freelance writer

Making Ferrari Money

August 27, 2021 by Brian Nelson Leave a Comment

I have a whole social media campaign planned out around the concept of me using various platforms and strategies you always see people on the internet insisting they use to make tons of money, and you can too!

The idea is to make enough money to buy a Ferrari like this one YouTube kid I randomly saw using different money making ideas and platforms that influencers say put them in a place to travel the world, buy sweet houses, and yes, own a Ferrari… or two… with a Bugatti. It even turns out that I drive past a local Ferrari dealership all the time. When the time comes, I can just drive up and say, “How much money is a Ferrari?”

I have some scripts to write and some TikToks to film to start the campaign off. But, as they say, a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum.

red ferrari money — Turns out there is a local Ferrari dealership on my usually driving path. Even though this Ferrari is on hold for someone else, and I took this picture through a window, it’s a solid example of what I’m shooting for.

Amazon Flex For Flexing Dollar Bills

One day, I was sitting in my chair scrolling through my phone, like my wife hates, and I came across a Facebook ad for Amazon Flex. Amazon Flex doesn’t need drivers everywhere, but apparently they were hiring in the Denver area, and even though I haven’t recorded my TikToks, or sent out my tweets, or put together a email list for people to subscribe to, I signed up.

Acorns is a good way to save and invest money.

I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal because I could sign up and get while the getting is good, and then just wait for the appropriate moment in my social media and content management campaign to document using Amazon Flex to make money. However, I didn’t really PLAN on doing Amazon Flex at all, and after getting through the sign up and on-line training process, I had this app just burning a hole in my pocket.

So, I started doing Amazon Flex.

Amazon Flex First Delivery

Usually, using Amazon Flex is a bit of commitment, at least when you’re used to being your own boss at your Denver-based freelance writing business.

You sign up for 2 hour, or 3 hour blocks, for the most part. As it turns out, the warehouses you start at are in my city, but not close to my house, per se, so not only am I signing up for a 2-hour shift, I’m also signing up for a 30 minute drive there, and a drive of who knows how long from wherever the route ends.

But, Amazon Flex has this setting where you can indicate that you are “Available Now.” Then, if some sort of delivery comes up with a bit of urgency, it pages you to say there is an immediate delivery available in your area. As it turns out, my house is about halfway in between two Whole Foods stores, so I’ve gotten a couple of buzzes. I declined the first one, but the second…

It was a delivery from Whole Foods to somebody, and I basically blundered the whole thing.

Despite watching all the training videos, my brain went, “I know what to do next,” and just took off. What I was supposed to do is click the button on the app that says, “I’ve Parked.”

You see, Amazon Flex is structured as a step by step process that requires you to indicate that you have done each step. So, when you get to the customer’s house, you don’t just get out of the car and take the bags up to the door, you click, “I’ve parked,” and THEN it tells you that the customer wants the packages a certain way. Then, it tells you to scan the bags to show you’ve delivered them.

I floundered around outside the house for a while before I noticed the “I’ve Parked” button. When I clicked it, everything because crystal clear.

The good news is that I had a chance to learn from my mistakes on a baby delivery and not on some long route that I fell way behind on.

Amazon Flex Second Delivery

I signed up for a second delivery today. It’s also a small one, but this time I get to practice going to an actual Amazon fulfillment center rather than just a Whole Foods. This time, I will look for a button to press every step of the way.

I don’t think Amazon Flex will earn me Ferrari money, but we’re going to see a movie this weekend, and it should pay for the tickets. I’ll need another delivery to pay for concessions, though.

Can a Professional Writer Have Too Many Websites?

March 29, 2021 by Brian Nelson Leave a Comment

Being a professional writer means being a writer.

In an underrated, classic starring Billy Crystal and Danny Devito, called Throw Momma From the Train, Crystal’s character is a writing class instructor. He says, “A writer writes. Always.”

Always Writing

What Crystal means in the movie is that as a writer you should always be writing. I’d go a step further and say, as a natural writer, you can’t stop writing.

