tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38320866990254015402024-03-12T20:31:26.852-05:00Master Dayton | Freelance Writing | How to Be a Freelance Writer | How to Become a Freelance WriterTired of looking for freelance writing advice and getting a sales pitch? This blog might not be pretty, but it's here to help starting freelance writers.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.comBlogger85125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-27635139387182285812015-01-08T02:39:00.000-06:002015-01-08T02:39:43.148-06:00So There's a New PostThings are moving forward very well now, and it's been a long road but I'm back and I plan to be back consistently. There's a new post over at the <a href="http://masterdayton.com/" target="_blank">Master Dayton website</a>, and I'm glad to be back and blogging/writing once again. I'm not going to go into a lot of what's been going on and where I've been and why I'm back, because you can read all of that at the new post.<br />
<br />
For those of you with short attention spans:<br />
<a href="http://masterdayton.com/so-hey-its-been-a-while-huh/">http://masterdayton.com/so-hey-its-been-a-while-huh/</a><br />
<br />
As for the obvious questions like<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Are you going to update the theme?</li>
<li>Are you really coming back consistently?</li>
<li>Will you PLEASE add something to the new site so I'm notified automatically when you have a new post?</li>
</ul>
<div>
The answer to all of these is yes, although the focus will be getting back to posting several times a month first and foremost. The design can wait a while if it has to, but I am pushing forward and I'm actually really excited with everything I plan to cover in the weeks, months, and year ahead. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The first thing is that the scope of the new site will be expanding considerably. Creative writing, publishing with Kindle, freelancing with independent clients, techniques, and drawing - whatever's going on. I think this will paint a much larger picture for my readers and to be quite honest it will keep me far more engaged and motivated.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Besides one thing that should be pretty obvious to everyone looking at how things are playing out: the times they are certainly changing. The new website is no exception. But now instead of being dead or a pure homage to the past, it will be a living, moving, interactive place like it should be. Hope to see you all there!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The new post can be found here:</div>
<div>
<a href="http://masterdayton.com/so-hey-its-been-a-while-huh/">http://masterdayton.com/so-hey-its-been-a-while-huh/</a></div>
Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-74318130784626526852013-03-13T16:32:00.003-05:002015-01-08T00:51:40.545-06:00Is Backlinking Bad?If you've followed online marketing for any amount of time, you know how hated the words "Penguin" and "Panda" are to many individuals who practice SEO (Search Engine Optimization). And if you haven't, even as a pure freelance writer you should. What's going on in the SEO world is going to directly affect what type of articles are wanted by employers from online freelance writers. The more you understand about what marketers are looking for when writing for good on page SEO, the better you're going to do as an online writer.<br />
<br />
<b>What does this mean for you?</b><br />
<br />
Even if you're working purely as a freelancer and not working on your own sites or building your own residual income (and I'm not sure why you wouldn't look at diversifying your income streams), it's worth understanding what your employers are looking for and what the trends in online writing are. This will help you become more effective. If you're someone who is interested in creating a side income from building niche sites, authority sites, or any type of website to further your online business goals, then you need to know about search engine optimization. And that means understanding backlinks.<br />
<br />
<b>I can find someone to say anything - who should I listen to?</b><br />
<br />
As with anything, opinions differ vastly from one "expert" to another - and one of the biggest frustrations many people have with SEO is that what worked a few years ago often doesn't work now or can even have the complete opposite effect and hurt your efforts to be found and to rank well in the search engines. <br />
<br />
<b> </b><br />
<b>Another issue?</b><br />
Another issue that sometimes confuses the situation for online freelance writers is that <b> </b>there is no single ONE way to success online when building sites. A few years ago a lot of exact keyword match backlinks with keyword stuffed text would do it. Those days are LONG gone. People have made success with incredible social presence. Others have put out such an overwhelming amount of content that over time they've culled in a major following. Some have used link building and SEO, some videos, and others have used stunning content to get attention through other mediums.<br />
<br />
In other words, there are plenty of ways to get to that ever hazy place termed as "success." Just because one person who has used one method strongly advises it, that doesn't mean it's the only way to get it done.<br />
<br />
But SEO still exists and there is plenty to know about how to go about using backlinks safely and effectively to help promote your website. With that in mind, I want to point all of you to the first guest post I've ever accepted on a Master Dayton blog. Over at the home of the new freelance writing blog, Chris from <a href="http://iworkofftheclock.com/" target="_blank">I Work Off the Clock</a> has provided a stunningly good guest post talking about how effective backlinking has to be done in a post Panda and post Penguin Google update type of world.<br />
<br />
Please check out Chris's <a href="http://masterdayton.com/backlinking-is-not-a-crime/" target="_blank">blog post on post Penguin SEO</a> at the new <a href="http://masterdayton.com/" target="_blank">Master Dayton website</a>. This is the type of information that can really help you to Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-65416228536183754832013-02-19T00:43:00.000-06:002013-02-19T00:43:38.036-06:00Updates at the New BlogHey All,<br />
<br />
For those of you who have been waiting for an update for a while, I'll have a brief laundry list then probably point you over towards <a href="http://masterdayton.com/" target="_blank">the New Master Dayton website</a>. It's a bit garrish now - I'm not liking the theme and may go to a more minimalist approach, but that's for another day of updates and wrestling. The main part right now is continuing with that transition from this ole blogspot thing to a site I have more control over.<br />
<br />
A few basic updates of note:<br />
<ul>
<li>The Keyword Academy has gone through some changes once again, and appears as ready as ever to be on the forefront of high quality site building and SEO for residual income online. Court has bought out Mark to run the show solo now, and the gates are open for new sign ups once again. So if you've been left out of the KWA before, I strongly recommend getting <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">signed up with The Keyword Academy now</a> (yes, that's an affiliate link - but this is one program I truly believe in).</li>
<li>The posting schedule will be picking up at my freelance writing website, and I look forward to having guest posts from bloggers I heavily respect showing up in the future.</li>
<li>Quality content is more important than ever - are you keeping up with how to lasso down the high paying gigs? Check out the new site if you haven't.</li>
<li>Several freelance writing ebook, kindle ebook, online programs, and freelance writing websites will be getting reviewed over there - which many of my new readers should find helpful since a lot has changed since 2007-2008 when I first started doing many of these reviews</li>
<li>I like my new freelance writing blog post on <a href="http://masterdayton.com/are-you-starting-off-the-new-year-right-2" target="_blank">starting off the year right</a>. </li>
</ul>
Otherwise that's all for here right now. Take a look at the new post over at masterdayton.com and hopefully you can enjoy the information there! Take a look and leave a comment - and hopefully 2013 will be the best year for all of you! <br />
<br />
Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-50195642147861894532012-09-30T11:25:00.002-05:002012-09-30T11:25:23.492-05:00Update on the New Website and BlogThis will be a quick update to let everyone following this blog know that I've <b><i>Finally</i></b> gotten around to getting the new blog up and moving over at <a href="http://masterdayton.com/">masterdayton.com</a>. Finally some branding, wa-hoo! Although it's still pretty bare and going to be a process, I'm hoping over time to move more and more of my activity all there and get to the point where ya'll are hearing from me once or twice a week.<br />
<br />
This blog will still get updated from time to time, and at the very least in the short term I'll have shorter summary posts here to at least give the heads up on what's going on over at the other page - but for all of you who follow this freelance writing blog I still suggest bookmarking the new page, as well, since more of my concentration is going to be focused there over time. <br />
<br />
If you haven't seen the most recent blog post, I talk about why 4 star rated Textbroker writers should take a gander at the most recent workload:<br />
<a href="http://masterdayton.com/quick-post-attention-textbroker-writers">http://masterdayton.com/quick-post-attention-textbroker-writers</a><br />
Because at least for another week there's plenty of work there if you have down time.<br />
<br />
And if you didn't see the big kick-off post of my new Master Dayton blog there's plenty that I cover in detail in that post including:<br />
<ul>
<li>Current thoughts on Web 2.0 websites</li>
<li>The recent Google updates</li>
<li>My first published fiction on Amazon Kindle</li>
<li>Opening spaces to be hired for work, and what I charge (in case you're wondering what's possible once you hit a certain point freelancing)</li>
<li>Future of a free e-mail "freelance writing for beginners" course</li>
<li>Future kindle freelance writing reports I'll be releasing</li>
<li>Finding new high level clients in today's markets</li>
<li>Moving from being just beginner focused to more advanced strategies and tutoring </li>
</ul>
All this can be found at:<br />
<a href="http://masterdayton.com/welcome-writers-whats-up-at-the-new-master-dayton">http://masterdayton.com/welcome-writers-whats-up-at-the-new-master-dayton</a><br />
<br />
So I hope this update finds you all well and still writing away. Keep up the great work and until next time keep living the dream!Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-28304013511565699932012-08-07T20:31:00.000-05:002015-01-08T00:44:50.253-06:002,522 Words on How to Fail as a Freelance Writer (and Blogger)<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
When September’s blog post about times changing came up
last year, I never dreamed I would then go six (oops I guess now it’s 9 –
brings the point home though) months without a single post on a blog that has
been my passion, my stress relief, and a really devoted project of mine for
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People who’ve followed me know
even when I’m “slow” – that means 1-2 posts a month.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until I disappeared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Letting the inner nerd of me out I’ll go to
Monty Python to assure everyone “I’m not dead yet.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I’ve certainly failed badly in
keeping the blog up and in even getting around to any “coming soon”
update.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even with the soon to be
mentioned in this post updates, a lot of those actions I meant to have happen
months ago.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m not dead yet – so where have I been?</i></b><br />
But sometimes life gets in the way, sometimes you burn out, and sometimes it’s
just time to hit the reset button and be done with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And sometimes you breakdown at the worst time
and are left with a mess to deal with in the aftermath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of these combined only start to scratch
the surface of what’s been going on, and unfortunately even after all of that I
can’t honestly say I’ve had “time off.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But it’s time for a change and time to return to my passions, and I
always did love this blog and all the amazing people I’ve been able to meet,
talk to, and help out along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is something that needs to come back as a major part of my life
again.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The last post even mentioned this in detail, and although
there’s been a mess of personal, financial, and other situations between then
and now, it’s finally time to just put that all behind and get kicking
again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m really invigorated and
finding my passion again, and I want the help given out by Master Dayton to be
a part of that.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">So where is this freelance blog going?</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
So here’s the long post – probably the final super long
post on the blogspot blog although I will have smaller updates here always
pointing out when things are going on or when there’s a new post at the other
blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The kick-off of <a href="http://masterdayton.com/">masterdayton.com</a>
also comes with some really cool announcements, but we’re about a week or two
away from that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However the majority of
strong future posts will be at that new site and I want to encourage everyone
who wants to continue along for the ride to sign up on the e-mail list, which
will be getting really active in a very short time.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
So before going on to my new thoughts, the changes on the
landscape, and what you can expect with a whirlwind of activity here in the
next few months I want to focus on the title of this post: </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“How to fail as a
freelance writer and blogger”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This blog was never supposed to have more than a month
without a post, and I certainly never intended to disappear for now going on 8
plus months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact there are several
discarded drafts of Master Dayton blog posts that were started and then
abandoned on the way and never made it to the next publishing cycle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of what’s happened can be traced to
recent changes with Google updates and major freelance website writing changes,
while a lot of it goes from a ridiculously tumultuous year for me personally,
emotionally, financially, and basically every “-lly” out there you can imagine
that can turn your life upside down in an instant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mix them all together and here’s where it all
happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just even when I thought life
was getting back to something even remotely akin to normal – this post has taken
several months to put together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not a
good sign – except by the time you read this it’s been published and that means
progress has been made and it’s moving forward.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
So getting back to the first point of this really long
post – how do you fail at freelance writing blogging or any type of blogging
for that matter?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me there are 10
main points I can grab from my own personal experience (guess I should have
SEO’ed the title to 10 ways to fail at blogging, huh?) and hopefully you all
find these points helpful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another great
blog post on the subject you can find from Chris Deline, who used to run the
music blog “Culture Bully” (I know – great name, isn’t it?) and you can find
that URL at <a href="http://chrisdeline.com/portfolio/how-to-market-your-music-online">http://chrisdeline.com/portfolio/how-to-market-your-music-online</a>.
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#1 Freelance blogging failure: Getting away
from your original passion</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This is a huge one and one that really affects a lot of
bloggers at one point or another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
might sound weird: does that mean I no longer love freelance writing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well that wasn’t the original point of my
writing blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea of passive or
relatively passive income is still a passion, but I also never hid that I was a
creative writer first and fell into the freelance writing back in 2006 after a
2005 car accident on my birthday (see my <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-i-became-freelance-writer.html">how
I became a freelance writer post</a> for this one) and went on from then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
But my passion with this blog was helping others get
started from scratch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether it was a
college student making a part time income to prepare for after graduation,
someone on disability who just needed a little more to get by, a long time
unemployed person looking for anything to make ends meet, or a writer who had
no idea where to start – these were people I understood and whom I felt I could
help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the thing that was really
cool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Interacting with other people,
helping them get started or finding a new source of income, the really neat
comments and encouraging e-mails.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Helping others was great: but then as I wondered about keywords and SEO
or social function or marketing versus writing and whether or not I was getting
too advanced in lessons, eventually it just became frustrating and another
chore I had to do versus something I looked forward to all week.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
In the end, I need to get back to what I’m most passionate
about: helping others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s been years
since I’ve been a true start from scratch beginner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hopefully some of the old posts are helpful
(although the days of eHow, Demand Studios, and Associated Content are long
gone, among many others) but it’s not an area that really gives me the same
passion because I’m so far removed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However basic freelance writing advice is always a good thing, and some
of the base tenants always apply.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the
fix to this is simple: go with the passion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If right now that’s Kindle, re-evaluating Amazon associates and advanced
writing tips to get up to $30 a page or more, that’s what I’m going to write
about.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#2 Freelance blogging failure: Stretching
yourself too thin</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This is one that really killed me and one that I am ridiculously
susceptible to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part of the reason is
that I’m easily distracted and I’ve never been the type who can focus on one
single project for a couple hours at a time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This means that it’s natural for me to juggle three, four, or more
projects at once.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This isn’t bad in and
of itself but let’s take a look at this old list of what I was doing at one
point: eHow articles, HubPages, Squidoo lenses, daily Demand Studios articles,
daily writing for Constant-Content, Associated Content articles, Austin client
weekly reports, Iowa City client weekly articles, Guru.com 5-15 projects per
week, Elance projects, my own e-books and content for 25+ blogs and
websites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Try fitting all of that into a
weekly schedule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t take long to
realize, that was not sustainable.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Now being diversified isn’t bad at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, I highly recommend that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However there is such a thing as going too
far and I can write an entire book about this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well I’m on Kindle now (as of this publishing it’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00815ZGZA/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00815ZGZA&linkCode=as2&tag=sinclewi-20">my
first fiction Kindle book</a></b>, but many non-fiction reports and books on
freelance writing will be coming up in the future, as well)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>so maybe I will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The point is I should have concentrated on
the three or four sources of income that were best for me now, and one or two
with the long term in the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
was no denying some of these sources of income had far more potential than
others – and I failed to fully take advantage of that at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Not only do I get to dream of missed $20-30k buyouts, but
also being too spread out meant I didn’t see the results as quickly as I
wanted, especially for long term projects, but there were times I had to work
on short term income when I wanted to go on a roll for long term projects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being more focused instead of stretching in
100 new directions would have helped me out immensely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, but
don’t make the opposite mistake, either.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#3 Freelance blogging failure: Spend too
little time on long term projects</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
If you’re building big sites long term for Amazon
Associates or AdSense funding, or even a passion site you want to turn into a
business – these are long term projects because you’re not going to do it
overnight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Likewise there’s nothing
wrong with getting started with Guru.com, Elance.com, or $9-$15 an article
content mills found around online.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, you always want to spend 10-20% of your time a week on long
term projects whether it’s residual income or cold calling local businesses to
build simple WordPress blogs and maintain them or finding the high end clients
who pay $30 or more a page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I understand
having to pay rent, but don’t sacrifice the long term.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#4 Freelance blogging failure: Fail to adapt</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’ve been freelance writing since January of 2006 but
this blog didn’t come into existence until September 2008.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, but the
online writing world has changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back
then Squidoo was slapped while HubPages and eHow gave a quick way to rank
articles and build up massive passive income.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now many Squidoo veterans are fine or doing better than ever while
HubPages died and then is showing some minor signs of life and eHow isn’t open
to writers anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of the best
content mills from back then are gone, and Google’s updates have hammered
thousands of marketers while pushing up established brands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, there’s never been a
better time to find independent clients who are willing to pay high dollar
amounts for high quality work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I needed
to adapt more with this blog and stop forcing everything to be “for beginners”
or “for part-timers.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things evolve and
change – this isn’t a bad thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
2008 plan won’t work in 2012.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Time to
keep moving on.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#5 Freelance blogging failure: Start without
a plan, continue without a plan</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This one is pretty self-explanatory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not something that is necessary if
you’re working on a personal site or blog but for a blog you want to stick with
or one you want to build into something it is important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The plan doesn’t have to be exact or precise
or x number of points, but you want at least an idea of where you are, where
you’re going, and where you want to end up.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#6 Freelance blogging failure: Never take
time off</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
No matter how passionate you are or how much of a
workhorse you are, sometimes you just need a little bit of time off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you don’t – then expect burnout.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what happened to me with the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/">Master
Dayton blogspot blog</a></b>, was burnout.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Burnout comes from a wide variety of sources, but not taking time off
for yourself now and then is a disaster waiting to happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This can also result as part of the next one.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#7 Freelance blogging failure: Let your
personal life sink you</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This one is pretty self-explanatory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing you do is stuck in a vacuum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So don’t pretend it does, and take time to
yourself when you need it but remember that sometimes work and projects can be
a stabilizing force for you instead of another stack of worries when you have
already too much on your shoulders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is good for life anyway, and the rest goes beyond the scope of this blog
post.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s always reason to take care
of business and push forward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like that
motto for Britain during WWII: Keep Calm and Carry On.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s good advice for blogging whether about
freelance writing or something else completely.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#8 Freelance blogging failure: Worry about
what others think</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
You are always going to have detractors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Internet comment trolls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or well-meaning people who still are going to
discourage you or want you to go in a different direction or forget that online
stuff or blah, blah, blah.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Basically you
need to stay passionate and in love with what you’re doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you’re going to do that, then you are
going to be happier, more fulfilled by what you’re doing, and less likely to
burn out than if you don’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Advice from
other bloggers or writers can be a good thing and by all means, enjoy the
community you build – but you have to be who you are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t worry about what others think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#9 Freelance blogging failure: Get
exasperated</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This goes along with burn out and worrying what others
think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a post doesn’t seem to be
working then shelve it and go on to the next one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If your plan doesn’t seem to be inspiring you
anymore or working the way you want it to then get a new plan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t get exasperated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The frustration from getting exasperated just
creates an albatross ten times larger than what the actual project is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exasperation is also an early sign of
possibly burn out or that other issues are cropping up that need to be dealt
with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Getting exasperated I’ve found
just doesn’t help writing, it doesn’t help building a business, it just doesn’t
really help anything.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">#10 Freelance blogging failure: Be afraid to
try something new – or just be afraid</i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Fear is the opposite of success.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes you’ll screw up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes you’ll do really well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You might be surprised by what posts take off
(I never expected my <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-im-not-ashamed-to-be-freelance.html">rant
against a former professor</a></u></b> to be one of my most popular posts), and
which ones fizzle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You may discover your
natural voice, a new “online tone” that you fall in love with and readers react
to – there’s </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
These are my ten ways to fail at freelance writing and
blogging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Part 2 of the original part of
this article will be coming soon – and probably be one of the first features at
my <a href="http://masterdayton.com/" target="_blank">new Master Dayton website</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It’s good to be back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Let’s see if we can finish 2012 strong!</div>
Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-31940945320292179462011-09-12T02:21:00.065-05:002011-10-09T10:58:00.023-05:00And The Times They Are A Changin'<h3>Freelance Writing in 2011: What to Do Now?</h3> Hey all. This freelance writing blog post has been long overdue, but I've felt for several months now that there have been some huge issues that not only do all online freelance writers need to deal with and then there are also the questions I've been wrestling with as far as what to do with this blog. I'd like to say I have everything figured out, but that wouldn't be true. This is going to be a long marathon read, so grab your caffeine and snack and settle in and dig in because I'm tackling everything at once this time.<br /><br />First of all, if some of this post seems redundant or a little circuitous, please cut me a little bit of slack. Organization isn't my biggest strong point to begin with, and some of the things I want to talk about right away also have relevance to multiple freelance writing topics being covered in this post. Basically this blog post can be broke down into three overarching topics that will each have plenty of subheadings:<br /><ol><li>How the freelance and Internet markets have changed dramatically in 2011</li><li>What you should do NOW as a beginning writer or Internet Marketer (as opposed to a lot of advice that is now obsolete due to #1)</li><li>What's the future of this blog?<br /></li></ol>These three topics are going to cover a lot, but there's no argument that the online world has changed immensely. It's always going to, and Google's Panda updates and (although they deny this many search results say otherwise) decision to jump into bed with giant companies and retailers in the search results has only added to the chaos. Advice I've given for the last two years for beginners and part timers, advice that worked for the last two years, often doesn't work anymore.<br /><br />A lot has changed since I started this blog. HubPages is not the place to send beginners anymore or a place to make easy online income. eHow no longer exists and there's a lot of signs that Demand Studios might be in trouble. Constant-Content is still a potentially great place, but the long waits are getting to the point of being intolerable. But demand for independent freelance writers for web content is also at an all time high. The Keyword Academy is moving from TKA 1.0 methods to TKA 2.0 methods - the online world is changing and what's being created isn't going to look anything like what's been there in the past. This doesn't mean that the ability to make a living online is harder - if anything it's easier in certain ways and the best strategies are more sustainable from a business and personal stand point, but let's not kid ourselves at all: you have to adapt to the changes to survive, much less to thrive.<br /><br />This blog has been about passion since the beginning. I love being a freelance writer, I love helping other people, and I wanted to really teach what I had learned to others so they could take advantage of this stuff far earlier than I did and also skip a lot of the learning curve that causes so many to quit. Figuring out you can make a living online can be a life changing proposition and so many college students, college grads, and young adults are struggling at a time when even a part time income from online writing could make all the difference in the world. I've done my best to provide excellent advice, and a lot of it still applies. Unfortunately because of the ever changing nature of the online world, and 2011 was the mother of all years even by normal "change" standards, a lot of the old posts are outdated or even worse, give advice that is not only outdated but now flat out wrong.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Does this freelance writing blog have a future?</span></span><br />The hardest section to address will be what the future of this blog is and what the future of my efforts helping others as freelancers is going to look like. Because of that, it's also the section that will be the most broken up. For one, this is a Blogger blog, which means I don't own it. If Google decides to shut this blog down and erase all the posts tomorrow, they could. This doesn't mean it will happen, but someday it could. So what would I do at that point? What about my readers? Where do I want to go with this blog I started (more than a little naively) back in 2007?<br /><br />Depending on when you read this, the "Sign up for Updates" form may or may not be on the right hand side from Aweber yet, because my first priority is getting the post up and then following up with possible future transitions. Basically I'm going to start collecting e-mail addresses because in all likelihood eventually I'm going to have to move my blogging efforts to my own URL that I actually have control over. The e-mail addresses will allow me to update whenever there's a new blog post, point you to that rare blog post or program that actually does kick butt, and when I start publishing e-books and kindle books ya'll would be the first to know. In the eventual situation if Google ever decided to eliminate this blog, then I would be able to tell you where to go to find my long winded blog posts :)<br /><br />So if you want to stay in touch, keep an eye for that box and sign up, and from there it's onto our huge array of topics. And while the Social Proof will be more important for my future blog site, if you don't mind giving this post (or blog or both) a +1 on Google Plus or posting this on Facebook with a "Like" I would very much appreciate it - but only do so if you really find value here. I would never ask for any support you don't think I deserve.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Is HubPages worth writing for Post-Panda?</span></span><br />I supposed I can't get away with just saying "no." Well: No. I can no longer recommend HubPages to beginners or anyone really for that matter. Some of my hubs are staying up because I just don't have websites where some of those articles will fit, and you can still get an occasional backlink but based on a lot of reasons, I would recommend not spending your time here. <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html" rel="nofollow"> Sign up for <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Keyword Academy</span></a>, even if you can only afford the one free month at first to learn what you need to learn and work on your own sites. That's the way now of building a great passive income, and two years ago HubPages ranked quickly and acted like a "short cut." All the work I've done this year shows me that there are no more short cuts to ranking quickly. Going with your own sites is the fastest way to go.<br /><br />Ever since going to the subdomains, here's the pattern I see with HubPages: traffic shoots up for 4-5 days, then plummets to near non-existence (this means from 2,300 a day to less than 300) for the rest of the month, then 2-5 days where for no reason they shoot up in rankings again. So far despite a lot of testing, there's no rhyme or reason and until it stabilizes, if ever, I can't recommend them. The general HubPages' admin reaction to Panda and how they decided to run the business were also atrocious and often misguided and in my opinion did more damage than even the Google Panda update did to HubPages. If you want a fuller scoop, then check out my <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2011/07/freelance-writing-opinion-why-hubpages.html">blog post on HubPages</a> for the full story.<br /><br />Otherwise, it's enough to know that I no longer support HubPages and have already removed 35+ hubs and counting, and anticipate only having 30-40 there by the end...all backed up if (when?) HubPages eventually closes.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why are you pushing the Keyword Academy so hard?</span></span><br />I know what it's like to start in the hole. It sucks. I've worked my way out of homelessness twice and despite what a lot of people in the States think (excuse the language) - it's next to fucking impossible to do. Think about it: I started off with a really crappy laptop, but I was a homeless guy with a laptop. Without it, I have no idea how people dig themselves out. But that's a 10,000 word post for another time, you can get the abbreviated version of <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-i-became-freelance-writer.html">how I became a freelance writer</a> there, but the long and short of it is: I don't have a lot of time to waste because I have medical bills, student loans, credit cards, and basically a ridiculous amount of monthly bills that require many hours of freelancing to cover even at $30+ an hour, and then there's that expensive travel habit. If you're looking for long term passive income so you can live a life a la <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307465357/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0307465357"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The 4 Hour Work Week</span></a>, or looking to make yourself a safety net for after college (never been a worst time in history to be a college grad entering the job market), then The Keyword Academy is the best method.<br /><br />It's NOT a get rich quick scheme, it does NOT work overnight, but if you're looking for passive income, they teach the best stable long term methods, give the best tools and advice, and will show you how to succeed if you're willing to work for it. There is no short cut using Amazon or AdSense anymore - so stop trying to game Google and learn how to make your websites Google's darlings instead. That's why I strongly advise <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html" rel="nofollow"><span style="font-weight: bold;">joining The Keyword Academy</span></a> (yes, that is an affiliate link, because I do believe that much in them to put my reputation on the line) if you are looking to build passive income. It's the best program, and they're going to offer you more than I ever could.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Is Demand Studios Finished?</span></span><br />If you've been coming here as a freelance writer and you don't have any interest in online passive income, then the section on HubPages doesn't really affect you at all. However this next one will. I've long been a proponent of Demand Studios as a great place for college students, busy moms, people with disabilities, or basically as a place a beginning writer could go and get experience in the writing world and make some decent money. A lot of people argued on this point, but $15 per article for a writer with no experience isn't bad, and if you've looked at the economy lately, for a lot of people it was good. Especially since there was no reason to do less than 2 an hour once you got the hang of what DS wanted, and voice recognition software could move that up to 3-4.<br /><br />But traditionally Demand Studios would also have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of articles and in the past three months they fell dramatically down to 10,000 area, and have consistently been 3,000 or less recently. This is not a good sign for them at all, and considering the timing of when former eHow writers agreed to their buyouts, often at 8-12 month's worth of royalties (which was before the Panda update) and then DS having to pay writers for the contracts that were agreed upon at Pre-Panda earnings levels, and then the Panda update slammed Demand Studios properties during this time. Traffic losses were anywhere from 40 to 80 percent depending who you talked to, and this is from a company that has produced one quarter of profit (end of 2010).<br /><br />Even before Panda, Demand Studios warned they expected to lose between $8.5 million and $16 million in the first two quarters of 2011, and that was Pre-Panda. The actual numbers according to the released statements for 2011 was $8.0 million - but we know traffic numbers are down immensely and the company is already buying back stock from its public offering. Even if the company itself isn't "finished" in the traditional sense, I'd be extremely surprised if the freelance writing section survived. With tens of thousands of authors competing for 3,000 articles, it's no longer worth your time anyway.<br /><br />So what's this mean? Frankly, if you haven't begun finding private clients on and off line, now is the time. The good news from the Google updates is that poorly written $1 articles from India, China, and the Philippines are not making the money any more. More than ever the very well written and crafted articles are scoring well in Google, meaning the demand for English speaking freelance writers to write excellent web content is shooting for the roof. And people are willing to pay a lot more for it than even a year or two ago.<br /><br />So ditch Demand Studios. Like HubPages, they're not coming back. It was a good ride while it lasted.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Wait a minute, Squidoo is back in?</span></span><br />This is a harder one to answer that falls into the "yes and no" category. I am making some excellent money from my early efforts at Squidoo but I have several things going for me:<br /><ul><li>I was there in the very beginning and so have followers, a forum presence, and several aged and well ranking lenses</li><li>I understand exactly what types of topics work best now on Squidoo and which should be saved for my own sites</li><li>I know how to set up the features on my Squidoo lenses to get A LOT of affiliate sales from Amazon and eBay<br /></li></ul>Does Squidoo have a ridiculous amount of potential for the future? Absolutely! Based on traffic numbers I'm getting, I think it's only a matter of time until they expand the tiers and I expect the value of each tier to continue to grow. That said, is Squidoo for the inexperienced or pure beginners? I don't think so. If you want to build some online passive income and absolutely refuse to create your own sites, then Squidoo is better than HubPages now in my opinion, and use a site like InfoBarrel to dive into AdSense.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Free reports coming soon</span></span><br />As an English major I have been trained to hate cliches with a passion, but as a blogger they can come in handy. In case you somehow have never noticed, I can get long winded in the old fashioned Grizzly style of blog post. I have a lot to say about freelance writing, and I want to share my online writing experiences in as much detail as possible to help out. So the cliche goes "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater," and that's how I feel about a lot of the old posts on this site. There's still valuable information, but there's also a lot of outdated stuff mixed in.<br /><br />I figure using those posts as the basis of some free updated reports will not only be helpful to everyone and help me sleep better at night (not kidding, I get some weird OCD sometimes and once I started worrying about people getting old info from my blog - it kept me up), but help convince of ya'll to stay with me once I check into a new URL location :) I'll be updating on Constant-Content, Associated Content, Squidoo, and some of the less site specific and still very important "general" topics like finding online work and private clients.<br /><br />And by soon, we'll say next two months. The end of this year is looking pretty crazy. Following that will be an e-book on making a living as a freelance writer: updated for online, offline, and passive income. I'm thinking about releasing it as a Kindle e-book, but am not completely sure yet. Might do a PDF online version and a Kindle, though the obvious potential issue there is people without a Kindle paying more than those who do. Anyone who has thoughts on this one way or another feel free to comment: I'm curious to see what the feedback would be.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Updating the 4 year plan for college students</span></span><br />This is a big one. My original post on a <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/02/freelance-writing-college-4-year.html">4 year writing plan for college students</a> to turn them into full time freelance writers (with passive income) by graduation was one of my favorites to write, and that was almost 2 years ago. The problem is, out of the 6 or 7 sites I recommended for college students to sign up for, now I would only recommend one of them (well <span style="font-style: italic;">maybe</span> two, but only one solid) and several of them don't take new writers any more. In other words, while the concepts behind the 4 year writing plan are sound, the specific actions mentioned are terribly outdated. I could see this one being a report, it could be a blog post, it could probably be expounded upon into a Kindle e-book, but one way or another an update will be coming. Like I said in the original post, I'm really passionate about helping college students because it's not that long ago I was there - and this is stuff all of them should know to create a much more stable future than what the job markets are going to give them.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hasn't the Keyword Academy Changed?</span></span><br />Yes, and for the better. But wait, I hear you saying, didn't you fully support The Keyword Academy for almost a full two years now? Yes. This isn't contradictory, either. What is now being called the TKA 1.0 was completely effective when The Keyword Academy started, and to an extent it still is completely effective. None of the moderators or people running the Keyword Academy say otherwise, but the risk of being de-indexed by Google and of wanting to stabilize the passive income is what leads to TKA 2.0, the new methods.<br /><br />If you notice one of the constant themes of this post, it's "update, update, update" followed by the explanation of "the writing world changes, things aren't the same anymore, the writing world changes, things aren't the same anymore." So doesn't it make sense that if a great online passive income course is going to STAY RELEVANT that it must change?<br /><br />The simple state of it is this: there is one and only one course online (and there are many trustworthy people, writers, marketers online, so don't mis-quote me here) that I would attach my reputation to without worry. Going by the honor code I was raised by, I would give my word to vouch for <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html" rel="no follow"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Keyword Academy</span></a> without hesitation. That's how much I think of them.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Super quick list of site changes</span></span><br /><ul><li>eHow - no longer accepts writers</li><li>Demand Studios - no longer recommended by me</li><li>Xomba - no longer recommended by me</li><li>Associated Content - okay for pure beginners, but much colder on this than before</li><li>HubPages - you might be able to make something, but no longer recommend</li><li>Squidoo - still torn on them, but better than HubPages</li><li>InfoBarrel - best option left for AdSense share article directory</li><li>Constant Content - great for beginning writers, can make some good money, but the wait times have become <span style="font-weight: bold;">ridiculously long</span>. Cools me a little on the site</li><li>Helium - never liked them after test, still don't. Stay away.</li><li>Guru.com - you need to be committed to this site, but good for pure freelancers</li><li>Elance - see Guru.com, though some will like Elance better, some will like Guru better</li><li>Rentacoder, oDesk - lots of good reviews, I don't know enough first hand to give you advice either way on either one of these sites<br /></li><li>The Keyword Academy - Hells Yes</li><li>Master Dayton - Do you even need to ask? :)<br /></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">So what else are you up to? (aka why you've been away so freaking long?)</span></span><br />Between personal life, friends getting married, and literally 1/2 the summer traveling, I've been busy. I'm working on multiple businesses, looking forward to the <a href="http://apocalypseca.com/">premiere of an independent film I helped produce</a> (I try not to do more than one Hells Yes a post, but this is definitely worth another Hell Yes), and am about to set up a professional website - the new blog may or may not be attached to the professional site - still deciding on this. Might be a good way to go since ya'll could find me and see how a professional page is set up - once again if you have any comments on this feel free to comment, I'd love to hear it!<br /><br />This is also another point of why I want to move off of Blogspot. SEO is MUCH easier on an owned URL than a blogspot blog. In other words, I could post shorter posts more often along with these super long ones and get more traffic with less effort. If I don't have to spend a lot of time getting links, I can spend a lot more time writing and helping others.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">So what is the future of this blog?</span></span><br />As far as the exact blogspot blog, I'm going to keep it up. I know I could get a lot of juice to a new site doing a 301 direct to a new site with the 2,000+ links pointing to this one (by the way, a HUGE thanks to everyone out there because I have NO IDEA how I got to that number!), but I'm terrible with technical stuff and I'm traditional. This blog has done well and helped out a lot of people and I talked with a lot of you and enjoy these friendships. Even if almost all new posting goes to the new blog when it's up and going, these are going to stay here.<br /><br />Second, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some money involved. Not in a "I'm a greedy bastard who wants to steal everything you own" sleazy Internet Marketing sort of way, but according to my stats over 60 people a month search for "Master Dayton" in Google. I've gotten some really good work from this blog, and the self-deprecating name is not only funny, but it's a pretty damn good brand. And I'm not taking advantage of that at all. I think there's no question I'd have more consistent readers, more searchers who stay longer, and that I'd help more people with a more professional looking blog. That's certainly going to look a lot better than a blogger blog, and there's a lot I do outside of freelance writing with creative projects I'm excited about...and having a blogger blog is a huge liability.<br /><br />At the end of the day, there's a lot of benefit for me switching to a blog off of a professional page, or have a blog on its own URL completely. Don't read this as an end or good-bye, but it's time to move forward, and by taking the first steps myself I'll also be able to teach others how to do the same. Opportunity has never been greater....so let's go grab it together!Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-69301982548936759182011-07-26T23:34:00.018-05:002011-07-27T00:46:10.800-05:00Freelance Writing Advice: Jumping at Opportunity<h4>The Importance of Jumping Quickly at Major Opportunity</h4> One of the major pieces of advice I can give beginning freelance writers is the importance of jumping to take advantage of an opportunity when one arrives. Sometimes you see a potential to make a lot of money, or potential to really take advantage of how a writing website is doing in order to build up a great residual income for yourself. If there's one thing I've learned from several years writing, it's that diversification is important but when you see a clear opportunity, you need to put the majority of your efforts where you're going to get the majority of returns. For other <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307465357/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0307465357" rel="nofollow">4 Hour Workweek</a> fans out there, this is referred to as the Pareto Principle or 80/20 Principle. Spreading yourself out in the name of diversity doesn't make sense if you have one clear winner. Invest most of your energy in the open writing opportunity, and come back to diversify later.<br /><br />So what do I mean by this? I'm going to give you two obvious examples from my own time writing online, and the reason I believe they both work is that even though both opportunities have more or less closed, meaning they wouldn't pay long term now the way they used to, if I had taken heavier action early on in both situations, I'd be far better off financially not only now, but heading into the future as well. Sometimes it's easy to say "well it's a good thing I didn't invest too much in that because now they're gone" - but that might be taking the easy way out and preventing you from learning from a missed opportunity. And if you want to make a living freelance writing online, you definitely need to learn from mistakes and learn to adapt and get better along the way.<br /><br />So the first example: eHow. I wrote for eHow's now defunct writer's compensation program when I was just getting started with online writing, and it did very well for me. With around 150 articles I made about $160 to $190 a month every month, with the majority of that income coming from the last 30 articles I wrote. The reason was that when the original version of the 4HWW came out I listened to the audio book, did the 80/20 looking at which articles and topics were making money for me on eHow, and then my last 30 were only on those topics. All of them made at least a couple bucks a month, while some of my highest income articles came from this batch. In fact, I would say those last 30 averaged $4 a month each with some higher and some lower, as always.<br /><br />This might not sound like much, but based on the subject matter that was doing good for me, I had a list of over 600 more topics which based on my research would probably have evened out to the same $4 an article per month rate. But I was also writing for Squidoo and for HubPages and for Associated Content and for my former employers and on Blogger blogs and building my own sites and pulling myself in a thousand other directions. Then the WCP closed.<br /><br />Between when I had the article list and when the WCP closed was three to four months. In that time, I could have easily completed all 600 articles which not only would have led to several thousand a month in passive income for another year or two, but when Demand Studios decided to buy out articles, the buy out would have been worth virtually a year's salary as opposed to the almost one month's income my buyout was (I can't disclose actual amounts due to the confidentiality agreement). One month is nice...but imagine what I could do if I was holding a payment equivalent to 10 months or a full year? I could outsource for entire mega-sites, pay off a lot of outstanding debt, and work on anything I felt like for several months knowing all my bills were taken care of. Or I could even buy several aged sites already earning passive income and continue to build on them. The point is that instead of staying spread out, had I taken those three months to just "kill it" on the eHow articles not only would I have made far more passive income the past couple years, but I'd be setting myself up for an early retirement right now investing the severance payment.<br /><br />That's one example where I should have really busted my back to completely finish off that list and to get up to a decent income as quickly as possible - then I could have spent a lot more time diversifying when I didn't have to worry about bills or anything else on a month by month basis. By delaying, I missed a golden opportunity which turned out to be two (when including the buy out).<br /><br />Then there's HubPages. While my last <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2011/07/freelance-writing-opinion-why-hubpages.html">blog post on Hubpages being finished</a> might have been a touch premature...although I'm still not convinced it isn't...there was a time not so long ago when it took very little work to get your hubs to rank ridiculously high for any decently researched keyword. So what was my missed opportunity here?<br /><br />Once again it was seeing the power they had, and not focusing enough energy on HubPages while they were extremely profitable. While the Panda slap would obviously still hammer me, there's still a good reason to see this as a missed opportunity. I was making about $350 a month from one HubPages account and $250 a month from another account. $600 a month isn't bad, but I was averaging only about 7-10 hubs a month with my attention split in multiple directions all at once. The $600 a month came from 200 hubs, but once again the majority of the income came from 50 hubs, many of which were some of my newest at that point. Had I focused first and foremost on hubs, there's no reason I couldn't have produced 100 a month for a few months. In three to six months, that would be near a full time income (on the low end).<br /><br />While Panda would smack that number down like it did with the hubs I had, there's a very good reason I still should have put more work right into the HubPages when they were ranking so easily: because even at six months or one year earning a full time passive income I could spend all my time on diversifying, on building my own sites, or investing all my actual freelance writing income back into my own business. In other words, the gain I could have made in those months would have really pushed forward my business and my passive income even before the Panda smackdown.<br /><br />Add in the new Hub Ad program, and the bounceback with 500 more hubs than I currently have and even now I would still be in better shape.<br /><br />Don't get me wrong, I'm doing fine when it comes to building my residual income and my recovery from Panda is going great. In addition, I'm making more freelancing than ever which definitely makes things easier. But the point remains: I could already by at my goals, be sitting on a year's pay from a buy out, and still be a couple hundred a month more ahead right now had I taken advantage of those two online opportunities while they were there for me.<br /><br />Now there is one extremely important point to make when talking about putting most of your energy into one source: I wouldn't just stop and rest on my laurels. I would take advantage of the situation to diversify AFTER getting my full time income, then with my freelance income I would invest in my business to diversify FURTHER. I'm just saying instead of spreading yourself too thin and spread out early on, get your money and your income and then with your renewed freedom and extra income you diversify.<br /><br />The point is, when you're writing for multiple sites, or maybe you're setting up multiple sites for yourself, look for that opportunity. When it shows itself, don't be afraid to take advantage of it. Work your butt off, race to your monthly passive income goals as quickly as possible, and don't worry about diversifying until you get to your goals. While some people might find this controversial, the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Diversifying is what you do to protect income, but until you have a major income to protect, what's the point?<br /><br />Right now for me this means taking advantage of what <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html">The Keyword Academy</a> has to offer, building my own sites while they are ranking the easiest compared to Web 2.0 properties, and jumping on the BMR train while it's still showing results. If there's one thing the past few years of online freelance writing has taught me, it's to take advantage of every opportunity!Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-7832845651481944182011-07-12T23:09:00.026-05:002011-07-13T12:31:18.422-05:00Freelance Writing Opinion: Why HubPages Is Finished<h4>HubPages Ain't What It Used to Be</h4> Well this is a freelance writing post that's somewhat painful to write, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of flak back about it, but one thing I've never been afraid of in this blog was calling things as I see them (you should have seen the level of hate e-mail I received after my negative Helium.com review) so I'm not going to sugar coat this freelance writing blog post. I will add the caveat that a lot can change over time, and things could very well change in a year or two, or even less. But as things stand right now, I'm not going to pull any punches on what I'm feeling about HubPages because as much as it hurts (I've made some very good money and wonder at the potential had they lasted out one more year) they're a mess. Or as Lissie put it, <a href="http://lissowerbutts.com/hubpages-is-a-train-wreck-and-the-next-big-thing">HubPages is a train wreck</a>. Folllow that post up with her earlier <a href="http://lissowerbutts.com/hubpages-money-making-update/">HubPages Earnings Update</a>, and you can see pretty easily that a lot of previously profitable and prolific hubbers seem to be jumping ship, and it's hard not to see that trend continuing. Part of the reason I finally wrote <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2011/05/keyword-academy-review.html">my Keyword Academy review</a> is because there was no doubt in my mind that even for beginner freelance writers, it was time to jump ship from HubPages.<br /><br />So let's get down to it. A lot has changed in the past few years since I started this online writing blog, and a lot has changed since Google rolled out Panda, not the least of which is the general opinion of many people I talk to that their 1st page rankings are total shite. Nothing like typing in a term that should scream "informational request" and getting 10 shopping links from Amazon, Target, Wal Mart, Home Depot, JC Penny, KMart, and eBay. Note to Google: If I wanted to buy from a top 10 retailer, I would have typed in their website name myself. But I digress. This is about the changes in HubPages, and why I think the ship is not only going down, but it might already be 100 fathoms deep. So let's jump into this, and remember that this is my own two cents as of 07/13/2011.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Starting with the ELEPHANT in the room</span></span><br />I thought about having this further down on the list, in the traditional "4th spot to hammer the point home for good" slot, but this time the Elephant in the room is so big it really stays as my number one reason why I'm dubious HubPages will recover. First of all, if you've been in Internet Marketing at all and you've dealt with SEO you know there's one major rule for attempting to stay out of Google's cross hairs: <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Don't Embarrass Google!</span><br /><br />This is a big one, and the way you embarrass Google is by intentionally and blatantly gaming the system and taking advantage of Google's algorithm to rank your site - especially if it's duplicate content, poor quality, thin content, or any of the above. And HubPages was blatantly gaming Google's algorithm. How? Internal linking. Anyone who has done Internet Marketing knows that keyword anchored backlinks are the key to ranking high in the search engines, and that external links are far more valuable than internal links, which are still important. So what was the problem with HubPages? The problem was the internal linking was so strong that it was easy to get duplicate content, lousy content, or thin content ranked in the top 5 in Google for relatively little effort based entirely or almost entirely on <span style="font-weight: bold;">internal linking alone</span>.<br /><br />Take for example my old <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Vaser-Liposuction-Review">hub on Vaser Liposuction</a>. When I wrote this all 100% of the content is original, I worked to provide a lot of information on the procedure, there were over 1,200 words of content in addition to links to authority sites (which Google claims to like). I also built nearly 30 backlinks to this page. At the time, a hub did indeed end up #1 in Google searches for the term "Vaser Liposuction." But it wasn't mine. It was a bland 400 word hub full of fluff with little original value and 0 external backlinks. So how did this page out rank mine? It drove me nuts, but finally with an SEO tool I saw only one major measurable difference: that hub had 60 internal links while my page only had 2 internal links. So I managed to get my hub ranked a little higher score wise, which got the internal links from HubPages sidebars pointing at me. With 30 of those I ranked #1 for the term at the time.<br /><br />Knowing this, I tested my next two hubs and easily got their scores high enough for the internal links to kick in (they were based somewhat on hub score - so getting over 70 was critical and over 80 was excellent), and with 2 Ezinearticles to each and internal linking alone, they both way outranked pages with nearly 100 backlinks and which had more content.<br /><br />How could this be seen as anything other than gaming the system by Google? Add in the fact that these out of control internal linking practices <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">have NOT been changed</span> at all by HubPages - despite making many others in response to Google that don't really make sense - so they might be changing a whole lot, but they've done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about what clearly (and glaringly) stands out as their biggest flaw. Until that is dealt with, I don't see any serious recovery, and yet among many ridiculous changes, no mention has been made of this at all.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Time is not healing</span><br />You know that old saying "time heals all wounds?" Well according to HubPages traffic numbers and Google Analytics, that's not happening with HubPages' attempt to recover from the Panda update. For something like the fifth month in a row I'm still losing traffic and rankings. Some of my well back linked hubs are maintaining okay search engine positions, many others aren't. But either way, it's easier now to rank a brand new website from scratch and rank it for a keyword than it is starting a hub from scratch and ranking it for the same keyword - so why give up 40% when there's no advantage to doing so anymore? While I understand changes take time, there have been several more roll outs of post Panda adjustments, and I'm not seeing any positive changes.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Amazon/California Situation</span></span><br />This is a huge deal. Maybe HubPages gets this sorted out, maybe they're okay with allowing hubbers in non Amazon affiliate banned states to continue profiting from Amazon modules on HubPage while they're not, or maybe they can move their corporate offices to allow themselves to become Amazon affiliates again. These are all viable options, but they also don't help individuals who are in states like North Carolina, California, and Illinois where Amazon won't allow individuals to sign up for their affiliate program (and a general "sorry" goes out to you folks). Then there's the chance that HubPages can't work in a way for themselves to profit off of Amazon and so shut it down. Since there's no way of knowing which of these scenarios will actually take place, that adds in a lot of uncertainty, and not a lot of "everything will be all right" options compared to further hammering on the HubPages model.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Baffling Official Response</span></span><br />Even with the disaster that was Panda, I'm with many online Internet Marketers who agreed that HubPages response was more damaging and damning than even the update itself. After the update they should have restructured the internal linking to make it far less powerful (which they didn't do), ban duplicate, spun, or low quality content (which they did), and then waited out the after effects to see how they would do with the next update before making any rash moves (which they didn't do).<br /><br />So the changes like banning links to popular affiliate sites like Clickbank: terrible idea that chased away a lot of the best marketers. In fairness, I understand their thinking in that this idea looks good on paper, but it doesn't work in reality. Yes, Clickbank has many products that encourage spam, and they also have some excellent programs which used to make hubbers a lot of money. Now that all of that is out the window, and while trying to keep spam topics away is admirable: you could just ban spam topics or spammers. Just a thought.<br /><br />Then there's the ban on pixelated images. WTF? Really, what's that have to do with anything?<br /><br />Limiting capsules to content: I don't have a huge issue with this at all although they may have overdone it a bit.<br /><br />Changing the AdSense layout has absolutely demolished the clickthrough rate (I can't give my CTR % because that's against Google's TOS, but I can tell you that my current rate is less than 25% of my old one). You were penalized for things other than ad layout - I'm not sure how cutting AdSense revenue by 75% further is really going to help at this point.<br /><br />In addition, rampant complaints of the tone of interaction with moderators and administrators changing is giving off a lot of smoke. There are major complaints of much ruder responses, a shift in philosophy from "all of us together" to "we're talking to you." There are also the less friendly and longer responses, like promising a blog post in a "couple days" in response to the Amazon situation and the community waiting 14 days later and counting for a response. I understand when nothing happens, but then give an update along the lines of "we're working on it." Freelance writers who helped make your site deserve at least that much.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Because of the Marketer Exodus</span></span><br />When some of your best writers who know SEO, keyword research, and backlinking/marketing all leave, who exactly is going to rebuild your rankings? Many of the best marketers and writers are already leaving HubPages - and with no one promoting your site, how exactly are you going to rank in the future? If everyone who knows what they're doing are leaving and even taking down their hubs, it's not going to be good. Especially when Google notices all the backlinks going to pages that no longer exist, and all the internal or broken links to other hubs that no longer exist. This is going to make HubPages appear even uglier in Google's eyes. So freelance writers, beware. HubPages is not the sweet deal it used to be.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">So what now?</span><br />So can you still make money on HubPages? You can, as long as they stay afloat (and many of us wonder if they're bringing in enough now to do that - although in fairness that is pure speculation), but the effort is MORE than building your own blogs or websites. So why would your bother with HubPages? If you're serious about the passive income, <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html" rel="nofollow">The Keyword Academy</a> is the way to go. They adjust to changes, give amazing education, and provide all the tools needed to build up a long term passive income. Now that starting your own sites from scratch is faster than HubPages, and more stable and successful, it only makes sense to go with them.<br /><br />As for which sites work for active income, or for a passive income split, it's probably long since time for me to put up another update, but that's coming next. For me, I'll keep an eye on HubPages, but I'm not holding my breath. Even the HubPages Ad Program has gone down considerably every month I've been in it, not only as total income put also $ per 1,000 so it'll be interesting to see if they can recover the way Squidoo did or not.<br /><br />But for now, I have to stick by The Keyword Academy as the best passive income option and at this time I simply can't recommend HubPages anymore.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-65290095781424130282011-05-30T17:21:00.022-05:002011-05-31T16:52:30.379-05:00The Keyword Academy Review<h4>Reviewing the Keyword Academy</h4> This blog post is probably way past overdue, but with the now infamous "Panda Update" from Google and a little more time to see how some of the so called "content farms" panned out, there's been plenty to do and test. And seeing how everything works now, I'll be the first to say I was wrong with one of my last posts: HubPages is good for nothing other than backlinks now, and you shouldn't spend a lot of your time putting original content on their site. But I'll get to more on that in a bit. The reason I want to review <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html" rel="nofollow"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Keyword Academy</span></a> now is because based on what I'm seeing, honestly the best way to make passive income is to go with your own site. It takes less effort now to build your own site in the rankings than it does a HubPage or a Squidoo lens...so why split the profits with someone else for your hard work?<br /><br />Many of the advantages that Web 2.0 sites used to offer are gone or highly diminished. At one point I had no problem with advocating that individuals start on HubPages, learn how Internet Marketing worked as they wrote hubs (which was so powerful as to virtually guarantee rankings in the search engines) and then made some good quick money on the way to learning everything you needed in order to apply those lessons to your own websites. But based on what's happened since the now named "Panda Update" and perhaps even more importantly HubPages reaction (and that second one is truly the key), I don't believe they'll make a bounce back any time in the near future, and the fastest way to success is now through building your own website, BUT you need to understand exactly how to do it the right way.<br /><br />This includes understanding:<br /><ul><li>Keyword research</li><li>Website set up (including the best WordPress plugins)</li><li>Backlink building time line and strategy</li><li>Monetizing methods</li><li>Importance of consistent work/effort</li><li>Knowing how/when to test ad lay outs</li></ul>The reason I gladly promote <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html">The Keyword Academy</a> (and yes, these are affiliate links but as I've said before, I don't put in an affiliate link unless I believe in it - notice the lack of HubPages affiliate links in this post) is because they teach all this in really clear video tutorials in addition to providing a wide range of services to members which really makes making money online much easier. In fact, if you're getting into Internet Marketing and you're competing against Keyword Academy members, you're at a huge disadvantage. So buckle in for perhaps the longest Keyword Academy review on the net.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Introducing the Basics</span><br />There was a time where I hesitated to recommend this program to pure beginners since I've been in a place where $33 a month seemed like a major investment, especially with another $12 for each domain name and another $10-12 a month for hosting. Especially early on when you could build up $100 a month in a few months using HubPages or writing eHow articles. However, now after a lot of testing the quickest way to get rankings is your own website, and that changes things drastically.<br /><br />For the beginners, the keyword academy has a clear "First 100 Hours" plan which basically takes your hand and helps you go step by step through 100 hours of work to get you on the right track, get you building niche sites that rank, and earning money. This is a very labor intensive business, so having a 100 hour guide is a great help to beginners who can just look down, work the next step, and start seeing results as quickly as possible to keep from becoming discouraged.<br /><br />In fact, there's even a "New Members Welcome Page" to get you all the e-mail support you'll ever need and to point you to the most important lessons for beginners to start out with. The e-book in the members area has chapters that come in both print and video form, giving you a very effective tutorial ranging from the attitude and perspective you need to succeed to specifics about setting up websites and videos giving all the technical details for those of you (very much like myself) who are absolute dunces when it comes to the technical side of things. In other words, you can re-watch set up videos again and again to make sure you learn how to set up a new WordPress site inside and out. I can't over emphasize just how easy and simple they make it for people to learn absolutely everything you need to set up your online websites and to build the rankings you need to succeed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Niche Refinery Tool</span><br />The niche refinery tool is one of my personal favorites among any online tool I've ever used. This tool uses the mathematical formula the Keyword Academy teaches to determine the value of keywords, but instead of having to hand check every single keyword and run the mathematical formula over every single keyword (a process that could take many many hours if you were checking out 100 keywords), the tool allows you to import several hundred or even thousand keywords from the Google AdWords tool and allow the program to run through all of them while you go and write content, gather new keyword lists, or do something else that's productive.<br /><br />The information is then given to you in a spreadsheet format where you can organize all the keywords by difficulty level (judged on a number scale from 10 on up) or on the projected value of the keywords. These can be arranged from lowest to highest or highest to lowest, making it very easy to analyze the information and target the easiest keywords first, followed by the ones with the highest money making potential. This tool allows you to run multiple lists of keywords at once, meaning in one day you can easily run enough data through the tool to find more good keywords than you could possibly work on in an entire year.<br /><br />This tool is not only an incredible time saver, but it saves on the tedium of having to do all the keyword research by hand and makes it very easy to see what keywords in a niche are the most worth going after, and what the "low hanging fruit" are that should be easy to pick off and gain rankings for. This tool alone is worth the monthly subscription, IMO.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The PostRunner Tool</span><br />The PostRunner tool is definitely the crown gem of The Keyword Academy's tools. Anyone who has been in SEO or Internet Marketing for any amount of time, or found a single accurate resource on the topic, knows the importance of backlinks. A few years ago outside of article marketing or investing the time and money to create your own long list of websites, getting those links could also be very difficult and very time consuming. The PostRunner tool puts hundreds, if not eventually thousands, of different blogs and websites at your disposal who accept guest posts. These are spread across hundreds of different hosting IPs, different hosting companies, and belong to over a thousand different people. In other words, it's a blog guest posting service on steroids, and unlike article marketing which only allows side bar links, most of these places allow two keyword anchored backlinks in the post - which are the most effective backlinks and also the hardest to get.<br /><br />There are hundreds of niche sites which only take posts on specific topics, and as anyone who has been working towards passive income online knows, those types of links give the highest amount of benefit when it comes to ranking in the search engines. The site owners get free content in the form of articles, while you get two backlinks per article to your own sites.<br /><br />Whether you call it guest blog posting on steroids or article marketing on steroids, the ending result is the same: you have hundreds and hundreds of sites at your finger tips just waiting to give you a perfect keyword anchored backlink. This tool alone is worth twice the monthly fee for the entire Keyword Academy, and a push for more niche sites and more high quality sites means that PostRunner is going to remain an extremely effective tool for ranking in the search engines.<br /><br />Many people (including myself) have ranked niche sites in the top 10, top 5, or even the top of the search engines only using PostRunner and nothing else - including myself. This is an extremely effective tool, and if you combine it with article marketing and a few link exchanges then you might be amazed how quickly you can effectively rank a niche site high in the search engines and get those AdSense clicks or Affiliate Commissions coming in. You also have the ability to add your own sites to PostRunner and thus take advantage of the free content people are willing to provide.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Streamline and WorkTracker Tools</span><br />As if those two tools weren't already more than enough to justify <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Keyword Academy's monthly membership</span></a> cost (which really is pretty ridiculously reasonable for what you get) there are organizational and motivational tools as well. I know for me personally a chart tracking my daily word count really does encourage and motivate me - as odd as that might seem. Using the Work Tracker is simple: put in your daily word count and the graph charts it on a seven day rolling average while also telling you how many words you've written in the past month and during any of their publishing challenges. You can also join groups and make your graphs available to a number of other TKA members. This can be a great motivational tool for a group as you can compare your publishing rates to those of others in the group. This can be a great motivation to publishing more, and to prevent you from taking a few days off knowing others will see those 0 word days.<br /><br />Streamline is a neat set up which allows you to assign main keywords and cousin keyword to the websites you're working on. Streamline keeps track of these, keeps track of how many articles you've written and how many keywords used, and then can be used to create a "Project Task List" which will show you how many more articles to write for each term as a basic start, and lists them so you can refer to it as a list of which articles to write next. Streamline keeps track of how much work has been done and shows the % completed for each cousin keyword and main keyword. If you tend to get overwhelmed when there's a lot to be done, this tool gives you the ability to make a very clear list telling you exactly which articles should be next and how many more are needed.<br /><br />For the organizationally challenged, this tool along with Work Tracker, can be a life saver.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Webinars</span><br />There are monthly webinars provided from TKA (and if I call it KWA at some point it's the same thing, just and odd eccentricity of mine) which can cover everything from "what to do after 6 months," "how to hit the next level," or other strategies about link building and the importance of getting the most out of your PostRunner site. In other words, the excellent teaching and content doesn't stop once you sign up, there's new information and training coming every single month and you're getting trained by people who know the Internet Marketing process through and through. I attend most of them because I know there's always an additional nugget or bit of information that is going to help speed up the process for me.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Forums</span></span><br />I'm with many people in this business who argue that forums can be one of the greatest time wasters of all online activity. That being said, a really good forum can also give you access to expertise, support, and ideas which speed up your ability to make a living online and give all the support you need to make it through the tough times. In my opinion, the TKA forums are the latter, as you will find many people on there making $10k to $20k or more a month who are still more than willing to give advice on how they did it, help out newbies, and also provide alternative information like other methods of getting ranked in the search engines, how to sell an e-book, or many other issues. While you should spend only a little time here and most of your time writing content, the forums are an invaluable resource and even provide an "Inspiration" thread with tons of stories of how KWA members started at $0 and made it to $1,000 a month or more. It's a great addition to the whole KWA bundle.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Trial Period</span><br />Oh, yeah, the first month is free and you have UNLIMITED access to The Keyword Academy during that time. You can use all the tools, gain backlinks, do your keyword research, and if $33 a month just isn't feasible at that point (and I've been homeless twice so believe me, I understand) then you take your information, move on, and come back when you're stable enough to afford it. If you stay, the price is $33 a month although discounts are available if you choose to buy a yearly subscription which is $396 for 14 months, or basically 2 months free when you pay for 12 months up front. Either way, it's a very good deal.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Contests & Awards</span><br />There are often 3-4 publishing challenges a year, and these challenges often have multiple awards given out through drawings. You get so many entries into a drawing often based on number of words published, number of days you publish, or other similar measurements. In other words, the more you work on your business, the more chances you get to win a prize on top of everything else.<br /><br />What makes this especially intriguing is that the prizes include $1,000 cash prizes, year long subscriptions to TKA, or even free credits to article writing services. All of these can be an enormous help to speeding up your Internet Marketing Career, and you get a chance at these prizes by working to build up your own business: that's about as win-win as it gets.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Affiliate Program</span><br />Current subscribing members to the Keyword Academy can enroll in the affiliate program, which pays very handsomely. For each person who signs up for the Keyword Academy through your affiliate link and stays subscribed, you receive 35% of their monthly dues, which comes out to $11.55 a month. So if you get a mere three people to sign up and stay with TKA, that will pay for your own monthly subscription.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">So Final Thoughts</span><br />This is by far and away the most commercial blog post I've ever written, and will probably stay that way. However, if you want to win in the online world in making residual income, this is the way to go. I have tested out a lot of products and membership sites online, and several of them were very high quality but at the end of the day, this Keyword Academy review hopefully explains what I honestly believe: this is the best possible program online for Internet Marketing for both beginners and even for the experienced. This program brings years worth of education down to easy to understand videos and lessons that can have you on the right path in days. That's why I strongly suggest if you haven't become a member that you start out with <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Keyword Academy Trial month</span></a>.<br /><br />I have more to say on why I've changed my mind about HubPages and why I would suggest a completely different strategy for building an online passive income now than I did 12 months ago. That's because this is a changing game, and while I'll get into more of that, I'm going to end this post as a Keyword Academy review and hit the rest later.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-27368910108853330102011-03-23T21:15:00.046-05:002011-04-02T00:44:53.568-05:00Freelance Writing 2011: So What Now?<h2>Freelance Writing Online Never Stays the Same</h2> If you've been freelance writing online for any amount of time this spring then wow, you know how crazy the landscape has been changing even by online or writing market standards. If you're hoping for a quick read, this isn't the post. So feel free to bookmark and come back later, or get ready for a marathon run. But first a <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">very important announcement:</span> to those who took me up <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2011/01/writing-for-passive-income-small-steps.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">on the offer</span></a> of buying my friend Ashley Cowger's first book "Peter Never Came," the report I was finishing for all of you become very outdated with the most recent Google Change and the reaction of Xomba, HubPages, Yahoo Contributor Network, and others towards them. So instead of giving a report that was half obsolete, or making you wait for just a few updates, instead I'm going to finish the freelance writing e-book I'm creating and giving you all the whole thing, including the bonuses.<br /><br />So it'll be even better than what I promised, it will be completely up to date, and it'll be about two more weeks - but it'll be worth it. I'm very sorry for the delay, this was a prime example of "life happens" along with "Google happens." So since all of you have been so nice and patient with me, I'm just going to give you my entire freelance writing e-book for free.<br /><br />So onto the long delayed blog post. There's a lot to cover, so this will be a long one and I'll try to cover how freelance writing online has changed, the HubPages ad program, residual income, and everything else that changed/shifted or didn't with the last big Google change.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Xomba updates their policies</span></span><span><span><br />Xomba has recently updated their online writing policies, especially in regard to bookmarks. Previous to this, one of the best ways to use Xomba was to bookmark your articles and blog posts, as Xomba bookmarks tended to get amazing rankings in Google all on their own (while their articles didn't which I still find strange) and even better, pretty much guaranteed indexing of whatever you linked to. For those of you who know the frustration of writing 100 backlink articles and hoping they get indexed, you know how valuable it would be to be able to link to every one with a Xomba bookmark and know that those articles would then be crawled. That's very powerful when you're trying to build your backlinks. Now you can't do that. You can't link to your articles, you can't link to your blogs, and well you can't really link to anything. So what does this mean? From my point of view, it means that Xomba no longer as any place in my online portfolio. A 50/50 AdSense on articles on a site that doesn't have the juice of other options out there (options who share more of the pie) doesn't appeal.<br /><br />Because of this I no longer recommend Xomba as a place to write for online freelance writers looking to make money online or use it as part of a passive income campaign. If writing is just a hobby for you and the money is bonus, then that might be the best place for Xomba, but without the bookmarking benefit, it's just not a good ROI on effort as opposed to benefit, in my opinion.