领稿费的感觉真好

One of the reasons why I was seriously thinking of stopping to blog is because as I mentioned before, I got a lobang to do some technical writing for a E magazine. At that time I was really not sure how much effort it would took me, especially in the evenings to fullfill the requirements properly. Hence was a bit apprehensive and might have to give something away to do this new side track nicely.

In the end, it turned out that the contribution frequency is about once a quater...so I can actually afford the extra time in the evenings at home to research, compile, think, analyse and write.

Not that I needed the extra pocket money badly, but I took up this challenge trying to enrich myself abit, forceing myself to more serious research, analysing, summary and also brush up my writing skill. Had been spending abit too much time on MSN so my Singlish getting more and more broken liao. This is a good way to bring myself back on proper technical writing English, and if I can get paid for it...why not?


My 1st assignment is in Dec06 and it was a subject that I really know rather superficially. It's called Bitumen : A Growing Energy source in Asia. Took me about 10 ancious evenings of 2 hours each to research, compile, summarise and type into a proper document.

They also wanted me to look for high resolution pictures to accompany my article. For that I contacted Teng Hup/ Aderline to help source for Bitumen pictures and all efforts are blocked because of internal clearance issue. In the end have to feedback to them to soure the pictures thenselves through professional means.

Most challenging part of the exercise is that they wanted a section on "marketing strategies". Told them it is quite impossible for marketers to share their rice bowl with us, as i have worked in MNC for 15 years and I knew the red tape well. Imagine if they won't even want to share pictures with you, wht will they want to share strategies?? Even if they can share abit of insight....most likely that it will be very superficial that not much one can gain insight into.

In the end my assessment was correct. They wrote to afew of the MNCs and got nil reply.

Was asked to write 2000 words article and I submitted an draft version of about 1850 words. In the end the final word counts in the published format was about 1350 words. (that is what the use as a basis to pay me eventually).

2 days ago just received my 2nd assignment : 600 words article on LPG in Asia. Think this should be an easier task than the previuos one...I really hope so.

Question : How much do you think my reward is for that 1st article?? Closest answer will again get a box of chocs. Heehee. 2 tries each and hint : three figures and less than $500 lah...

But just want to say this : 领稿费的感觉真好！！