I’m often writing in my head. Sometimes it’s nothing more that narrating something that happened to me. Often, it is some fantasy scene playing out in my head. Other times, it’s writing an article for publication.

The catch to always writing is that you always need places to put your writing. As a result, I have numerous websites. Some of those websites make money for me. Some of those websites are just informational, and some of those websites are just places to allow my creativity to spill out onto the page. The only way to truly stop writing something in your head is to write it, for real, in the real world.

Once upon a time, I had a website called brianenelson.com. I have this website because BrianNelson.com was already taken. The idea was that this website would be the “me” website. A place where I could dump my ideas and thoughts, and blathering on. All of which would be pre-written in my head.

I took it down after worrying that specifying my middle initial was too person and might lead to identity theft. Ironically, finding my middle initial is probably the least difficult piece of data to track down about me.

A New Place for Personal

What all of these words are getting at is that I’m debating whether this Brian Nelson website is where I want to put “me” even though it has the .pro extension, or if I want to pull my other Brian Nelson information website out of mothballs and make that the “me” website.

Honestly, either one makes sense. I could contain my pro stuff to my Colorado-based freelance writing website and then use this as a “Yes, I’m a professional, but I also do all of this stuff everyday,” website. A lot of the “me” can be diverted to other websites I already run like, my parenting website which I use both as an outlet for all things parenting, as well as a money earning website with parental information and keywords.

Or, I could keep this as my “me, but professional,” website. I could talk about computing conferences I attend, and things I do as a professional, like training, writing, and glitches in programming and website design, while keeping the me things like weight loss, cancer and getting healthier on my other non-pro website.

Anyway, welcome to my brain dump. I’ll keep you posted either way.

I’m a writer.

I write.

Always.

(And, now I also go find stock photography, build links, choose categories and tags, and fill out meta data – An online writer links. Always 🙂

My Library Closing

November 30, 2018 by Brian Nelson Leave a Comment

OK, the headline is overly dramatic. For starters it isn’t MY library, it’s the library I go to in order to work while my kiddo is still at school. And it isn’t closing so much as temporarily shutting so that it can be remodeled.

It’s odd too, because it is a very nice, very modern, seemingly up to date library. The “after” artist drawings don’t seem like an enormous improvement. Maybe a bunch of behind the scenes stuff is out of date, or whatever.

Check out my Acorns reviews.

Anyway, that sets me up for finding a new work locale after the Christmas break. There are numerous coffee shops, but I prefer libraries and I don’t have to feel guilty for taking up a table for 3 hours while ordering a single coffee. (However, papa does need a gingerbread latte every now and then.) Turns out there are two libraries pretty close. Ironically, the closest one is apparently in a different city of the Denver metro area because it is not part of the same library system.

Colorado libraries (at least the ones in the Denver area) are pretty chill about giving library cards to people from another city, but it still means getting another library card if I want to check out books or reserve a room, or whatever. I mean, I just got around to getting a library card for this library after two months of coming here pretty much every weekday.

There is another library from this library district in the area. It’s ten minutes away instead of my current three minutes, and the other library’s six or seven minutes, so hardly a big deal. I’ll probably try both of them out and see which one I end up liking better.

Can you really earn money with Ebates?

Still finding and getting comfortable in new digs always takes a while. I turns out that a seemingly great spot can have too much sunlight on one side, or it’s so close to the elevators you constantly hear the machinery turning inside. Eventually, you find “your spot.” Then you find a backup spot in case someone is in your spot, or in case that turns out to be the area some chucklehead uses while on the phone. (Seriously, it’s a library. How hard is it to figure out that you can’t just jabber on your phone?)

On the upside, I really am not a fan of the hardwood chairs without cushions that are placed at all the tables at my current library. There are padded chairs, but then no desk or table to use. Maybe one of these other libraries has the ability to offer comfy seating, while still using a table or desk.

Check out my article on freelancer taxes.