Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Online Writing Opportunities Review: 10 Huge Advantages of Writing For Yourself

Online Writing Opportunities Review: 10 Huge Advantages of Writing For Yourself: Here are the 10 huge advantages of writing content for yourself as against writing for a client or getting published on a blogging platform...

10 Huge Advantages of Writing For Yourself

Here are the 10 huge advantages of writing content for yourself as against writing for a client or getting published on a blogging platform like revenue sharing sites. 

1. Learning Experience: When you write on your personal blogging platform, it helps you become independent. You keep learning as you write. You have to take decisions like the topics to write on, the importance and popularity of the topics you choose to write on, the likely readership and so on. There are several factors that go into the decisions you make on these issues which ensures you do research using the free online tools available. As your learning curve grows higher you will want to switch over from free domain host to the paid one and eventually continue on the growth trajectory. 

2. Development of Expertise: There is a difference in learning and expertise. While learning is a life long process, when you develop expertise you develop a certain level of comfort over the broad field of your writing. For instance, you enhance your reputation if you are an expert in an area. For instance, you may develop expertise over any one or more among science, healthcare, technology, literature, books, entertainment, pets, gardening, wildlife and so on. As a writer, at a certain stage you will have to decide which area you want to develop expertise in. No one can write on everything. So, developing expertise helps in the long run.     

3. Technological Learning: When you've your own writing platform, the real frustration comes not in writing unless you have never written anything before, but in arranging and tweaking, creating good layout, designing the website. As you can see I am very poor in these things, so this site looks cluttered. However, with time you learn and I too hope to learn some basic html language and understand how coding works. Since this is a self-learning, it will come about slowly with trials and errors. Yet, I strongly feel the time has come when every writer should have some basic understanding of technology used in content creation. The younger generation may not face this problem as IT is now pretty much a part of school curriculum right from the first standard. 

4. Freedom to Write: Although the revenue sharing sites also give the writers the freedom to write on anything you want and any time, the freedom with your personal writing site comes with the sense of responsibility. It is like your child that you give your complete attention to. With revenue sharing sites on the other hand, the admin or the site operators are your boss and you could be debarred from writing if you break the rules. Here you make your own rules or change and modify them or not make any rules at all. Yet the freedom here comes with responsibility.      

5. Earning: With your own writing platform, you have no one to share the revenues you generate. While this is the upside, the downside is that it takes a lot of effort and time to generate revenues. With revenue sharing sites, especially those ranking high in PR, it is relatively easier to generate readership and consequent revenue. 

6. Content Ownership: While you own your contents on revenue sharing sites as well as your own site, the advantage of owning them is that you can transition to dotcom or personal domain from free website along with all the contents, while in transitioning to your own site from revenue sharing site, you cannot pull out your contents from there unless you delete them manually from the original site in which case your revenue sharing site will have no contents to show.  

7. Sell Your Site At a Considerable Advantage: If you have your own site, you can easily sell it at a higher price, if the site is optimized and doing well. You cannot sell your account on a revenue sharing site. There are many sellers like Flippa for instance where hundreds of websites are bought and sold everyday. It is common for some of the revenue optimized sites to be sold for several thousands of dollars. 

8. Freedom to Choose Advertisers: If you have your own site, you can decide to choose advertisers who will pay you for clicks or page views. While adsense is the well known advertiser, there are many more that you can have on your blog. With revenue sharing sites, there are advertisers like adsense but rarely beyond. 

9. Freedom to Promote: You can promote nearly anything you choose to on your site and earn commission in the process, but on revenue sharing platforms, you cannot promote any company beyond ebay and amazon. Only Squidoo offers you a larger choice in promotion. 

10. Its Your Completely Owned Business: Your website is your own business that you may want to grow with and take to new  heights. When you write for clients, you feel alienated from your work. On the contrary when you write for yourself, you have the highest degree of involvement.    








Monday, January 20, 2014

Online Writing Opportunities Review: Should You Write For Clients or Should You Write F...

Online Writing Opportunities Review: Should You Write For Clients or Should You Write F...: When I began writing online, I just looked for some kind of writing opportunity to get paid. Being new to internet, the idea of getting pai...

