ROTFLMAO- This was Funny!

This week I've been playing with Associate Content a lot.  I've got to get back to eZine, Constant Content, AmTurk, and several others...lol The point of that is of course that the more you write, and the more places you use to share your work, the more likely you will be successful at freelance writing.

I'm becoming impressed with A.C. in ways I didn't expect. I had a major issue the other day when I discovered that another contributor had posted content of mine. The piece is something I wrote on amTurk, but it doesn't look like the contributor is the one who purchased the rights to it. Technically, it's not "stealing" my work, or plagiarism, if the person who bought the content was given full rights and sold them to someone else... but I'm not really sure what happened. What is certain is that on Associated content you are only supposed to post work you really wrote. Having the copyright to something does not give you the right to post something there that someone else wrote with your name on it. On one level it might not be plagiarism- but it is actually fraud, which is a felony. That person is now gaining "clout" because of writing that they did not originate. They can make money from the page views, and if the writing is good they could get and fraudulently accept job offers based on skills that aren't theirs.

This is making me edgy about using AmTurk, because to do well with it you have to accept lots of hits from many people who may have intentions and motivations that aren't disclosed. However, I did successfully make over a hundred dollars with amTurk in the last couple of weeks. It's also not something I just want to give up on yet.

What impressed me about Associate Content i that when I posted about it in the forum in a general way, I got a lot of helpful and encouraging responses from other writer's that use the service to publish and share their writing. There are many different ways to make money writing online, but this route also includes a nice community of other writers- which could be very useful. If you're trying freelance writing and haven't experimented with writing online with Associated Content, I encourage you to give this one a whirl. Click on the link below to sign up, and check out my articles when you have time! :-)

My first two articles on Associated Content just got accepted, and are live. :-)

Please check them out!

How to Read Tarot- The Basics , by Nicolette Stevens

Simple Ways You Can Help in the Effort to Clean Up the Gulf Oil Spill, by Nicolette Stevens

* note: the article about the gulf oil spill clean up includes information about Matter of Trust, an organization that was collecting hair to make mats and booms to soak up the oil. Unfortunately, underwater the booms seem to soak up too much water and sink- so they have now stopped trying that method. Please don't send hair, instead, volunteer or make a donation to the Audubon Society if you want to help.

Tips on Hyperlinks

Sometimes hyperlinks are very useful in blog posts, articles, and content you publish anywhere online. A hyperlink can be used in the body of a paragraph to link pages and sites that are related to your subject. To create a hyperlink you use a standard html tag that allows you to link displayed text words to a hidden web address. ( For instructions on how to use the hyperlink code in several different ways here's a good cheat sheet: http://www.hyperlinkcode.com/make-hyperlink.php )

If I did a hyperlink for this blog, what will then actually show in the text will be Freelance Writing Fun, and when a person clicks on it they would wind up on this page.

In your own blogs and websites, using hyperlinks can help your visitors find relevant information that you'd like them to see. In forums and other places you socialize on line, using these kinds of links appropriately can lead interested people back to your personal playgrounds. However, be careful when adding hyper links to the body of your articles if you are submitting to online publishers that share your content in other ways. Check the guidelines to see what you can and can't use in your work, and where in your articles adding links is permitted.

Be aware that some services are set up to hack the links you add in the body and replace them with the links the site prefers. If you aren't careful, you could wind up adding a link to "Toledo Zoo", and having your link to the official zoo page be replaced with a link changed to activate on  the word "Toledo" and pointing to some other site related to businesses in Toledo.

Creating Links to You Blogs With Articles

If you start writing and submitting freelance articles, you may have opportunities to add links to related information. If you are also a blogger or run a website, you can use this to increase the traffic to your outside work with visitors you already know will be interested in the subject matter you are talking about. If your blog has business aspects, this could increase interest in your skills and products. If you do affiliate work, it will also increase the number of people who may take an interest in those other aspects of your pages.

When adding links to articles that you submit to various services, be careful to pay attention to the guidelines. They will differ from publisher to publisher. You should try to make sure that your links in general are related to the subject matter of your article. Many publisher's and clients don't want articles that sound like a sales pitch, but don't mind you sharing other content if it is relevant.

