We covered the basics of health insurance for freelancers, and then we added some updated health insurance information. Those two articles initiated a trickle of suggestions on new health insurance options for the freelancer, which I am now passing on to you!

A funny story from the magazine Inside Higher Ed: Elsevier, a publisher of textbooks, recently had to backpedal when someone in its marketing division seemed to offer to pay for favorable reviews of the book on Amazon.com.

The textbook, "Clinical Psychology", recently went to print, and its contributors got an email from the publisher offering $25 giftcards in exchange for favorable Amazon reviews. One of the contributors quite rightly had a problem with the deal, and called the publisher out on the practice. Elsevier stated that the email did not reflect its policy, and that it was a "poorly written email" by one employee.

Oops!

Lately I've seen a lot of information on working at home and starting a home business, not to mention the masses of emails that I always get on the subject. Alison at About Job Searching was recently kind enough to link to this site in a post about Working at Home. It got me thinking... is working at home really all that?

Working at home may be surging in popularity due to the economy, layoffs and etc. In addition, more and more people are technologically savvy and have a computer in their home, ready to make them a buck. I've been grateful to work at home and my children and family have benefitted from my availability. My children's school has also benefitted, not to mention a few other places that I've volunteered for. But there are some downsides, and I'd be remiss not to mention them. Check out this article on Working at Home for the full story.

We talk about Elance, Guru.com and the rest of them a lot around here, don't we? One blog post from last February garnered 48 comments arguing the pros and cons of Elance, although when I revisited the Elance debate this past Spring, there wasn't as much interest. I regularly note that I think places like Elance and Guru are a good place to start, and that you can use them to see how much money other freelancers make. Well, all that is interesting and good for writers (especially beginners and newbies) to know, but another great perspective showed up at the New York Times online. "Enlisting a Global Work Force of Freelancers" talks about Elance and other bid sites through an employer's eyes. It's a good read!