Should You Write For Clients or Should You Write For Yourself?

When I began writing online, I just looked for some kind of writing opportunity to get paid. Being new to internet, the idea of getting paid for writing online was immensely appealing. I learned over a period of time, the ways to find clients willing to pay you for writing for them. The first place I bumped into after losing some money in scam was Guru.com. Landing  the first job there was not easy because I had no ideas on bidding, how much to quote, how to make promises you make sound genuine, where to show the portfolio of your work. In fact I did not have online samples of work. So, much of your online activities are in fact lessons in learning.

Then, one day I was surprised when a client without my least expectation chose me to write for his blog. Actually, he was running a gambling site. I had absolutely no idea on gambling. Yet he chose me for I have no idea, what. He said he was willing to pay me 6 euros for three articles. I was excited beyond my belief. I wrote the  three articles in quick succession, while he quickly transferred the six euros to my paypal account. The sight of those six euros into my  account made me feel like an internet millionaire. For the first time ever, some one was paying me for my first ever online writing work. I thought I had nearly hit a goldmine or jackpot because I had never believed that you can actually get paid online. Everything about the online  scams I had heard so long now appeared rumors or myths.

I didn't believe I could ever write on gambling or gaming for I could not distinguish a spade from a jack, yet I tweaked and rewrote something from  an article that made no sense to me. Neither did the final product - the stuff I had written made a sense to me. 

When you do something the first time after lot of learning and effort, the repeat task becomes easy. So, I wrote few more articles for this client when I realized he was paying me peanuts. He was not an exception, nearly every client looking for a writer wants them to work for peanut wages.

Yet, with little effort and endless bidding, I soon landed with a client willing to pay me at $10 to an article. This was a nearly five times jump. I was  now beginning to get convinced that a writer can survive online. The rest is  history. Along the way  I learned a valuable lesson: If you just want to earn something  writing online, you should be able to do that within an hour. There are nearly  endless opportunities with sites that lets you choose work on the basis of your bids. There are similarly many other sites that let us you choose a work you want to do at a fixed price of say $5, or $10 or more depending on the quantum of work or size of the content. 

However, a stage comes when the cycle of write to get paid upfront begins to get monotonous. This is especially so when you work for one of the content mills where writing, a creative task begins to haunt you like the ennui that haunted the 18th and 19th century industrial workers. The boredom, the monotony, the ennui, the listlessness and dissatisfaction from  the writing work you do is comparable to alienation of the workers that Marx spoke of. I was getting alienated from the writings I did because subjects like online poker, furniture, a new carpet for your room, and other crappy topics that clients requested me to write on did not enthrall and elevate my soul, as I thought writings are designed to. In addition, most of the clients want you to work at 18th century third world wages. 

This was the time when I began to ask, should I write for myself. In other words, you write on things you are passionate about or you have an expertise in or both. There are some very good blogs that let you write on anything you want  to write and make some money in the process. These are Hubpages, Squidoo lens, Triond, YCN and hundreds of others. The best thing about these sites is that you can continue  to earn monthly revenue from them after you have assiduously built a fairly good amount  of content, that is an impressive list of articles.

In addition, you can build your own blog. You may begin with a freeblog as this blog where I publish my articles. It needs to be reminded here that no one should expect to begin earning with the very first article you write here. The consistent result begins to appear with consistent efforts after a period of time.        

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Online Writing Opportunities Review: How To Make An Impact With Your Writing

Online Writing Opportunities Review: How To Make An Impact With Your Writing: A major reason you want to write is to make an impact. A piece of writing can either inform or drive home a point, make an appeal or do one...

How To Make An Impact With Your Writing

A major reason you want to write is to make an impact. A piece of writing can either inform or drive home a point, make an appeal or do one or more of these. There are basically just three things in a writing that make an impact. These historical ingredients were well recognized by the Greek philosophers and the best writers even today use these very qualities in their writing. These are ethos, pathos and logos. A judicious mix of these three make a speech or writing persuasive. 

