Tag Archives: blogging

Are You Wasting Money on Your Blog?

iBook_plastic_letters_float

By Yolander Prinzel

Almost every freelance writer out there has a blog. Certainly, we can’t all need that much advice, can we?

If you have a blog, every hour you spend on it is unpaid time (I’m assuming Adsense and Clickbank aren’t paying your normal rate) and is time that might better be spent on client work or marketing.

Or not.

Really, it depends on why you are blogging. For some, blogging is an outlet for their frustrations. For others, it is a way to build a community and share their experience. And some lucky folks use it to make money through Adsense, selling their own products and services or using it as a sample for potential clients.

No matter what you do your blogging for, make sure that you have a plan and purpose for your blog and that it is fulfilling that plan and purpose. If it isn’t, decide what you can do to make it worth your while either financially, emotionally or…spiritually.

Yolander Prinzel, ACS is a financial writer as well as a series 7, 66 and 2-15 licensed financial representative with a decade of industry experience. She was the National Director of Marketing and the Director of Operations for The Compass Agency USA and has also been a trader for Raymond James Financial Services. None of her posts are meant to be advisory. Only an advisor with close, personal knowledge of your financial situation can offer advice. You can get her new e-book You’ve Found Your Specialty–Now What? Tips and Tricks to Finding and Scoring Clients and Making a Living Writing What You Know here for just $7.95.

Make Money Blogging? The Game is Changing

make money blogging

by Joe Wallace

We all want to make money blogging by inserting Google Adsense, Chitika and other pay-per-click or affiliate links.  According to a recent AdWeek story the landscape could be changing, especially for those who struggle with the technology to insert ad code and modify blog templates to accomodate it.

According to AdWeek, an experiment is underway by the Wall Street Journal and other top-level publishers. What do readers get during the test? Something called “interruptive” ads” that pop up as you try to access a web page.

It’s not a new idea, but according to AdWeek if the idea catches on there will be much more intrusive advertising cluttering up our laptop screens.

What does this mean for bloggers?

For those using freebie WordPress, Blogspot and other platforms, some of these ads will happen with or without your permission if the owners adopt a more aggressive ad policy. For others, the challenge will be incorporating these more intrusive ads into their current placement systems. If Google hops on board, chances are the ads will eventually be as ubiquitous as the hated pop-up once was.

For blogging noobs eager to make a buck with as little effort possible, this experiment is probably a welcome development, but for the rest of us who actually care about readership it feels a lot like a step backwards to web 1.0. aesthetics.

In fact, intrusive ads–in the minds of some (me) are just as annoying as pop-ups and (with luck) the shelf life of this not-so-new ad delivery method could be limited. But the future could hold a vast amount of annoyance if this experiment gains traction.



Get a Freelance Job by Example

freelance-writing-advice

by Joe Wallace

Sometimes the only way to get a freelance job is to create an example of what you’re capable of and have it ready to show a potential client. Do you want to get hired as a blogger or an advice columnist? Consider setting up a portfolio website that showcases the skills you want to use as a freelancer.

Are you an aspiring political blogger? Don’t wait for someone else to hire you–start creating the kind of content you want to write and point your next editor to those posts. You might be surprised twice–if your blog takes off you’ve got a supplemental income to tide you over til the next gig.

If your blog does modestly, you still have something to show your next client as an example of what you do best…and you won’t have to rely solely on building up a list of published clips to prove what you can do.

Of course, the key to all this is your content–if it sucks, you won’t get hired. Make it shine and see what happens.

A Blogging “Mistake” That Costs You Clicks

images

After seeing a most excellent post on a fellow freelancer’s blog, I noticed something wrong with the blog itself. Instead of the post’s URL (the actual web address of the blog post itself) reflecting the headline, it showed a number instead. The post URL read http://www.freelancewriterville.com/?p=2155. Instead, it should read http://www.freelancewriterville.com/the-difference-between-buyers-and-clients or some variation thereof.

Why? Because blogs with the “right” URLs are easier to Google–your latest blog post could be discovered on the strength of your headline and URL combination alone. But how do you get this URL format to work? Every blog platform is different, but for those of us using WordPress, it’s an easy fix:

1. Go to PERMALINKS in the SETTINGS section.

2. Choose DAY AND NAME under COMMON SETTINGS. It’s the one that looks like this:

Day and name

http://freelance-zone.com/blog/2009/06/03/sample-post/

3. You might have to make files writable in your WP-ADMIN folder to make this change work. If you change the settings and it still doesn’t work, you will have to go behind the scenes and do a bit of tweaking in your WP-ADMIN folders via FTP. You will see the following text towards the end of your COMMON SETTINGS section that reads:

“If your .htaccess file were writable, we could do this automatically, but it isn’t so these are the mod_rewrite rules you should have in your .htaccess CTRL + a to select all.”

If you see this text, there’s a workaround for that–insert the following code in the box into your .htaccess file if you know what you are doing:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

If you don’t know anything about modifying your .htaccess file go to WordPress.org and read this tutorial.

Top 100 Books for Freelancers–InkThinkerBlog.com

freelance-writing-advice-library-books1

To begin with, DAMN. A list of 100 books is pretty ambitious, and the fact that this collection is well organized into lists by category makes this my new favorite collection of resources. Inkthinker.com hasn’t been on my radar until now, but here’s a site worth watching. Kristen King has a very impressive, highly detailed blog going here, well worth a busy freelancer’s time.

Of all the books on King’s top 100 list, Website Marketing Makeover is the one I’m most tempted to pick up on her recommendation alone. Most writing-related sites (including FZ) could use a refresher course on this stuff. Other good entries on her list include The Well-Fred Writer and a sequel to this great book I was unaware of til now, thanks to Kristen. I have no idea where King finds the time to do a top 100, but I am very glad she did as there’s plenty to keep you busy here.  Recommended.

The New Absolute Write

absolute-writeI have to confess, it’s been a while since I visited Absolute Write but I was pleasantly surprised to see the site has finally evolved into Web 2.0 with a new reader-friendly design. Congratulations, AW! The site is 110% more attractive and easy to navigate.

Absolute Write has been a favorite of mine since the earliest of my early freelancing days. I’ve used it for everything from networking to hiring, and the site continues to be a relevant, entertaining place. Especially for new writers–if you are just getting started in the biz, you could do your career a world of good by becoming a regular there.