Freelance Writers: Should You Be Blogging?

Not all writers are bloggers but blogging is what got me my start in freelance writing and is something I still use today to help me expand my writing career and my income on a constant basis. If you’re new to writing or want to expand your passive income streams and your marketing reach, you might consider niche blogging and the potential benefits.

I have about 12 of my own blogs or so (plus about another dozen free blogs) and they do a lot for me. They bring in a little bit of Google Adsense earnings every month (some of the sites make $50-$75 and some are just bringing in a few dollars a month). It only costs me $10 a year for each domain name (which I write off as part of my business expenses because I do claim my blog earnings at tax time) and my hosting is already paid for through my $10 a month paid to host my writing business site.

Beyond the bit of income they bring, the blogs also help me with my marketing, too. Here’s how I use blogging to help me in my writing career:

Link Building

I use blogs to build links to my business site and to the blogs I want to focus most on. This increases traffic and earning potential

Writing Samples

I use some of my blog posts as writing samples for prospective clients. If I want a gig in a specific niche area, I often have a blog to point the potential client to so that they can see my writing style and SEO writing abilities in their category

Selling Points

I use my blogs as a selling point with clients who want guest posts and links back to their site on blogs in their niche (and am sure at times this has won me bids). Some existing and past clients are in the blogroll on some of my niche blogs and many of them have linked to me in return

Blog Monetisation

I make money with Clickbank, Amazon, and Kontera on them (not loads but some money regularly and it’s passive income). One simple blog post I wrote in 2006 that was popular has probably earned me more than $1,000 in passive income.

A few of my blogs make other money through paid advertising banners. More than once I’ve had an email waiting in my inbox that says “I’ll pay you $100 right now if you put this link on your ___.com for six months.”

Blogging = Effective Marketing on the Cheap.

Adding a blog to my writing business site helps me with SEO as I write to potential clients and talk about areas I want to write in, therefore helping me rank for particular keywords, saving me writing gig hunting time and bringing clients to me. I don’t have to run a pay per click campaign or pay to advertise my services because what I do on my blogs equates to some pretty effective marketing. A few of my blogs have gotten me new clients because through social media or search engines, they've found the blogs, clicked through to the 'about', and found me.

Other Perks

I occasionally get emails asking me to review books related to blog niches. Because I blog about what interests me, this is a nice little bonus. Right now I have a self-improvement book and a parenting book on the way to be read and reviewed.

And, I’ve made some great friends via my blogs, too :) Blogging isn't entirely selfish, either. The Writer's blog makes me almost no money whatsoever but it has made me a lot of friends. Many of those friends have helped me further my career. Writing this blog has helped me pay it forward by sharing my writing journey with others.

Blogstalking: Are You A Stalker?

Blogstalking can be a fun sport. Not the bloodsport it sounds like but it's a sport nonetheless. What it means to me is that because I can't wait for new posts from particular blogs either because they inspire me, teach me something or entertain me I'm regularly visiting that URL to see what's new (and pout when there's nothing new to see).

Here are some blogs I regularly stalk. I don't even necessarily subscribe to these blogs because it's not necessary...I never forget to check them. Subscribing would mean that I wait for an e-mail notification but for those I stalk, it's not necessary because I'm on their blog nearly daily to see if there's something new. I also tend to follow every Tweet or Plurk of theirs as well to see what they have to say and what interests them.

Are you ready to reveal to your prey that, "Hey, I'm watching your every move"? You could make their day! (Or, give them the creeps.) If so, participate by kindly linking to my post here if you're so inclined and then start
your own where you link your favourite blogs. If they have pingbacks, they'll find out automatically.

In a week or so I'll make a post with all the posts that have linked and do a post linking participant's blogs and all the blogs that may consider filing for restraining orders. I'm betting there will be some new prey for readers to stalk. Don't be possessive, now. Share!


My Current Prey:

Sharon Hurley Hall: http://www.getpaidtowriteonline.com Sharon was one of my original mentors and is a great friend.

Naomi Dunford: http://www.ittybiz.com Naomi is a fountain of wisdom (and expletives!) and she totally cracks me up. And, the commentary that happens on her blogs is almost as entertaining as the blog entries themselves.