<br /><br />So where to go now to help stack links and get your articles indexed and keep them that way? If you're an old hat who knows how to use Bookmarking Demon software, then you're already set. For the rest of us, I'd probably recommend two bookmarking site who have revenue share programs: Snipsly.com, and Shetoldme.com. I don't expect these to have the same impact as a Xomba bookmark did, but it's much better than nothing and Snipsly especially is pretty painless to use.<br /><br />If you have no idea what link stacking is, then take a look at this <a href="http://bloggerillustrated.net/introduction-to-backlink-stacking-and-why/">video blog on the importance of link stacking</a>. It's a great introduction, and Blogger Illustrated is a great marketing blog to get familiar with anyway.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The big Google update<span style="font-style: italic;"> - is it time to panic???</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><br />The short answer is absolutely not. Google updates are going to happen, and they're going to happen every year. This time sites coined as "content farms" were hammered (how eHow escaped this designation is beyond me), and the cutting down to size of <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/">HubPages</a> is the one that really got a lot of attention of online freelance writers and beginning marketers. Part of the reason for this is that HubPages had a ridiculous level of authority in ranking new hubs, which made it attractive for marketers, writers, and unfortunately also douchebag spammers.<br /><br />My suspicion even early on after the big time slap HubPages received was that the main action was to discount internal HubPages links. The internal linking structure of HubPages was too effective. Sometimes you could get page one rankings for decent keywords with nothing but 30-50 internal links and not a single external backlink. It was only a matter of time until Google did something about this, because that type of system is too easy to abuse. Now don't quote me as Gospel on this is what happened, but others who are much better at analyzing technical data then me just in the past week or two are starting to say the same. Personally, most of my hubs with a lot of external backlinks still rank very well. The hubs whose main strength was strong internal linking were absolutely decimated.<br /><br />So are HubPages still worth it? For true freelance writers (ie those of you not into Internet Marketing but whom still want passive income) HubPages is great, and the backlinks are still solid even after the Google Algorithm change. Squidoo was declared left for dead three years ago when they were slapped much harder by Google - and my earnings from that site are four times what they were back in 2008. HubPages is making some major changes, and I fully expect them to bounce back over time. Now there are no shortcuts and you need backlinks, but hubs can still rank very well, and you can backlink a lot quicker to hubs than completely brand new websites.<br /><br />So what happens if you were building original niche sites with solid original writing, good articles, and keyword based URL names? In my case, and the case of hundreds of others, the keyword rankings for my niche websites (especially the long tail keywords) jumped. In other words, if you were concentrating on your own sites which you have full control over, then this last update probably actually helped you out. And if you spent a little too much time on HubPages building easy income instead of investing in your own websites (and I'm not judging - I'm nailed based on this criteria), then take this Google update not as a step back, but as the kick in the pants you needed to do what you should have been doing all along.<br /><br />At the end of the day this confirms that in the online world change is constant and that people writing high quality original content and who build solid (not thin, not spammy) sites the right way pretty much still have nothing to really worry about. Keep at it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The HubPages Ad Program</span></span><span><span><span><br />One of the major programs rolled out after the Google-content farm smack down was HubPages' news that they were rolling out their own advertising based program. This was planned even before the Google action and is being rolled out in waves starting with the most prolific and trusted hubbers and as the bugs get worked out the rest of the community will eventually be able to take part.<br /><br />The earliest beta test only involved 9 hubbers, so take the early results worth a grain of salt, but they reported that AdSense + Hub Ads combined to equal a lot more than what just AdSense alone from Hubs earned. Everyone reported double digit % improvement, while some saw jumps as high as 40 or 50%. This was before the Google slap, but I've been with the program most of March and while it's still early to say anything too definitive (there's just not enough data at this point), I can say that while my Google AdSense coming directly from HubPages has plummeted, <span style="font-weight: bold;">the Hubs AdSense + HubPages Ad Program = 6% income increase</span> for me which might not sound like much, but considering that over 80% of my AdSense income came from HubPages, and all of March was post Google slap for HubPages, then a 6% gain is actually pretty damn impressive. And yes - I projected February as a 31 day month to match March so the three day difference has nothing to do with the 6% increase.<br /><br />However I still have a couple of reservations. I had a couple uncustomarily big days with AdSense that ramped up the monthly earnings, while the overall number of double digit dollar days from AdSense plummeted. However, with the Hub Ad Program there might not be a lot of high days, but daily earnings are consistent which helps bring up the bottom line. The biggest problem is without those two really big days my combined earnings would have been lower. In fairness there's a chance that if I stayed all AdSense on my Hubs, the March numbers would have been even lower than projected. This will bear some testing.<br /><br />I'm going to be watching through all of April and all of May to collect more data. On the plus side, as this program gets stronger and the changes being employed to HubPages should only make them stronger in the search engines, the Hub program pays directly via PayPal. This means you can still earn AdSense and Amazon from Hubs and build them independently from niche sites, but you also now can have a new income stream from HubPages which definitely helps the diversification process - and add in the bonus of building links and getting a little AdSense and Amazon action on the side and HubPages could really end up ahead on this one. As much as I dislike where Xomba is going with their remodel, I really like the direction HubPages is going for online freelance writers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Good news - markets are getting better</span></span><span><span><br />Granted, this evidence is anecdotal, but on the good news front is I'm finding work much easier to find since before the big recession/economic crash in 2008. Overall many people I'm talking to agree that the demand for freelance writers is rising, and one of the benefits of the most recent Google slap and their strong public argument for quality content is that a strong movement is forming away from Indian and Philippines outsourcers and towards native English speakers for writing articles. The movement is towards at least basic quality, and even if $5 for a 300 word article isn't much at all, a good Native English speaker shouldn't have any problem writing 3-5 of these an hour (assuming Internet standards of quality and not <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times-Pulitzer Prize</span> level). Even at the minimum there, $15 an hour isn't bad compared to you know, $0 from being unemployed or not being able to find any work.<br /><br />Now, I don't have an issue with many Philippines outsourcers who are paid to write quality and can do so, but I am against making outsourcers write $1 articles at obscenely fast rates like 125 articles per 40 hour work week. You can't get quality from that. Those of you living overseas who can write quality articles are going to find yourselves in higher demand. It may take some time, but this is a good thing in the long run.<br /><br />So generally speaking, especially with a changing perception from many Internet Marketers about wanting more original content and wanting more quality, the outlook for freelance writers and especially beginning freelance writers is excellent compared to recent years.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Individual Niche Sites</span></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">& The Keyword Academy</span></span><br />Individual niche sites are still the way to go with Amazon and AdSense based sites, or you can go with the super site model. The point is, many people who wrote high quality content and invested in their own sites are still doing well. The old model of 5 pages with thin re-hashed content and tons of backlinks and nothing else isn't going to work anymore. However a rock solid niche site with twenty or more pages of original and high quality content can do quite well.<br /><br />In other words, those of you frustrated seeing cheap crap rank ahead of you because you developed your own sites with original and high quality content that took some time to develop then don't worry and keep working because my niche sites are doing fine. In fact, they've done much better since the last update. If anything, the only thing this last update did was to confirm what many Internet Marketers have said all along: go ahead and use blogger, HubPages, Squidoo, and the like for links but INVEST in your business with your own websites which you can actually control and which can't arbitrarily just be taken away from you.<br /><br />This also brings us to what I believe is the best tool out there for online freelance writers or marketers, especially novices or beginners or even those somewhere in the middle. I am a firm believer in <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Keyword Academy</span></a> (and yes, that is an affiliate link) and see the teaching, lessons, and resources they offer as more important than ever. If you want to work towards full time residual income, then in my opinion you'd be a fool not to join this program. It's the only monthly membership site I belong to, and I anticipate it's the only one I ever will.<br /><br />First of all, there's an e-book and video tutorials for beginners that are extremely detailed and helps even the greenest newbie understand basic SEO, how to build niche sites, and how to get going with making money online. Add in support forums, a great community, and some unbelievable tools and it's not hard for people to see why the Keyword Academy is so well thought off by its members.<br /><br />There are amazing tools that make keyword research a breeze, help to get a large number of good backlinks (the hardest part of SEO and ranking in the search engines), and to teach the technical aspects of setting up WordPress blogs. Those videos in particular have been huge for me, helping me to learn how to change the blog set ups as necessary to optimize my sites and get the most money out of them.<br /><br />The way it currently works is the first month is free, then it's $33 a month for the premium membership after that (go with the premium as the webinar recordings and Forums are worth the extra $4 a month). Any one of their major tools alone would be worth the money, so the combination is outstanding. They're recent webinar push towards further quality content convinces me that they're dedicated to building amazing tools that will last.<br /><br />If you are ready to really pursue the passive income options from working online, then you want to <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">check out the Keyword Academy</span></a>. They're the best teachers I've found with an amazing array of tools and a great support system. Worst case scenario, take the free month, learn all there is to know, and then cancel if you're not ready for the rest or simply aren't sure if it's right for you. Right now they're even sharing 4 "super sites" they're building from scratch so you can literally follow the process along the way.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The e-book</span></span><span><span><br />I'll be working to wrap this up shortly - was just about there when a huge series of changes made big sections of the e-book obsolete. So now working on the overall and I'll be bringing it out before too long. It's aimed primarily at beginners and people just getting started but there will be some solid advice in there for some people who are at that space of being more than a true beginner but not where they want to be yet making a full time living writing online.<br /><br />My goal is to provide clear cut information on all the sites I've written for and how to get the most out of each one. This will not only give readers the ability to make a full time living writing online, but also get the most out of each and every site I go over. This way readers won't have to spend six years learning by trial and error like I did: they'll get all the benefits of my experience with one reading and be able to get to their goals much faster than I did.<br /><br />I'll keep everyone posted on more as that project develops.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">So finally at the end...</span></span><br />So this will probably go down as one of the longer freelance writing blog posts I've had here, but this brings us about up to date with all the changes that have gone on. I'd love to hear everyone's experience with what's going on and what your plans are to make the most of it. Hope everyone is doing well and keep at it - the reward at the endgame is worth the long online freelance writing journey.<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-33579486358148912202011-02-13T08:23:00.028-06:002011-02-13T23:17:32.557-06:00How Are You Going to Bust Through?: A Freelance Writing Rant<h2>Freelance Writing isn't for Sissies. Do you know how you're going to make it?</h2> And after a month away working feverishly on my <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/">passive writing income</a> and setting up my business ventures for this year, we're back! This post might be a little different than some of the other recent ones, as the past couple months have also been a time of major reflection and some pretty painful and brutally honest self-evaluation. Classic 80/20, if you're familiar with the Pareto Principle that has been pushed into the spotlight by Tim Ferriss's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307465357?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0307465357"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The 4 Hour Work Week</span></a> (which I highly recommend, btw), and while I have plenty of legitimate excuses about life getting in the way, have done an amazing amount of work, and have been pulled in eight directions, it was still a stark revelation to see where I really was versus where I thought I was. Unless you're really focusing on it, most people probably don't realize how much time falls between the cracks. To paraphrase something I've heard over and over: <span style="font-style: italic;">"I thought I was working really hard, but I really wasn't."</span><br /><br />Even for those of us who do work a lot, is it really on the projects that are most important for our long term growth? Do we really accomplish what we should, or do you find after a year that somehow, some way, when you look at the numbers honestly that you haven't done anything remotely close to what you wanted? Did you really write 350 hubs at <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">HubPages</span></a> in one year at an incredibly modest 1 a day, or after a hard working year do you find yourself hovering around 70? Oops. I'm not bringing this up to preach or condemn - I'm finding myself in the same boat.<br /><br />Have I done a great amount of useful work the past two years in particular? Absolutely. But what if my goals (especially for passive income) had met even some very modest goals? I'm nowhere close to 700 hubs on HubPages, which is where I'd be if I did 300 a year for every year since signing up - a modest less than one a day. How many niche sites have I actually set up? One a month? How many actual links have I built to every article, every hub, every niche site?<br /><br />The funny thing is, despite all the work I've done, my actual numbers fall short of the extremely modest "one hub a day" or "one blog post a day" or "three backlink articles a day." I think most people reading this blog who are trying to balance freelance writing and passive income building with a real world job understand. Even balancing freelance writing to pay the monthly bills versus building passive income is a very difficult proposition, even if writing is your full time profession. I can look back and point out the many potential true reasons why I didn't write 700 hubs over two years and get plenty of backlinks to all of them, or I can accept that:<br /><ul><li>There is always enough time if you're willing to make it</li><li>It's all about prioritizing</li><li>Daily consistent work is important</li><li>There is ALWAYS time for one a day</li></ul>When you look at your freelance writing goals or residual income goals over the past year, what do you see? Is 300 hubs in a year really too ambitious, or could you find the time for one a day (not even)? I think if most of us are honest, the problem isn't having too little time, it's not prioritizing and not staying consistent. After all, how can writing 300 hubs a year, less than one a day, be a deal breaker?<br /><br />This is just one example. Did you want to set up 12 niche sets over a year and only set up 3 or 4? Ask yourself: if you sat down for one week and treated residual income as your only concern, could you knock out the basic articles and set up to 12 sites in one week? Of course you could. I absolutely suck at anything technical. I even consider using WordPress annoyingly technical. That tells you how <span style="font-weight: bold;">not a techie</span> I really am. All that "programming WordPress is easy" did not apply to me - it was hard. So if I can set up 12 niche sites in a week, including the About & Privacy pages, insert AdSense, and get 5-10 basic articles up on each and linking to one another, then what's the excuse for anyone else?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Breaking through means not doing the same-old, same-old.</span> One of the easiest things to do is fall into habits of "studying" and "researching," or losing minutes and hours at a time sitting at the computer, making lists, making notes, or doing any and everything other than the actual work to advance your business. Breaking through means narrowing a big goal down to smaller ones, and then attacking those small daily goals over and over - even on days when you don't feel like it because you're far more likely to go on a 10 day skid than "make it up the next day."<br /><br />Recently I've made a very conscious effort to only do the absolute minimum for freelance writing and spend a lot more time on passive income and my other growing business. This is a difficult decision because I have tons of student loan debt, a lot of medical bills, and several thousand dollars more in medical procedures I need to undergo. Then there are the weddings, reunions, and badly need travel vacations that I need for personal sanity and preventing the severe stress attacks that put me in terrible shape last fall. Nothing like a doctor telling you "Take a long vacation or you'll have a heart attack," to make you learn not to stress the small things.<br /><br />This led to another revelation while I went on my seven weeks of travel and vacation (although I do always have to work at least 4 hours on Fridays). The revelation was that I really didn't fall behind on anything because when I looked at the bottom line numbers, I just didn't write nearly as much as I thought I was. In other words, it was easy for me to do more work in January than in October through December combined, and I take more time off for myself.<br /><br />So these question are for ALL of us writers and Internet Marketers: <span style="font-weight: bold;">How are we going to break through?</span> How much more can you fit in each day if you commit only one or two solid hours to passive income? Is that hour of doing nothing really worth delaying the day when you have enough passive income to live off of?<br /><br />Unfortunately, dreaming and planning don't pay. Work does. This is something I've harped on frequently in <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2011/01/writing-for-passive-income-small-steps.html">recent freelance writing blog posts</a>, and I'll continue to do so. Look at the work you've done. Even if you don't set up your own sites at all and only did HubPages, did you do the equivalent of one hub a day? If not, how much would it change your income if you did write one hub a day for two to three years? Can you spare one more hour a day for backlink articles? This combination really is a tiny amount of work when you look at it, but most of us fail when we look back a year or two later to accomplish even that much. <br /><br />So at the end of the day, it's time to man or woman up and make our large goals tangible, daily or weekly, and to dedicate ourselves to making them. If you're part of the <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Keyword Academy</span></a> and have seen the forum reports, it's amazing how many people are hitting the $1,000 a month passive income mark and how they are taking many different strategies to get there. If you aren't a KWA member, I highly recommend it if and ONLY if you meet one or more of the following requirements:<br /><ul><li>You make over $50 a month passively and are prepared to reinvest to make that number take off.</li><li>If you know for a fact you are completely dedicated to earning passive income and won't quit.</li><li>If you are dedicated to spending enough time every month on your page or sites to make the $33 a month expense worth it.</li><li>You're already experienced and want to take the next step.<br /></li></ul>Some people recommend KWA for beginners, and I admit that <span style="font-weight: bold;">I am torn on this</span>. The issue is not with the program. The starting videos and core videos are absolutely exceptional, and if you know even the basics, you know how valuable the advanced tools are and how to properly use them. If a beginner is gung-ho and knows for a fact that they will stay with it (and the problem is everyone thinks this until they see the work that is involved), then starting with KWA will save them months, if not years, and make the process much faster. So yeah, for anyone who can afford the investment, it's worth it. The first month is free, but after that it is $33 a month.<br /><br />So whether your goal is freelance writing, residual income, or a little bit of both - it's time to really be honest and look back over what you actually did versus what you thought you were doing. You might be surprised how little writing or marketing you actually did, and that might be all the motivation you need to really kick off your breakthrough for 2011.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-76423788653510015272011-01-16T13:54:00.032-06:002011-01-17T00:24:20.842-06:00Writing for Passive Income: Small Steps for Big Goals<h2>Small writing steps equal giant passive income results</h2> Hard to believe we're already 16 days into the new year, but here we are! January 1st is a day when we all make goals and resolutions for our "new start" and then generally completely forget about them until months later when we get that "it's too late now" attitude. Freelance writing and writing for residual income are two areas that can make it very easy to fall into this trap since so much work is required before seeing any pay-off. Many writers become overwhelmed, and it's easy to try and convince yourself that reading 5 blog posts and doing some keyword research is a lot of work. It's not. I'm not preaching at you, I'm still often guilty of the same thing. So this is the first update, along with <span style="font-weight: bold;">a very happy and special announcement at the end :)</span><br /><br />In <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/12/2011-writing-goals-looking-ahead.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">my last freelance writing blog post</span></a> I talked about setting some of my own goals after realizing I needed to become much more efficient to reach my goals, and after getting some inspiration from re-listening to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307465357?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0307465357">Timothy Ferriss's The 4 Hour Work Week</a> (love it - and that is an affiliate link), getting re-charged from vacation, and also being inspired by <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/My-Plan-for-Tripling-Online-Income-Next-Year">Kidgas's effort to triple his online income</a>. It's been a very effective trifecta for me and I put down my own goals and dreams, although in a more abbreviated form, and swore I was going to work my tail off to get them.<br /><br />So how am I doing at this point? All in all, actually quite well. I'm especially impressed considering that I'm split working in multiple directions, no matter how much I wish it were otherwise. I have to drastically increase the amount of freelance work I'm doing to pay for a wide variety of medical bills, lawyer fees, those annoying student loans, and some other major one time (I hope) expenses that are all coming up this spring. In addition, ideally I'd like this to be the first year I'm going to buy a house and get out of the country for the first time in 12 years. So there's the freelancing....then there's the building the business my brother and I are starting, which is almost like three different business focuses in and of themselves, then there's my actual passive income I want to work on...which comes from multiple sources.<br /><br />In other words, I'm ridiculously busy once again, even with 80/20 applied to my life. Still, I've made some very good progress and based on everything going on, my freelance and passive writing goals are going well so far. Just this weekend I published six new HubPages for myself, with some backlink work to each, finished $400 in freelance work and produced seven hubs for my brother and I's business, all also with backlinks. The outlines to a few e-books are just about complete and I have a very clear idea of what lies ahead for the next couple months. In the first two weeks of January, I've gotten about as much done as I did in any full month last year.<br /><br />So why is this? Because I didn't let myself get overwhelmed with the sheer mass of things to do. Every single thing that needed to be done, I broke it down into the smallest, easiest steps possible and then I focused only on those small steps. Yeah, I'd love to write 100 new hubs in the next few months, and in my 100% dream scenario write 1,000 total hubs on HubPages this year (BTW - if you are completely new to the make money online or make passive income online, start by <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">signing up with HubPages</span></a> and making hubs there as you learn how to rank your pages and monetize them. HubPages is the best beginner's place to go by far, IMO).<br /><br />Will I achieve that goal and many other equally as ambitious? I think so. 1,000 hubs is a huge number and if I try to think about it that way, it becomes overwhelming. What if I fall behind for a few days, how will I come up with 1,000 ideas, how will I find the time to check all those keywords, how will I have time to backlink them all, etc. It doesn't take more than a couple minutes looking at the big picture before it's sheer size is enough to crush you. So I don't worry at all about 1,000 because <span style="font-weight: bold;">there's no point to doing so.</span><br /><br />There are ALWAYS more markets and topics to write about, and one thing I do have now is a couple hundred good keywords. So I'm working on those one at a time, two to five a day depending on all other surrounding circumstances. Over the course of a year, this will add up to 1,000 hubs or mighty close enough and without the stress, worry, anxiety, and everything else that would come with trying to plan out every detail from the outset. I've also known from watching other people, as well as observing myself, that when you focus on the big picture and try to get a handle on huge goals or huge problems, you tend to not only NOT control the situation, but you get far LESS work done than if you just took the "I'll do 1-4 a day and not worry about the rest" approach to it.<br /><br />I don't think about having to pay off those $10,000 or so in medical bills early this year, I just think about making an extra $30-50 a day above my average freelancing workload, and over the next half a year that will take care of itself.<br /><br />Whether you are reading this as a freelance writer, or an internet marketer, or anywhere in between of those two broad terms, then maybe you'll agree with me when I say this is one of the most important lessons I've learned over these past few years: <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">we are our own worst enemies because we overwhelm ourselves so much that we end up accomplishing so little.</span><br /><br />The choosing to go for 1,000 hubs this year while doing the backlinking on my existing articles and websites is a decision I made very recently based on a stark observation I made on myself. Back in the winter of 2008 when my job in Austin, Texas, just disappeared, I tried to plan ahead, figured I had 4 months of expenses barring anything going wrong (which it actually did in spectacular fashion, but that's a story for another day), and I was trying to plan looking at the big picture without thought on how to get there or making goals that I couldn't actually directly affect (an example: make $3,500 by March - that's a terrible goal because it doesn't give any clue for as how to get there. A goal like "write for Demand Studios or Guru.com 8-10 hours a day" at least gives me a clear idea of what to do). Obviously even with the terrible economy and hugely changing markets I made my way back and then some, but <span style="font-weight: bold;">then the thought hit me:</span> what if I had just wrote 1 single HubPage, 1 single eHow article (until eHow was closed to writers), and 1 single Squidoo lens a day?<br /><br />That's well under 8 hours of work a day, and on a good day is less than 3. The answer: I would have nearly 500 more HubPages, 500 more eHow articles, and 700 more Squidoo lenses than I have now. Based on the average of what each of those earns me, we're talking about over $2,200 in complete passive income more <span style="font-weight: bold;">per month</span>. That would have me in "semi-retirement" mode, living extremely comfortably and in position right now to only work on what I want to do and nothing else while traveling at will.