Here’s how it works. Once you’ve downloaded the app, you select an “avatar” and begin creating tasks for your todo list (I picked the skeleton guy because I didn’t want to pay the extra $.99 for the macho dude). You can give a certain amount of experience points to each task you create. If it’s a relatively big project, give it 300 XP. If you can take care of it in a few minutes, give yourself 50 XP.

No Magic Sensors Here. You Need To Be Honest.

Epic Win is based on the honor system. You are the one who determines how much each “quest” is worth. You’re also the one responsible for crossing items off your list. Some reviewers complain that anyone can cheat through Epic Win, and that’s true — but what kind of person has a good time cheating his way around a to-do app? There are better games to play (and they also have cheat codes).

As your character gains XP, you start moving down the map, leveling up, and collecting loot. Whenever you level up, you have the option to announce it your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. It’s all an attempt to get people to compete with their friends to be more productive in real life.

There is one limit to the game (and I have a sneaking suspicion developers are working at a feverish pace to get it taken care of). You can’t actually use the loot you collect on your journey. I imagine that if you play this game long enough, you eventually get desensitized to just seeing a picture and a description. Real players want to fight monsters and bosses. They want to equip swords and cast spells.

Should You Use Epic Win?

Having said that, this app has suddenly made me more productive than ever. There is something incredibly satisfying about gaining experience points for doing daily tasks. I think one of the main reasons we get so bored with daily life is because we don’t hear bells and whistles when we do the normal stuff we’re all supposed to do. That’s why you can play an RPG for 40 hours straight while neglecting your girlfriend for days at a time.

I don’t think this app is very useful on its own. You need to spice it up with “real world” incentives. Here’s my plan. Once I reach level 25, I’m going to buy myself a new pair of snowboarding goggles. These are the kinds of discretionary purchases I could never justify on my own, but when they help me improve my overall productivity, it suddenly makes sense.

When you combine the fun of opening chests and leveling up with the payoff of upgrading your life (even if it’s small), you’ll notice a pretty substantial uptick in personal productivity. Even as I write this blog post, I’m thinking about eliminating it from my task list and gaining enough experience points to move up to the next level.

Are Games Like This The Future?

Games like Epic Win are going to become more and more commonplace in our lives. It won’t be too long before you don’t have to use the honor system. Sensors will watch what you do and notice that you are taking out the trash and brushing your teeth on time. The system will decide how many points to award, and you’ll get real world payoffs along with your virtual items.

Is this a good thing? Are we headed toward some 1984-esque future where corporations and governments treat us like some highly programmable Skinner box? Actually, we’re already living in that future. People check their email obsessively and play RPGs like World of Warcraft for days on end. Most of us would rather tend to our virtual crops on Farmville than clean our actual kitchen.

The makers of Epic Win are turning our human weaknesses inside-out. They are using our flaws to make us better people. Let’s face it. The games, the cameras, and the sensors are coming. It’s only a matter of time. At least a few of the designers are using it make our lives a little better.

That’s not scary. It’s totally EPIC!

I didn’t have time to talk about personal finances, an equally important aspect of doing what you love every day. Would you care to guess how much money I’m making while I’m living my dream? The answer is a lot lower than you might think.

I make about $1,700 a month. I use this money to travel the world, purchase new snowboarding equipment, pay rent, eat, and go out (very occasionally). At $1,700 a month, I’m making a little more than $20,000 a year. After self-employment taxes, the real amount is much less than that. You see, I really don’t make that much. I just know how to spend it very wisely.

How You Can Pull It All Together On Almost Nothing

I can snowboard year round because I don’t pay much for rent, I almost never go out to the bars, I carpool to the mountain with my friends, and I stay at my parents house in between seasons. Is this the dream life? For me, it is. I love to snowboard, and I would have a very difficult time adjusting to an office job when I’ve tasted the joys of working in my pajamas and leaving the house whenever I want. I’m also philosophically opposed to commuting (unless I’m going snowboarding).

