Inspired Author.com Short Story Contest - Winter 2009

Inspired Author is having a short story contest. I think it's a great way to do something creative and have some fun with writing this winter. It runs from now until January 10 and I'm helping to run it.

Here's how to play:

-Start an Inspired Author blog. The blog is free and yours to use however you see fit plus you can monetize the blog, too: http://inspiredauthor.com/wp-signup.php.

-Write your short story (up to 5,000 words) on any topic on your new blog.

-Visit the Inspired Author forum and post your URL to your story on this thread: http://inspiredauthor.com/forum/topic.php?id=26

-On January 10, 2010 Suzanne James and myself will pick our favourites (up to 10). Those 10 will be featured on the main Inspired Author blog with a link back to your own blog. The public and other contestants vote and the winner will be announced on January 20, 2010 (so do feel free to promote your entry on the main IA site post).

-Prize: Amazon gift cards to first, second, and third place plus bragging rights and a badge to display on your blog.

More info:
http://inspiredauthor.com/blog/community/inspired-author-winter-short-story-contest

Make More Money Writing with Twitter

Social media is something that nearly everyone is using. It’s not just for teenagers, for techies, and spammers. I firmly believe it can be useful to anyone. It has certainly been useful to me as a freelance writer. Sure, some social marketing tools can be time wasters but there are definitely benefits of using social media to get writing gigs.

Sure, there are a few 'paid to tweet' services that pay a fee for a tweet but that's not the kind of Twitter money I'm talking about.

I was using Twitter before it became main stream. Actually, the first time I saw it was on Sharon Hurley Hall’s blog in either 2007 or early 2008, I think. Sharon had posted a Twitter widget in the sidebar and I saw the conversation that was happening and clicked on it out of curiosity. It was a smart move because I learned how to unleash the power of Twitter early on and have definitely benefited from that knowledge now that it has become so popular.

I think Twitter has an amazing capacity to help writers. Here are a few of the ways it has helped me:

• Earlier this year I ghostwrote a big 250-page e-book on using Twitter.

• The other day I listed my writing topics for the day in a tweet and someone searching for ‘writers’ on Twitter DM’d me and offered me a gig. That new client has already paid for their first month of ghostblogging services.

• Due to my experience in social media, I have declared myself to be a social media consultant. I now help clients use social media tools to their advantage, which has been lucrative.

• I have included social bookmarking services as part of my service with some writing quotes and this has helped me secure several gigs.

• Several months ago, a writer friend that initially “met” me on Twitter forwarded me a client she could no longer look after. This client now orders about $250 worth of writing each month.

• Twitter brings traffic to my various niche websites through links I post on my accounts. I think I have four active Twitter accounts of my own and have login access to about a dozen client Twitter accounts. Some of my own links bring clicks that bring me contextual advertising revenue and some also help me earn affiliate marketing income. Some clients pay me to ghosttweet for them regularly.

• Twitter has helped me with writing skills. It has taught me to be more succinct (Although you’d never know by how often I go off on a tangent and write a 900-word blog post). Because I only have 140-characters to express a message, I often go back and find ways to make the message click-worthy and make it fit (without using gawd awful text-slang). 140-characters does force you to omit needless words (I think Strunk & White would approve of Twitter). I know I’d listen to that valuable advice more often if everything I worked on had a feature that physically stopped me from rambling on. :)

Twitter is fun, too. Twitter has helped me when I’ve asked technical questions, asked for advice on finding a Japanese steakhouse, helped me find other writers to connect with, given me great writing blogs to read, given me inspiration and ideas, and social media tools have also shown me the true colours of a few people I’ve added to my writing team (be careful what you tweet…someone is always reading!). Plus, as a bonus, on more than one occasion I’ve gotten a huge belly laugh when it has been sorely needed.

As a writer, your Twitter account is just one of many free social media tools that can help you expand your horizons, get writing gigs, and make the (sometimes) lonely job of writing less lonely. How do you use social media to your advantage?


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