There is a truism that artists hardly survive the common life. Artists are known to be so dedicated to their work they often fail to acquire the necessary skills to obtain money to sustain their work. Talk of forsaking the form for substance. At any rate, writing is an art, and since I am a writer, I believe I am an artist also so that if I stay poor I would not have anyone but myself to blame. Knowing that artists wallow in poverty, and I insist on being an artist, then if I wallow in poverty it is my fault, right?



But writing as a way of living is conceived generally to be a process: write, publish, sell and earn. An artist gets no money until his book sells. So a writer strains for very long writing his novel or book, engages an editor to correct its language and structure, hires publisher to have it published so that it can sell to earn him money. All the time the writer has to eat, and if the story does not get published or is rejected by publishers, or does not sell because of many factors, the writer starves. Unless he gets a patron or earns a living by some other means which usually means he neglects or relegates his writing to lower priority in life, or he surrenders to money some of his convictions.

There is, however, a new system for writing that gets paid almost instantly, so that the artist survives at least on a day-to-day basis. It is called freelancing on the internet. essentially, the writer bids for writing jobs over the internet, in specialized websites that offer such, for clients who need articles on topics they require for their own websites or business, but haven't the talent or so they think or the time to write what they need. They therefore hire 'professional' writer --'outsource' is the term-- to write them. The buyers then pay the provider --writers-- the bid amount once the buyer approves the work done. Payment is often via specialized websites also such as PayPal.

Well and good. except that since the internet is available all over the world, providers of all nations and persuasions and talents bid, and the buyer is not sure if the provider can actually produce the required article. Hence, there is a rating system instituted to mark those providers who have proven to be reliable and preferred by his clients. In another website, there is a panel of editors who go over the articles submitted before they are passed to clients. In such a way, quality is assured and the system becomes failsafe, so the business continues.