriate amount of time to various tasks. If you are allotting an hour for projects that take twenty minutes or for projects that take three hours, you need to adjust your schedule.

Some time management tips

• Use Tomorrow + 2 planning. At the end of each day, plan the next day and make preliminary plans for the next two work days. This allows you to make plans before the panic of a new day and makes it easier to sleep at night because your brain won’t be so busy reminding you what to do the next day.
• Batch similar tasks. Jobs such as research, email, writing, and editing can be grouped by their similar nature, allowing you to stay in one “mode” longer rather than switching back and forth.
• Learn to say no. Avoid time-wasting activities. Don’t over schedule yourself. Look for assignments and tasks that make the best use of your time.
• Figure out what your prime time is. For most people there is usually a time of the day when they are the most effective. The reasons for this can be a combination of energy, enthusiasm and a lack of interruptions. Schedule your most difficult tasks for that time. Schedule the easier to accomplish, less taxing tasks for the periods of time when you are generally less effective.

Randy Pausch Lecture: Time Management

Long but worth it.

Using task management for your projects

As I mentioned earlier, task management is focused on mapping out the actions that need to be taken to complete a project. Setting time goals and deadlines is more in the area of time management. Task management is about tracking the actual actions that you and others need to perform in order to successfully reach a goal. Many people forego time management in favor of task management, while others combine the two. Personally, I focus more on task management than time management. While I schedule and track items such as appointments and deadlines, I don’t schedule most of my tasks. Instead I try to choose the most appropriate task based on my current energy levels, resources, enthusiasm as well as the task’s priority level.

If a calendar is the key tool in time management, the to-do list is the key tool in task management. Creating a to-do list can be a very straightforward activity. At its most basic, you only need to write a list down on any sheet of paper or any word processing file. There are, of course, much more sophisticated tools. I personally use gtdagenda.com to create my list, but there are also plenty free resources such as iPhone apps. Even Google Calendar has an integrated task list. What I like about gtdagenda.com is that it follows the principals of Getting Things Done, my favorite book on task management. I also like that it automatically emails me a daily to-do list that I can either print out or view online.

Step One: Assess the task / project

According to the principals of Getting Things Done, simple tasks that can be done in five minutes or less should be done right away. There is no need to track a task that you can just get done and forget about. Real task management comes in the form of projects. Projects are tasks that require multiple steps and may take from a few minutes to several months to complete. Most writing projects fall into that category. A typical Demand Studios article should take from a few minutes to perhaps a couple of hours to complete. The same task management principals, however, can be applied to larger projects such as books, manuals and web sites.

When you assess a task you want to determine the following:

• What is my priority for this task? (Low? Medium? High? Someday/Maybe?)
• Is there a deadline I need to work with?
• What resources do I need?
• Can any part of this task be delegated?
• What are the actions I need to take? (Be specific and detailed)
• What is the very next action I need to take?

Step Two: Add the next action to your to-do list

Your to-do list functions as a list of the next actions you need to take on each of the active projects (leave the someday/maybe projects off of your to-do list). You should also keep a list of things you are waiting for such as feedback from an expert or an email from a publisher. For people who are practicing time management as well, you should schedule those tasks on your calendar. For those practicing only task management, keep the to-do list handy and pick your next task based on priority, energy, enthusiasm and resources. Your resources often vary according to your location. For example, there are actions you can probably only do when you have an Internet connection and others you can only do if you have transportation or office equipment.

Step Three: Track your progress

The best part of a to-do list is crossing things off of it. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment. When it comes to task management, however, it is also important to assess on a daily or at least a weekly basis to determine what actions need to be added, deleted or delegated. I recommend that you follow the same basic rule as with time management. At the end of the day (either the work day or the actual day) go through your list and make sure that the list reflects what you need to be doing over the next few days.

Some task management tips

• Avoid multitasking. Do one item on your list at a time. Splitting your concentration generally means you will be less effective as a whole.
• Process the items on your desk (and in your email) as if they are potential tasks. Determine what actions are needed to remove them.
• Review your someday/maybe list about once a month to determine if any task is now important enough to take action on.
• Don’t get your heart set on completing every item on a to-do list. New items will always be coming in. The key is to capture them and accomplish as much as you can.
• Don’t feel guilty about taking time off or adding fun things to your to-do list. Life is meant to be enjoyed.

David Allen: Getting Things Done

If it’s good enough for the folks at Google, you should probably pay attention.

Below is a sample GTD style task management system:

An important change is coming to Poewar June 1^st. I am proud to announce that Poewar is going to join forces with Freelance Writing Jobs to create a new Writer’s Success Resource Center. This center, sponsored by Demand Studios, will feature in-depth coverage of writing topics, with guest experts from across the blogging and professional writing spectrum.