Here’s what I’m saying. There are two sides of the coin when it comes to living the dream. It isn’t just about making a ton of money. That doesn’t matter if you’re spending it on $200 nights on the town. If you want to live your dream, you need to figure out what matters the most for you, and you need to budget for it.

Avoid Temptation Daily. Stick To Your Unique Agenda.

There are a ton of ways to spend your money, and you’re always being tempted. A girl out here in New Zealand just won $27,000 on Deal Or No Deal. In less than 6 months, she blew it all. How did it happen? One dollar at a time. She had to buy the best of the best, and wouldn’t you know it, those expensive bar tabs added up.

What’s she doing now? Last I heard, she’s a gas station attendant making $13/hr.

Don’t buy the best food. Buy as much as you can on special. Cook at home, and never let your leftovers go to waste. This is some pretty obvious advice, but it bears repeating. If you land a client that pays $50/hr, don’t start thinking you’re gonna be rich. Celebrate quietly with a cheap bottle of wine. At my house, we’re all big fans of Carlo Rossi.

Be Prepared For Hard Times

I keep a cushion of savings in case times get tough. With at least a few thousand dollars in the bank, I don’t have to worry about going back into the restaurant business or finding myself working in a gas station. If you have a great month, put your extra money into savings. You’ll be thanking yourself when work starts to dry up.

Your cushion will also help you expand your business and reach new markets. You can always expect to make a little less when you’re shifting gears. That’s because you’re working your butt off to convince new clients that you’re worth more. Once you land those clients, you’ll see the benefits.

The people who really get into trouble are the ones who have nothing set aside. They end up taking very low paying jobs just to get through the month. Don’t put yourself in this situation! As soon as you start charging ridiculously low rates, people will walk all over you. Pretty soon, you won’t have the time to devote to blogging and building important business connections (Hint: you won’t get them from people paying $8/hr for your work).

I would be lying if I told you it’s easy to break into the online freelance writing market. My first freelance writing gigs paid less than $5/hr. For several months, I had no idea what I was doing. I worked in a restaurant to make ends meet, and I saved up as much as possible to launch my business. When the time came to make the transition, I had no other choice but to figure it out right away.

Expect to make much less than you would make at a corporate job in your first year. That’s the tradeoff when you are building your own business. You don’t have a boss to help you get new clients. You have to do it yourself. I spend as much time looking for work as I spend actually doing work. When I’m not snowboarding, I’m hustling harder than anyone I know.

My dream isn’t some far off beach cabana. It isn’t a life spent slacking. I love to work. I’m addicted to it. Even when I’m snowboarding, I’m working on new tricks and putting videos together. There’s nothing better than being involved, whether you’re working from home or at an office. I just prefer the former because there are too many sunny days in the year, and I don’t want to miss any of them.

Freelancing might be for you. It might not. If you’re willing to make some sacrifices, and you enjoy being in control, it’s the best thing ever. For me, it’s a chance to live the kind of life people only dream about.

And finally, the result of an epic day:

Double Rodeo Attempt from Ted Bendixson on Vimeo.

There is a lot of evidence that video presentations sell products better than the standard sales letter. People are getting tired of gimmicks. They want to know more about who they are buying from, especially online. If you aren’t using video on your website, your brand could be at a disadvantage.

No matter how much time you put into your video content, it wont get found if you put a barrier between yourself and the search engines. Many bloggers think they only need to put their videos on the web, and the rest will sort itself out. It’s going to take a lot more than that. Here’s what you need to do.

Written Content Is King. You Still Need To Write Articles.

Despite all the technological advances we’ve seen in the past few years, Google still doesn’t know what to do with video content. When Google’s search engine spider crawls your website, it only notices the presence of video. It doesn’t know what’s in the video because that would require too much work.

Instead of going through the extremely difficult task of figuring out what your video is about by “watching” it, Google’s spider reads the written content surrounding your video. This is the easy thing to do, especially when Google’s servers are busy crawling and indexing billions of sites daily. Will Google eventually make sense of video content by analyzing the videos themselves? Maybe… but I wouldn’t bet on it anytime soon.

