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.

SEO Fail

I seem to be good at SEO, but the problem is often that what I choose to write about has a fairly small audience. People who are searching for the stuff I write about can find it, but not many of them are searching. I never choose those trending topics that everyone is supposed to go for in order to get big numbers. It can get frustrating to see useable information not get big numbers because it's not about car chases or whatever it is that's trending right now. So, let's just try a little experiment, shall we?

Twilight is a movie. Twilight is a book. Twilight, right? Have you read Twilight on your Kindle or Blackberry or watched Twilight on your iPhone or iPad? The iPad does exist. You can watch Twilight while holding an iPad with Steve Jobs. Edward Cullen! Edward Cullen is a character, don't you think? I'll bet that Edward Cullen has both an iPod and an iPad. Video game hacks! Aren't video game hacks grand? Edward Cullen from Twilight uses video game hacks on his iPhone while listening to his iPod.

I feel dirty now.

Freelance Writing Roundup

Everyone once in a while I do a round up of what's going on in my corner of freelance writing. Since I am a Web writer and PR specialist, it is inevitably pathetic, but here what's been going on this month so far:

I started with Break Studios. I don't know if they hire outside the U.S., but anything I can do to keep from relying on Demand I will do. The pay is about the same as DS but the hassle factor is supposed to be better. We'll see. You can only grab five articles at a time from them instead of the 20 that I can with Demand, and I did five one night just to see how it will go. It seems like a long lag time for review, but if the hassle level is low, I'm sold.

Went on Atkins. Lost 14 pounds.

Dealt with two horrible, national-news-headline shootings, both within minutes from my house and avoided writing bad poetry about my cynicism and distrust of people. Yay me!

Worked on my book about gardening that is under contract with Atlantic Publishing. The contract isn't great, but it's a print book that will likely be a nice little resume booster. It's been an interesting experience working with them, and I am enjoying working on such an enormous project instead of my usual 500-word bites of knowledge.

Worked super hard on a press release that is so specialized and technical that I have to call engineer relatives every five minutes to figure out how to proceed with different aspects of it. On the bright side, my PR efforts yielded articles in both Popular Mechanics and Design World this month.

Had a query turned down by Dog Fancy. Growl.


On another note, it's Valentine's Day, or it was a couple of hours ago. I am a creature of habit and of odd, drunken fascinations with geeky things. I write all the time, sometimes 12 hours a day, and take little interest in other things. Despite this, I have a spouse who understands it and even supports it all. Happy Valentine's Day, spouse. You are a special person for dealing with all of the idiosyncrasies and weirdness without complaining. When I told you I got in a fight at the Sam's Club last week, you didn't bat an eyelash. Thanks for being as understanding as you are.

WTH

I got home from an errand a little while ago, and heard an enormous chorus of police cars when I got out of the car. The last time I heard so many sirens a policeman had been shot, so I was a little concerned about what might be going on. Maybe it was just an accident nearby? Maybe it was a robbery? No dice.

The local university was attacked by a shooter, possibly two shooters, and at least six people were shot. Three have died and several are pretty bad off. That's bad enough- to happen so close to where I live and to have the community rocked by yet another shooting (last week it was a school 15 minutes from me).

But, this particular building is where my spouse attends courses. He was not there at the time, luckily. The campus has always felt pretty safe to me. I have taken courses there before, and I go to regular events there. It's unbelievable that this would happen here- and it's not even some over-stressed student who lost it. A professor? At UAH? I don't understand any of this.


And btw- no student alerts were sent out. There was no student notification of any kind, even when the campus was on lock down. Spouse and friend of spouse, both of whom attend courses in the building, got no email, no text and no phone call. Great job, UAH.

Update: 2+ hours after the shootings, the emails are just now being received.

Update: Amy Bishop. From news reports, no implications, no malice. Just information.

DS and Frustration

If you write for Demand Studios, you know the good and the bad. They are flexible, you can have as much work as you want and the pay is pretty good. They have a lot of types of titles to choose from, and they pay often. However, the frustration level when you deal with them can absolutely and without question drive you over the edge. I often have to take a month or two away from them and do client work because I can't take the frustration level for very long.

