I have been looking for more and more outrageous ways to sucker people into reading these screeds. While it’s true that there’s plenty of advice to dispense, there’s also a dire lack of (fun) sensationalism in the freelance writing blog community, so I thought I’d up the ante a little bit by injecting a bit of it here.

Today, in pursuit of said eye-grabbing sensationalist fun, I did a Google search on the term “the naked freelancer” just to see what would come up. I wasn’t expecting much, to be honest, but I found several entries that made me laugh. For a start, somebody posted a gig on GetAFreelancer.com with the headline “Naked Nude Porn Picture Detector”. Believe it or not, this person (who would only pay up to $250 for such a thing) was actually looking for a “naked nude porn picture” BLOCKER. Or so the ad says.

Another bout of laughs–on purpose this time–came by way of FreelanceSwitch. Mary Beth Ellis posted a pictorial and essay called Day In The Life Of A Freelancer. Mary Beth exposes the REAL life of an experienced freelancer in this hard-hitting tell-all. Newcomers will be shocked by both the wake-up times AND the images of the kinds of research fulltimers get up to around 2PM. Mary Beth, you’ve outed us ALL. Except mine’s the Heineken, not the Chardonnay.

Monika Mundell’s The Writer’s Manifesto Blog features an entry called “It’s Time To Strip Naked”, which even has a photo of some kind of corset in the lead-in. Naughty clickers hoping for some kind of pervey payoff are instead treated to some actual, good-sense advice about time management for freelancers using the metaphors of weight loss and self-examination to make the point. Very nice.

It seems the random Google search can–and does–pay off when searching for writer resources and mind-enhancing distractions from the daily grind. I’ll be paying close attention to how these more, shall we say, flamboyant entries perform. I predict there will be many more of these to come, because who DOESN’T click on a saucy headline to see what’s inside?