For instance, I play piano and write songs, and have developed a blog of notes for musicians and music lovers. You can find it at http://nicolettesmusicnotes.blogspot.com . When I write articles about piano, songwriting or music theory, I take it as an opportunity to lead people back to my personal work outside the sites I submit articles to.

More things for your Online Writing Tool Box

Depending on where you are submitting your writing, different things will be asked for. One thing many clients require is articles of a certain length, often determined by a word count. Many word processing programs will show you the word count of your article in the properties menu, but depending on where you're doing your writing and what machine you are using it can be necessary to do it another way. Here's a free online word count tool I use:

http://www.wordcounttool.com/

Most publisher's also require that your work use proper spelling and grammar. It's possible to be a good writer with imperfect spelling, but you should clean up the edges if you want it to be understandable and show intelligence. You can find a free online spelling and grammar checking service here:

http://www.spellchecker.net/spellcheck/

Most importantly, take a break and laugh Alot:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

Warning: seriously, the above link made me laugh so hard that my image of a word will be forever changed! :-)

Associated Content: Writer's Market for Articles

Associated Content is another writer's market for articles that is worth checking out. You can earn money writing articles for Associated Content in a variety of ways. Some of the revenue for authors is performance based, and as more people take interest and read the articles you submit your earnings increase. They also offer assignments targeted to the writer's skills which pay specific amounts. If your writing is very good, they may select your work for up front payment rather than performance based payment. Like with Constant Content, you can make choices about weather you are sharing specific articles exclusively, or whether you'd like to retain the right to republish wherever you want.

To try it out for yourself, go to Associated content, create a profile, and start sharing your writing.



As I explore Associated Content, Constant Content, Ezine Articles and other organizations that help writer's promote their work I'll be reviewing the pro's and con's of each here. If you stumble through and have exeriences and ideas you'd like to share, feel free to comment.

Promoting Yourself with Ezine Articles

For a budding freelance writer, getting involved with Ezine articles may be another good idea. Ezine does not pay you for your work, but sharing some of your work through Ezine gets a lot of exposure for some people. Authors post articles on whatever they would like, and a team of editors reviews the material to determine that it's quality work and follows their guidelines.

You'll probably remember having read someones article about something on Ezine at some point, and that's a good sign if you want people to read and be aware of your work. Ezine stores the articles shared there and makes them available, free of charge, to people who want content for their blogs and websites. People using content from Ezine can select up to 25 articles per year to share in their own projects. They are required to leave the name of the author on the article, publish as written without editing, and include the author's "resource box" with the article. In the resource box you can share links to information about your topic, links to your blog or website, and ways to contact you. Allowing others to share your work in this way gets it out there, and interested readers may find their way to your work elsewhere in this fashion. Whether you are trying to get clients for freelance gigs, or people to check out your web based business, this kind of exposure can ultimately lead to good press and new opportunities.

If you keep a blog or have a website, you may also be able to use good articles you find on Ezine, to add to your own unique pages. Sure, if your readers like what they see, they may go off and check out the writer's other haunts on the web- but that's not always a bad thing. If your site is that useful they'll be back, because they know you have fresh and helpful material. If it's not useful or interesting, well then, maybe you need to improve. *wink* Cross linking such articles can also give you an opportunity to befriend other writer's, -which often leads to link sharing, more traffic, and the joy of having people to chatter back and fourth with once in a while.

To start sharing articles on Ezine, simply go to their site and create a profile. You can link your blogs and website's to your author profile there, as well as share a short biography and other information. When you post your first article you'll learn more about what their rules for posting are. You will save yourself some time by reading and understanding the guidelines. For instance: it's okay to put a link in your author' resource box to a website that sells products and services in your own business. It's not however okay to write an article that is really a sales pitch for your products. You're limited on the number of links you can add, so pick wisely. At first, you can submit up to ten articles. If you're somewhat prolific and good at writing, the powers that be at Ezine will raise that- so make sure you share useful and well written material.

http://ezinearticles.com/

Have fun! If you stumble across this post and have Ezine articles you'd like to share, feel free to leave a link in the comments.

