Within the last several weeks, two projects have been driving me crazy: something I needed written very quickly, and a PDF document of an ebook that I need to update. But the Word file that I used to create the PDF was corrupted. It’s possible to edit a PDF but it’s time-consuming and it would have taken me weeks. <\/p>\n
I have found it virtually impossible to do either project, because I have a million other projects on my plate. Then I heard about Elance.com <\/a>and Rentacoder.com<\/a>, two websites where thousands of vendors are just waiting to bid on projects like the two I was dragging my feet on. <\/p>\n I went to Elance.com and posted the writing project. I specificed that I didn’t want the bidders to see each other’s bids. Then I left the bidding open for 10 days. When the deadline expired, I had seven bids to review, from a low of $400 to a high of $5,000. As it turned out, the lowest bidder had the best qualifications. He even worked as a newspaper editor and knew exactly what I wanted. The project was finished on time.<\/p>\n Here’s what happened with the project that involved turning a PDF document into a Word document. I posted the project at both websites, flagged it as an emergency and left bidding open for only two days. When bidding closed, I had about 10 bids from which to choose. I chose the lowest bid at—get this—$10! The woman who won the bid did a phenomenal job. Not only did she convert the document to Word, but she compared every page in both documents and reformatted the Word document so looked exactly like the PDF. <\/p>\n Is that a steal, or what?<\/p>\n Many vendors probably live in countries like India and Pakistan where a $10 project is akin to a week’s pay in other countries. <\/p>\n Both websites make it easy for you to communicate with the bidders if you have questions about the bids. They have also built in a variety of security measures to make sure the work is done to your liking before the vendors are paid. Those who do the work pay the fee. <\/p>\n I can think of all kinds of ways Publicity Hounds can use both websites:<\/p>\n –To have news releases written and media kits created<\/p>\n –To call in experts when you’re in a bind about a techie issue such as how to update your website<\/p>\n –To find editors and proofreaders<\/p>\n –When you’re having problems formatting documents<\/p>\n –When you have problems with software programs such as Excel, Quickbooks or ACT! <\/p>\n I’m sure you can think of lots more uses. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Within the last several weeks, two projects have been driving me crazy: something I needed written very quickly, and a PDF document of an ebook that I need to update. But the Word file that I used to create the PDF was corrupted. It’s possible to edit a PDF but it’s time-consuming and it would\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":4,"wds_primary_category":603,"footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[281,13,604],"class_list":{"0":"post-333","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-content-creation","7":"tag-press-kits","8":"tag-press-releases","9":"tag-writing-articles","10":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40649,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/40649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}