Michel,

This is a great idea.

I have the same concerns as Suzanne. It would be nice if there was a filtering process. There's a fair amount of dreck here so far. $1 articles and the like.

If this forum contained only the best of the freelance opportunities out there it would make it more useful. It would also be ideal if only a moderator could post threads here to cut down on the dreck.

Also, it might be good if the posts were made under an ID dedicated to that purpose so that your profile isn't cluttered with these posts. If people click "find posts by Michel Fortin" they will have to sort through all these job posts to find your other posts.

Good points!

1) Remember, the first time the board fetches the job postings, it goes back to the last 25. So that's why right now there seems to be a lot. It won't be as many from here on end.

2) While there are some filters (I have applied them to find only copywriting jobs), the quality of jobs (such as price, budget, job type, etc) have too many variables to filter. So we will need, if someone is up for it, to moderate these as they need to be human-reviewed. There really is no other way around this, unfortunately.

3) The username of new posts from now on will come from a different username ("Copywriters Board") instead of me. (Good point, Anita!)

Michel,

I'd be happy to assist with the filtering and other tasks.

Update

There are currently 6 feeds for the Copywriting Jobs forum:

• elance.com
• netwriter.com
• getafreelancer.com
• odesk.com
• writersrow.com
• getcopywritingjobs.com

I just applied the following filters:

• copywriting
• copywriter
• salesletter
• copy writer
• copy writing

But the problem is, the filter looks at keywords, not phrases. The last two, which has the word "writer" in "copy writer" will be filtered. That's why there was a whole bunch of posts for article writing, forum posting, etc.

I manually removed those from the forum.

But I also removed the last two filters. It should be posting even less, now. Only when the feeds contain "copywriting," "copywriter" and "salesletter" it will be posted in the forum.

Finally, I did some more digging, and applied some "extra" filters to the native RSS feeds -- although, this was a pain in the neck because some RSS url's were ver-r-r-r-r-ry long. I used tinyurl.com's redirect service, and it seems to work.

In other words, I went to eLance.com and filtered to show only ads that have a budget of $1,000+. (I know this will keep out the hourly rate offers, but this is better than before.)

Also, I removed JobVolume altogether. The ads were low quality, and it was too labor-intense to filter. JobVolume is an aggregate site itself, anyway, so I'd rather use its sources directly. (Which I have, in fact. One I found and added was GetCopywritingJobs.com.)

This should be the last changes for a little while.

However, in the meantime, if you know of a job site with rss feeds you think I should add, let me know!

Michel, my hat's off to you! You're always looking for additional value for this forum (and everything you do).

Cheers,

John

Michel

You are awesome! Thanks for doing that for all of us.

I hadn't really paid attention to how jobs were being posted here by feed...so I thought it was clients posting directly.

I have a question: are the copywriters on this board really going to be interested in jobs that offer single dollar amounts to write "articles"? I'm not sure that jobs from getafreelancer.com are the best fit for the jobs board here, but I might be very mistaken.

Am I wrong? If so, please tell me. If not, perhaps we should limit submissions from the getafreelancer.com website.

"clients who want cheap labor". LOL

Don't they all? On these online "employment services" I can't believe the low hourly rates! And the jobs go to the lowest bidder, too. It seems like a waste of time to even bother bidding on a job that ends up being $25 per hour.

I can do that!

Hi, I run a job board for writers, editors, copywriters called Sunoasis.com
and have posted two jobs for copywriter type positions in the Chicago area. One is for a Marketing Communications Specialist and can be seen at sunoasis.com at appliedsys1.html


The other is a Public Relations Specialist. See here:
appliedsys2.html

The company is a maker of software for insurance agents and brokers and is looking, in both jobs, for someone with a 4-year degree in journalism, communications, etc.

I hope this helps someone on the list!