Constant Content: Writer's Market for Articles

Constant Content is an online resource for writer's and people who need written content to interface with each other. It is possible to buy and sell articles through constant content, and retain much of the control over who buys your work at what price. Options are available to sell licences for specific articles, and you retain the right to publish them elsewhere while making a few bucks by sharing your work. You can also sell unique rights to things you write, at which point the purchasing party can republish in any manner with or without your byline. A higher price can be charged for unique rights, although you'll find that the average amounts offered for good articles are more reasonable in favor of the author than some other services.

I am very new to trying Constant Content, and can already see a variety of great things about it, and a few potential pitfalls. I'll evaluate it further here as I experiment with it more. If you'd like to check the service out, here's a link:

Constant Content

How to Start an Online Store for Free with No Sales Fees

About eCrater : the Free Online Marketplace

Many people use Amazon and eBay to set up their ability to sell online; weather it's items from a commercial business that they want to resell, services, handmade goods, or things from personal collections. Dolls; toys, trains, books- whatever you have, there's probably someone online whose willing to pay for it. While those services can be profitable and relatively simple to use, there are a couple of other services I'd like to highlight.

The first I'd like to mention here is eCrater. It's a lot, like a more user friendly version of Amazon and eBay combined, that runs for free. I said the magic word, FREE. I'm trying it out as an alternative way to sell a large collection of toys and books, and really am just in the set up process. Already I'm kind of amazed. It's very easy to set up an online storefront particular to your goods, break it down into easy categories, and create multiple ways for potential customers to pay you. You of course are responsible for sending the goods once paid for, eCrater is simply an interface for people who want to make sales online and customer's who are interested in what they have.

Like on Amazon and eBay, seller's receive a rating from customer's based on if they were happy with their purchase. Over time, having a good ranking increases the shopper's sense that they are doing business with someone they can trust. You can set your sales to be at a fixed price like on Amazon, or you can take place in auction type sales as done on eBay. The difference between using eCrate and Amazon or eBay is that there are no fees. No listing fee, unlimited items, you manage your eStore yourself. No closing fees, or special weird requirements to use there services.

Like with Webs, which will allow you to build a website for free, eCrater does offer paid options with special features. However, it seems set up well enough that you can functionally set up a professional looking online store and expect to make some money from it. Like with other things, how well you do will probably largely have something to do with how much you put into it. If you are willing to maintain the storefront with regular updates, and can do some self-promotion of your web store, you may find that this is a useful service to know about.

I'll post more as I evaluate how effectively eCrate works, but for now have a look yourself:

http://www.ecrater.com/

Sidework on The Internet: Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a service provided by amazon to hook up people who need a lot of small online tasks to be completed, with people who would like to make a few bucks on the side. The little side jobs include things like: "classify this picture", "tell us what you think about this website'', "comment on this blog", "write an article about ...." .

Some jobs require simple tests to show the employer's that you have the skills to complete the activity they want. There are jobs that apply to writers, people who are computer literate, those who can code, and folks who do data entry- among other things.

The jobs and they pay amounts vary based on the employers. Some people who use Amazon Turk to get things done offer very low amounts of money for what they want, others are quite reasonable. Some offers may be on the scammish side, a big red flag for me is surveys that pay a high reward and lead you to sites which require that you give a lot of personal information and complete sponsor offers. I avoid those.

I have however been doing a lot of little articles through Mechanical Turk. I look at it as more of a writing exercise than as a way to make real money, although much to my surprise I've already racked up over a hundred dollars in amazon gift credit. My goal with it is to earn enough to get a nice new professional level laptop. Many "real" writers discourage this, as it can be kind of exploitative to sell your written work for between $1.00 and $5.00 for most articles. However, if you want an exercises that will prove you can write 300 words about anything, it may be good for you.