<br /><br />So how have I worked my butt off for three years to not be at the same place where 1 hub, 1 eHow, and 1 Squidoo lens a day would put me?<br /><br />Because I made the same mistakes that many other people in this position have made, continue to make, and will continue to make. I didn't make room for that minimal daily effort like I should have, even when "life happened," and I was too easily overwhelmed and distracted by the large goals or big picture to get the daily work done. I'd recommend taking a good long look at your own efforts and see if the same is true.<br /><br />This time around, I'm not going to make those same errors. This year, there is always time day to day to work on the hubs, to work on the supporting links, and to make sure that by the end of the year there aren't any more years doing work for others that I don't care for. Day by day I concentrate on the good and hit it out one step at a time, one page at a time, and don't worry about the big picture: because that will take care of itself just as long as I keep steady.<br /><br />Now, <span style="font-weight: bold;">the very happy and special announcement:</span> most of you who know me personally or follow this blog know my overall feelings about graduate school and the years of my life wasted there. We'll keep it very understated and say that my overall experience was less than stellar. That being said, there were a few incredibly cool people I met during my time up there who have been very close friends of mine and like family. My life has been permanently blessed and made better simply from having known them. One of these people is <a href="http://ashleycowger.blogspot.com/">Ashley Cowger</a>, who consistently was one of my favorite writers in the program. She started her first year in the MFA program in Fairbanks Alaska when I was finishing my third and final year. Her brother, <a href="http://halfthoughtthoughts.blogspot.com/">Justus Humphrey</a>, is a good friend and actually put me up for a brief six week period when I would otherwise have been homeless during the winter in Alaska. Still very much obliged, bro.<br /><br />Both are remarkably wonderful people, and both are great writers, as well. I'm happy to announce that <span style="font-weight: bold;">Ashley's first novel</span> came out this week: "<a href="http://ashleycowger.com/Peter_Never_Came.html">Peter Never Came</a>." I'm waiting for my copy to arrive in the mail, and the next 10 I'll order for friends and family who love good stories and good reading - and even without seeing an advance copy, I can tell you from seeing a dozen plus of her stories or more that I WHOLE HEARTEDLY and without reservation recommend her book. Ashley was an incredibly talented and hard working writer when I first met her, and she continued to get better and better. I can tell you right now when that book shows up, I won't by doing ANY work. I'll be kicking up my feet and enjoying some great fiction.<br /><br />It's a small press publication and a collection of literary short stories. If you want to read great fiction, buy <span style="font-style: italic;">Peter Never Came</span>. If you want to support an amazing collection of short stories, buy a copy of the book. If you want renewed faith in an amazing up and coming young writer, read Ashley's book. If you love supporting quality literature from a small press, buy this book. Here is a link, it is NOT an affiliate link: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Never-Came-Ashley-Cowger/dp/1932870466/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295243965&sr=8-1">http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Never-Came-Ashley-Cowger/dp/1932870466/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295243965&sr=8-1</a><br /><br />I've tried to think what I could do to encourage people to buy a copy of Ashley's book, and I think I've come up with something. This is going by the honor system, but there's a good group following this blog so we'll do this on the honor code. Over the next month I'll be putting together a guide on freelance writing & earning residual income online. This isn't an A to Z complete guide, but it will include a lot of my "tricks and tips" for making passive income, how to set up a HubPage that converts (the set up is huge in determining whether they make money or not), how to maximize results from your online work, and basically sharing my tips and knowledge from six years online in about 20 pages. It's not an encyclopedia of knowledge, but if you're a beginner or just getting started, this will speed up the learning curve quite a bit.<br /><br />Buy Ashley's book, e-mail me at masterdayton [@] gmail.com with the words "bought Ashley's awesome book" or "peter never came" or anything along those lines. When I'm done with my guide, anyone who buys Ashley's book and sends me an e-mail gets the guide for free. I'll e-mail it right to you.<br /><br />I'm not going to give a BS sales pitch with a fake "valued at" number, but I will tell you that this is going to have far more value than most of the multi-hundred dollar e-books out there. Hopefully that deal will help move a few more copies of Ashley's book, and I really am ecstatic over her recent success. Sometimes good things do happen to good people.<br /><br />Hope ya'll liked this post. Now I have a couple more hubs to hit before bedtime, but keep on keepin' on, devote some daily time to your business, and if you enjoy a good book, grab a copy of "Peter Never Came" to celebrate the emergence of a wonderful writer.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-36275039043428143612010-12-29T17:25:00.033-06:002010-12-29T22:16:26.266-06:002011 Writing Goals: Looking Ahead<h2>Full Time Passive Income x 2 , No Freelancing, and a $15,000 December?</h2> Hello everybody! I have to say, I think the Europeans have it right as far as the minimum of six weeks paid vacation per year. I'm back from 4 weeks and change of traveling, and another week of just being lazy and enjoying re-acclimating myself to winter weather once again :) While it is definitely very cliched and maybe even passe (that's an annoying fashionista word, isn't it?), this time of year it simply makes sense to not only look back on the past year, but also look forward to making your goals and New Year's resolutions for 2011.<br /><br />I'm no different, as I've been spending the last week in the exhausting task of recording every top 10 page keyword ranking for every passive income article, website, URL, Hubpage, Squidoo lens, blog posts, or what have you that I have online. When combined, this is over 1,200 pieces at some level. While some are much more valuable and thus much more time-worthy of working on then others (Associated Content articles are pretty much ignored and Squidoo lenses are way down vs. HubPages, all of which are lower than my 100% own blogs), I like having numbers and I want a clear list of everything there is to work on.<br /><br />This is part one of my 2011 goals: <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Taking away all excuses to delay or procrastinate because I don't know what to do next.</span></span> The beauty of this long master list is that if I don't know what to do, I take a look at the next keyword on the list and just keep going. There's no chance now for me to waste time or get frustrated because I'm drawing a blank. Basically I'm preempting one of the major issues I've run across throughout my writing career, and one that because of that I'm sure to run into again.<br /><br />I'm a firm believer that the reason most people don't achieve their goals isn't because it's not possible - not even the most overconfident of us knows what we're truly capable of - but because making the goal is only part one. The even more important part is planning out in <span style="font-weight: bold;">specific</span> and very detailed, <span style="font-weight: bold;">easy to follow steps</span> how you are going to do it.<br /><br />One great example of this I've already seen online is Kidgas's hub on <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/My-Plan-for-Tripling-Online-Income-Next-Year">tripling his online income</a> in just one year. What does he do right?<br /><ul><li>He sets a goal that is ambitious but realistic, one that is going to force him to work but isn't going to become an anchor because it's unrealistic.</li><li>He clearly identifies the best way to get from point A to point B (tripling traffic)</li><li>He clearly lays out his plan of how to get there, not with a general "write x number of hubs," but an even better weekly plan of one Saturday, one Sunday, and one during the week - as well as some specific steps on building backlinks, since this is a crucial part of ranking in the search engines and getting more traffic<br /></li></ul>If I was a betting man, and I am, I'd put my money on Kidgas not only making his goals, but even surpassing them by the end of 2011. That is a good plan. And yes, a few simple tweaks or additions will make his backlinking efforts much more powerful (more on that in a bit), but the point is that all the bases are covered. This is someone who is putting the clear planning and effort behind his goals to succeed.<br /><br />So for this post I'm going to do two things:<br /><ol><li>I'm going to announce my own goals (public pressure and all to keep me on track) for the next year and how I intend to get to them, including some major potential pitfalls I can see.</li><li>I'm going to give some simple steps/advice to Kidgas (not picking on him or singling him out - but I know he reads this blog and I'm eager to help him hit his goals; I'm a firm believer in paying it forward) that can help improve his backlinking strategy to help him reach his goals.<br /></li></ol>In all fairness, it might be that Kidgas didn't mention everything he did with backlinking, so maybe I'll just be talking to myself and running a refresher course, but some well intentioned good advice certainly can't hurt.<br /><br />But first, <span style="font-weight: bold;">my writing and passive income goals for 2011</span>. The subtitle of this post, while appearing somewhat sensational, is actually pretty accurate. My three main goals for 2010 when it comes to writing and passive income are:<br /><ol><li>To no longer have to freelance write for clients at all - and I mean NADA</li><li>To have two full-time incomes (in my mind app. $36K a year) from passive income by the end of the year: one from just my own efforts and one from my brother's and my business</li><li>To have a $15,000 month (minimum) in December solely from Amazon's Affiliate Program</li></ol>So starting off with #1: it's not that I don't enjoy freelance writing, I love the lifestyle and there is little else I'd rather do, but the prospects of having full time passive income and being able to work on my passions and my own creative projects is FAR more appealing, not to mention that an end of the year Pareto Principle look at my life indicates that the majority of my work stress (all of it, actually) comes from freelancing for clients. Don't get me wrong - many of these clients are great and many of these jobs I enjoy, but at this point I have to do a pretty decent chunk of freelance work to make ends meet, pay student loans, and try to save up to improve my current lot in life. And with this comes stress. While I can weather the storm of any major recession, the sooner I don't have to freelance at all, the sooner I have total control over my financial life.<br /><br />So how to get there? Obviously I need much more passive income to make up for the freelancing income. The first step for me is <span style="font-weight: bold;">counter-intuitive</span>. I want to take on more work the first three months of the year to save up an extra 3 to 4 months of expenses - something I've never had before. With that much saved up I can take the next 4 months off from freelancing, only take on the easy, high-paying, and fun jobs that come along (if I so choose) and use all that extra time to focus hard core on the passive income side of the equation.<br /><br />I'm very confident that if I had 4 months where I didn't have to worry about making any income at all, and ALL of my attention was focused on the residual build up, then the progress on that front would be exponential compared to right now.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">To do this</span> I plan to spend 4 hours a day writing for Demand Studios, 3 hours a day writing for jobs I win from Guru.com, and 1 hour a day finding new work. I know intermittent work will come in from some former employers, but I choose not to count on it and anything I get is just bonus.<br /><br />Now for #2: <span style="font-weight: bold;">Getting not only one, but <span style="font-style: italic;">two</span> full time passive incomes</span> by the end of 2011. This definitely might be considered over-ambitious considering I haven't fully earned one yet, but I'm feeling good about this. Part of it is from the fact that the business my brother and I are partners in did very well in December - about $1,700 well and counting from only online sources. Yes, the Christmas season throws the numbers way off since a lot of that is Amazon, but it still shows what is possible, and we got started late and were not anywhere close to putting in 40 hour weeks...if only we had.<br /><br />One of my first steps is making the SEO master list of all my sites and pages, and the company's sites and pages. There are more than enough good topics, keywords, and online real estate that I think I would already be making at least one, if not both, incomes if all these pages, sites, or articles ranked in the top 5 (preferably top 3) in the search engines. So getting there is step one, and with the voice software, I can do 10-12 articles a day for backlinks pretty easily now, in fact in three hours or less - so 300-400 backlink articles a month on the really low side won't hurt at all. If I spend 10 hours every Saturday doing nothing but backlink articles, I can do upwards of 40 to 50.<br /><br />Next is to create a minimum of 200 new hubs for both my personal account as well as the business account based on continued keyword research, and using the optimal layout we found for selling Amazon products, in addition to still converting for AdSense. These will all get backlinks, including from revenue sharing sites like Xomba, InfoBarrel, and Squidoo. I also need to get my butt in gear and get some of those e-books and online reports done like I've had on the "To Do" list for over a year now and make sure all of my domain names have active and hosted websites - which means a lot more work to get up from the 25% or so where I'm sitting at right now.<br /><br />This means going back to old pages to "properly" monetize them based on what I've learned the past two years and also being very selective about what I spend my time on. I'm very much naturally a "scatter-shot" sort of person as opposed to the "sniper focus" and my efforts the past few years have reflected that: very broad but rarely very deep. To complete this goal, I don't have any other option. I need to focus heavily on the pages that are showing the most return, the most potential I can actually turn into earnings in a reasonable time, and the projects with the highest upside.<br /><br />I'm also going to "cheat" and count 2011's Amazon earnings as part of the "average" for the year.<br /><br />Finally, I've had some really cool ideas for e-books and online courses that I've been working on just a little bit throughout the past year, and it's time to get those out. While not completely passive, they will definitely help with no longer having to freelance and over time some of them might become very profitable passive income streams. One of the appeal of e-books is if you can get an audience and provide information that really is worth $40 a pop versus 50 cents a click or $1 a commission.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Which brings us to #3: $15,000 December.</span> This I actually think is very achievable. Basically I didn't heavily figure out Amazon until this year, and it's been mind-blowing for me. Using only HubPages (so think 60% of what we could have earned) and starting on the 15th of August, we made 67 HubPages, each with an average of 3-5 articles backlinking to each one. Considering there's 116 days between then and Christmas, this isn't that much work, especially for two people. In fact, we pretty much stopped doing anything the first week of November.<br /><br />The end results? By changing which keywords we shot for slightly and testing to find the best layout for hubs to sell Amazon products, our company (which right now is the two of us just working together) earned $2,783 in commissions, well over half of which came in December. My personal account jumped from $10 a month to $70, and tallied nearly $200 for December, and mostly just from me revising and changing 5-10 hubs I already had to make them more Amazon friendly.<br /><br />At the end of the day we could have done so much more - even doubled the work without feeling all that stressed out or rushed. So knowing that, and having figured out how to take advantage of Christmas sales and how to design HubPages and sites that actually convert for Amazon, with an entire year to go making $15,000 in December 2011 does not seem that far fetched at all...especially since it's not like this year's hubs disappear. They'll rank even higher by next year.<br /><br />The goal here is 2 campaigns per month, and at least 2 backlink articles per hub or per website page per month aiming at Amazon, with a huge push in July through October 2011 when we'll have a much better idea of what's hot and what's not during the Christmas season, and what words will be achievable versus which won't be. This goal is actually the one I consider the easiest of the three based on experience and my confidence in what I know and how to do it.<br /><br />So those are my goals and how I intend to achieve them. For anyone looking at making goals for the next year, I'm personally a fan of aiming for challenging goals that force you to "step up" to achieve them. Getting to new places and reaching new goals means pushing yourself to accomplish things you haven't done before.<br /><br />Next, hopefully this helps pay it forward and helps Kidgas (who seems to be a cheerful and thoroughly outstanding individual - you can check out his <a href="http://myonlineincomebykidgas.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"My Online Income"</span></a> blog here) reach his goals with some advice, which is always my two cents and nothing more, that hopefully will help his backlinking efforts and in achieving his goals over the next year. And actually, these can be used by anyone, so anyone else go ahead and take notes and enjoy!<br /><br />Well I guess we could just go back to my <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/10/backlinking-for-dummies-or-just.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">old blog post on backlinking for beginners</span></a>, but since none of us are going to do that, let's move on to just a few basic steps that Kidgas could take to make his back linking more effective.<br /><br />By all means, I agree with bookmarking at Xomba, Snipsly, and SheToldMe. This is a good start. I would also say, if you don't have an Ezinearticles account, get one! Regardless of what people have been saying for 5+ years, the demise of Ezinearticles is greatly exaggerated. Even 2-3 Ezinearticles (don't use the exact keyword you're shooting for in the title - use a related one) per hub can add 4-6 good solid backlinks. Learning the "a href" language to get backlinks in your author box is not difficult, and I get solid traffic directly from my Ezinearticles...and if they're willing to click once, they're willing to click again once they get to my page.<br /><br />So I obviously encourage adding Ezinearticles to the mix. You can use the bookmarking sites on these to add extra "juice" to your links.<br /><br />The next step would be to look at InfoBarrel if you haven't already done so. This is a very good AdSense and Amazon revenue sharing site that also allows you to have backlinks in your "signatures" of the article. InfoBarrel articles tend to rank fairly well, and you can make money off of them, as well.<br /><br />Finally, in each new hub make sure to link to other recent hubs that you produce. This is a very smart move, as those "internal links" can actually be an enormous help in outranking other pages.<br /><br />This is an extremely basic "how to get started," for Kidgas or whoever else needs it, but even by adding just a few Ezinearticle, InfoBarrel article, or other links you might be surprised how quickly your rankings in the search engines improve. HubPages is an incredibly strong site, and it often doesn't take very many backlinks to push the hubs up in the rankings for targeted keywords. Once you get the hang of this and start seeing the results, take a look at the <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/10/backlinking-for-dummies-or-just.html">backlinking for beginners</a> post I made as it will give you a list of other places to get backlinks from (including sites who have an AdSense share program) and the default order in how I do things if that type of structure helps you out.<br /><br />If you haven't tried it already, down the line consider looking at a <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Keyword Academy Membership</span></a> (this is an affiliate link), which last I check offered a free trial month. The tools and teaching they offer is incredible and has shaved months off of my journey, if not more. The regular price is $33 a month, so it is a commitment, but it's not a bad idea to sign up when you have some time to watch the teaching videos, get a feel for their tools, do some research and get some backlinks, then if you can't afford $33 a month you can decide whether it's worth it for you to come back at a later time. Definitely <span style="font-weight: bold;">hold on this</span> until you know you have time to look at the videos and take notes: it's incredible information and even if now you can only do the free trial run, do it. What you learn will speed up the passive income process immensely.<br /><br />So hopefully that will help you out to really get the most out of your backlinking efforts. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment and ask. You were brave enough to mention your goals, so I want to be able to help you reach them and then some.<br /><br />As to everyone reading, hope your holidays are great, feel free to share your goals or thoughts in the comments section, and I really encourage you to challenge yourself to really go after those big time goals in 2011. Cheers!Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-27966580155219466842010-11-30T13:40:00.056-06:002011-07-29T23:58:14.674-05:00Freelance Passive Writing Income: And a Vacation Update<h2>Passive Writing Income Opens Up the World</h2> Well this should be an enjoyable post. I've just finished my third week of travel/vacation out of four, and after a week enjoying North Carolina and then Tampa, Florida, this week is already up and kicking in Las Vegas. And we're not talking New Mexico here, people. While I've attempted to start this post several times in the past week, well vacation has been great and there is always a lot to see in the city, so the tenses of this post might not completely match, and I'm going to try and be a little bit less long winded than usual since I am on vacation and there's so much more to be out doing and seeing. But I figured it would be nice to get in one <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">freelance writing blog post</span></a> before Christmas.<br /><br />This has been somewhat of a work vacation, as I've put in about four hours of work every Friday, but many days on vacation I haven't done any. And on some of the other days, I've only worked a couple hours a day, using free or rented Wi-Fi and a laptop to get online and type some articles, or use my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VNCRNQ?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B003VNCRNQ"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dragon Natural Speaking Software</span></a> (this is an affiliate link, but I strongly recommend this software after a couple months of use and will be doing a more in depth review on it later) to really get some done quickly in a shorter time. So it might not be a 100% no work vacation, but I haven't worked more than 8 total hours any of the last four weeks, and the reason this is possible is not only because of a little bit of savings, but because of the way that <span style="font-weight: bold;">passive income</span> opens the door for this type of trip. In a limited way, so does freelance writing since it only takes a laptop and Wi-Fi, but then you have to work a lot more on each week of break than you otherwise would.<br /><br />During these four weeks I've received over $300 from Google AdSense, $250 from Amazon's Affiliate program, $150 from my eHow articles, $90 from Yahoo! Contributors (formerly Associated Content), $13 from Suite101, $125 from Squidoo, $40 from eBay and $700 from other various sources of passive or semi-passive income. Taking a month long vacation is much easier when you're receiving $1,665 from work that you've already done while on vacation - and it definitely helps you to stretch out the savings. This is part of the reason I so adamantly believe that all freelancers should spend some time building up their passive income streams. The number of hours or days I "have to work" shrink dramatically when a flow of money is coming in from various resources. Even the number of days you can qualify as "I should work, but I don't really have to" also shrinks dramatically when enough money comes in to pay the bills.<br /><br />This also makes traveling more enjoyable. What stopped me the most early on was that I spent way too much time reading and trying to learn everything there was to know instead of actually building blogs, writing articles, and building sites. And when I started Grizzly's famous make money online for beginners blog was available as an excellent resource, before Google and a few jerks (you know, the ones who try to ruin everything for everyone) hammered away until it was no more. Even if that blog was still available for all of you, it would be a bad idea to do too much research and not enough doing.<br /><br />There are several reasons for this, not the least of which are:<br /><ul><li>Online marketing and passive income changes constantly. While the basic cornerstones remain the same, there are constant changes in how pages are ranked, what links are most effective, and other tweaks to the best ways to rank pages and make passive income. Because of this, you can NEVER learn 100% of what there is to know before getting started.</li><li>You can always learn <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">while you are setting up money making pages</span>. Not only is this smarter because you will learn the most by actually doing, but instead of sitting on the sidelines you will be beginning to make the articles, HubPages, and websites you need to build up your passive income.</li><li>Age matters. The older a website or article, the more authority it has in the search engines and the easier it is to rank on top. So the sooner you get started, the sooner your pages will age and the more they will make for you.</li><li>Did I mention that actually doing is the best way to learn this business and you can fill in the details while you're writing online?</li><li>Passive income is partially a numbers game. The higher the numbers, the more winners you are going to have, the more money you will make, and the more likely you are to have a large number of articles or pages that you can tweak to turn into good earners once you learn more about passive income.</li><li>Paralysis by Analysis is the most common thing that stops people from making it online</li><li>And finally, almost everyone I know making passive income states that their one big regret was not jumping in and getting started sooner or waiting too long before starting, or something else along those lines.</li></ul>One of the great things about <span style="font-weight: bold;">writing for passive income online</span> is that you get to correct your mistakes and improve your sites down the line. You don't have to ever be perfect, and certainly not up front.<br /><br />Use that information to encourage yourself to get moving. You can always revise your HubPages later, move ads around on your blogs and websites, and write more articles that are better focused. You're not going to get hurt earning online passive income because your articles or pages aren't perfect when you're starting out. At least by having pages out there you have the ability to earn - someone with all the knowledge in the world and 0 sites is worth $0.00. A person with a badly put up site with no good keywords at least has an outside chance at something.<br /><br />So this is one of those basic "motto" posts which can be summarized easily: get started and work consistently. If that means something as simple as only one HubPage and one InfoBarrel article a week and one Ezinearticle to both, then so be it, but put in the work. It's worth it, and you'll be glad you did down the line. And if you're ready to really invest in your business, then read this <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2011/05/keyword-academy-review.html">Keyword Academy Review</a> to get a true sense of where the next step is for the true beginner.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-20756546312543416632010-11-20T08:57:00.013-06:002010-11-20T09:49:46.788-06:00I Haven't Updated My Resume Since 2006<h1>Freelance Writing Benefit: No Resume Games</h1> First off, let me add an important caveat to the title, that being that I'm not saying having a good resume isn't important or that <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com"><span style="font-weight: bold;">freelance writers</span></a> shouldn't have resumes. I'm just saying that I haven't updated mine since 2006 and honestly I'm not keeping a conventional resume any more because I don't have any intention of getting an "honest job" (whatever that means) again. <br /><br />My personality made me clash with authority even before I worked for myself, so really, in many ways I'm probably pretty unemployable at this point unless my boss let's me do my own thing as long as the job gets done. But one of the advantages to a freelance writing career is that after a certain amount of time, depending on how well you set up your business, you don't need a resume anymore. I stopped updating mine in 2006, when it became clear that getting into academics was a nightmare I wanted nothing to do with, and that the boss of the job I was interviewing for had exactly <span style="font-weight: bold;">0 interest</span> in my resume and was only interested in my writing skills and at how efficiently I could keep growing and adapting into producing the type of writing that was actually useful to him.<br /><br />Now don't get me wrong, I do keep track of special accomplishments, list of clients I've worked for (or continue to work for), and places published and earned awards. But as for organizing everything into a writer's resume, I don't bother. There's no reason to. Between steady clients and my growing passive income, there just isn't any reason to. Aside from the fact that the way I was taught to write a resume in college is now "completely wrong and outdated" why do I need an updated resume? Maybe down the line if I want to spend some free time teaching as an adjunct because there are a couple classes I'd really enjoy designing (such as one on online freelance writing that college students could actually use and turn into paying work), I love working for myself and am not willing to give that up.