Matthew Bredel: http://www.matthewbredel.com Matt knows I'm stalking him. We're co-authoring a book together and by reading his blogs I get to stay in sync which helps when I work on our collaborations. He's always busy in cyberspace and his entries are interesting and often entertaining with a combo of text and video blogs.

Freelance Writing Jobs: http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com This is a great writer's site. I'm not hunting for jobs often these days as a lot of clients are repeats and I have some finding me on my business site but the discussions and advice on this blog are fantastic. I visit at least several times a week to see what's been happening.

My 'starting' to stalk list includes:

- http://write-from-home.com/ by Amy Derby
- http://rogueink.wordpress.com/ Rogue Ink by Tei

and:

Very soon I'll be constantly following Ashwin. He's thinking of starting a traveling freelancer writer blog and I think that's a brilliant idea so I've suggested he do a vlog of his travels. Really looking forward to that one!

Comment soon with links to your posts. I'm looking forward to stalking your mentors!

My Blogging Genesis

Group writing projects are a lot of fun and can get great conversations going. Today's post is in response to Sharon Hurley Hall's Blogging Start Group Writing Project

How did I get my start in blogging?

My blogging start created a freelance writing career for me but it didn’t happen straight away. I started a blog back in late 2002 / early 2003 on Writing.com. I spent every spare minute there for months writing and sharing and giving people free reviews of their writing pieces. How I loved that site!

I started posting my writing and then got promoted through some of the inner rankings and when I hit a specific rank I got given a blog of my own as a 'gift'.

I abandoned that blog when morning sickness struck in mid 2003 but then in early 2006, I read an article in Reader's Digest about people making money online and blogging was in the list. A month or so later I discovered a blogging for money site and joined writingup.com with the promise of Adsense revenue sharing. I think I made a whole $17 in Adsense on writingup.com in several months but what I did make was friends that helped me start my freelance writing career as a result of sharing their freelance journey on their blogs which helped me learn of places that would pay me to blog and write articles.

I always knew I was destined to write but I wondered if I’d ever fulfill my destiny. You see, I never thought about freelance writing. I thought I’d have to face dozens of novel rejections before finally getting my big break.

Writingup.com (which is now long gone) helped me find many work at home job leads, writing mentors and helped me find my writer’s voice. Today, I maintain about a dozen different blogs, write full time from home and have a small writing agency. It all started with blogging.

God Bless the Internet!

Avoiding Scams And Listening To Early Warning Signs

Sorry there haven't been any new posts from me in a few days but I was in some training (along with my already busy schedule) all week for what looked like a great opportunity.

A rather juicy carrot got dangled and 20/20 hindsight tells me I should've been more careful. A few things happened along the way and I continued to give the benefit of doubt. The benefit of the doubt is now reserved for friends and loved ones alone going forward!

I've spent a big chunk of the last few days examining the offers, examining the original job postings and talking to a few writing friends who were also in the training about what happened and there will likely be more to come once I catch my breath.

I've posted a little warning to other writers and those still going forward with the training in question on a WAHM forum post where, in a nutshell:
-What looked like an established company posted a blogging opportunity for bloggers for pay per post + revenue sharing in blogging and editing positions on a new blogging network
-The deal was open to 20 chosen people for 4 weeks unpaid training and either a blogger offer or an editing offer with paid training after the four weeks
-After the first week I was offered the first editing position and asked to help teach the rest of the classes. Excitedly I waited for the compensation plan part of the offer. I was rather shocked when I found out it wasn't revenue + salary it was a partnership position of 60% commission only. The company would keep 40% for hosting the blog and putting up ads. No guarantees but lots of talk of 6 figure incomes and sweat equity and talk about sipping pina coladas on the beach later on together. Is a commission only or revenue sharing offer ok? Yes, in the case where that is offered up front.

Revenue sharing alone is certainly not what the original e-mails and postings suggested....

In fact, it came out that anyone who didn't decide to become an editor could choose to go on a reserved list of writers who might be employed in future by editors for posting but the editors would pay for the posting, not the blogging company.

-After re-examining everything said and posted on the original forum, the training forum and in e-mails, I now believe I was pitched in a way that a classic MLM scheme might have been done. Well, at least I didn't buy a $200 kit of soap and I wasn't asked to refer 20 family members.

I don't see the value and what I do see is deceit. Maybe they'll do well and maybe their editors will get wealthy but there are no guarantees and at this time, all my non-paid efforts are going to go to either my own websites where I can continue on my own at 100% commission or to an area to help me as a writer for getting more gigs. I was signing up for salary + revenue sharing, not pies in the sky.

