Microstock

Well.. since my freelance career is not making any progress (i.e. no client at all), I decided to do something else, which I’ve never really consider before. Selling microstock. So, what is microstock? Microstock is kind of stock image (Getty Image, Shutter Stock, etc). Usually, photographs, Here’s an example of stock photo (courtesy of aidsresearch.org)

But I don’t play here. My playground is vector images. I had quite a bad time just trying to submit the stock vectors. The agencies demand eps files and jpeg preview while I use Inkscape. Inkscape exports only to png (which actually has better quality), and saves natively to svg (the de jure standard for vector use in web, stated by W3 Consortium). So I spent so much time just to convert my hi-res png’s (some files scale up to 1080p) and svg’s to low-res jpeg’s and eps’s respectively. And yet, after all of those time-consuming efforts, I still don’t know whether my vectors are to be accepted or not.

Well.. I can only polish my skills. And let God do the rest.

Victim of Scam

Well, I waited for two weeks to do this post before I finally decided to post it. It is a story of scam which getting more creative day by day. I remember the scams about sex stuffs (you know, penis enlargement pills, virginity restore medicines, and such), referral things (I hate this one), cheap luxury items (watches, bags, you name it), even kind of lottery tickets. And now this, job scam.

As I mentioned before, I got a freelance job as writer, But it turned out to be just another scam. The reason why I waited before I post this is because I don’t want to be kind of prejudice against the client (I still call him client, because that’s exactly what he is to me). But after I saw no sign of good intention more than two weeks, I decided to post it anyway.

Get a job is seriously hard today. Even for well known freelancer. It is even harder for newcomers like me. I still have my full time job, but I already felt that I’m done. I would jump out anytime if I got the chance. Dealing with kids surely can be depressing.

My warning : don’t get too excited for a deal that sounds too good to be true. It almost is a scam. Or worse, a gateway to identity theft. Be warned and you’ll thank me later.

New Freelance Job

Well.. I’ve been staying up all night long again tonight. As result, I got my first ever job as freelancer. I intend to do this full time and leave my current full time job as soon as the time when I got steady income. I target at least $250 month steadily before I leave. But it’s a long term target. I currently only got $1 for every 500 words article I made. It’s not much. But also not bad for a start.
500 words for an article not that many. But for a topic I barely know, it’s a really hard work. Yeah. Unfortunately the first article I have to write was about furnitures. I like furnitures. I like how beautifully made furnitures were shown in expos. But that’s it. That’s all. I barely understood about the topic ‘Scandinavian Furniture design’. Googling didn’t offer much help. I had to babble a lot. Too bad for the first job, right? But it’s the reality I had to deal with. Fortunately, with God’s Wisdom, I managed to finish with 509 words
Whew.. That was the hardest writing I had to do, so far. I wish I could get something that really is under my competence. You know, computers, Linux, smartphones. But there’s always the first time in everything, right? My journey, long journey as freelancer begins now.

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