<br /><br />For beginning writers, a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470455845?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0470455845"><span style="font-weight: bold;">freelance writing resume</span></a> is essential as you build up a client list, learn the ropes, and still have to sell yourself in query letters time and time again. If you're also someone who doesn't mind writing for a company or in the corporate world, then a resume in addition to copies of published articles (your "clips") are very important. However, one of the great advantages of being a freelance writer is that word of mouth is a powerful way to gain new work as one impressed client will suggest you to others looking for a good and RELIABLE writer. I still can't believe all the horror stories of flaky and terrible writers who don't respect their clients and make the rest of us look bad.<br /><br />If you're a good and reliable freelance writer, just keep marketing yourself and over time between steady clients and word of mouth, you'll get to the point where you have all the clients you need and possibly a backlog to boot. Another key point here: <span style="font-weight: bold;">passive writing income</span> definitely helps out this process a great deal. The day you work for yourself only, with no other clients, I'm sure is also a great day - and one I'm rapidly working towards. Never ignore passive income even if 90% of your time has to be spent on freelancing - a situation I'm used to. However that 10% of time I've spent just over 3 years (because the first 2 years I did ignore the passive income) building passive income has me almost half way to a full time passive income. I'd probably be there by now had I started right away, but the point is that even small baby steps over time will add up to hundreds, then thousands, of dollars a month. You'll be very glad you did not neglect this point.<br /><br />So what does not updating my resume since 2006 have to do with anything? Well to me it's symbolic of a lot of things that I love about the freelance writing life style. There's a definite independence. Not only do I not worry about finding a new job, I don't worry about getting fired from an old one. There's no being pissed off at being passed over for promotion over and over again or having someone else take credit for your work (unless you're a ghost writer getting paid very handsomely to do just that). There's no worry about whether or not I can compete with experienced veterans or eager newcomers willing to work for less - employers do not let go of excellent reliable writers. No worrying about "having to" beef up a resume or "what about that gap" or "how can I make this sound impressive?" None of that.<br /><br />Not to say I haven't written resumes since 2006 - I have...but other people's for $50 a pop :) The point here is that a skilled writer willing to take the lumps, learn the business, and push through the frustrations and muck then you can become completely independent of all the worries that plague so many daily grind workers who deserve better. I haven't updated my resume since 2006, and you know what, that might be the last time I ever do. <br /><br />So how long has it been since you had to update your resume? How hard would you work to make sure you never had to do so again? This might not be right for everyone, but these are questions that might give you that little bit of motivation you need to get moving with the online writing. Imagine never having to prepare a resume again because you were secure. What would that be worth to you?Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-66403713688955939092010-11-11T00:58:00.019-06:002010-11-13T02:22:27.517-06:00Last Writing Post Before a Freelance Vacation<h1>Freedom to Write on the Road</h1> If there is one giant benefit to <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">freelance writing</span></a>, especially when the majority of my work is done online (and nearly 40% of my income is passive) is that when it's time to take a vacation...or just wander off for a while, that's exactly what I can do. There is no office I have to be at, no location where I "must" be to do my job. Have Wi-Fi, get paid for working. So over the past year I've been back in Cedar Rapids, Iowa building my business, taking care of personal matters, and trying to clean house and figure out what's next for me.<br /><br />Part one is part doctor's orders and part just long overdue. After a very stressful year and too much working in 2010, (not to mention serious wanderlust that hasn't been seriously fed in 2 years) there's no question that it's time for a good vacay, and there is little that relaxes me more than traveling. So I'm going on a vacation, also a "work vacation" for the rest of the year.<br /><br />Next week I'll be taking the train east to visit one of my best friends in North Carolina, who is fulfilling his life dream of going to college at the age of 30 - a life dream that was delayed by a hard life. After hanging out for a week, it's a road trip to Tampa, Florida where he can visit his family for Thanksgiving, and I can visit my Dad for Thanksgiving. A week after that I'm flying for my return trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, where I'll be meeting some of my best friends from Alaska who I haven't seen in years.<br /><br />After that, a week in Austin to see some of my old friends and scout out apartments for a return next year and a nice train ride home with a few days in St. Louis before getting back to Iowa in time for Christmas.<br /><br />How can I do this? <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Because as a freelance writer all I need is Wi-Fi</span>, whether it's Asheville North Carolina, Tampa Florida, Las Vegas Nevada, Austin Texas, St. Louis Missouri, or back to Cedar Rapids Iowa. I've worked my butt off the past six weeks to pay off the bills, set myself up to be able to coast out the year and take this vacation with minimal work. <br /><br />Now I'm not 100% passive income, and that passive income level isn't where it needs to be so I can "not work," but I'll be enjoying life a lot more than most people stuck in a career. Every Friday for the next five to six weeks I need to work 4 hours a day in the morning. Otherwise, it looks like 6-8 hours a week will be more than enough to handle expenses, give me a decent bit of spending money and cover all the bills. For me, visiting some of my favorite cities and some new places altogether is going to recharge me in incredible ways, with or without work.<br /><br />The <span style="font-weight: bold;">freedom of a freelance writing lifestyle</span> is what allows me to end a year like this, and while I'm on break no worrying about saving up for bills, no worrying about getting extra work, and no worrying about building passive income or writing my next e-book. I'm going to do the minimum work to finish out 2010 and recharge my batteries to be prepared to go full force in 2011.<br /><br />This also serves the important function of reminding me not to pigeonhole myself, because being a freelance writer offers freedoms and an openness to planning life that gives me the opportunity to do amazing things and enjoy an amazing life - as long as I don't let old habits or practices get in the way and change my thinking to make a freelance lifestyle just another job.<br /><br />Not everyone is going to have the same goals or desires that I do. I love travel. ALWAYS have. For other people that's not the goal, but simply having the ability to move around, to work in different places, and to have that control over your life is a huge relief and maybe the biggest benefit of being a freelance writer. <br /><br />Being at my breaking point, having the ability now to travel, to spend a week at five different places (most I love, one I haven't ever visited) and to only have to work a grand total of 10-12 hours a week at the most to do it is huge for me. For those of you who are more motivated by the possibility of living out your dreams as opposed to written goals to achieve (i.e. earning enough to take a 6 week work vacation as opposed to a goal of 'write 100 articles' and then doing it), take the time to really look at what you love out of life and use that as motivation. I find it easier to have at least one or two reminders of things I have done and want to do again - this is easier for me to imagine as opposed to going somewhere I've never been or doing something I've never done.<br /><br />This doesn't mean I don't have to work for a break - I've pushed myself pretty hard the past few weeks, but now I get to enjoy the pay out, and while this shouldn't be the last freelance writing blog post before 2011, I'm not sure if I'll be posting over my break. Basically if I feel like it I will, and if I don't then I won't. That's the beauty of a freelance writing vacation, as well - I get to choose my schedule.<br /><br />So I hope everyone is doing well, keep up your writing goals, and if you're finding a hard time getting motivation then think of the things you want or the ideal lifestyle you could enjoy from making a full time living as a freelance writer. Spend some time reflecting on these goals or ideals, then map out the first steps you can take to get there.<br /><br />So take care, and for now I'm outta' here!Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-38001469298091142192010-10-29T19:34:00.005-05:002010-10-29T20:00:49.791-05:00Dragon Naturally Speaking Review: The 15 Minute Review<h1>Immediate Impressions of Dragon Naturally Speaking 11</h1> After recommendations from several people about looking into this software, and getting the green light of approval from several online freelance writers whom I respect very much who claim to use Dragon Naturally Speaking Software full time (thanks to TW at <a href="http://www.completewritingsolutions.com/">Complete Writing Solutions</a> for the encouragement and answering my questions), I decided to finally bring out the credit card and take a shot to see if all the hype was there and if this really could make me more productive - or at the very least take down the physical stress from Carpal Tunnel. I bought the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VNCRNQ?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B003VNCRNQ"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dragon Naturally Speaking 11 Home Edition</span></a>, without any fancy bells or whistles. What I thought would be interesting is to try it right away and give my initial first impressions, do a second review in two weeks (right before my vacation) and then do one in January after I've had plenty of time to decide whether or not this is something I'd recommend to freelance writers.<br /><br />So what's the result after literally only 15 minutes? I would probably recommend it to most people. Seriously, I'm blown away by the early results. This doesn't mean I don't have frustrations or concerns, but this software hasn't even had time to adapt and learn how I speak and it's by far and away superior to every other voice software I've ever tried.<br /><br />In fact, I'm going to paste in my "practice run" using Dragon <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">for the first time</span>:<br /><br />Dragon naturally speaking review.<br /><br />Many people have recommended this software to me. After a long debate, I decided to finally give it a try. Early on it is hard to figure out it is a good piece of equipment or not. Early on I'm having a hard time with actual word showing up that I did not say. But I have been told that this is a problem that most people have with speaking software right out-of-the-box. I do have to admit, that so far I am fairly impressed with this software. The hardest part for most people, including myself, is having the patience to train the software to work for us. When the software is working fine you definitely pick up speed and versus typing.<br /><br />This is my first test using Dragon NaturallySpeaking software. There is no question in my mind, that this is a much better piece of software than the cheap version that comes with some Windows. When I tried using other brand it was pretty much worthless. I can already see how the this particular piece of software could definitely help me out. One thing you will have to be aware of so, is that you will have to do a lot of visual checking and correcting to make sure the words are coming out right.<br /><br />Another very important aspect of using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking software is that you have to make some corrections yourself. Making the corrections with your voice instead of typing them in, helps to train the software to recognize your own enunciation's and accents. I also think that while correcting text to seems difficult at first part of that is just not being familiar with the command first time.<br /><br />I have made some minor corrections with this text, but have chosen to leave most of it as is so you have at least a reasonable idea of how the software is working as I'm talking to you first time. So far I have had to make approximately 6 corrections. The funny thing is, many of the hardest words on here the software recognized right away. Right now is having the hardest time figuring the word at versus it. In fact I just had it correct that in the last sentence.<br /><br />If you're writing here does not seem up to par with what I usually do, don't worry that's more of me figuring out the software and learning to talk as opposed to write my ideas. Although obviously there are some early frustrations, unlike other voice software I have tried even with the first test run here I can see how this will be worth the purchase. I also appreciate that the DragonPad makes files in RTF format.<br /><br />This makes it much easier to save the file straight to document and then be able to use it with anything I need on or off line. While I can't endorse the software yet due to the fact that I'm still using it on my very first day, the potential is definitely there and my hands are already happy with the rest that they are getting. Once I actually get used to the commands that you use with this program and more used to talking instead of typing, I think I could definitely improve our production using the software and help prevent carpal tunnel, or at the very least alleviates it.<br /><br />So in some ways you can look at this is a test, and maybe I'll have a better idea what this can do after 10 days and even better idea after 30 days. It is too early to say for sure whether this was a good buy or not, but the early signs are looking like this is a very worthwhile in investment. Are you kidding me<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">End of Dragon test</span></span><br /><br />Now the "are you kidding me" comes from me realizing that as opposed to talking out about 300 words in 13 minutes, which is where I thought I was, the total actually came out to be 633 words, which comes out to 49 words a minute completely ignoring the facts that:<br /><ul><li>I spent over 50% of the time correcting small details and trying to learn the correction commands</li><li>I had no outline and no idea what I wanted to say</li><li>This is my first attempt dictating an article as opposed to typing, so I felt very slow stringing my thoughts together</li><li>This review isn't a topic I'm used to, so I couldn't just pull stuff out from prior knowledge like I can with many of my niches</li><li>It was my first freaking time using the software - 50% of which was spent trying to learn simple commands.</li></ul>Which means even going slow as an absolute beginner, I could still belt out over 2500 words per hour even before this software learns my speaking nuances, before I learn all the commands, without being familiar with the subject, without being familiar with the software, and before I get used to speaking and thinking as opposed to typing and thinking.<br /><br />So what happens when I stop pausing every time I just remember to say "comma" or "period," when the software gets used to my pronunciations, and I get used to dictating instead of typing? My guess is my rate will double at a minimum, and it will save my hands. This is especially useful for late at night when I can think of things that need to be written or things I want to write, but my hands and eyes don't want to cooperate.<br /><br />So my initial reaction is that this was an exceptional buy for me, and I have a feeling I will be strongly recommending it once I really used to using this software and become much more comfortable and efficient using it.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-24221591539988788612010-10-27T17:14:00.029-05:002010-10-29T19:30:24.298-05:00Backlinking for Dummies (or Just Beginners)<h1>Backlinking Basics for Beginners</h1> Welcome to the <span style="font-weight: bold;">freelance writing blog post</span> featuring the most alliterate title to date. Recently I've been helping some friends get started not only with freelance writing, but specifically with the real basics of passive income. <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/">HubPages</a>, keywords, and backlinks all come to the front of the discussion, and it's easy for me to overlook the basics because I have been working on passive income for some time now. I believe for a lot of us this could be the case. Even after a short time working for passive income online it can be easy to not think about things like keyword research or finding backlinks, because it's all become second nature after even a short time.<br /><br />Also, after a certain amount of time you get used to being able to take short cuts. I've done so much keyword research I can take an educated guess at this point and with about 60 seconds of research decide if it's worth going after or not with a pretty decent rate of accuracy. But it took a lot of time to get to this point. And now more often than not I simply use the tools at <a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html">The Keyword Academy</a> to REALLY shorten up the process. Ditto with collecting backlinks (and if you're serious about your online business and have the time and money to invest, the $33 a month subscription for <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Keyword Academy</span> is ridiculously good resource. That is an affiliate link, but I believe the first month is only a $1 and if you don't like the affiliate link, then type "keyword academy" into Google).<br /><br />So for someone who is a true beginner, who knows only the most basic information about making money online and SEO (Search Engine Optimization if you're really a noob...aka getting ranked high in Google), doesn't know where to get backlinks, and doesn't have the time or money to make a $33/month investment at this point, then this post will walk you through a nice simple template of actions I used early on to get backlinks to everyone of my money pages - and I still use this with new pages when I don't want to think too hard about it.<br /><br />If you're a veteran at the passive income, you can probably skim or even ignore the rest of this. For anyone who feels lost as a beginner and wants a solid way to build several good backlinks to their money sites, read on or feel free to print this post out as a starter's guide.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Caveats:</span> Many of the links further down are affiliate or referral links, but I only use these links when I get a cut of the website's %, not yours. This is also going under the assumption that you're building <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/">HubPages</a> as opposed to websites when starting off. I'm doing this because HubPages is by far and away, in my opinion, the best way for true beginners to learn how SEO and Internet Marketing works and to see some early results to stay motivated.<br /><br />If this isn't the case, I'll explain more about how that changes things (actually very little) later on in the post. Also, have a safe place to keep copies of all your log in information as you will need to open accounts in several places to build your backlinks.<br /><br />First of all, you will need to open accounts at several article directories and websites. Some split income with you (InfoBarrel, Xomba) while others don't (Ezinearticles, Buzzle, Articlesbase). This doesn't make one better than the other: you need backlinks to get your money pages ranked, and the more good links, the better.<br /><ul><li>Open accounts at <a href="http://ezinearticles.com/">Ezinearticles</a>, <a href="http://www.buzzle.com/">Buzzle</a>, <a href="http://www.articlesbase.com/">Articlesbase</a>, <a href="http://www.infobarrel.com/signup.php?ref_id=3671">InfoBarrel</a>, <a href="http://www.xomba.com/referral/777a93f1">Xomba</a>, <a href="http://www.allthatsolive.com/">Olive Articles</a>, <a href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger.com</a> (gmail account needed), <a href="http://wordpress.com/">Wordpress.com</a>, RedGage.com, <a href="http://www.yousaytoo.com/JadeDragon/?13075">YouSayToo.com</a>, <a href="http://shetoldme.com/referral/736880db">SheToldMe.com</a>, A1 Webmarks.com, & <a href="http://www.theinfomine.com/">Theinfomine.com</a><br /></li></ul><ol><li>After publishing a hub, the first step is to write a Xomba bookmark for your hub. Although there is a 50 word minimum, I strongly recommend 75 words as this almost guarantees your hub (or whatever you're bookmarking) will be indexed by Google within 24 hours.</li><li>Find a high PR blog that gets a lot of attention (like the 4 Hour Work Week Blog) and make a relevant comment, only linking your name to your site. This isn't for a keyword - this is to get Google's attention, index your site, and get a "natural crappy" link to make the link building look natural and honest.</li><li>Write 3-5 original articles for Ezinearticles and submit them.</li><li>Write 1 original article for Buzzle</li><li>Write 1 original article for InfoBarrel</li><li>Write 1 original article for Articlesbase</li><li>Write 1 original article for Olive Articles</li><li>Write 1 original article for Theinfomine.com</li><li>If the topic is something you're going to right a lot about, start a Blogger.com blog and a Wordpress.com blog. You'll eventually want a minimum of 5-10 posts each, but each post can have a link to a hub or article (not even including the blogroll for each blog).</li><li>Bookmark your hub at RedGage.com, YouSayToo.com, SheToldMe.com, & A1 Webmarks.com.</li><li>Create a Xomba bookmark to every single one of the articles on this list with a 75+ word description.</li><li>Use the 4 social bookmarking sites to bookmark every one of the articles on this list.</li><li>Write a Xomba article (not bookmark) that links to your hub or site. 400+ words is best but not mandatory - this will give you a "no follow" bookmark, which is always good to have a few.</li><li>If you want a few more links, Google "KeywordLuv" and spend 20-30 minutes gathering blog comment backlinks using a variety of keywords related to your hub.<br /></li></ol>That's it. Is it a lot of work? Yes - but everything online for making money is. Is it difficult or hard or confusing? No. This is very easy, and you can completely skip the Blogger.com and Wordpress.com steps if you feel like it. If you're a true beginner, I might even recommend that. When you're further along with Internet Marketing you'll understand how to use those better, anyway. If you have a website or blog as opposed to <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/">HubPages</a>, then just follow these steps, except add a HubPage and then go through all these steps for the HubPage, too, to make that a much stronger page, which will make it a stronger link.<br /><br />This outline is very basic, it uses basic social bookmarking, blog commenting, and article marketing to get a solid group of links. HubPages is a very strong website that tends to rank very well right off the bat and FAR better than an independent site or blog starting from scratch. If you follow this group of instructions, <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">you already have 15-18 backlinks</span>, even with no Blogger Blog, no WordPress blog, no Keyword Luv commenting. A decent amount of these directories even split any AdSense earnings that your articles might earn. Aside from Xomba and InfoBarrel this rarely happens, but every little bit extra helps.<br /><br />Most of those are do follow, with just enough no follow to make your site look really good to Google. With a HubPage, this can often be enough to start ranking well, especially after some time passes. The steps are ordered by importance, so if one article directory is ranked in step #3 and the other is step #8, then the backlink you get from #3 will be stronger than the one you get from #8.<br /><br />I'm not saying this is the best way to gather and build links, but it is a great <span style="font-weight: bold;">backlink starter template</span> for those of you who want to learn about Internet Marketing and SEO but don't have a lot of guidance. Now there's no excuse. Go make some hubs, and use this guide to get them all some backlinks. Remember that the sheer number of hubs and money pages you have does matter, and time is a very big factor when it comes to ranking a page at the top of Google, which is how your pages will make you the most money online.<br /><br />By all means, keep learning and keep reading from the many incredible resources that are online, but there's no excuse now. Go to HubPages, start building hubs, and use this template to gather backlinks. No fear!<br /><br />I'm not saying there won't be a learning curve, and as you learn more online you'll almost certainly go back and touch up your old sites and/or pages (I still do), but when you really know what you're doing and understand down the line from having more experience, you'll definitely be glad to already have a great base of backlinks. It makes everything much easier! Hopefully that helps out and if anyone has any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section.<br /><br />Good luck and enjoy the extra results this work will bring to your efforts!Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-44934910494038015192010-10-20T21:48:00.021-05:002010-10-21T14:36:59.708-05:00Online Writing, Passive Income, & Blogs to Read<h1>Reading Break for Online Writers</h1> One of the nice things that I've really enjoyed about becoming an <span style="font-weight: bold;">online freelance writer</span> is not only the freedom of time and place or the security that comes with being self-employed, but also the great community that exists online. You don't have to spend too much time looking around to find a huge number of writers, bloggers, and other normal people shooting for passive income who want to share what they've learned and help out others in their online community. I've felt extremely blessed for the number of positive comments and e-mails I've received from this blog, and from the number of people who I've helped to get part time or even full time income working on their own. Just as great has been the sheer number of online friends I've made, the communities I've discovered, and the support that really comes from normal people who have extraordinary dreams - because those are two of the common factors I've found from many people online.<br /><br />So this post will hopefully give you a few great resources and blogs that are worth checking out. As always, make sure you're working towards your goals and not letting over analysis paralyze you - nothing any of us ever tell you is going to beat good old fashioned experience when it comes to learning the ropes of making money writing online and making money through passive income. But it's nice to have support, encouragement, and online mentors...and this list of blogs is one that I encourage anyone looking for great reads to take a look at.<br /><br />It's important to understand that while earning passive income online most often involves a LOT of writing, that's not the only model for earning passive income. One thing I like about passive income online is that Jade Dragon's blog covers both the online and some offline methods to passive income. Two recent posts have really jumped out at me. This one on <a href="http://www.innovativepassiveincome.com/happy-with-3-a-day/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">being happy with $3 a day</span></a>, and then this informative article on a <a href="http://www.innovativepassiveincome.com/fantastic-link-stacking-sites/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">great link stacking tool</span></a> that is extremely useful for improving your SEO online. Both of those posts are definitely worth checking out.<br /><br />Along the same lines of there being more than one type of passive income, I strongly recommend the blog "My 4 Hour Work Week." There are several reasons why I love checking in on this blog. Aside from the author being about 10 times more consistent at posting than I am, he's willing to ponder unconventional questions like this post wondering if <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.my4hrworkweek.com/a-crazy-yet-common-trait-of-many-wildly-successful-internet-entrepreneurs/">controlled chaos can equal success</a>. It's a good read and good discussion down in the comments section. He also talks about non-Internet based sources of investment and passive income like this earnings update that also serves as a <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.my4hrworkweek.com/my-blog-and-passive-income-experiments-update-september-10/">LendingClub Review</a>.<br /><br />I definitely feel akin to this next blog, as the author, Felicia, started as a writer and is moving into full time passive income. Obviously this is exactly along the lines of the same transition I'm making, one that started shortly after I originally created this <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com">freelance writing blog</a>. So if somehow you haven't heard of the <a href="http://www.nojobformom.com/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">No Job for Mom Blo</span></a>g, you should go check it out. The comments section can be a wealth of information here.<br /><br />If you haven't seen the <a href="http://www.completewritingsolutions.com/">Complete Writing Solutions blog</a>, then you will want to check it out. This blog is a recent one that a reader actually recommended to me. T.W. covers some major parts to writing online full time, and goes into the great benefits of living as a writer such as living overseas, travel, and living a mobile lifestyle as a full time freelance writer.<br /><br />And sometimes blogs are carried not just by great information, but also great personalities. This isn't saying that the other blog owners aren't likable (I find everyone listed here to be a jolly good group), but some blogs really shine almost personality first. Two examples of blogs that jump out immediately in this regards is Lissie's <a href="http://lissowerbutts.com/">Passive Income Blog</a> and <a href="http://myonlineincomebykidgas.blogspot.com/">Kidgas's Online Income Blog</a>. Both of these blogs feature writers who are very open, very friendly, and know what it's like to be a true beginner still working towards their main goals. I always enjoy new blog posts from these writers and enjoy hearing about their on going successes, as well.