My suggestions of browsing freelance job boards for work?

Don’t.

You will not believe the amount of writing people are willing to do for the most pathetic amounts of money. Look at the this posting:

A writing opportunity for serious article writers. Its more like a regular job than any other writing work. The writer would be required to deliver 1 article of 600 words daily and is suppose to keep in touch with me constantly. Since it is like a regular home writing job, the budget is $2 per article, and the payment for first 15 articles (i.e., for 15 days) would be kept in escrow account once the writer is selected. After delivering 15 articles (daily basis) partial payment would be released and after 30 days, the remaining funds would be transferred.

I am looking for a writer who can write for me in a timely manner, no delays please since I have to update on a daily basis. Besides, the subjects would be law, literature, psychology, management, nursing and so on. Writer is free to choose and write upon any matter but the information should be useful and meet the standards of a mature reader (Often I would be giving him selective topics to write, overall the topics would be decided beforehand). I could have done the task myself but due to timing constraint, I am unable to do so. Once the writer be able to gain my trust, I would prefer him or her for my future projects.

So in summary this person is asking someone to write 600 words for $2, every day for 15 days before she pays anything. That’s 9000 words, or nearly 20 pages of content for no more then 30 dollars. After this they will then receive partial payment, $15 I presume, and then they have to wait 30 days before receiving the remainder. I can only presume in this time she will be wanting another 20 pages.

What is shocking about this is that people actually bid on these kind of Jobs… Maybe it’s worth a lot more to people in other countries, but it certainly makes it harder to get any kind of freelance work with people willing to work for that kind of price.

I think the $8-$15 range is reasonable for posts between 200 and 500 words. For this you can be averaging maybe around $12 an hour if you write fast. I currently need to improve my writing speed. Often I find myself writing an article I then consequently completely rework later.

My aim is be able to write a decent, well linked 250-350 word article in 40 min or so.