If you work for them or have been thinking about it, this is all you need to see:




It's like someone opened a window into my soul.

Salinger and Seclusion

I was pretty surprised to find out that Salinger was 91. I've always admired him for his reclusive tendencies, probably because that's kind of my ideal life. I've always wanted to be able to write and not deal with very many people. The reality is that to be able to make a living by writing, the work has to be out there for public consumption and it has to be something that will attract readers. But when they do read in large numbers, I get a little squirmy. I can't imagine things on the scale of Salinger's readers and critics.

If I even have a day when the blog has a lot of viewers, I immediately know that there is a link somewhere that is pointing people to the idiot who is talking such nonsense. Imagine someone of Salinger's caliber attempting to deal with not only his legions of fans but the literary critics and people who wanted desperately to find something wrong with his work so that they could feel important. Yeah, I think his lifestyle made perfect sense.

I actually read this article about a week before Salinger died. Most of them have good reasons to avoid a constant onslaught of critics trying to make a name for themselves by picking them apart.

Product Testing, Free Stuff and Blogging

Ok, so I had mentioned a few weeks ago the new FTC ruling about blogging and product promotion. Ever since then, I always look for the disclosures on blogs. Some of them have them on posts when they are reviewing an item and some of them have a general page that says that some product opinions are the result of a free product to test, which seems to meet the guidelines of disclosure.

The interesting part is that some bloggers are saying exactly where the got the items from, which led me to MyBlogSpark. One blog that I read frequently disclosed that a product had come to them through MyBlogSpark, and I have a blog, so I thought- hey, why have I not tried to do this? So, I signed up, and pretty rapidly I got an email saying that they had a General Mills cereal thing going on, and did I want a bunch of cereal to test.

So that led to one thought- Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Next to C-3POs and Smurfberries, which they don't actually make anymore, Cinnamon Toast Crunch is one of the best cereals ever made. So, testing CTC was no problem whatsoever. I actually got several coupons for the really big cereal boxes- not the tiny ones that they keep on the bottom shelf- from General Mills through MyBlogSpark. And yes, they were tasty. And yes, I probably ate too many of them because there were four giant boxes full of CTC sitting there staring at me.

So, the real question then is how to blog about them. Do I just do a review about the cereal? That's not really my style unless it's a review article. Do I just talk about getting free items? That's probably not what they had in mind. Do I just talk about disclosure and then disclose that I got some stuff? That's really has nothing to do with the thing that I was reviewing. So, I figured some type of hybrid was pretty much what I can do. I hope you liked it.

Two Years

I seriously want to take in a Haitian orphan. I don't know how to go about doing it. I found out that I do meet the legal requirements, but I don't think they are being taken out of the country at the moment. It seems like if they could airlift them out, a lot of people would be willing to adopt then and there. Here's info on adopting from Haiti. According to that, it can take two years to complete the whole red-tape process. It seems like a crime to make them wait so long. Surely they will change this in the wake of what's happened? It would be easy to airlift kids to Florida, I could be there in a few hours and then we'd go home. How do lawyers and politicians succeed in making everything so much more complicated than it should be?

What is a Managing Editor?

I've seen a lot of speculation about just what a managing editor is, some of whom attribute all kinds of responsibilities to that title. In truth, however, there is no one job description for a managing editor. I worked for a paper that utilized a a managing editor as a reporter who also helped other reporters with questions. It wasn't a very big elevation of responsibility, but it was useful to have someone to go with questions besides the busy editor.

At another paper, the managing editor served as the editor and handled everything that an editor in chief is supposed to do. The title of editor was given to the paper's owner, though he rarely had anything to do with the actual content and I wonder whether he even read it most days.

While a managing editor is fairly prestigious in that land where there is air and sunlight, I keep finding that managing editors are pretty low-level editors on the Internet. They are often just over-worked editors with little responsibility within the actual publication. Then I came across the term contributing editor at a site that I'm starting with. Maybe it's just me, but that seems a little odd. Either you're an editor or you aren't. If you're a contributor, why are you editing? I thought editors were people who couldn't write and so take out their venom on people who can?