<br /><br />Finally, one freelance writer's blog that I strongly recommend is Bianca Raven's <a href="http://ravens-writing.blogspot.com/">Freelance Writing from Home</a> blog. The October 15th, 2010 post she has on the need for freelance writers to take their clients seriously is fantastic and I strongly recommend it. Far too many would be writers make this critical and completely inexcusable mistake.<br /><br />So this should leave you plenty of reading material, including this blog. You never want to read so much that you stop working on your stuff, but this list of blogs gives you not only a wide array of perspectives and people willing to give good advice, but also a part of an online community that is actually worth being a part of. While these blogs all vary greatly, one thing you can see in common with those listed here is a genuine kindness and willingness to pass it on.<br /><br />That's it for now, although there will be some more posts coming up soon going over my base link building strategies for passive income, current strategy for writing online, and a post making fun of the first outright "crazy person" e-mail I've received because of the advice I'm giving on this blog. So hope everyone has plenty of reading now, and keep up the good work!Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-35228078530635747602010-09-20T01:43:00.017-05:002010-10-01T10:30:39.121-05:00Finding Private Freelance Writing Clients<h1>Freelance Writing Work: Finding Private Clients</h1> One of the major parts of building a successful <span style="font-weight: bold;">freelance writing career</span> is building a list of private clients. This can be one of the hardest and scariest parts of building a freelance writing career, as well. But private clients often equate to steady work and much higher wages than any other form of writing. There are many, MANY people out there who are willing to pay much higher wages to find one very good and very RELIABLE freelance writer to deal with all of their work.<br /><br />Many of my private clients pay me double or more what they originally did when I was first hired, because I set myself apart as being talented and <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">completely reliable</span>. The second part is even more important than the first. Average writers who are completely reliable are 10 TIMES more valuable than fantastic writers who may or may not hit deadline. If you can be above average and prove yourself as THE go-to guy (or gal), you can find some excellent pay. I don't have any private clients who pay less than $36 an hour, and on some jobs I get paid as high as $60 to $65 an hour. Even if you don't hit those levels (and early on it will be difficult, especially in this economy), having steady solid work from private clients makes a huge difference and is worth pursuing.<br /><br />There are a few important rules you need to make sure you hold yourself to before you search for even your first private client.<br /><ol><li><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Always get done before deadline.</span> There is absolutely no exception to this rule. Almost any successful employer or business I worked for agreed that C+ work done on time is ALWAYS better than A+ work delivered even a few hours late. Missing deadlines kills businesses, and great writing won't resurrect them.</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Come through in a pinch.</span></span> Proving that you can deliver on short notice can move you to the top of the list. Two private clients I write for both originally used several freelance writers. Once it became clear I was willing to turn any reasonable project around in 24 hours, I took over ALL the work for both. Sometimes this means you'll get a job at 9 pm and be staying up all night so they have something in the inbox by 10 am the next morning...but this type of coming through not only lets you charge more, it means they'll send all the high paying quick turnaround work to you.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Defend your specialties. </span></span>Everyone has their specific niches or specialties - those topics or subjects that they know more about than other people. As a writer, you need to know the areas where you can excel, because these niches are the first places you're going to look for new clients. If you're good at a niche, work to become great. Expertise shows.</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Be confident.</span></span> Many writers like the idea of working from home, and part of that can often come from preferring to be one one's own as opposed to having people looking over your shoulders. That being said, finding private clients means practicing some common exercises that many people find hard nowadays: cold calling and pitching. You need to appear confident because when cold calling you're already pitching yourself without any permission and no foot inside the door - which makes it all the more important to come across as confident, professional, and with true value to offer.</li><li><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Be Prepared.</span></span> Be prepared, because on cold calls I find my success rate is about 3% - and I have a really good radio-style voice that gives me a little bit of an edge in the "vocally charismatic" arena.<br /></li></ol>These five rules are critical before even starting the search. The next section, about places and techniques for finding private clients, are based on past experiences I've had. This isn't a step by step guide for a major reason: while I can give general advice and tactics that have worked for me, finding private clients is going to be different for individual people, and changing technology and economic times means that the best ways to find private clients (and the demand for reliable writers) is going to shift and change over time. Everything I'm writing here is true, as far as I know, in my experience from 2005 to 2010. Starting in 2011 and on, who knows?<br /><br />But those five freelance writing rules for finding private clients still stand. You will get rejected much more than you get accepted, but even a few consistent private clients can make a huge difference. So here is my best advice for finding or increasing your number of private clients.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Use old connections</span>. This is a great piece of advice, and the ideal way to actually get started into freelance writing, if possible. Did you just walk away from a company? Get downsized a few years back, but know they need an online presence? Do you have friends with companies that want to set up websites? Former employers, friends at other companies, or any type of old connection can often be used to find work. You might be surprised how often these connections can lead to work, but only when you ask point blank. My best private clients to date are actually my former employers in Austin, Texas. Just because there was no longer enough work to justify a full time writer on staff didn't mean there wasn't more writing work that had to be done. Those old connections (and their recommending me to friends) leads to thousands of dollars of work a year for me.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Forums.</span> Don't spam online forums, but in many online forums you can offer services or find work even by casually mentioning that you are a writer, especially in niche forums (those forums about topics you are a specialist in) and online marketing forums, who are often ALWAYS looking for talented writers. With the latter you may have to start with a discounted rate to prove yourself, but if you prove your mettle you can pick up some very profitable long term clients.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Start out at auction site.</span> This is how I found many of my earliest clients. Personally I have a lot of experience with Elance.com and Guru.com and can vouch for both, but many writers I know also like oDesk and Rentacoder as well. These sites may not seem like a natural place for finding private clients, but many employers come to these sites looking for quality writers not only for one project, but for several. It's not uncommon to have employers who use Elance or Guru for all their projects to come to you first for any new work, and they're willing to pay extra to have a writer who is consistent and provides quality work. Sometimes all future work is done on the auction sites, I've also had these employers contact me directly and start paying me directly to work for them. That way you save 6-10% on commission fees and you have more private clients who often recommend you to their friends, as well.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Surf websites in "expert niches" and find sites that may want more content.</span> Sometimes I'll stumble on a website by accident while doing research. Sometimes they have a blog but no content, or a really nice site but no content, or a nice set with terrible content. I'm not shy - if the writing sucks I'll offer my superior services for a reasonable professional price. Look around niches you know a lot about and see if you can find a lot of sites that might want contact. You might only get 2-3 responses for every 10 or 20 e-mails you shoot, but even 5 test articles at $15 each is a nice little haul in for a couple hours of querying. Any long term contract you get is bonus. I broke into travel writing this way, and while no one contract was large, there were 4 sites I wrote for who each wanted 15 to 20 articles a month at $15 each - and they were simple, I could do two in an hour, and added up to good grocery money.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Set up your own online presence.</span> If there's one area I should personally do better in, it's this one. You can set up a professional website or blog (or both) to set yourself up online. In addition, while building passive income by writing for sites like <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/">HubPages</a>, <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/Monteath">Squidoo</a>, and <a href="http://www.xomba.com/referral/777a93f1">Xomba</a> you can talk about yourself in your profile and even offer your services. If nothing else, leave a business e-mail to let clients get a hold of you. Just from HubPages and Squidoo I've been interviewed as an expert in writing, working from home, literature, and history on various radio shows and online radio shows, and was almost in a USA Today story. You will be amazed at the ways people will find you online as long as you have a presence there.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Cold call local companies.</span> This is one of the most intimidating ones on the list, and many people find it hard to believe that calling is better than e-mail now - but cold calling is MORE effective than ever just because of this change. So many people shoot an e-mail when looking for work or asking a question that having the guts to call not only makes you stand out and look more professional, but gives you a better chance of success. You might be surprised how many companies want a freelance writer, or didn't think about it but are willing to give you a shot once you call. If you know anything about SEO to go with freelance writing, your chances of success sky rocket.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Advertise in local papers.</span> And I don't mean online. While I believe in having an online presence and how important that is, I'm not a fan of online ads since people look for cheap work here, and many people look for people to rip off. Many people still swear by Craigslist, and I'm not saying it can't work, but a great way to find local private clients is through local papers. People still look at the want ads or ads offering services, so put yourself out there.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Advertise in trade magazines of your niche.</span> Sometimes it's best to just pitch magazines, but depending on the niche, it might be worth advertising yourself as a professional online writer who specializes in that magazine's niche. Chances are that people who run popular websites in the niche still look through specialty magazines for ideas. An ad for a freelance writer custom made to their niche could easily be too much to resist.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Business cards at coffee houses.</span> Remember all those billboards at Colleges full of fliers and business cards that no one paid attention to? Well there's one place I've found where those actually get read and picked up. Coffee houses. Post up some business cards, or a flier explaining your services, and you might be surprised how often this leads to some good work.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Read the best books on the topic. </span></span>This is kind of a no-brainer, and don't worry I'll list the ones I feel are the best. If I miss one, feel free to add the information in the comments section.<br />First, I would strongly recommend Peter Bowerman's book, "<a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0967059879?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0967059879"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Well Fed Writer</span></a>." This gives a ton of great information about finding clients, and the cold calling advice is invaluable. I know Bowerman also wrote <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0967059852?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0967059852"><span style="font-weight: bold;">a sequel to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Well Fed Writer</span></a>, but I have not read it at this point so I can't personally vouch for it. Once again, if anyone reading this post can give a review good or bad, please include your opinion in the comments section. Robert Bly's two books: "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805078037?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0805078037">Secrets of a Freelance Writer</a>" and "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159181037X?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=159181037X">Getting Started as a Freelance Writer</a>" are both also extremely useful and should be extremely helpful to beginners. I also strongly recommend Jenna Glatzer's "<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">How to Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer</span>." The emphasis here is on magazines, but the chapters on research, marketing, and pitching should be read by everyone who wants to make it as a writer. The reason I recommend these books is because these writers have landed more private clients than I have by far - and the best way to get information is right from the expert's mouth!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Be persistent.</span></span> It takes time to build a strong client list, but private clients seem to be the most profitable as well and taking the time to build that list will help you on your way to a strong full time income as a freelance writer. Push through the early rejections and over-deliver every time you get a chance to prove yourself.<br /><br />That's it. That's all the advice I can give about tracking down private clients, and it's what has worked for me. Hopefully this helps all of you, and keep on fighting for that dream. It's worth the long struggle when the hard work pays off and you get paid handsomely to make a living writing.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-78413973909805995322010-09-15T21:41:00.004-05:002010-09-15T22:04:14.411-05:00Creative Writing, Brief Update<h1>3 Poems and a Brief Blog Update</h1> Hey all. Appreciate the kind comments and e-mails. I'm always encouraged by stories of people finding work, taking their first steps, and finding success in the world of freelance writing. I'm currently working on a blog post on how to find private clients as a freelance writer, since that is a topic that is getting a lot of interest from readers. This is taking a little bit longer than I expected, thanks in part to several real world projects that popped up as well.<br /><br />So until I get the next post wrapped up, I thought I'd answer the second request that comes up a lot, and share some of my creative writing.<br /><br />For those of you who are new to the blog and have no interest whatsoever in creative writing, feel free to check out early and try the following posts:<br /><br /><a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/01/50-things-beginning-writers-should-know.html">50 Things Every Beginning Freelance Writer Should Know<br /></a><br /><a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-im-not-ashamed-to-be-freelance.html">Why I'm Not Ashamed to Be a Freelance Writer</a><br /><br /><a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/09/truth-about-freelance-writing.html">The Truth About Freelance Writing<br /></a><br /><a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/03/demand-studios-review.html">Demand Studios Review</a><br /><br /><a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2008/10/freelance-writing-constant-content.html">Constant-Content Review</a><br /><br />For the rest of you, the following are three poems I wrote while living in Alaska, one of which was published, one which won a contest/award, and one which would have been published had the journal not folded two weeks before publication. Such is life :) Hope ya'll like it, and be gentle. Poetry is my fourth creative writing skill behind fiction, creative non-fiction, and screenplays. Also if the formatting gets screwed up - blame Blogger and Microsoft Works for not playing nicely.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Graduated</span><br />Arctic chills in spring,<br />familiar fragrance, burning meth<br />lazing thru loose floor boards<br />and shoddy dry wall.<br />Sit on empty red milk crate<br />grading freshman papers<br />Gut-wrenchingly bad.<br />The poets are in hiding, and<br />future leaders have lost all sense of soul.<br />Muffled mattress squeaks,<br />inevitable result of meth perfume,<br />Harbinger of sad quiet sex<br />once distracting, now ignorable<br />like a drip, drip, dripping faucet.<br />Until one very early morning red and blue lights<br />cascaded thru open shades<br />and splashed our walls.<br />We laid awake and trembled<br />like deer who just missed the headlights.<br />They took them away,<br />one in a bag.<br /><br />New neighbors came.<br />Summer brought back familiar smells<br />and not-so-quiet mating,<br />snorting like animals,<br />Summer papers were a little better.<br /><br />Remembering when I was astray, the warthog,<br />burning spoons and shooting syringes,<br />Tap, Tap, Tapping the Mainline Florida,<br />and, oh God, how I loved to touch you . . .<br />until you rode off one Tuesday<br />on back a Harley to somewhere;<br />left me to finish the degree I started<br />and forgot about half way through.<br /><br />I moved out of state, two thousand miles to teach,<br />but never enough for a better apartment<br />with a river view like we talked about;<br />but what would an adjunct do with money anyway—<br />and what’s the point of a river<br />with no one to share?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Communion</span><br /><br />Cabin’s cold even in summer<br />Alaska's like that,<br />but the shiver indistinguishable from a shudder<br />and not due to forty degree nights.<br /><br />Marshall bought bread at<br />Wal-Mart, evil empire of commerce,<br />but prayers sanctify<br />organic whole oats<br />or refined wheat flour<br />into the twisted flesh of<br />a broken Savior and<br />grape juice in blue plastic<br />Dixie cups transforms into royal<br />blood prepared for cannabilistic ingestion.<br /><br />Prayers drip off heavy lips<br />like the tears bursting from<br />closed eye lids too light to hold back<br />the deluge behind the levy.<br /><br />Bless us. Forgive us. Help us.<br />Word torrents rush out and<br />old tongues mix with new,<br />older than Aramaic,<br />harder to translate,<br />always ends with <span style="font-style: italic;">Abba</span>.<br /><br />You want a whole piece? I asked,<br />surprised when he didn’t tear it in halves.<br />I have a lot of sin to cover, he replies,<br />and knows I do, too.<br /><br />Naked body cannibalized<br />piece by piece,<br />by greedy ravenous teeth,<br />thanks given,<br />spontaneous prayer bursts forth<br />from sanctified vessels;<br />the cabin walls can not<br />contain it. <br /><br />We erupt and do not care<br />who hears.<br />Bullied into silence long enough,<br />but not in our temple.<br /><br />The blood is sweet and<br />gushes down eager throats,<br />but some remains on the bottom,<br />speckled, you can never quite<br />get it all, and not all can ever<br />quite get it and therein lies the<br />problem and maybe the solution.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">North of Noah's Flood</span><br /><br />Technically Fairbanks, Alaska,<br />is a desert, my professor says,<br />and I’m not sure he is right,<br />but there is so little rain,<br />and they say come in, but this<br />isn't even drizzle, it's mist, and<br />even then it only comes twice<br />a summer.<br /><br />Then there was 2006,<br />and it was different.<br />On Monday I spread my arms<br />and yelled joyfully at the sky as<br />it drenched me and<br />every other Midwesterner<br />dancing in the rain and even the<br />Alaskans thought we were crazy,<br />these people who didn't know to come in,<br />and danced like wild pagans<br />praising an indigenous Christ-like God<br />and the rain is home.<br /><br />That was the only good rain in three years;<br />but then the skies poured again,<br />and Thursday twice more. <br />Lightning made buildings shake<br />and I wonder about cabins with tin roofs as the<br />skies won't stop dumping,<br />coming in sheets and flash flooding<br />in ways even Iowan farmers<br />would fret at,<br />wind blowing weighted trees sideways,<br />Trees gyrating wildly,<br />already bent near breaking<br />from many winters snow,<br />cabin's tin roof poor shield<br />from lightning and logs.<br /><br />Wind howls and man,<br />I have never seen this here—<br />no one has—<br />and man oh man are those trees<br />making me squirm.<br /><br />We've never seen a storm like this,<br />and some wonder aloud<br />if the world is ending.<br />Maybe it is.<br />Us crazy bastards,<br />not even we dance in this.<br />The desert becoming<br />an ocean,<br />and us without an ark.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-90401450102126617502010-09-06T14:54:00.020-05:002010-09-06T18:54:38.799-05:00The Truth About Freelance Writing<h1><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>The Truth About Freelance Writing: What a Writing Career is Really Like</h1> There are many different important <span style="font-weight: bold;">freelance writing topics</span> I cover with this blog, and while they are all perfectly valid, I wonder how many beginners stop and think about why they want to be freelance writers. More to the point, I wonder if they understand what a freelance writing career is really like, or if they hold a romanticized notion of what a writing career is really like. It's not that <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/">being a freelance writer</a> isn't great - there isn't another career out there I'd rather be doing (and I fold my passive income work into the general term "freelance writer career" as well), but that doesn't mean this doesn't come without its own set of costs or difficulties. Some of these difficulties are easy to overcome if you really don't care what other people think, and this is a job that I thoroughly believe is much easier if you are single as opposed to raising a family.<br /><br />So I wanted to take some time in this post to explain the truth about <span style="font-weight: bold;">starting your own freelance writing career</span>, and explain both the positives and the negatives: and how sometimes they can be the exact same thing. This post isn't meant to force people to jump in and become writers, nor is it here to try to scare you away from pursuing a freelance career whether it is part time (which I think is probably right or better for most people, especially starting out) versus full time. This post will hopefully simply lay out the truth about what a freelance writing career is like, both good and bad, and give you a better idea if this is the right road for you - or indeed since there are many different ways and routes to becoming a full time writer, which specific road might be the one you're most comfortable with pursuing.<br /><br />First of all, the disclaimer: there are ALWAYS exceptions to the basic "rules" of any given industry, and freelance writing is no exception. I've met a couple of people who just were in the right time, right place, starting out and were good enough to turn it into a full career very quickly. Over 99% of the time, this isn't going to happen. And the majority of the time someone leaves a snarky comment on a writing blog about how quickly they made $50k+ a year right out of school writing, notice the less than stellar writing and lack of a URL linked to the name. There are more trolls claiming to be successful freelance writers than there are really good freelance writers making a living. Most successful freelancers I know are more than friendly and go above and beyond in sharing their time and advice with newbies. In fact, there's only one I've run into who isn't. All the others are more than happy to help someone who is willing to do the work needed to prove they're really dedicated to making it.<br /><br />Not everyone will experience all of these, but based on my 5+ years experience as a freelance writer, I'm going to go over my experiences as a freelance writing and mention not only the positives and drawbacks of being a professional writer, but also go into the things that I think others could have issues with as well.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Common freelance writing beliefs or questions</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">#1: Freelance writers can work anytime they want.</span> This is one of those freelance writing beliefs that is both true and false. Yes, you do get to set your own hours. This means if you get up one morning in April and the water levels are finally down after a wet winter and the trout streams were stocked for the first time all year, you can choose not to write that morning or even the early afternoon. Pure freedom, right? Wrong. A more accurate description of this common belief is that: freelance writers can move their working hours around any way they want. You can go fishing when the fishing is good, but that means you won't be going to bed at nine at night. You'll be staying up until 1, 2, 3, or maybe even 4 a.m. making sure you get your needed writing in and get any assignments done on time. The work MUST be done, and it MUST be done on time and on deadline when applicable. So yes, you can move your schedule around and it helps to lead a richer and fuller life, IMO, but you WILL make up for it. Flexible Schedule? Absolutely. Work whenever you want with no consequences? Not bloody likely.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">#2: The Respect Issue.</span> There are generally two, and only two, reactions you get after telling someone you are a professional freelance writer. The first reaction is what most non-writers or beginning freelance writers imagine: surprise, interest, and a strong sense of respect, often out of interest in what you do and how you pull it off. The second reaction is a little (actually probably a lot - I'm fortunate in that I'm surrounded by family and friends who more or less gave up on me ever going the conventional route for a job or life by the time I was 17) more common and surprises many beginning writers: smirking, arrogance, or absolute disdain. Don't be surprised if many people look down at you, believe you can't get a "real" job, or will never believe you no matter how easily you can prove that you're successful. Don't be surprised if everyone who looks at you with disdain thinks they could do your job easily, even though most can't. And you will NEVER convince them otherwise. I'm making double per month what some people who know me are, and they still snicker and make fun of me for being "just a writer." If you crave or need the respect of others, sad truth is you just might not have the skin to be a freelance writer. That's a hard truth, but it is one you need to be aware of before making an unwise jump into the freelance writing business.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">#3: You get to write what you want.</span> No, you don't. This doesn't mean you can't start your own blogs or write specialty articles, but most people will never be able to make a living writing articles on only things they are interested in. Even if you are very capable like <a href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?ii=585824&c=ib&aff=45791&cl=99174">Celeste Stewart over at Constant-Content</a> and can write excellent high quality articles on topics you choose and sell them: they still have to be in topics in demand. I might be able to write 20 great articles on the historical philosophical and political ties between the Kingdom of Morocco and the United States, but no one is going to buy them. You are allowed to turn down jobs you're not comfortable with, and I 100% suggest that you do just that, but getting clients means writing the way they need you to write for the jobs that they need you to do for them. Period. That's the only way you can make it as a full time freelance writer.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">#4: Freelance writing is easy.</span> This is a misnomer. Personally, I find the writing part easy and natural. I've literally been writing since I was 3 years old and have never wanted to be anything else other than a writer. But there are always jobs that are harder than others, and writing is only one part of being a freelance writer. Taxes, finding clients, pleasing clients, dealing with problem clients, finding more work, adjusting with ever-changing markets, writing online, writing offline, learning different writing styles, editing, budgeting, loneliness, self-motivation, discipline, providing own benefits, marketing, and balancing life and work are all important aspects of being a writer, and balancing all of those is NOT easy in any way, shape, or form. And if you're stuck doing technical writing, you're making a lot of money but the writing itself won't be easy either.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">#5: Freelance writing is lucrative.</span> This is one where it's hard to nail it exactly, because freelance writing can be lucrative. It can be extremely lucrative, especially on a per hour basis. However getting to that point can be very difficult and take a long time. I started out at about $4 an hour while learning the ropes. If you've followed this blog and some of the other excellent resources online that were not around back in 2004 or 2005, then you should be able to start at quite a bit more than that. But even then, getting to $20 an hour or $30 an hour or more can take a ton of work, a lot of time, and working for countless 50, 60, or 80 hour weeks or more building up your portfolio, looking for better long term clients, and constantly working not only to keep up with the rent, but to keep pushing your freelance writing business towards more growth and more movement.