Squido Lens Updates

I made a bunch of updates to my squido - make money with online writing lens today. Squido is another great way to promote and share your writing, as well as make a little money.

What's Squidoo? You can create 'lenses'  focusing on a topic of interest which can be about anything you have experience with. On Squidoo you can share your knowledge by publishing collections of links and material that relate to your topic, and earn money from it. If you write elsewhere, you can also use your squido lenses as another way to promote your work elsewhere. The Internet is an enormous place, people are more likely to find you with sign posts.

Better yet, follow this link to join Squidoo yourself and try it. Like the other projects, it may take some time to really start earning money, but it is one of the places your content can earn you actual money.

Click Here for More Information or to Join Squidoo

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Increasing Page Views

There are many different ways to widen the audience of the people who read your writing. One way is to be involved in many different social networks, and cross post about similar interests. If you write articles on AC, Hub Pages, or other places this may give you opportunities to share you thoughts with a wider range of people. When making a post in a community about a topic you've written an article about, always include a link.

Regardless of where your work is seen, some articles or posts will get more interest than others. Some of that has to do with how your work shows up in a search engine, and many factors such as good use of keywords may play in. Other factors such as the popularity of a topic will play in.

Here's a good example. I wrote a couple of silly little articles about Halloween related topics a few weeks ago. I put some time into sharing good ideas, but I can't say that either piece was very weighty. Both received about five hundred page views within a day! One reason may be that it was the right time of year for people to be interested in articles about Halloween.

The first article was about "Fun Things to do for Halloween in Seattle" . I didn't expect it at first, but sometimes I get a lot of views when I write an article that is based on a certain locality. In the article I included more unique ideas as well as standard ones. For instance, Seattle has a number of great Ghost Tours- which would be a fun and spooky activity for a group of people at this time of year.

The second article I wrote had even more views than the first, and was about "Cool Ideas for Halloween Costumes with Thrift Store Finds" .  If you have a look you'll note that I included lots of different types of costume ideas. Including an array of related topics that fit key words and concepts may draw more viewers. "Halloween", "Costume Ideas", "Pirate Costume", "Greek Goddess Costume", "Costumes for Kids", and "Costumes for Adults" could all apply as keywords. An underlying concept that may draw more attention is the opportunity to still have fun, but do it on the cheap. In this economy many people are struggling to take care of basic needs, and may not have much money for things like entertainment. Those people effected will all be looking for less expensive ways to celebrate than they may have in other years.

Paying attention to these simple things made the difference between 50 page views over time and 500 page views in a day.

Get Paid to Write: Examples of Articles that Pay

A few days ago I submitted four more articles to Associated Content, all of which were accepted for upfront payment. They paid slightly higher than some of the previous articles I submitted, so I must be doing something right. I focused on things of local interest, useful information, and tips. The article I added photography to made the most, which is another thing to take into account. One thing I had to remind myself to do was convert my resource links to properly hyper-linked text, but that's fairly easy to do within the AC text editor.

Check out these three articles as examples of some that have been accepted for up front as well as performance payents:

Fun things to do Near the Space Needle

Ten Tips for Traveling by Bus

Beautiful Places to Visit Near Seattle: Mt Si and Mt. Teriniffe

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! :-)

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.

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

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 )