Selling a call is no different than buying a future. It's the same risk when you think about it. It's not a trade I placed though, for obvious reasons. I was just toying with the idea. What it does, is juice a bit of extra money into your account from the get go of the trade.
The idea in selling a call in a sideways to bearish market, as I saw at that point, is to take advantage not only of declining prices, but of the market's time decay. This method allows you to profit from markets that are just drifting sideways, rather than trending in any one direction.
Although I have done plays like this in the past, I am not yet good enough with options, so I decided not to try it. Right now I am slowly growing my account. It's not time to change tactics while this one is working.