Maybe there's a need for new online titles for editors who also write, editors who actually do have some control over the publication and editors who have a need for an important title to compensate for what is lacking in their lives. How about God-complex editor, editor-not-in-chief-because-the-title-is-meaningless and editor-until-someone-will-pay-me-to-write.

Nastiness and Skin

A few days ago I had a rather bad day, full of nastiness, deceit and cowardice. The thing about writing is that if your name is exposed to the masses, they see what you do and assume that you aren't an actual person. They feel the need to comment on everything, to express any negative feeling they have about anything that you wrote. Cowards sometimes send you nastiness for no reason other than that they can.

One day last week I got a some hate mail from someone who didn't like an article that I wrote about a year ago. They didn't really understand the article and took it the wrong way. I took the time to communicate with the person, explaining my position and talking it out until we both understood each other. It was fine. It was solved.

The very next day, I was forwarded a horrific hate letter from someone at a site that I write for. This coward wrote to the site to complain about me, saying that a couple of my articles were crap and that everything I did should be taken down. My attitude was bad, my ideas were bad and I was just basically a pile of crap. It was lovely.

Later that day, I found out that some cowardly asshole had linked to another of my articles on that site and called it stupid or something like that. The brain surgeon involved thought that the site, a gigantic content site that is more than 10 years old, was a blog. So, I'm getting a lot of traffic here from people who read that thing and my oh-so-nice response. Fuck 'em. If you are reading that thing, you're not much smarter than he is.

Here's the thing- writers are supposed to have a thick skin. That's the first thing that any seasoned writer will tell you. There are some people who won't appreciate you. There are some people who assume that because your name is out there you are a target for any random venom that they want to spew. You're supposed to grow a thick skin so that you can continue on through disappointments, rejections and assholes.

Somehow, this hasn't happened to me. I don't have a thick skin. I have a paper-thin skin. Someone being so nasty to me for no reason, especially when that person is completely wrong, is personal and awful. When it happens three times in two days, my confidence gets shot to hell. It's like going up against those high school bullies all over again. They all were so much taller than me and had way perkier boobs. They knew things about boys when I thought they were bizarre and possibly dangerous creatures. The bloggers and random cowards who complained about me and said rude things are nothing special. They are the schoolyard bullies who always seem to win.

So, they wanted to make me feel like crap? Well, they did. You guys win. Yay you! Do you feel better now? Do you feel important? Is everything compensated for? Do you have a book deal? Oh- that's me, sorry. I guess the time you put into your relentless complaints about my "attitude" and my grammar in a single article could have been better spent querying publishers. Pity.

New Year's Writing Resolutions

I didn't realize it the last time I updated the old blog, but that last post was my 200th post to this blog. I do have a few resolutions now that I've had a few days to reflect on what I really want to achieve this year versus what I really need to achieve this year.

Here were last year's resolutions, and here's how they stacked up:

"Stick to a basic work schedule." I did make a lot of headway with this, mostly by using two notebooks, numerous lists and a timer.
"Work on my novels." Ha ha, ha ha ha ha! Wow. Ha ha hee hee, ho ho. *wipes eyes* Excuse me, I'm back now.
"Read my work more often." I am getting marginally better at this. It still embarrasses me to read my own stuff, but I'm trying. I really am trying.
"Continue to build residuals." I have come a long way with that over the past year. I now have six or seven residual streams and have a few hundred a month coming in from them. That's a nice little insulator to have for peace of mind.

So this year, here's what I have:

Learn moderation. When I find something I want to do, I hit it pretty hard, time wise. I need to find better balance between personal writing projects, PR clients, content writing and residual building. I cant spend whole days writing fun stuff when there are opportunities out there that I could be missing because I've put up blinders to everything else.