In other words, your writing whether serious or humorous must be factual. If you can cite authorities, credible sources and statistics the readers will take your writing seriously. It should be logical. In other words, what you claim in your writing must be appealing to common sense. Finally, if the writing makes an emotional appeal, readers tend to get swayed. However, you must be cautious in using these critical elements. They should be subtle and somewhat detached from the writer in the sense that the writer should appear to use them to drive home a point. 

Some of the best speeches and writings make persuasive use of language. Funeral oration of Pericles for instance may appear to use these qualities. Kennedy's Day of Affirmation Address and Martin Luther King's speeches, as also the speeches of Hitler are some of the examples of persuasive speech. 

What is true for speech is also true for writing. Shakespeare has used this approach in his works. 

A writer can use the elements of ethos, pathos and logos depending on the kind of writing. A serious scientific piece of writing for instance will be mostly factual, yet writers can add subtle emotion. For instance when writing on "static charge" a writer can elude to how the importance of this topic is little appreciated by people and cite some of the historical accidents that have taken place due to "static electrical charge". 

Similarly, a writer writing a piece of humor may add a line or two on how humor is important to human health and may cite evidences to elude to health benefits of humor. 

The important thing to note is that writers should ask right in the beginning before actually writing a piece, who are they writing for and what message do they want to give to their audience. If this question is answered before the writing, the next task will be easy enough. More to the point, the writing should be appropriate to the age group of the audience. 

The next important thing is create and sustain interest of the readers. The first sentence in a piece of writing is known as "hook". The best writers know how to create the hook that instantly connects them to the readers. Some writers begin with a question, the others with a quote, and still others with an interesting anecdote. Each writer has their own unique strategy. 

However, hook is just the beginning. The writer must know the skill of holding their readers' interest till the end. That is the kind of art that comes with the practice to write constantly and evolves over time.   




   

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

How Writing Career Is Transforming Today

Writing career has changed dramatically within the last decade or two. I believe every one, that is pretty much every one who uses internet, mobile and other gadgets to communicate is a writer. That was not the case earlier. In past, there were limited avenues in the print media for writers. Technology has changed all that. A writer need not be at the mercy of publishers and editors because every one needs content today.

If you think, you can write, you can write. It is that easy. If you think you can earn money writing, you can. This is possible largely because technology has empowered everyone.

However, if you are used to security in career or are looking forward to a secured tenure, internet is not the place that can instantly guarantee full time earning. Yet, you can certainly find a little time to make money online writing. 

No one will ask you how qualified you are. No one looks for credentials or certificates to write online. All you need in the online world to write is to write something that makes sense. In other words, everyone from a Nigerian to Pakistani and Indian known as ESL writers or the writers whose English is the second language to EFL Americans and Britishers with English as their first language are free to write on the same platform.

All you need to decide is when and for whom are you going to write. If you are going to write for a client, they will pay you to write the stuff they want. If you want to earn writing within half an hour to an hour with money paid instantly, you can begin writing for iwriter. But there are hundreds of other online writing sites where you get paid to write. All you need is Google "freelance writing" or any other search term.

When you begin writing for the first time online, anything you earn first time sounds too good. Soon you will realize, you are getting peanuts for all your labor. The clients who want you to write for them are actually making money off your writing. 

So, a better idea is why not write for yourself. In other words, when you write for yourself, you have your byline and you also earn something in addition. There are some websites like hubpages, triond, YCN, Squiddo  lense and several more, where you can open multiple earning channels. For instance, you earn from google adsense, from amazon, from ebay and few more sources. Only your income is split 50/50 or 40/60 depending on where you are writing. The income split is justified because you do not have to worry about hosting your site. In addition, these sites have high PR which helps you promote your content to a large number of audience. 

This is quite unlike ever before. Anyone can be a writer and anyone can begin writing and earning anytime they decide to. Compared to the past, where only few could write, this has been a real transformation. Some of the old print newspapers are today dying and decaying or have been compelled to transform and run online versions along with printed paper versions. 

In addition, the niche for which any one can write has multiplied exponentially. There are more fields to write than one can imagine. In comparison, there were limited periodicals earlier with limited topics and issues to write on. 

We have entered into an era when content is truly the King. Every one who has a presence on internet needs content whether they write it themselves or hire writers to write them. In addition, the need for content is increasing by the day because content is essential to drive traffic.