The most successful video blogs are not just “video blogs.” They are blogs with video. If you want your video content to be found, it should always be surrounded by a nice well-written article. It has long been known that Google gives extra “weight” to pages with more written content. The more words you place around your video, the better it will appear in Google’s eyes.

What You Need To Know About YouTube, Vimeo, And Other Video Hosting Sites.

Believe it or not, video hosting sites want your video content to be found too. Thats why they allow you to add tags and write a nice long description for every video you upload. Whenever you add videos to social media sites, take the time to tag them for the keywords you want to be found under. It will improve your traffic more than you think.

You should also write a description that sells your video to potential viewers. It should read like a mini-advertisement. Don’t worry too much about keywords when you do this. Just remember to include hooks and calls to action that will get people to click on the link.

Let’s use this video as an example:

“Are search engines finding your videos? In this short and simple tutorial, I’ll show you a few little known tricks that will help your videos get a better rank on Google and other search engines. You’ll learn why it’s important to embed your videos in written content, the purpose of tags, and how to use social media to get more views.”

It takes time to write a description like this. I spent about 20 minutes. Many people like to breeze on through when they upload videos to YouTube, but it’s not wise. It’s just like putting a product on sale and having no signage. You’ve already gone through the trouble of putting up the content. The least you can do is advertise it.

This is a point that doesn’t just apply to SEO for video content. It applies to SEO in general. Website owners often forget to use their META description tags properly. These are the short descriptions that appear in Google’s search engine listings under your link. If they don’t read like an advertisement, people won’t click through.

A Final Note About Keywords

It’s always important to do keyword research, but some people go overboard with it. Don’t worry about “keyword density” or any of the other phony metrics. If you want to rank for a particular keyword, put it in your tags when you upload to YouTube and include it once in the header or a sub-heading. That ought to be enough to give your keyword more “weight” when Google’s search engine spider comes around.

I have said it before, and I will say it again. The best SEO strategy is no SEO strategy. It’s all in the content. As long as your content is accessible, and you give it the polish with a good sales pitch, people will share it. You don’t become a YouTube star by worrying about how many times you’re repeating certain words in your description. You become a star because your videos are amazing. Especially this one.

Writing is like putting together a puzzle. Some sentences work in certain places while others just don’t. You’ve got big pieces. You’ve got small pieces. You’ve got pieces that only work in one context, and you’ve got pieces that hit the mark every time.

Your one and only job, as a writer, is to know your pieces well. When you put your pieces together and everything fits, your writing will have rhythm. If you haven’t solved the puzzle yet, your writing won’t be very readable. It’s really as simple as that.

Don’t Just Look For Grammatical Errors. Ask Yourself If Your Copy Sounds Good.

Everybody proofreads their work. Unfortunately, most people only look for misspelled words and grammatically incorrect phrasing. They don’t stop to think about rhythm.

Do you think the person who wrote this even wondered if it sounds good?

“We offer high quality reliable research copywriting and editing services through qualified professionals from a wide variety of industries and apply strict quality assurance processes to ensure we produce written words that are well-researched, portray the right image and effectively communicate a clear and concise message.”

Yes, very concise…

Would you believe I found this gem posted as my competitor’s bid for an Elance project? If you’re wondering why some people aren’t successful on that site, here’s your answer. Nobody is convincing their prospects that they can actually write.

Don’t Be Afraid To Delete Large Swaths Of Your Work

I often delete entire paragraphs because they just don’t work. This is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it should be a part of your writing process too. Sometimes the best way to solve the puzzle is to see it in a different light. When something doesn’t work, give it the chop and start again.

You will be surprised at how liberating this can be. I might go so far as to say it’s a cure for writer’s block. So many of us get caught up on one idea. We bang our heads against a wall trying to get it to work, but nothing happens. Deleting clumsy paragraphs and sentences will clear your mind and allow you to come up with something that works better. I suggest you give it a try.

