Writing for BellaOnline

If you're a Web writer, chances are that you've considered writing for BellaOnline, or that you thought about it and ran the other way. If you haven't heard of it, here's what it is- a big 'ole site about pretty much everything. It's the "second-largest site for women," according to the owner, and it hires category editors to take on each of the topics. It's not just for innies- outies can also apply to be category editors and write about whatever it is they get hired for.

You don't get paid for writing, per se, but you make money on affiliate sales through the site and can sell stuff through the site's store. Since I rarely make anything on any of it, I assumed no one was reading it. And since no one was reading it, I stopped taking it very seriously long ago. My writing went from being serious and informative in 2007 to being mostly there to amuse myself in 2008 and to pretty much phoning it in by 2009.

Being a giant dork, I either didn't know or forgot, I'm not sure which, that your traffic numbers are available through the huge, complicated admin area. I don't think I'd ever noticed them before until earlier this week. After assuming for the last couple of years that no one was reading it, I actually looked at the numbers a couple of days ago. More than 10,000 people a month are reading these. Seriously. About 10,000 to 12,000+ people every month are reading about fictitious Bob Dylan translation devices and saw me make fun of poor, innocent Art Garfunkel. I kind of want to crawl under a rock right now.

But here's the biggest question- where's all the hate mail? Normally with those kinds of numbers you can expect some regular hate mail. Not only are people not buying through Bella, they don't even care enough to send a little hate mail? Thanks, Bella readers.