Some of the other red flags were:
-All 20 writers were told they could be editors
-The process was done informally and no contract or written agreement was offered prior to the training.
-The company didn't answer a e-mail with key questions just before the first week of training. I should've halted then instead of carrying on figuring my questions would get answered later.
-Many of my questions were not really answered. Double talking and skirting seemed to be happening and talk got more pitchy and MLM'ish as time went on.
-My last e-mail before quitting the training didn't get answered. Instead the owner put a clarification on the forum. Lack of addressing me directly after blowing that much smoke was a strong case of poor form.

I am always careful about scams. I don't think the company in question was trying to exactly scam anyone but they certainly were not forthright and I'm rather perturbed about the time I wasted. I am guessing they are from the typical school of hard sell sales pitching. They said they were intentionally vague to protect their business plan but the way it was done was not vague, in my mind, it was intentionally misleading writers into thinking there were guarantees when really, I think they wanted to psych everyone up and then drop the bad news after you were already convinced it was a great company and great opportunity. This way you'd take a chance and not want to miss out on 6 figure blogging incomes and beach side drinks with the other wealthy people.

I am sure I'll gain some knowledge from this whole experience because life and scams always teach you a valuable lesson and I will chalk it up to experience but must admit I am still seething a little from it.

Customer Connections Blog

Life is good. My new website is coming along nicely (although I'm still battling a few small details) and I started a new blog. I've called it Customer Connections and it lives on my new writing website.

Many of my blogs are written for my peers such as:
this blog, Inspired Author and Momphabet Soup at writeniche. Communati is more of a social place for me and then there are my health and cooking blogs which I write because I'm passionate about both subjects. For Customer Connections, I hope to provide valuable information to my clients and at the same time establish myself as a subject matter expert to make hiring me an even more attractive proposition

Please stop by if you can and I'd love some link love. If you do give me any, feel free to tell me so here and I'll be sure to visit your linked blog or website and return the favour.

Cheers,
Dana

Getting The Right Audience To Your Blog

As a freelance writer, I’m always excited when I see new search terms listed on my stats that show where my readers come from. Today’s entry will give you some advice on how to get the target audience you want to your blog. If you are a writer or want to be a writer and are not blogging, it's time to start. Who is the right blog audience? These are people that want the information you are posting and who will buy what you are selling, subscribe to you, link to you and who will tell their friends about your blog.

Niche Blogging

Freelance writers often have many blogs in various niches. I know I do. Not only does it help me build clips but it helps me do so in a specialty area and if you have a specialty, you can get higher writing rates in that area. It also brings in residual income if you do it right. I have three areas I like to focus in the most in my writing so that's what I blog about because I have an endless amount of things I can say about these topics because they are near and dear to me.

If you have a niche blog, you are looking for a specific type of audience. How do you get that audience to find your blog? You have to think like the searchers and think like search engines at the same time.

Is Your Blog Search Engine Friendly?

If you were looking for your blog in cyberspace, what search terms might people use to find you? If the automated search engine programs looked at your blog right now, would it be glaringly obvious what your niche is? In order to get indexed in search results for specific terms, the search engines need to find relevancy in your blog postings. Look at your titles and headings to help you. Are there related keywords in them? Does each paragraph have words related to the subheading and overall subject? If you were a program designed to find relevancy, would the last post on your blog meet the needs of that program?

Don’t bother to keyword stuff your blog entries as you want good flow for both the search engine crawlers and the human visitors on your website but be sure that if you were thinking like an internet spider, you would want to crawl through and index on multiple types of words related to the subject matter. Too many keywords will turn off the people viewers and not enough keywords won’t get you noticed by the robotic search engine crawlers.

If you look up the keywords that you are targeting for your website, what comes up on the first page? Be sure your meta description is as good or better than those others in terms of not only using multiple keywords but also for readability and interest piquing for those who are going to see the search results come up. Think of your meta description as a headline and your target audience the readers of a newspaper looking at the classified section. Those readers will scan a page with their eye and look for the most interesting or eye catching heading.

