Tag Archives: blogging

advice, lifestyle

Guest Blogging is the New PR

batman-shirtWhen the Gotham police department wants to get Batman’s attention, they have it easy. Shine the Bat-Signal on the clouds and hope he’s not sleeping it off somewhere. When bloggers want to attract attention, they have to do a bit more work.

Know we all know that guest blogging can help you build traffic to your site, but let’s think a bit outside the box for a second. Many freelancers don’t have enough business to write full time…yet. Some freelancer who ARE full time have steady contract gigs that keep them busy like a regular day job (that would include me as editor of Cheap Today) but who use mad time-management skills and a massive influx of caffeine to keep the off-duty output higher than a kite.
Continue reading Guest Blogging is the New PR →

advice, reading

The Super Affiliate Handbook

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super-affiliate-marketingThere are plenty of guides out there, including this one by Rosalind Gardner, that explain the ins and outs of affiliate marketing and how to make it work for you. Many people get very excited after reading books like The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436, 797 In One Year Selling Other People’s Stuff Online.

There’s just one teeny little problem–not with Gardner’s book, but with the people who read it and get over-excited. Bloggers who think they can throw up a few posts and a few subsequent affiliate links and turn a profit tend to forget that you have to have an audience in order to get the clicks. And since most affiliate programs don’t pay you by the click, but rather by the purchase, that equation gets a little more challenging.

The key to a successful affiliate program on a blog or website? Focus. Decide what you want to do and stick to it. If you want to supplement a blog with some affiliate income, there are strategies and techniques you can use specific Continue reading The Super Affiliate Handbook →

advice

Barack Obama Reads This Blog

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freelance-writing-advice-3No, he doesn’t. But that headline serves two purposes—the first is it definitely grabs your attention. Even if it’s just for a moment. The second is, for better or worse this headline will be scooped up by Google and will give yours truly a lot more clicks.

Am I suggesting that you put misleading information into your blog headlines? HELL NO. What I am suggestion is that people don’t put enough though into those headlines. They don’t realize that Google latches on to keywords–especially those found in headlines–and may give your next blog entry higher placement if you use Google-friendly buzzwords such as “freelance rates” or “freelance jobs”.

Headlines can be a very powerful way to attract more clicks if you structure them correctly. Notice that my bogus Barack Obama headline leads with the most Googleable word in the string. “Barack Obama” is very hot right now, so I capitalized on that to pull add SEO value to the headline. “Blog” can also be a hot Google word depending on what you use it with. In my case, the usage is weak because I don’t tie the word “blog” in with anything else, so I lose points for that.

Headlines can be your best friend depending on the topic you’re writing about…when you write them, think GOOGLE.

advice

Top Five Ways to Get More Clicks with Hot Headlines & Subheads

You might not consider an investment website like The Motley Fool to be a place to learn how to blog effectively, but think again. Learn by example by taking a good, long look at their great article This Week’s 5 Dumbest Stock Moves. Let’s break it down–why is this piece so excellent? How can you learn from this post? It’s simple, really:

1. An eye-grabbing headline makes you want to read more. Why are these stock moves so dumb? What makes the writer think these companies are wrongheaded and silly? You’ve already got a million questions and you’ve only just read the headline. Brilliant.

2. The use of “Top Ten” and other numbered lists ala David Letterman is a proven winner when it comes to getting your attention quickly.

3. Each entry in the top five gets its own goofy, but still clever subhead. Corny as they often are, you get an idea of what’s to come without duplicating the content in the first paragraph. Well done, Motley Fool!

4. The meat of  the writing under each subhead is easy to understand–OR is explained in layman’s terms to help the uninitiated. ThisFool.com blog post is a very good example of writing clear, concise material for an audience of varying levels of understanding of a complicated topic. The subhead teases you, but the paragraphs themselves give you plenty to chew on without choking on the finer points of investing.

5. The article is chock full of relevant outbound links to help you further understand the piece. Note that some of the most relevant outbound links are very close to those clever subheads. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

Take a lesson from Fool.com and watch interest in your next blog post rise.

reading

Business and Legal Forms For Photographers

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Freelance writers who branch out into photography make themselves much more marketable. It’s one thing to make a pitch to an editor with the story, but another altogether to say “I can provide pictures of the balloon race, too!” Your photos lend an immediacy to any article that the plain text might not be able to provide.

Tad Crawford’s Business and Legal Forms for Photographers is an important volume to own if you want to get paid for your pics. This book and CD-ROM combo has the right forms you need for just about any situation where you and your camera need a piece of paper making the gig official. Do you need a contract or agreement to shoot a wedding, news assignment or simple head shots? If you shoot images for any story and your pic have recognizable faces in them, you’ll need a copy of the model release found in this book. Do NOT publish those people’s faces without the legal protection that a model release gives! Continue reading Business and Legal Forms For Photographers →

editorial

Writing Blogs: Why We’re Missing the Boat

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I’ve had great volumes to say about what to do and what NOT to do as a freelance writer or editor. I’ve been called bitter, caustic, angry and generally too stern when talking about how to avoid the kinds of freelance writing mistakes common to noobs and pros alike. I’ve given the benefit of my experience, I’ve ranted, I’ve made fun of the goofballs in the industry, I’ve posted some dead-on predictions and some posts that were off the mark.

But one thing I’ve NEVER done up to now is write anything directly critical of writing blogs or bloggers. Why should I? We’re all in the same boat, trying to help each other out. Why bite the hand that feeds?

Because I’ve suddenly discovered that writing blogs are missing the boat in a very important area. Not ALL writing blogs are completely at sea, a couple of shining examples come to mind of how we could be closer to doing it right. But for the most part, we’ve lost the plot. Why? Continue reading Writing Blogs: Why We’re Missing the Boat →