Deb Ng at Freelance Writing Jobs has long been a friend of the site, and I am thrilled to be partnering with her on this series. Demand Studios, for those who don’t know, is a community of over 7,000 freelancers that creates articles and videos for sites such as ehow.com, livestrong.com, cracked.com, trails.com and many other sites. They also provide content for newspapers such as USA Today and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Demand Studios has kindly agreed to sponsor this series designed to help writers increase their skill sets and find new jobs.

Beginning June 1^st, you can expect a major article and multi-media post to appear weekly. Freelance Writing Jobs and Poewar will alternate weeks, with Poewar providing the first post, an in depth-study of writing procedural “How-To” articles. These types of evergreen articles are a key to long-term success for most bloggers and web-content providers. Major writing bloggers James Chartrand of menwithpens.com, Tom Johnson of idratherbewriting.com will be providing advice and information for this first article.

I recently wrote an opinion piece defending Demand Studios after another blogger chose to label them as a scam based on the fact that their pay is somewhat low and they make frequent requests for rewrites of articles. I still side with Demand Studios on that issue, but I do want to point out a better (though not perfect) article about Demand Studios at ReadWriteWeb. This article doesn’t try to portray the writers as victims but rather tries to analyze the effect of such a large content mill on the Internet as a whole. The basic premise is that Demand Studios has a content creation system in place (using both automation and live reviewers) that results in an assembly-line style article that RWW compares to Henry Ford’s original automobile production line. The article takes issue with the quality of the content being produced, and that is a more legitimate criticism than the exploitation of writers.

4000 Articles a Day

According to the RWW piece, Demand Studios produces approximately 4000 articles a day through its combination of freelancers and editors. The one issue that I have with the article is that they use this as an indictment of the quality. They ask:

The bigger question is: there are surely many examples of good Demand Media content on the Web, but how many of the 4,000 articles it produces every day aren’t?

To me this is a poor argument. Yes, I’m sure that some of the 4000 articles aren’t great, but no one can judge what the percentage of this is so it is a specious question. I mainly read blogs by single authors. Mass produced blogs leave me a little cold. As a follower of individuals I can tell you that even the best bloggers put out lousy articles on occasion. Lord knows I do. No one is brilliant every day.

The better point the article makes is that the Demand Studios assembly line style and fast turnaround time creates a certain sameness to the articles being written, that there is a Demand Studios style, and it isn’t very interesting or incisive. I don’t read enough of their types of articles (like I said, I follow individual bloggers) to know if this is true, but it seems like a legitimate possibility.

In the Eighties the Definition of a Content Mill was “Associated Press”

Miami Vice Meets AP Style

Way back in the eighties, I served as the Associated Press Wire Editor for my college newspaper. Having an AP feed back then was as close as you could get to having Google News now. Article after article printed out on the dot matrix printer they provided, and I looked at them all (while dressed in my linen Miami Vice jacket) to see if they were relevant. I can tell you that AP’s style (they do have their own stylebook after all) was pretty bland even then. For most articles, you got the facts, and nothing but the facts. There was little room for color or individuality. A single article might get published in 500 different newspapers all over the world. Any sort of colorful writing had to be killed in case someone out there didn’t get it, or worse, was offended by it. Another interesting similarity between the Associated Press and Demand Studios is that AP has always used a number of low-paid writers (they call them stringers) to freelance for them. In the eighties, the saying was, “You can’t spell stupid without UPI and you can’t spell cheap without AP.”

Obviously Demand Studios is not identical to AP. The journalistic standards and the general level of talent at AP are considerably higher than at Demand Studios. AP is more selective about who they hire and more stringent about the sources for their articles. It is the similarities though, not the differences, that catch my eye. Both organizations tap a worldwide pool of writers. Both organizations exist to provide content to other organizations. Both organizations rely heavily on freelance work. Most importantly, both organizations have writing philosophies based on a universal cookie-cutter style.

I believe that sort of generic writing was the beginning of the end for newspapers, and I think that it can only have limited success on the Internet. A certain number of people will be satisfied with these articles, and search engines may never be able to tell good articles from bad articles, but there will always be plenty of room for individuals with distinctive voices to keep writing. A loyal audience that comes back again and again is in most cases preferable to a large number of casual readers who never return.

Demand Studios is a company that is filling a content niche quite successfully. The fact that they have enough writers and customers to be publishing 4000 articles a day shows that they are filling a need that exists on both sides. That said, if someone else comes up with a better way to do it, then the market will change again. I think Demand Studios does a lot of things well, but I also think there is plenty of room for improvement. If they can make a profit doing things their way, then surely someone who improves on the concept can do even better.

For Further Information:

• Is Demand Studios Worth Your Time?
• The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model
• About Hub Pages: An Interview with Ryan “Hup” Hupfer
• FakeAPStylebook on Twitter