When you pay attention to each blog entry not only for the existing subject matter but think about how that specific entry ties in to your whole blog in terms of niche and seo you’ll find that you will naturally feel the way to structure your posts. It's ok to go off topic once in a while but if you do it too often, you are decreasing your blog's focus and lowering the relevancy to the keywords you've spent time focusing on.

Utilize Free Blogging Tools!

Don’t forget that you should social bookmark with proper tags and categories as well as visit and comment on blogs and websites that are related to yours. Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog are great for getting new traffic, indexing and subscribers a plus finding where your traffic is coming from as well. People can search on these social tools to find blogs on topics they are interested in and you can use these tools in many ways.

Get Paid To Blog

This week's focus is on various ways that you can get paid to write and today I want to just touch lightly on blogging. There are many posts on this blog about blogs as well as in my blogroll. Blogging is a great way to get your thoughts and creativity out there without any worry about an editor's red pen. It's also a great way to make some cash.

Here are some very basics on blogging. Dig into my archives and my blog roll for more information. You can blog as a career to earn money or blog to help build clips to get other writing jobs or even do both.

1) Blog for Google Adsense and affiliate marketing revenue. People and companies will pay you to post on your blog once your blog has good rankings and plenty of traffic.

2) Paid blogging companies like Blogsvertise and Blogitive will pay per post for a short post and clickable link on well indexed blogs.

3) Companies and people will pay you to maintain their blog for them. Many ghostbloggers make very good money. You can also work for blogging companies that host multiple blogs like b5media.

I first started a blog because of what I'd read in an article in Reader's Digest about blogging as a p/t income. Little did I know that the steps I took would land me a new writing career and home based business. My first blog was a hosted blog on writingup.com. I only earned a few hundred dollars directly from the blog through blog posts and a little bit of Google income but it earned me a heckuva lot of indirect stuff. I met experienced writers there who mentored me and used the blog as a showcase for my writing work and as a result now have a full time living getting paid to write and recently started giving other writers work as well. If you're a writer and want to sell more books or earn more money, start a blog.

Dress Your Blog For Success

If you blog as a writer, you know your blog can be a great tool for getting your writing out there. Many writers are full-time or part-time bloggers.I blog professionally for several clients but it makes up less than 25% of my work so I consider myself a p/t blogger. I also earn successfully with Google Adsense, which I know many new bloggers do not. I've heard many vent and say they haven't hit payout and joined two years ago or that they got turfed from the program for click fraud. To earn money at Adsense you have to really do some homework about effective blogging and be very cautious about how you manage your blog. It's not too difficult, though. I know many bloggers who earn regularly through this program. I know bloggers who earn a full time living blogging thorugh multiple income sources and I, myself have earned a few thousand dollars in the last 18 months across several blogs.

Here are some tips for a successful blog.

-Make it look nice. Play with colours and graphics and make it look appealing so people will be drawn to stop and look if they land there.
-Diversify your income. Beyond Google Adsense ads, add some affiliate marketing banners or referrals too.
-Add a blog roll. Share some love with fellow writers and they will probably do the same. You can also add your other sites to your blog roll.
-Widgets! I love widgets. They're neat and can be unique and dress up my blog. I have some that are functional and others that just dress up the site.
-Regular content. If you only update it once a month, you'll be lucky if you get a few readers. Update regularly to ensure people come back because they know they'll find something new
-Don't overdo it on the paid posts. I have a blog or two that I have plenty of paid posts on but consider the paid posting my main income for them. I don't fill all my blogs with these as too much can hurt your readership. People don't want to come 'just' for ads. I try to respect my niche on most of my blogs as much as possible.
-That brings me to the 'find a niche' advice. The only way you can develop a following and subscribers will add up is to find a category for your blog so people can find you.
-Tag, Ping and social bookmark. Spend some time doing these things and your readership will rise and your CTR % will too!
-Plug your blog! Put your blog url in your signature line for forums and for when you comment on other people's blogs. This will help more people find you.
-Read and comment on other blogs in your category. This can bring you links and more readers.
-Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog. I use both of these and they are an excellent marketing tool. I think I'll blog about them later this week.
-Polls, pictures, scrolls, banners...you can find many online for free or small fee that can help dress up your blog too.

I also came across a great blog with helpful information. Give your blog a Blog Checkup on a regular basis.

Another good idea is to read John Chow and Darren Rowse regularly for advice.

Spend a few minutes every day or an hour every week promoting your blog and in no time, you'll see a difference!