The guy I regularly wrote for and who promoted me started getting...well...odd. All the jobs he kept promising never materialized. I know that he didn't give the writing jobs to other people because he showed me the websites I'd be writing for. They don't have a blogger on them, so apparently all these deals he had fell through.  Why, I wonder...

I was beginning to wonder when he kept saying he had a ton of business come in every week, but no new writing jobs materialized. Then when I became his project manager, it was only for blogs that I had worked on. I thought that was kind of strange. Shouldn't I be editing and proofreading another writer's work, and not my own? I quickly learned that being a project manager for Bob wasn't for me. I was basically used as a buffer between him and a couple of his clients whom he consistently let down. I didn't care to be put in the middle like that, so I quit the managing part after a week. Bob became indignant and said what a shame to lose me as a team member when he had all this work coming in. So I took it from that that I was being fired from writing because I wouldn't be his buffer with his frustrated clients. I refused to budge, and he backed down and said of course I could still write for him. Um, okaaaay.

I was really shocked at the total incompetence of his managing and end product. One of his clients, Bill, whom I briefly blogged for, was pretty frustrated by the shoddy website that was put together for him. I looked, and I about choked. I have no idea how anyone in their right little html mind could possibly have put up such literal crap and call themselves a webdesigner. Poor Bill had a shopping cart that contained a few of his company's services to sell, as well as the ability to break one of the more expensive services down into three payments. The shopping cart basically looked like this:

Product A Payment 3 Payment 1

Payment 2 Product B Product C

Now who on earth would put things that much out of order!?!  Bill was justifiably frustrated by it, as well as by one of the product descriptions that had a list of what all is included. The numerical list was numbered thusly: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Huh!?! I asked the web designer to correct it, but she said it was impossible. LOLOLOL! Um, okaaaay. Now I'm no professional web designer, but I know html - having put up several of my own websites. It can easily be changed. I just couldn't believe it! And why put something up like that in the first place. Common sense would dictate that you don't count like that. Geez!

Anyway, Bob said after I quit that everything was all fixed with Bill's site. I looked, and there are several things still unfixed, including the above mentioned counting problems. I just shake my head.

Bob also started getting late in paying me. At the beginning, he said he'd pay as soon as I sent him an invoice. He did - within about 30 minutes. Since around the time I started the project manager gig, he started getting late - taking several reminders and a couple days. I sensed something was going on. He also claimed to have been too ill to work while I was doing the project manager tasks that one week. Yet he went to Palm Springs and attended some sort of NASCAR event. Things that make you go "Hmmmmm...."

Last week when I invoiced him, he gave some sort of little stalling excuse. Then he admitted he couldn't pay me til he collected some money. Well, that ticked me off. In ANY business, workers are NOT paid after the employer gets paid. When I had my own business and hired Independent Contractors (IC), I always made sure they were paid, even when I hadn't been paid yet. That's a part of hiring others. I even used payment processors that ended up stiffing people for millions of dollars. I was out a couple thousand dollars, and I still paid my ICs becuz it's my moral and ethical responsibility to do so! At the time, I was also making under $20,000 a year, and to have all that money come out of my pocket while having the payment processors stealing from me was very difficult. Bob supposedly makes money hand over fist; his company won't take on an SEO project for less than $10,000. I just wonder what on earth he's doing with his money that he can't afford a couple hundred bucks. Or does he even have any money? After all, where were all these new clients he was supposedly getting? They neveral materialized. I realized that he was one of those hot air guys who like to exaggerate to great lengths.

He did end up paying me - several days late. I told him that I wouldn't be working for him unless he paid me up front, since he's having several financial difficulties. I also wondered aloud to him how he handles his in person workers and how they deal with paychecks several days late. He replied that I'm an Independent Contractor, and that was all he said on the matter - lol. I guess ICs don't rate on time pay or even guaranteed pay. We parted ways becuz he couldn't agree to paying even $25 up front.

I say it's good riddance, even tho I need the money. His behavior was getting increasingly erratic. I was also running out of things to write for his client. I had to snake oil peddle the Law of Attraction, and I was getting tired of it. Writing two posts a day, seven days a week, for two to three months is difficult when it's only on a couple different things. There's only so many ways you can re-word it. I did write some success tips, but still, it was the same problem of running out of ways to reword the same spin. 

So it's on to my own blogs and trying to utilize what I learned working for Bob to making money off my own blogs.