Have confidence. This one I struggle with continuously and there may be no end to that struggle. I often take on work that pays less than it should because I lack the confidence to ask for more or to go after the higher-paid work. I recently had a bunch of high-paying articles and couldn't sleep a bit the night before I did them, convinced that it would all end in disaster. I go into meetings thinking that I know nothing and even when I am helpful I wonder if people weren't just being polite and pretending to think it was all useful and collaborative.

Shoot for print. Every year I say that I will, and it looks like this will be the year that it actually does happen. I do have a book deal, though it's certainly not the best one that ever came along. I may end up posting about it soon, but I haven't gone through all of the agreements yet, so I don't know what I can and can't say. Aside from that, I want to pitch an idea or two to at least one magazine and one publisher.

So, a year from now I may be laughing at this year's resolutions, or I may be wondering how I could shoot for so little. That's the great thing about the future- the anticipation of finding out is what drives us to continue on.

Putting Off Resolutions

I'll come up with them, I'll come up with them, but until then I have a rant. I really, really do not understand the constant texting and the obsession people have with iPhones and Blackberries. People seem to be aligning themselves along whether they have iPhones and text each other every five minutes and whether they don't.

I don't want to get into a lot of the bigger implicates of which is better, which actually keeps people "in contact" and whether it's actually better or worse to be in constant contact. I genuinely want to understand why so many people do this and if they understand how boring they are. I can literally no longer eat a meal with my brother because he texts people the whole time, takes pictures of what is going on around us and then tweets the pictures- all as we are eating together. Back in the day they called that rudeness and self-absorption. Today apparently it's called, well, I actually don't know. What is this called?

I went to Disney last year and I was truly puzzled by many of the people there. Here's how it works: you stand in line for 15 minutes to an hour in the heat and blinding sunlight, growing weary from standing on concrete and sweltering in the heat and humidity. When it is finally your turn, you get to sit down in the dark, enjoy cool air and experience a ride. Instead, many of the people treated the experience as an interruption of their texting time. They struggled to see their phones in the dark. They typed non-stop while on a ride, at Disney, during their vacations. Many of them watched the rides through their cameras as they filmed the entire experience.

I am very sad to see how boring many people who used to be lively, interesting and engaging have gotten. I can understand sending a text or making a cell phone call if you are looking for someone that you needed to meet somewhere and can't find them. I can understand it if you realize that you forgot to remind someone about something and need to send them a quick message. I can not understand texting people for hours a day about anything at all. I can't understand interrupting a meal, a movie or a work day to send junk messages to a bunch of people that you may not even know. If there is a real, logical reason other than "everyone is doing it- it's new" then I'd love to hear about it. Maybe it would soften the blow of seeing so many interesting people dry up and turn quiet, lifeless and just plain dull.

Preparing for Resolutions

I'm trying to come up with some new New Year's resolutions, even though it seems like it's only been a few months and therefore I should get a few more months before I have to think about this. Anyway, I thought I'd look around first and see what writing sites are posting as writers' resolutions.

First I found this one. Wow. No. Just- no. Every single one of the 10 is the opposite of what I want. I want fewer income streams, less going outside my comfort zone and less online networking. I also don't foresee enjoying the journey just for the sake of doing so. Enjoyment comes from seeing results.

Then I found this one. Just for disclosure's sake, this was written by my editor, but if it sucked I would still say so. This one is a lot closer to what I generally do each year. I always write out my goals longhand and really consider them before committing to allowing them to hang over my head for a year. It also breaks down the resolutions into the real categories they belong in- personal and financial.

Then there is this one, which seems kind of written for hobbyists. If my biggest problem was that I didn't take the time to read more, I would be a pretty happy cog.

So far, I haven't come across any New Year's resolutions for hardcore content writers who have to slog through keywords for hours at a time and sit in on meetings where no one listens to a word they say and then the non-listeners wonder later why their online strategy didn't work and what to do when insanely ruthless people are content to stab you in the back just to get a bigger piece of the pie when you know that the pie is always expanding and there are never enough people to eat it all so there's really no reason to even do that.

Gifts for Writers

This time of year I get a lot of hits from people who are looking for Christmas gifts for writers. Since last year's links seem to have evaporated for some reason, I'll make a new list.