Keep Simplifying Everything You Write

Some people say you should proofread your articles once to make sure they’re grammatically correct. Just once? Are you frickin’ kidding me? I read everything I write at least 10 times, if not 20 times, in the course of writing it. I’m always looking for new ways to simplify my content. You should too.

No matter what you write, there is always a simpler way to express it. It’s really easy to write a nice long article like this one. You have breathing room. The real challenge comes when your client wants to you to jam an entire biography into 50 words. If you don’t know your puzzle pieces, you won’t create an arrangement that works.

Try this out. Write a 500 word biographical piece on yourself. Once you’ve done that, write the same thing but restrict it to 250 words. Next, go to 100. After that, try 50. I believe you will notice something. It’s really hard to write concisely. When you have less wiggle room, you have to get rid of the big puzzle pieces and replace them with the smaller ones that say the same thing.

The most effective writers have no romantic notions about the process. They see it as a mechanical sort of discipline, complete with words and phrases that function like cogs in some great machine. I am not an artist. I get paid to play Tetris with words. As soon as you realize that creating good content isn’t about being clever, you’ll get more people to care about what you’re saying.

Really. It’s as simple as that.

Here’s a good reason to always check through every buyer you see on a site. If you ever see any reviews like this, just think to yourself that it could be you the next time. Even if somebody does cause you harm, it looks very unprofessional to publicly wish for their life to become a living hell.

I hope the worst curses of bad PR befall you, TheMason! May you find yourself in a position in which you are never able to recruit top talent! Yea, your business shall rot from its own creepy and decrepit ways, and your children’s children shall never touch an Elance account for fear of mockery and reproach! Take heed, for the twilight of your exaggerated anger is upon you!

Forget what I just said. This is too fun!

Have A Very Well Written Profile

Your Elance, Odesk, and Vworker profiles are much more important than your Facebook profile. You aren’t just writing something for your friends. You are writing a little advertisement for yourself. Make sure your English is perfect and your wording is as smooth as butter. Be specific about your unique skill set, and never promise to do more than you know you are capable of.

I see a lot of profiles where the freelancer states too many generalities. If you find yourself saying things like, “100% satisfaction and amazing turnaround,” or “the most innovative web designers on the web,” stop yourself. This is a huge turnoff to buyers because they know you are just fishing for whatever phrase sounds nice. Take the time to find very specific strengths that set you apart from everyone else. Your buyers will notice the extra effort.

Bid Competitively (For Now)

The lowest bidder doesn’t always win, but a bid that is lower than average can help to position you as the better choice. Here is something you can try. Go through the buyer’s project history and try to find out what she has paid for something similar to the project currently listed. Instead of bidding the lowest price possible, position your bid slightly lower than the price of the last project.

There is such a thing as bidding too low, and it can actually cost you the job because it makes you look like you don’t understand the scope of the project. I certainly don’t always hire based on price alone. I almost always pick the candidate who grasps the project the best.

Be There For Someone In A Time Of Need

Emergencies happen, and they are the reason companies like Odesk exist in the first place. If you can find someone in a rough spot who needs your expertise right now, you will be on your way to securing that crucial first project. To narrow down your results, just type “urgent,” or “emergency” into the search bar. There is almost always at least one person in desperate need of your help on any given day.

Realize that I offer this advice with a word of caution. I wouldn’t recommend most of these clients on a longterm basis. Some people genuinely do get into emergency situations, but I’ve often found that most “needed it yesterday” types simply lack good time management skills. Take the project now, but don’t offer to help them when they come back with another “emergency” unless you are getting excellent compensation.

Follow Through With Your Best Work Ever

So you got hired? Excellent. Now get to work right away and impress your client with some real results. Time is ticking. The more time you spend procrastinating, the less excited your client will be when you deliver your work. Keep a sense of urgency and get your work done a few days ahead of the deadline. Stay in close communication in case anything unexpected happens.

