oDesk

Paypal Currency Conversion Tool

anilatluri 0 Comments

Paypal Currency Conversion Tool helps you find out the worth of your American Dollar (USD $)  in Indian Rupee(INR).  Log into your Paypal account.  Click on the My Account tab.

Paypal Currency Conversion Tool

You will find “Withdraw” there. When you click on it, it opens a new screen – Withdraw Funds. Click on the option:  “Withdraw funds to your bank account“. If you have a verified bank account it is displayed as default in the amount transfer “To” box. Right beneath it to you will find the Paypal “Currency Converter“. Click on it.  It opens pops up a new window displaying the currency converter. This is the window that tells you exactly the equivalent amount Paypal is likely to consider at that point of time. Take a look at the screen shot for a detailed view.

The Paypal office in Chennai is a development center and has nothing to help you.  When I reached them while writing this post on 044 – 6634 8001, the receptionist there gave me this US toll free  # 1 402 935 2050.

Do not call them if you do not want to go through their IVR system that could take ages to reach their agent .  You are burning your money.  It is better that you mail them.  I came across this site which seemed to have plenty of resources to learn more about Paypal.  Good luck. Hope this little info about Paypal Currency Converter helps you.

If you liked this post, please pay it forward to others who do not know how Paypal deals with foreign exchange.

How to: Customize your signature in GMail

anilatluri 0 Comments

Yes.  You can now customize your signature in GMail.  This is a feature that I had been waiting for GMail to introduce.  There were times when I wanted to introduce my services with a few links to content to my clients on Elance, Guru and oDesk, the freelance sites where I am active. One of those Firefox addons that I used was Wisestamp.  The problem with it was if people were accessing mails through their Outlook, Evolution or Mozilla’s Thunderbird or other mail clients they were unable to read my custom signatures.  Wisestamp displays my latest posts when I added my RSS feed to it.

Tip: How to customize your GMail Signature

Customize your GMail signature

You can customize your GMail signatures now.

Click on the image to view large

All you have to do is log into your GMail account (Created an account here if you do not have one) and login.  Click on settings tab that you find on your right top hand side.  There under the general tab, scroll down and you will find the Signature box. Now you will see a rich text editor.  Enter the text like your name, a designation with other contact details.  You can format the text, add links and insert images to add more value to your signatures.

Images You cannot add images from your desktop.  However you can add images from the web.  In case you want to add a logo or a specific picture, I suggest that you upload to your Picasa or Flickr account.  Add tags to the image.  Copy the link to the image and add it in the Web Address URL box that pops up when you click on the insert image icon.  If the image is small and the URL you entered is correct, it shows up almost immediately.  Save your settings.  Now click on the compose mail link and in your mail composing box, you should be able to see your signature in all its glory.  To edit it, you need to go to settings and tweak it.

In case you already have multiple custom addresses, you can create a unique signature for each address.

Increase Your oDesk Rating 5/5

anilatluri 0 Comments

I came across Mike Stratton on oDesk way back in 2009.  He had then posted a project Increase Your ODesk Rating 5/5 –  Fictional Story of Encouragement. The intriguing project title  drew me to it.  Leave alone the ranking and the money, Mike was talking about, it was for a noble cause.  Besides it would help me assess my creative skills.  Mike should like it enough to publish it on his site.

I did not submit my bid immediately.  I had to make sure that I had something to write about in Mike’s own words , “a personal story of encouragement/ empowerment”.  I had to write a fictional story in about 500 words.

When I woke up the next morning, I had the story outline.  When I sat before my keyboard it took me something like sixty minutes to complete it. You can read the story here.

Thank you Mike, for giving me that break.

Please, leave your comment here to let me know what you think about Mike, his initiative and my story.

Thank you.

3 Simple Tips To Win Paying Jobs on oDESK

anilatluri 0 Comments
As a professional freelance writer who is interested in building an online freelance writing career, there were times when I used to quite often visit oDesk.  The frequent visits were to check for openings and apply for almost all the potential jobs.  And then I used to get messages like this:

“Hello Anil,

You have not been selected for the job opening ‘ Ghost Writer‘.
* Reason candidacy was ended: Job Opening Expired“
from oDesk.(Emphasis mine).The undeniable underlining hope was that it would take me closer to a successful freelance writing career.  I was yet to learn the tricks of the freelancing trade.  I did not know then that I was wasting my time and effort applying for some of those ‘freelance content writing openings’ that were very clearly saying ‘DO NOT APPLY’.  Surprised?  Don’t be.

The signs were all there.  The thing was I did not know how to read all those signs then.  I do not claim to be any wiser now.  But then I think I am better off from where I began working on oDesk, having spent more than 50 productive oDesk hours (you can check my oDesk history) and made some pretty decent money with freelance writing.  It included, website content writing, product descriptions (more about it in future), press release news, ghost writing for employment related blogs, some Internet research apart from other jobs.

Those little known ways that helped me, didn’t they?  So I would like to share them with you so you too can save some time.  You can invest that time in improving your chances of quickly finding ‘paying jobs’ and make some more money.

The First Tip
I subscribed to “Job alerts” a feature that you will find under your ‘My Profile” tab.  Half the clutter is out.

I get my job alerts into my inbox.  The jobs of my choice walk into my ‘inbox’.The Second Tip
When I visit the job posting on oDesk, the first thing even before I read the job posting is, check to see if the ‘buyer‘ is ‘oDesk Verified” for ‘Payment’

If the buyer is not ‘verified’ then you need to think twice before applying.  Is this buyer really serious about the job?  IMHO, I do not think this buyer is either professional or serious.  Out goes this from the list.The Third Tip
I check the ‘Buyer Facts’.  If this buyer became a member and posted this job the same day, this buyer too is ‘out‘.

The reason?  Well, I think this buyer doesn’t need my attention because, this buyer is not willing to tell me how she is going to pay me and when she is going to pay me, if at all she is going to pay me.So, there you have a buyer, who is not “oDesk payment verified” and the ‘oDesk Buyer Facts’ has nothing to tell you, so what would you do?

You love the gig and want to ‘do’ it.  Go ahead.  Be my guest. You can always give this gig a try and may be you will be introducing a great buyer to all of us here at oDesk.

Bonus:
The bonus is you can avoid all those “Candidacy Ended“, “project was canceled“, “Project expired” messages and unnecessary disappointments that keep crawling into your in box.
* With thanks to Brian Clark, the Copyblogger.