Freelance Writing – ArcticLlama

Happy New Year, a little bit late. I was celebrating, you know

Anyway, let’s get the new year started off on the right foot with some great resolutions for writers for the new year.

New Year’s Resolutions for Writers

Every writer is different, but there are some things that seem to be true for most writers. I’ve started off this list of writer’s New Year’s resolutions with those that fit into that almost universal category and then moved on to those things that might be more useful for fellow freelance writers.

1. Write - No matter who you are or what you do, writing is the one thing that will always improve your craft. Reading is useful (see #2) but there is no substitute for just writing. The thing that catches many writers is that they force themselves to write certain things in order for it to count as “writing.” For example, a freelance financial writer may only count the things written about finance as writing. In truth, any writing is useful, skill building writing. In fact, writing outside of your comfort zone is a great way to develop better writing skills. Writing for recreation, is a great way to avoid burn out. This blog is a great way to turn procrastination into useful procrastination. Cranking out a blog post may not drop any income on the table (at least not immediately) but it has many uses. In addition to being cathartic, this blog allows my freelance writing business to show up in searches, help me meet and become friends with other writers, and pay it forward by helping others develop their own writing craft or writing business.
2. Read - The other thing that helps all writers is reading. Reading allows you to learn and hear other styles. It allows you to gather new information, obtain a fresh look on old knowledge and it keeps your mind working in complete, grammatically correct ways. The other important benefit of reading is that it allows you to know more. New writers often hear, “write what you know.” That is true, but what blocks too many writers is not realizing that you can always know more. You can “know” about being a prisoner in Alcatraz by having served time there, or you can always learn by reading everything you can get your hands on about the subject.
3. Brag and Boast – Too many writers, especially new ones, are reluctant to put themselves out there as high-quality writers. I’ve seen many a top-notch writer dismiss what they do to others. “I mostly just write little things for some ad agencies,” is hardly the way to make the kind of impression that might lead someone to remember later that you are a professional writer. When you tell people about what you do, toot your own horn a little bit. That way, when the day comes that acquaintance happens to be in a room where someone talks about getting some professional writing help, he’ll think, “Hey! I know a great writer.”
4. Market - Many writers are writers because they like to be in their own heads. They often like to work alone, if not by themselves. For writers like us, marketing can be a major downer. Unfortunately, marketing is the only way to develop and keep a reliable pipeline of freelance writing gigs coming your way. Fortunately, you don’t have to cold call like some telemarketer begging for work. This is the 21st century. There are literally hundreds of ways to market yourself without every picking up a telephone or shaking hands at a Chamber of Commerce mixer. Create a website, start a blog, build up a following on Twitter, print up flyers, take out ads, make sure you have compelling, up to date profiles on Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. A little legwork in one or more of these areas can improve your exposure greatly.

Lastly, never forget why became a writer in the first place. If you don’t love it, figure out another way to make a living; there are a lot of jobs out there that are easier and better paying for someone who isn’t a hopeless wordsmith.

Good luck to everyone on their new year and may 2012 be your most successful writing year ever, in whatever way you frame success.

Don’t you hate when you can write for miles in your head, but when it comes time to put it down on paper (or type it into a computer) the well just dries up? (How’s that for mixing some metaphors?)
Today is like that for me, unfortunately. Maybe it’s because it’s the end of 2011. Maybe it’s because I am tired. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

Whatever it is, it is annoying.

Tomorrow (or later today if this mental fog clears) I’ll be posting the best writer’s resolutions for the new year. Until then, Ugh!

Not too long ago, there was a gold rush of sorts at HubPages. About a year ago, web marketers got the idea that HubPages, with its PageRank 6, was a good place to do something called article marketing. I don’t think there is any hype around it anymore.

With article marketing, you publish articles on websites, generally for free and without any editorial approval, and then use those articles to link to your own webpages. The idea is that since Google is basically a glorified link counter, making more links point to your online writing content is a good way to boost how high your rank in search engine results pages, or SERPs.

The “best” place to publish said articles changes from time to time. Sometimes it changes because Google figures out what everyone is doing and they make some tweaks that make publishing on the old place less valuable. Sometimes it changes because the websites themselves figure out what is going on and shut it down. And, sometimes is just changes because people decide to go somewhere else.

The first article marketing website I remember hearing about was EZinearticles. The required an editor to approve your article, although the standard wasn’t exactly high, and they restricted the number and placement of your links to your own content. It was theoretically worth the restrictions because Google thought highly of EzineArcticles.com.

Later, I heard about Squidoo. On Squidoo you build “lenses” which are webpages built with the help of Squidoo.com’s tools. Essentially you type your content into various fields and the site generates and publishes a webpage. Squidoo was the first site I heard of being “taken down” by some sort of Google action. Squidoo remains, but it’s value as a pure article marketing play isn’t as high as it once was.

From there I heard about site after site. Most of the time I took a look, maybe published a freelance writing article or two and then moved on. For example, I have a handful of articles published at EzineArticles. You can find them via my ezinearticles Expert Author page. I also have a couple of lenses published at Squidoo under the name BrianBrightHub, which I’ll be changing if you can change usernames since BrightHub ended it’s revenue sharing program.

Eventually, I heard about HubPages. The strange thing is that I liked it enough to stick around for a while and publish over 100 “hubs,” which are also just webpages created via the HubPages interface. You can find my hubs under Hub Llama.

HubPages Earnings

Like most of the freebie publishing websites, I eventually moved on. It usually just makes more sense to publish your own unpaid content on your own websites. You control all of the rights. You build up the credibility of your websites. You get 100% of any advertising earnings.

I used HubPages largely for things I wanted to write but that I had place to publish them that fit. Every month or two I would end up back there for some reason, often to build a link to an article that had surprisingly, popped up in Google AdSense reports as making some money for me. But, in the end, I mostly dropped out of using HubPages.

However, there were a couple of things I liked about HubPages. First, there was no editorial review, so as soon as you hit publish, your article was live on the web. That doesn’t mean there are no rules however. HubPages nofollows links until you generate a high enough author ranking to get your links followed. That puts a crimp on the one-and-done types. Also, there are automated checks of things like how many links go where and so on. It is all very easy to circumvent, but it blocks the worst abuses.

HubPages has revenue sharing as well. The interesting thing about HubPages revenue share was how it was done. Hubs were published with Google AdSense ads on them. The way the revenue share worked was that HubPages showed Google Ads with your AdSense ID on the ads 40 percent of the time and showed ads with the HubPages company ID the rest of the time. In theory, this gives you a 40 percent share of all ad revenue.

Still, I hadn’t been to HubPages in some time. All of that changed recently when I decided to redirect BrightHub links to other things I have published since the company will no longer be paying any revenue sharing. Since I had some links built from HubPages, I dropped by and found a nice surprise. I’m earning money at HubPages.

Sometime in the last year, HubPages started using its own advertising program. I have no idea how it works or where the ads come from, but I clicked Yes to sign up for it. It turns out that now I’m making money from HubPages.

Don’t get me wrong, I made a little money each month with the Google AdSense program on HubPages, but never anything worth working on. However, with the new HubPages ad program, I’m earning closer to $50 per month, for articles that I haven’t updated, linked, or thought about in over a year. My greatest number of pageviews come from an article about the current Happy Meal toy at McDonalds, although my article about 529 plan contribution limits in 2011 is a close second.

I can’t help but wonder if publishing a little more on HubPages might generate some additional passive income. As it turns out, I have some extra material I can easily publish since some of it was returned to my ownership when BrightHub shut down.

Now, I have to decide how much effort is warranted at this stage.

Do you use HubPages? Are you making lots of money on HubPages?