"If you're good at something, never do it for free."
-The Joker
There's this idea out there that you can do what you enjoy, and somehow you'll eventually get payed for it. It almost never works.
Last week, I noticed an add on Craig's List. Examiner.com needed someone in San Francisco to become a new correspondent for their website and write up all the local stories relating to zombies. I've never been so qualified for a job in my life.
I applied online, got hired via email and sent them my paypal information for the purposes of virtual remuneration. The future is now.
I'll have to work in a more journalistic style than I do here. Especially the past couple weeks, this site has become more bloggy and, I'm disappointed to say, kind of self-centered. I set out for this site to be entirely about the content of the story, but it would get pretty quiet around here waiting for me to get the next chapter just right. Like I said in my first post, this is an experiment, and as of last week, I was still making things up as I go along.
Now, logging into my account page on Examiner, having published my first article and let it sit there for over a day, I've banked myself eight whole pennies from page views. $0.08! I'm so proud.
A long time ago, I decided writing was the career for me. I've done a lot of writing for free since then. We call it writing on spec, which is short for "speculation that someone might someday pay for what I already wrote." In all that time, writing has now made me a total of eight cents, and it only took about six years.
So come on down and check me out, the SF Zombie Examiner, professional writer.