Read the directions carefully for each hit before accepting. Be aware that if you are writing articles, some companies want the full rights to the short article, so you can't publish it elsewhere. Others don't care if you also circulate what you write in other ways, particularly if you'll link back to their business. )

It can also be useful, as you interact with the employers on occasion and may be able to work yourself into better side jobs and short freelance writing gigs this way. It's working for me that way, mostly because it's leading me to other useful websites and services I didn't know about.

https://www.mturk.com/mturk/

( Exmples of this kind of writing can be seen on a private blog of mine, send me a message if you'd like to see. sassynolagal@yahoo.com )

How to build a Website for Free

You can very easily build a nice, professional quality website on your own with a little time and effort. As well as blogging, I build and maintain my own websites, and have discovered that some providers make it really easy and fun. After trying several, I am mostly using the Webs free website building service.

I like webs because it is very versatile.  You can create a website for free, and they also have a variety of paid options that you can choose from as well. If you begin by setting up a free website, you can choose to convert it at any time to upgrade the options and features you have. Your website can have multiple pages of your choosing, and you can use it in a professional or personal context. It's easy to add a blog, a links page, forums, photo's and other things that will be relevant to what you want to create. It includes free site building tools that will make the process easy if you are not familiar with doing your own coding, and if you happen to be skilled in that department, you can also build what you want without their tools but get hosting through their service. There are a lot of rich, nice looking themes available that are simple to put together. They also offer tools and tutorials that will help you with promoting your website, search engine optimization, and other aspects of creating your home on the web. I think it's a very good place for both people who really know what they are doing, and beginner's who would like to learn to do this well with a hands on approach.

Check it out:
Get a Free Website at Webs.com!

"How do I put a counter on my page?"

One thing you will probably want to integrate into any blog is a counter, so that you can see how many people are visiting your pages. I like Stat Counter, another free and highly customizable service. It is possible with Stat Counter to create individual counters for different pages, and fairly simple to set up. You can use Stat counter in conjunction with all kinds of websites and blogs, including those published on Blog Spot and Word Press. In either of those cases, you set up an account with stat counter and get it to generate a a HTML box in the widgets or gadgets section. You'll the be able to see what kinds of hits you're getting, and be able to break it down and view different statistics.

http://www.statcounter.com/

"Where do I list my blog?"

Well, at first thought, you might s well list it everywhere you can come up with. Then again, if your blog is about weight training and fitness and you list it on Suzie Q's music site list, it may not help.

There are several services like the one I posted about yesterday which submit your blog or site to many different search engines at once. That's not a bad idea to invite general traffic, but my theory is that listing your site in the most popular places and the most relevant places will bring the best results.

Most Popular Search Engines:

ADD YOUR SITE TO GOOGLE
ADD YOUR SITE TO YAHOO
ADD YOUR SITE TO MSN

Once you've added your site to the popular search engines, you may want to try some other individual indexes as well as visiting sites that help you submit to multiple search engines at once.

For instance, some sites would do very well attracting attention though the librarian's internet index, particularly if your site is "safe for work" material, and educational or informative. the DMOZ OPEN DIRECTORY PROJECT is another good place to be aware of.

Then, start searching for places that list your kind of blog. For instance, when I was looking for places to list my music theory and songwriting blog I did a bunch of google searches like 'list your music blog here' and music blog search' and 'music education websites', just to see what I'd come up with. The same basic concept probably appilys to most subjects.

Wordpress VS. Blogspot

Two services that allow you to crate and publish online blogs for free are Blogspot and Wordpress. Both can be used to publish material of any nature that you would like. It doesn't matter if you are publishing "Grandma's Cookinig Hints", "Underwater Basket Weaving for Dummies", or "Rocket Science for Kids". If your writing is of a mature nature, both services allow for warning pages and some adult content. ( For example, erotic poetry )These services appily to anyone who wants to put a blog together, regardless of the particular subject matter.

Both are very popular services with lot's of features. I like the themes that are available on Wordpress more than I like the themes on Blogspot. Wordpress seems to have done a lot more development in making their available themes visually appealing and interesting. The ready-made themes on Blogspot are much simpler looking, but layout is set up in a way that is very easy to use and professional looking. You can use either service in conjunction with various affiliate programs if you want to earn money from your writing. Both also allow you to create multiple blogs and manage them from the "dashboard" in your account.