Still lacking motivation? Think of it this way. It’s better to have a profile with no job history than to have a profile with one botched job. If you fail now, you basically ruin your chances of ever getting work on any of these sites. I did that with GetAFreelancer.com, and it’s one bridge I’ll never be able to cross again. Don’t close the door to more opportunities just because you want to be lazy!

When All Else Fails, Get A Friend To Hire You

It took me a month and a half to land my first job on Vworker. That’s one month too long if you’re looking to use platforms like these to build up your portfolio and launch your online career. It might seem unethical, but it is completely OK to have a friend hire you for your first project.

Just make sure you’re actually doing a project and not simply paying off your friend. I’m sure you can find something that needs to get done. Maybe your friend needs a custom made Twitter account or some help editing a term paper. This practice is completely ethical as long as you are going out and commissioning real work.

My friends still hire me over Elance and Odesk because these sites aren’t just tools for finding work. They’re also great for managing projects and making sure everything gets done according to a set schedule. I see these sites as a software platform and nothing more. Their job is to facilitate the online work process, making it easier for you to manage your work life from home.

Don’t allow the fact that you don’t have an online job history get you down. It’s a lot easier to build an accomplished profile than you might think. With persistence and the desire to create a schedule that allows you to get the most out of life, you can win your first job and launch your freelance career.

Appeal To Their Self-Interest

Countless studies show that the most effective headlines are the ones that appeal to a deep and personal want or need. Use this to your advantage by creating headlines that tell your readers how you can solve their problems. This is the reason why you see so many headlines that read something like this:

“The Top 5 Reasons You Should Use Top 5 Lists In Your Articles”
“Are You Doing Enough To Stop These 10 Common Causes Of Failure?”
“You’re Pretty Sure He’s Running Around. How Can You Tell If He’s Going To Desert You?”
“My Grandmother’s 1 Weird Tip For Getting Men To Pay Attention To My Midsection”

You get the idea. All of these headlines play with your reader’s personal wants and needs. You can take it one step further by embedding an accusation of some sort, just like I did with the headline for this article. Whenever you find an opportunity to inject an emotional trigger into a headline, use it.

Why The Secret I Am About To Reveal Will Make Your Headlines More Interesting

Sometimes it’s what you don’t say that makes your audience want to read a little more. If you can find a way to add the element of mystery to your headlines without taking away the appeal to your readers’ self-interest, you might just have yourself a winning formula. Here are a few examples:

“What She Isn’t Telling You About The Size Of Your Worst Insecurity”
“The Secret To Creating Mysterious Headlines Finally Revealed!”
“Companies Like To Keep This Policy Quiet. Find Out How You Can Exploit It.”
“This Thing That I Won’t Name Right Now Changed The World. It’s Back, And It’s Better Than Ever.”

You will notice that many of the examples from the first section also use the element of mystery. I always chuckle when I see these “1 Weird Tip” ads on websites. They have to be doing well because I keep seeing more of them. It’s just interesting that something as simple as saying you have a “weird tip” could be so effective.

Sometimes You Need To Consider A Design Change

It doesn’t matter how well written your headlines are if you don’t have a site design that shows them off. Do your articles have clear and visible headlines? Are Your Headlines Written In Large Bold Text With Capital Letters At The Beginning Of Every Word? I don’t mean to toot my own horn here, but this website is a great example of a design that’s created for the purpose of presenting content. It has large bright red headlines that stand out, sub-headlines that break up the articles, and the occasional picture or video to attract even more interest.

Be willing to face some hard realities. You may have just put down a bunch of money for an expensive Flash website when something much simpler would have done the job. You might also have a design that’s outdated. If you aren’t using some kind of content management system like WordPress or Drupal, it’s time to get in on it now.

I have a little secret for you. I only had to pay $200 to get this site designed. Here’s what I did. I bought the server space and domain, installed WordPress, picked a theme I like, and then I hired somebody on Elance to modify the theme to something that suits me a little more. If you think high end design is out of your price range, think again. There are plenty of ways to make it very affordable.

