Thursday, June 7, 2012

Armchair BEA Day 4: Beyond the Blog

Welcome to day four of Armchair BEA! This week is just flying by, you guys. I hope you're all having as much fun as I am. Today's topic is 'beyond the blog' - sharing tips for taking your writing beyond blogging, and possibly making money from it. 

This one’s actually kind of easy for me, since I’m lucky enough to say that writing is my actual career - I’m an author and freelance writer. I published my first book, Blue Sky Days, in January, I’ve had several short stories published in online magazines, and I also write for HubPages and Squidoo.

Some of my tips:
If you want to write for sites where you can make money (like HubPages and Squidoo), there are a few things to know:
     -It takes time to make money on writing sites. Most sites pay based on the number of clicks you get on ads that are spread throughout your articles. Some pay a flat rate per article, but that's rare from my experience. How quickly your revenue ads up is based on a number of factors - search-friendly topics and titles, content, keywords, quality, how much you advertise your writing (on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc), and how much other people advertise/share your articles.  
     -You absolutely cannot post duplicate content, even if you wrote it yourself - ie, you can't write an article for one site and post the exact same article on a different site. You can, however, write several articles about the same subject and link to your own articles to draw attention to them that way.
     -Some sites you'll make money from your writing, and others you'll make money from selling things. For instance, all the money I make on HubPages is based on page views/ad clicks from people who have actually read my articles, whereas the majority of the money I make on Squidoo (with the exception of my monthly revenue share) is from Amazon and eBay sales. My most popular page on Squidoo is Gift Ideas for the Harry Potter Fan in Your Life - I've sold dozens of items from that one page, and I make a commission from Amazon for every sale.

A couple other things that I haven't personally done, but that I know other people have tried: having blog sponsors (where people pay you to post an ad/their banner on your blog). I've also known a few people who write blogs with essay-style posts, and after awhile have compiled them into an ebook with all their wisdom or tips on a certain subject, and then they sell it on Amazon.
Just don't expect to get rich quick…or get rich at all. I’m going to tell you right now that the chances of that happening are slim. The majority of freelance writers I know have a 'day job' because they don't make enough money from their writing to live on. I don’t want to discourage you, I just want you to go in forewarned. My best advice would be to start out doing it for fun - write a few articles and let the revenue slowly trickle in (or, if you're lucky, flood in) month after month. You may be wildly successful, and if it's something you're passionate about, I hope you are wildly successful.

Have you tried any of these things? What are some of your best tips? 
PS - if you have any questions about anything I mentioned here, please feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer. 
 

5 comments:

  1. Great suggestions! Very informative. I'm not sure I want to work that hard -- maybe after I'm retired, but you gave some good information. My BEA Post

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  2. This is some really good information. thanks so much for sharing.

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  3. I joined Squidoo last year and love it--and I do like that income that comes in. It's not super great but it's income. :)

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  4. Most of your information was new to me. I haven't really considered writing anything for outside sites. The only way my blog is monetized is via amazon links. I have had offers for paid links on my site, but usually the pay is tiny and the links aren't even book related, so I've passed.

    The most ridiculous offers I get though, are the ones where they say they'll write a guest post for me "for free," but only if I post their links in the article and elsewhere on my site. So ridiculous! Those go straight to the trash folder.

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  5. I definitely haven't tried any of those things. I think for right now, I'm okay with not monetizing my blog at all!

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~Marie

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