I'm still not sure which service I like better, I'm experimenting with writing blogs on both of them to find out. I like the ease of Blogspot, but I enjoy some of the options Wordpress has that Blogspot doesn't seem to include. For instance, on Wordpress there is an easy interface for creating multiple pages. It's possible to create links to other pages on Blogspot, but doesn't work the same way.

I'd be interested to hear the opinions of others on both services- what do you think works better? Feel free to leave a comment.

Here are the links to both if you haven't tried them, creating an account with either or both is free and a relatively simple and quick process.

http://wordpress.org/

http://www.blogger.com/home

Blogging Basics #1 – Content Specific Writing

Different services provide many types of opportunities for people who like to write. Social networks such as LiveJournal, Facebook and MySpace provide places for people to share their daily stories and link up with one another.

The next step for many people that get into that is to write content specific blogs, which can provide useful information and endless hours of fun for web surfers. Most internet traffic goes to sites that center on specific topics. This is probably because the average surfer does searches that are interest based, which lead them to material about the particular interest they have in mind. This can lead to a lot of traffic on a content centered blog, much more than one might expect from a generalized journal on a social network. For those who are interested in making money with their writing, Content specific blogs are eligible for advertising from affiliates and other options which may generate some pocket change.

Affiliate advertising has it's pro's and con's. For one, if you are trying to run any kind of business that is related to a blog you write, it may not be in your best interest to use outside advertising on your page. If you have a product or service of your own to sell, you don't want to pull your potential customers off your page and send them somewhere else. At the same time, the potential audience you have on the Internet is very broad. Sometimes getting involved in social networks that are related to your business may draw you more positive attention. A balanced common sense approach should help you figure out weather or not advertising would be advantageous for you, and in which ways.

Blogging has another positive result for freelance writers. It puts your work out there and allows others to see informal examples of your capabilities. If you want to get into writing on a professional level, using blogging to increase your visibility as a writer is a good move.

By default, blogging is great practice for other writing projects. If you start blogging, or keep going with developing things you have already put together, other kinds of writing projects are very natural. Unlike 20 years ago, this technopalloza opens up a lot of doors for people who are talented at writing. It is not difficult to self publish your own books, or to get into writing articles professionally. It has a great appeal to many people- what other job can you do while still in your pajamas's and drinking copious amounts of coffee?

Travel Writing on Ruba

One project I did recently involved talking about a lot of the places I've enjoyed visiting on a travel oriented website called Ruba. This was pretty fun, and others who travel might really enjoy it. It's a social network set up in a way that you can add places you enjoy and share the details with others. You can see my profile with guides for New Orleans, Seattle, Detroit, Toledo, Oxford, and Toronto here if you'd like :-) :

http://www.ruba.com/user/NicoletteFox

Greetings!

I might as well admit it. Hello, I'm Nicolette, and I'm addicted to writing. I guess there are worse things to be addicted to, LOL. I've enjoyed writing since I was a young child, and have never lost the bug. I'm glad, because it has brought me a lot of wonderful things and experiences.

Slowly, my writing has taken on more professional aspects in a variety of venues. I've written my own material for classes I have taught. I'm involved on multiple social networks, have a list of topic specific blogs, and also promote my own small business ventures with websites I have built. On occasion I do this for other people.

The usefulness of this is astonishing, especially to me. I've been kind of poor for a while. The economy has really screwed a lot of people's lives up, and mine is not immune. It's taking a lot of work, and if I wasn't somewhat talented at it these things would not be producing the results that they are. Trying to make money writing is not practical in a lot of people's eyes. However, if you are really good at it, and diligent about looking for opportunities- they are out there.

Please enjoy watching me stumble through the process, make suggestions if you have any, and learn something if you can!

Welcome to my new little project.....

~ Nicolette

TO CONTACT ME WRITE SASSYNOLAGAL AT YAHOO DOT COM WITH "crispy bacon not spam" OR SOMETHING ENTERTAINING AND REAL-LIVE-PERSON SOUNDING IN THE HEADER :-)