Don’t be afraid to spend a lot of time thinking about the headlines you write. If you can’t come up with something interesting right away, wait on it. There’s no point in publishing an article that won’t get read just because you need to meet a deadline. Write the headline first, and the content will practically write itself.

Cardona Teaser Ted Bendixson from Ted Bendixson on Vimeo.

Over the years, the online job market has come to represent the real job market in a variety of ways. The social media revolution has created a kind of real world responsibility that is fairly new to the web. What you do, as an employee and as an employer, is more visible than ever. Every action counts.

I don’t mean to scare you, but here is the new reality. If you want to attract talent online, you need to do the same things you would do to attract talent offline. You need to convince your potential employees that your project is worth the time and effort it takes for them to put a proposal together. You also need to look like you can follow a project through to its finish.

As a person who searches through the bidding sites for work, I value employers with a solid reputation who know what they’re doing. When you convey this image in your job posting, you will get more of the right people to bid on your projects. Here’s how you do it.

Don’t Ruin Your Reputation!

It doesn’t matter if you are hiring on Elance, Odesk, Vworker, or any of the over 20 different sources of online workers, reputation is the most important thing to consider when you post your job. Every time you post a project and don’t follow it through, your reputation suffers. The more your reputation tanks, the more difficult it will be to attract rockstar talent.

Before you post any project, think it through. Do you really want to do this? More importantly, do you really need to do this? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve posted a project and decided minutes later that I would just do the project myself. It’s this kind of self-destructive behavior that will ruin your reputation very quickly. Don’t do it!

Be 100% certain that you have the resources to devote to the project and that it is something you cannot do on your own. That is the only way to guarantee you won’t give up on hiring someone. My most successful hires were in areas where I knew absolutely nothing and desperately needed the help. My employees did a great job, and my online reputation improved.

Start Small And Work Your Way Up

As an experienced freelancer, I am past the point of considering employers who don’t have at least one project under their belt. I wish I could, but It’s simply too much risk to assume on my part. I would guess that most experienced freelancers are in a similar situation. We don’t want to work for someone who doesn’t have any experience hiring people online.

How can you get past this? It’s simple. Start with a quick little project and use it to build up your reputation. There are a lot of small scale projects you can do, and they shouldn’t cost you that much. How about taking care of a long-neglected but relatively tiny website tweak?

A single project as small as this will help you establish yourself as a high paying client who is worth pursuing. When I look through a potential client’s history and see that the client was willing to pay between $20 to $40 per hour for copywriting skills, I pursue that client. Do as much as you can to make it look like you will pay well for any services you purchase.

Don’t Look For Quick And Cheap Solutions. Look For Longterm Business Relationships.

I have a guy who will make tiny changes to my website whenever I need it done, and I can talk to him whenever he’s on Skype. He charges a very reasonable price for his services, and he saves me a ton of time. How did I manage to get him to work for me?

Very simply put, I never tried to fleece him. I posted the project on Vworker.com, accepted his bid, and after the project was finished, I just asked him to quote me what he thought was a reasonable price for the work. Most people aren’t trying to scam you. They know what you can afford, and they know how long it takes them to complete the work. Their quotes usually reflect their efforts.

Trust needs to be the cornerstone of all of your business relationships. If your employee tells you she is working overtime to complete your project, take that as a hint that your initial time estimate was wrong, and she deserves to be paid more. Give her a nice bonus, and she’ll happily stay on Skype to help you when it’s urgent.

The clients I have chosen not to keep are usually the ones who are trying to get an amazing bargain out of hiring an online freelancer. They think they’re playing the system, but we can smell them a mile away. After a single a project with one of these clients, I promptly delete their contact information and move on.

Be reasonable and generous from day one, and you will keep us interested and willing to continue working with you. The old adage is true, both online and offline. You get what you pay for. When you’re willing to spend a little more, you will attract many more qualified candidates. Just because you’re hiring online doesn’t mean you should take the hiring process any less seriously.

Now get out there and find the freelancer of your dreams!