<br /><br />A <span style="font-style: italic;">Writer's Market</span> article from several years ago mentioned that a stunning number of freelance writers would never make enough in a year to pull them above the poverty line. Somewhere in the 75%+ mark. Making above 30k as a freelance writer puts you in the top 10%. While the top writers make six figures - there's no question they are in the top 1% of all earners. Passive income can muddle this up a bit, but even in that field there are far more trying to make good money at writing and blogging than are actually making it.<br /><br />As a part time job, second income, or hobby that's used just to fill an IRA or save up for a vacation once a year, freelance writing is a great gig that is very lucrative and attractive for limited goals such as these. As a long term freelancing career, it's hard.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Other points of interest to beginning freelance writers:</span><span><br />There are several other points I want to make from personal experience, because there is so much that can be covered on this topic, but it's hard to dive into everything fully for people who haven't been through the same, and as with all things, different people react differently. Loneliness is a major problem for many people, while it's just not that big a thing to me. Additionally, I'm willing to do more with less because I don't have a family, which makes many things simple for me that are harder for others (like insurance, day care, extra expenses, working at home while trying to balance family life, etc).<br /><br />Going in a bullet point format, here is a final list of tips. If there's any point or number of points that you want to know more about, or if there's even something else I haven't covered completely, feel free to ask a question in the comments section. I'll do my best to answer based on my own experiences.<br /><br />More truth on the freelance writing experience:<br /><br /></span><ul><li>Develop a thick skin. Even if you are one of the best, you'll get rejected a LOT. If you take it personally, you'll burn out too early to ever see success. Develop a thick skin and go from there.</li><li>Recognize you could get lonely. Freelance writing is a long lonely job. Take a break and spend an hour at a book store, take a walk in the park, or go out for a cheap meal. Just being around people often helps, and you need this to keep your sanity over the long run.</li><li>The money will be hard early on. Very hard.</li><li>Private clients will pay the most, and will be the hardest to find.</li><li>Some types of writing, like technical and sales copy writing, will pay far better than others (like content writing). The more expensive the writing, the harder it is to break into that market.</li><li>You pay self-employment tax. This varies greatly based on circumstances, but a basic rule of thumb is that you will pay 12-15% more than you are used to.</li><li>You must have self-confidence, because many people who think they are helping you will inadvertently (or maybe even intentionally) put you down during the hard times when you need support the most. At these times only your own self confidence and determination will see you through.<br /></li><li>Get a community. A supportive online community can be very helpful during the rough times - but don't go there so often that you spend more there than actually writing.</li><li>Be open to learning multiple styles of writing. This makes cobbling together clients and a solid writing resume, as well as a working income, much simpler.</li><li>Specialize in a popular niche to really get some private client attention.</li><li>If you don't know what cold calling is, learn it. This remains one of the best ways to find private clients who can become your biggest paychecks.</li><li>Never undersell yourself. If in doubt, charge 20-30% more than you think you're worth. I was stunned when I did this and saw my workload double, then did it again and saw the demand stay exactly the same. Don't work for less when clients have already decided you're worth more. I've been told by clients who pay me $36 an hour that I don't charge nearly enough. Good to know.</li><li>You have to learn to concentrate on the very short term, in a one-step-at-a-time method to keep your work running smoothly and keep yourself sane but if you want to succeed long term you have to be able to keep an eye on the long term picture without getting overwhelmed. It can be a tough balancing act.</li><li>Learn what passive income is right away and devote a MINIMUM of 10% of all your working time towards building this passive income. Start with <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/">HubPages</a>, <a href="http://www.infobarrel.com/signup.php?ref_id=3671">InfoBarrel</a>, <a href="http://www.suite101.com/">Suite101</a>, and <a href="http://www.xomba.com/referral/777a93f1">Xomba</a> and go from there. It may take two years to see big results, but you'll kick yourself in the butt for not doing more while being thankful you started at all.<br /></li><li>If you have the choice, start at part time and go from there. If you're a college student and money's not an issue, jump right in.</li></ul>That's it for this new post on learning some <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com">truth about freelance writing</a>. I hope you found this useful, and feel free to leave any comments or questions you have.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-51778216562089688212010-08-19T23:24:00.016-05:002010-08-21T00:51:34.984-05:00Freelance Writing Updates, Advice, and Important Miscellania<h1>More Freelance Writing Advice, Corrections, and Updates</h1> Hey all. I appreciate all the kind words from the last blog post of mine, about <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/08/celebrating-writing-milestones.html">celebrating freelance writing milestones</a>. Every single comment I receive that tell me I've helped to inspire people to get started, or helped people take the next step in freelance writing really fires me up and I count each one as a huge blessing. Thanks for the great comments, and thank you all even more for pushing yourselves to meet your goals in life. Even a quick e-mail note telling me you're a college student who writes only $100 a week just to travel during the summers - that's exciting and awesome from my point of view and I appreciate all the stories you've all shared with me.<br /><br />For this post, there are going to be a lot of odds and ends that I cover as it seems like that time of year where there's one little note of interest here and one other note of interest there. I'm not sure how comprehensive this will be for complete newbies, but hopefully between all the little things I want to cover there will be some gems of information that are worth knowing, and I'll mention all the resources that I personally know are worth paying for. Yes, those will be affiliate links, but anyone who has followed this blog for any amount of time knows that's not why I'm in this one. Look at it from my point of view: I absolutely am defensive of my name and reputation because it's one of the few things I can generally control. If I don't feel completely comfortable with a product, I won't recommend it and if I'm willing to take an affiliate commission, then I know I'm putting my reputation on the line with each recommendation, so I'm very careful about what I endorse.<br /><br />And as with many past websites, I reserve the right to pull that endorsement at any time as I see fit based on changes or actions of the site or resource in question. The past couple weeks have also taught me some things I wasn't aware of before, and I found some high quality blogs that are also worth a mention, particularly for those of you just becoming familiar with concepts like "Lifestyle Design" or "Automated Residual Income." <br /><br />So while there are plenty of reviews and more advice coming up in later posts, right now this one is going to be a hodge-podge. Based on the sheer number of e-mails I get, I will include in this freelance writing blog post:<br /><ul><li>All the paid resources I can personally vouch for and have bought or used myself.</li><li>Some blog posts worth following (any blog I've linked to in post in the past is most likely still on my heavily recommended list).<br /></li><li>Updates on various online writing websites and what I think of them as of the date of this blog post (08/20/2010).</li><li>Some announcements on future projects I'm working on and will be releasing by the end of the year.</li><li>More comments throughout badgering new readers to get started NOW, because getting started is the most important piece of advice anyone can get for freelance writing or building passive income.</li></ul>So first and foremost:<br />If you haven't already started, <span style="font-weight: bold;">get started NOW! </span>(See, told ya' I'd be badgering over this one). If you learn everything there is to know over 8 months, in 8 months you have knowledge and you have nothing to show for your learning. The guy who throws up 10 hubs a day, even at random without keyword research, he's not getting enough for his work, but he'll have hundreds of hubs and therefore he will be making money.<br /><br />So people have asked for my recommendations on paid resources. I'll give the list here, but I want to make sure this is perfectly clear: not every person has the same needs as I do, which is especially true since I'm working to switch from a mostly freelance model to a mostly passive income model. These have worked for me and I recommend them to other people. I'm also NOT saying that I don't trust anything that is not on this list. The best programs in the world might be out there and I don't even know about them. But these are the ones I can personally vouch for:<br /><br /><a href="http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/465.html">The Keyword Academy</a> - This is an amazing program that Court and Mark oversee, and newbies get their first month for $1, then it's $33 a month after that. If you're looking to learn how to earn passive income, how to find back links, and want to learn to make a full time residual income, this is the place. As of this writing they have a goal of helping 1,000 students reach their goal of $1,000 a month passive income within 12 months. Strongly recommend if you can afford it and put in the time to work a little bit every day.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?ii=585824&c=ib&aff=45791&cl=99174">Celeste's E-Book on Constant-Content</a> - Nobody rocks <a href="http://www.constant-content.com/?aref=4273">Constant-Content</a> like Celeste. If you want to know how to make it at CC, this is the one and only guide.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?ii=121991&c=ib&aff=45791&cl=27349">Writer Gig's E-Book on eHow</a> - I used to have this one on the sidebar, then I took it down. NOT because of quality - Writer Gig's book is the real deal, but after the eHow and Demand Studios mess, I wanted to wait and see what happened before putting this back up again. While it's not 100% up to date because of the new format, if you're approved to write for Demand Studios and want to make the most out of their residual income articles, this is still your best resource.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=111879&c=ib&aff=45791">Justin's Great E-Book: Life After the Cubicle </a>- Justin as a great blog, and he worked a year on what is obviously a passion. Comes with MP3 Coaching and deals with a wide variety of topics that people have to deal with when looking to work for themselves or get away from the cubicle life they hate so much. Highly recommend.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003LMAIK6?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B003LMAIK6">The 4 Hour Work Week (Audio Book) Revised and Expanded by Timothy Ferriss</a> - Not every part of this book is right for everyone, and it's not meant to be. Some of the exercises are great for individuals, others I think are a touch corny. But in the end, the expanded version of this book is incredible, and if you are willing to give it a shot, there is something here for everyone who can learn to make a side income, chase their dreams, become a more efficient worker, and find a much better path that what most people are following right now. I listen to this all the time for encouraging and motivational background. In fact, this is what I'm listening to right now as I type this blog post.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/097220265X?ie=UTF8&tag=sinclewi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=097220265X">How to Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer (Print Book)</a> - Best book I've found for magazine writing, freelance writing print markets, and how querying and research is best done for maximum effect.<br /><br />These are the paid resources I would recommend at this point. You know, as long as you <span style="font-weight: bold;">immediately started working on your writing career</span> even as you were reading them. Without getting started, they're just more information overload. If you want passive income and don't know where to start, <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/">start with HubPages</a>. It's where I started seeing major results, and I know it's one of the first places Lissie started seeing success online. It's perfect for beginners.<br /><br />Secondly, there have been some very good blog posts recently that are worth having a look at. Some of my favorites from the past month or so:<br /><br />JadeDragon's post on <a href="http://www.innovativepassiveincome.com/constant-content-demand-studios/">Constant-Content Success</a> and why most new writers fail there (and why they have no excuse to). His observations on CC and how writers should be able to sell a lot here and why most don't are dead on with what I've seen. Yes, he links to one of my posts from the blog, but this truly is a great blog post and comes back to the all important point: you have to get started.<br /><br />Okay, this one is older, but if you're new and haven't seen Allyn Hane's: <a href="http://bloggerillustrated.net/everything-you-need-to-know-about-backlinks/">Everything You Need to Know About Backlinks</a>, you're missing out. Go watch, read, then come back and get started.<br /><br />Take a look at this blog: "<a href="http://www.my4hrworkweek.com/">My 4 Hour Work Week</a>." I've only discovered this one recently, and obviously he is also a fan of Ferriss' work, but it is great to see another perspective on learning to make passive income online, on the hard work to get there, and on how progress does happen.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.livingorsurviving.com/">Change Your Life, Are You Living or Surviving?</a> Not about freelance writing at all, but this is a question every single one of us should be asking constantly. If you don't get the question, then it's REALLY time for you to stop and start thinking about what it might mean and what direction your life is going.<br /><br />Check out Lissie's Passive Income Online article on <a href="http://lissowerbutts.com/online-income-the-secret-to-success-is/">The Secret to Online Success</a>. Lissie is great, friendly, and and hits the nail on the head on this fantastic post!<br /><br />Felicia is an absolute inspiration and does a FAR better job updating her blog consistently than I am here. She had a couple of great posts worth reading, one reflective on <a href="http://www.nojobformom.com/2010/08/07/the-write-path/">Choosing the Write Way</a> (nice), and another on <a href="http://www.nojobformom.com/2010/08/03/dream-big-and-think-long-term/">Dreaming Big But Thinking Long Term</a>. They're both worth the read, and might be that last little push to get you moving.<br /><br />And last but not least, thank you to TW for <a href="http://www.completewritingsolutions.com/2010/07/another-look-at-content-mills/comment-page-1/#comment-312">Another Look on Content Mills</a>. Before anyone comments on whether or not the math was right, wrong, or otherwise, read the article, read the comments, and realize that whether or not he understood the math for the specific example, the concept is absolutely correct and Demand Studios gets mentioned a lot in the comments because of it.<br /><br />Finally, as for the questions about whether some future business projects I've alluded to have anything to do with e-books or creating my own writing e-book, the answer is yes and kind of. Before the end of this year I do intend to create a few e-books that aren't just aimed at beginners, but go into things like running an actual business, finding clients, carving out a niche, improving query letters, and working efficiently to build freelance and passive income at the same time. I also have a very big project I'm proud to co-author aimed at college aged kids, or kids wondering if college really is a good idea anymore or not, and what the real options are versus what they're being told.<br /><br />So yeah, there's a lot coming out in the future, and since there seems to be plenty of interest, I'll make sure to keep things posted here. A creative writing project I was hoping to have up this fall is running behind schedule a little bit, but we'll see what everything's looking at by Christmas.<br /><br />So that's it for this update. Plenty of reading, plenty of resources, now get out there and don't you dare settle for anything less than your wildest dreams!Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-5736679883033541072010-08-06T18:52:00.002-05:002010-08-06T19:27:33.914-05:00Celebrating Writing Milestones!<h1>I Am One Happy Freelance Writer</h1> Sometimes you toil for months or even years (years especially if you tend to be stop-and-go like I am - always the sprinter, always had trouble with marathon running) wondering why you can't hit that huge <span style="font-weight: bold;">freelance writing</span> or <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com"><span style="font-weight: bold;">passive income breakthrough</span></a> that so many people have hit before you. Sometimes you see only slow snail-paced movements and you start wondering if you'll possibly have the energy to finish the race to your goals before becoming too exhausted to do anything but quit.<br /><br />And then sometimes....and then sometimes...<br /><br />Sometimes you hit that week that not only changes your perspective or your business, but it also changes your life. Based on the title, you want to take a guess on what the last few days in August have been like for me? :)<br /><br />Well to copy I quote I came up with earlier this week: "The ceiling that marks the limits of what I can accomplish seems to be flying further and further away with every passing week." Wednesday I landed the largest writing contract I've ever had, and it's a beauty. In fact, it's probably going to push me into the next tax bracket. I call that a nice problem to have. The next day on Thursday I broke through a barrier I've been chasing since March 1st, over a full 5 months ago when I made $19.83 in one day with AdSense. I finally broke through that $20 in one day barrier, and so far in August my total passive income is destroying the 15% a month growth I've been aiming for (and almost averaging) this year.<br /><br />Back on May 30th, so beginning of June for all intensive purposes, I wrote <a href="http://master-dayton.blogspot.com/2010/05/residual-income-freelance-writing-made.html">this blog post about passive income</a>, encouraging people just starting out to keep with it, even though it's hard to see the work. One of my biggest points was that in the beginning it took 6 months for me to get to $40 in one month, but after two years my AdSense had single months where it grew that fast, or close to that much. I also stated that I expected to make the $100 jump from $200 a month to $300 month in about 4 to 5 months, less than half the time it took me to get from one hundred a month to two hundred. Well I hate to make an early call, with Murphy's Law and all, but barring Google dying or an atomic bomb disaster of a month, I can already call it: I'm going to blast past $300 this month, only 3 months from the time I was celebrating the $200 mark.<br /><br />That's a snowball effect, and it's a beautiful thing when it's working for you instead of against you. Hopefully you'll all not only enjoy this day and these accomplishments with me, but take encouragement, as well. I'm not the most tech-savvy person, and in fact that's one area where my smarts don't help me a lot. It takes me a long time to figure out basic SEO stuff that came easy to other people. I'm not a natural at all at marketing myself or pitching to clients to get huge writing jobs. But I know my craft, and I'm stubborn as the most bull headed mule you'll ever meet. So I'll learn. Very slowly, and with many nights banging my head against the wall, but I will keep going to learn what I have to and accomplish my goals through sheer work if nothing else.<br /><br />I'm sure there are many ways to get to where I am faster and with less pain than it took me...but the point is by being good at what I do, by working on my craft, and by hammering away I managed to get here. I'm going to make more this year than I ever have in a year despite a really ugly first few months, and next year might take me right out of the middle class bracket...which is pretty freaking cool. The passive income is growing and snowballing and giving me more freedom than ever, and getting me close to the point where I can start doing some serious outsourcing to ramp up the passive income projects even more. <br /><br />If I can get here by pure force of will and stubbornness, what's stopping you?<br /><br />It wasn't that long ago that I was unemployed with no prospects and no emergency funds, and it wasn't that many years ago when I was homeless for a while. If you really want the dream of a freelance writing or passive income, just keep fighting for it.<br /><br />I can tell you from first hand experience these breakthrough moments are absolute bliss, and even better than you imagine.<br /><br />Thanks for sharing this moment with me, now go and make one of your own!Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3832086699025401540.post-39710305633803137992010-07-28T14:46:00.009-05:002010-07-28T21:17:58.303-05:00How I Turn Demand Studios Rejections Into Passive Cash<h2><i>Rejected Demand Studios Articles Can Make a Mint if You Know What You're Doing</i></h2> One of the most important aspects of creating a <span style="font-weight: bold;">successful freelance writing career</span> is knowing how to get the most out of your articles, and knowing how to ride through the rough spots. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a fan of writing for Demand Studios as a way of supplementing a writing income, especially for beginners, part-timers, or college students. Even if you're not particularly skilled at typing or researching, you should be able to write at least one article an hour, which translates to $15 an hour at a minimum. If you're very good at quick research, typing, and writing to format, there's no reason you can't make a lot more. When I'm really distracted I make about $22.50 an hour. When I'm not distracted, I make $30-$40 an hour. If you're other option is unemployment, or if you're a college student saving up an emergency fund, that's not bad scratch.<br /><br />But I'm not a sunshine pumper, either. I try to be as honest as I can about what a freelance writing career is like, and to give the pros and cons of various freelance writing resources that are available online. Because of that, I'll also fully admit that Demand Studios can be a complete and total pain in the ass. And by "can be" I mean "eventually will be." You can count on that just like death and taxes.<br /><br />Normally revision requests from the copy editors are reasonable, and early on it's a little bit more of a headache as you learn the guidelines and nuances of each form. But sometimes there are just completely off the wall or unreasonable requests from the CE that make it abundantly clear that the article is no longer worth your time. For me, this falls into the 8%-11% range, depending on the month. That includes articles rejected after revision (>1% in my case) or articles where I abandon the rewrite because it's either impossible or not worth my time (7% all time, about 12% in recent months).<br /><br />To give you an idea of what my overall stats for Demand Studios are:<br /><br />Approved No Rewrites: 74%<br />Approved Rewrites: 18%<br />Abandoned Rewrites: 7%<br />Rejected Articles: 1%<br /><br />And that's from over 700, almost 800, articles so it's a pretty solid base of comparison. So the question comes up, <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">what do I do with the abandoned rewrites?</span> I hate wasting time and research, and 65 articles adds up to quite a bit of writing and research that I'm not getting paid for. Rejected articles the text stays there for you to copy, but abandoned rewrites disappear, so make sure to copy and paste your text into a notepad or word file so you don't lose it. There are a few strategies you can use when dealing with an abandoned rewrite or rejected article:<br /><br /><ol><li>Throw a hissy fit, refuse to work anymore, and not make any money (not recommended).</li><li>Just move on with life and forget about it (fully acceptable, but still wastes that time and effort you made on those articles)</li><li>Use Demand Studios' keyword research on the article and take your information to your own blog, InfoBarel, Xomba, Squidoo lens, or HubPage. (<span style="font-weight: bold;">CHA-CHING!</span>)</li></ol>The ONLY obligation you have as a writer based on the Demand Studios contract is to NOT use the EXACT title of the article. That's it. All that information and research belongs to you, so if you want the most out of your article rejections at Demand Studios, look at it as a chance to build up your passive income.<br /><br />We can sit here and argue about how effective Demand Studios really is in finding profitable markets and doing keyword research and all that jazz, but the point is that DS is willing to pay $15 or more for these articles because they believe there is money to be made. So if they're not willing to pay you for your work, then you mine as well profit from it yourself!<br /><br />Some recent examples for me:<br /><br />Speargun Regulations <span style="font-weight: bold;">becomes</span> Speargun Fishing Regulations<br />Russian Restaurants Near Worchester, MA <span style="font-weight: bold;">becomes</span> Worchester MA Russian Restaurants<br />Flathead Catfish Fishing Tips <span style="font-weight: bold;">becomes</span> Flathead Catfish Tips <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">or</span> Tips for Flathead Catfish Fishing <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">or</span> Fishing Tips for Flathead Catfish<br /><br />See the difference? This is all legal based on the agreement - just change the title of your article or HubPage to use the same keyword but a different order. Then you can expand on your article without having to worry about all the really annoying restrictions that DS puts on the articles and how sources have to be cited, and you can use that blog of the guy who has been a professional fill-in-the-blank for 20+ years as a source that you couldn't use for DS because it's a blog, and therefore unreliable as a source.<br /><br />So write for Demand Studios, and make a lot of money doing it, but when a rejection comes along or you think a rewrite request just (for whatever reason, and there are many) just doesn't work, <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">go over to HubPages</span></a>, open an account if you don't already have one, and put your articles up there. Throw on some Amazon and eBay modules that can earn you affiliate commissions, add your AdSense code, and enjoy the extra passive income you can earn from all of these sources. If you don't want to put up a whole HubPage around a subject, consider editing the text to make a good <a href="http://www.infobarrel.com/signup.php?ref_id=3671">InfoBarrel</a> or <a href="http://www.xomba.com/referral/777a93f1">Xomba</a> article. Each of these still gives you the opportunity to make some AdSense income from your work, which is far better than just throwing that time away.<br /><br />Personally, I make a HubPage out of most of these articles, as I find the topics are ones that a HubPage can rank well for, especially when I double the text, add some links, and set up a good hub around the topic. In fact, it's almost a guarantee that you will outrank whatever article they eventually approve on the topic, even if you do an absolute minimum of backlink and SEO work. This is why I don't let unreasonable rewrite requests from Demand Studios get me down anymore. If I receive one (especially when it's obvious I know 100x more on the topic than the CE calling me out), I simply go to HubPages, create a new hub, and then gather some basic backlinks later on when I'm working on building my passive income. <br /><br />Some of those hubs have made a little bit of income for me, several have made nothing. And one or two have done very well and consistently bring in per month about the same amount that DS offered me upfront for those articles. Just like with any online venture, some work really well while others bomb completely. But at least this way my words don't disappear into oblivion and all that work goes unpaid. It's making the most out of a given situation, and even better in my case it means that 10% of my freelance writing time ends up becoming passive income work that will keep working for me long after the initial pages are up.<br /><br />So for those of you writing for Demand Studios because you need the money, and who are frustrated by the rejections or the rewrite requests that are too ludicrous or time consuming to even consider, then build up your passive income. If you haven't been building any passive income before now (bad writer - hit yourself on the head with a newspaper), this is the perfect time to <a href="http://hubpages.com/_352m8jex91k9t/tour/affiliate/">open an account on HubPages</a>, get approved for Amazon affiliate, eBay affiliate, and Google AdSense, and start building passive income. Even if this wasn't your original intention, if you write 50 DS articles a week and abandon even 5% of the articles (way less than I abandon, btw, and I make what amounts to a full time living from DS) then after 50 weeks of writing over the year you would have 150 HubPages earning passive income for you. It doesn't take long for just a little bit of backlink work to turn that into an avalanche of passive income.<br /><br />So that's my advice for you guys today. It's a great way to write for Demand Studios for freelance writing income now, for building passive income for the future, and to set yourself up in a way that the occasional rejection or really unreasonable rewrite request won't get you down - but can actually end up exciting you as it gives you yet another 300+ word head start on your next passive income page.<br /><br />So keep writing, guys, and as always I look forward to hearing from you! Keep following the dream.Master Daytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12474000076679558912noreply@blogger.com9