On one of the loops I'm on, there is talk about searching for your name on Google to see where you are mentioned. I saw a few emails come through, so I decided to give it a go. I picked up quite a few direct links to myself. The one being to a column that I wrote years ago. I cringe at some of the articles I wrote back then. I've definitely improved in my writing skill since I had that column. I also found some links to comments I've left in the past on some of the news sites. One comment being one I left around election time last year. I never had an idea that would be easily accessible.
Other mentions were also found. One that was quite interesting to me. A few months ago I had applied for a copy writing job. I received the assignment, but something just didn't add up. I talked to some fellow writers over at Writers Chat, and they all agreed something seemed off. The pay was too low. The assignment was one of those huge in number that would take forever to complete, but they said one could write ten articles in one day. I wrote three in one and that took me a few hours to do, so unless I wrote all day on those assigned articles for a period of months there was no way I'd see the promised bonus incentive. I sent in my first batch of ten, and I had three accepted. Something screamed at me to walk away, and that's what I did.
Today during my Google search, I found one of those articles I had written referenced in another blog. No link to the exact article posting, but it was my article and my name. I was never paid for the article, and I'm not sure if it was even one of the ones the editor had even accepted. My computer suffered a computer crash a month or so ago, so I don't have the article on my hard drive. It was one article, so I'm not sure if that is a big enough issue to make a deal of. I would like to see where the article was posted, and see if there were others. I'm wondering if I should comment the blogger that used my article as a reference and ask. Any suggestions?
21. Googling yourself
Monday, April 25, 2005
Posted by Regina Avalos at 5:10 PM
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4 comments:
I googled myself and found some nice reviews and one not so nice review ... ouch.
Last time I tried googling myself, I came up with my blog, some blog comments I made, and a bunch of other people with the same name. I didn't check all the listings, though.
As for your question, I'd try asking the blog owner about the article. The worst they can say is they don't know where it is, right?
It is interesting, Sheri. I usually forget to look though until something reminds me. Like the emails yesterday that came through the ERA list.
Jill, good on the good reviews. On the not so nice one, I just tell myself that you ca't please everyone all of the time.
Lynn, I went about 4 or 5 pages once I saw the article pop up. I wanted to see if there were any others that had been posted. I thought I had bookmarked the blog I saw my article, but I don't see it now. I'll try googling again, and see if it comes up.
There never was a contract signed. It never got the far. Unless the editoe count my email accepting the assignment on a trial basis as a contract. I'm definitely going to have to take a look into this. If nothing else I can use the articles published as a writing credit. They were short articles, and I know with more time and more research I could do better on the topics discussed.
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