Most writers want a Snake Wine Holder.If they don't care for wine, they may enjoy a nice Sack of Snakes.If they don't care for snakes, they may like a box of Conversation Cardsso that their conversations about wine will sound more scripted.

For weirdos who don't care for wine or snakes, there's always Uranium Ore,which is FINALLY in stock. For writers who don't appreciate radioactivity, there are Yoda Lights.If you know a writer who doesn't like Yoda lights, do they really deserve a gift? Really?

Questions Answered - No Problem

I get a lot of questions emailed to me through this here blog. People don't feel the need to leave me comments, but they do feel free to email. It's fine, though, I answer a lot of questions about freelance writing and "meet" some interesting people. However, I thought I might start answering questions here on the blog so that I don't get the same question a bunch of times, which does happen occasionally.

Here's the latest question:

How can I stay on track with my novel?

Answer: Beats the hell out of me. I am the last person on Earth who could answer this question. I have a list of about 14 novels that I've been working on for a long time. I have a sci-fi trilogy that I love, but I've been working on it for almost 20 years. It's all completed in my mind, but I never seem to have the time to put it all on paper.

So, I guess my advice would be to make a list of the novels that you have inside you, work on them piecemeal for a couple of decades and then one day realize that you will likely never have time to finish them all. You're welcome.

Disclose Your Stuff

The new FTC guidelines went into place at the beginning of the month, so if you're posting sponsored reviews, even if your payment is nothing more than a free sample of the item, you have to disclose it on your blog. I wrote a boring article about how it works and what you're supposed to do to comply with the new guidelines.

Basically, if you're giving a sponsored review, it's an advertisement. It's not about journalism or media law or what rights bloggers have or any of the rest of that. It's about complying with the laws that every other advertiser has had to comply with for decades. It's an ad. Disclose it. It's not the end of the world, like a lot of bloggers have decided. It's long, long overdue, in my opinion.

Twitter Results

I had been adamant about not joining Twitter. It wanted me, but I didn't want it. Finally, it came after me and won. I really thought it would be a huge time waster and that basically more of my life would get sucked into useless stuff that takes away from writing time (thanks, YouTube).

But, after using it for a month or so, it really isn't that bad. I have never asked anyone to follow me, I have never put Twitter links on anything else that I do and I have never marketed my stuff through the site, so I think I've avoided most of the major pitfalls as I see them. I think that if you don't avoid those three things, you can get seriously caught up in and end up with less writing time and more stress. Here's why:

More followers = crap

Getting more followers means nothing unless you're just using the site just to market your stuff. If you're marketing, pushing your links onto "friends," etc., then yeah, go for followers. Otherwise, I have actually seen some poor, misguided souls bragging about having more followers than other people. It's worn like penis size or something. That's just a waste of time.

Twitter links = irritation

"Follow me" links are irritating, without exception. Ick. Want followers? NEED followers? Get therapy.

Twitter marketing = meh

Yes, I do have to write articles about how good Twitter is for marketing, and actually, it kind of is- if you have something great to market. If you do have something great, word of mouth is probably better, but Twitter is good too. If you don't have something great to market, tweeting about it won't make it become so. Tweeting isn't alchemy that will turn crap into gold. I think Confucius once said that.

Just Had to Share

If you haven't already seen this, you have to:



Why didn't someone think of this years ago??

Email

Email used to be something that you enjoyed getting, like a friend calling or a letter from your grandmother. It is no longer. Everyday the email battle begins first thing in the morning with the onslaught that comes from that first push of the Inbox button. That tiny button holds back a dam of email that then floods your inbox in wave after wave of subject titles that demand your attention.

On a good morning, that number is fewer than 50. On a bad day, it's closer to 100. Every one of them has to be looked at, classified, archived, answered or deleted. This can easily take half an hour or more to do properly, ensuring that no client is left without an answer, no receipt is left unprinted, no payment is left undocumented and no friend is left wondering why you haven't answered. If that were the end of it, that wouldn't be a terrible drag on anyone's time.

Unfortunately, that's not the end of it. The email keeps coming. It keeps coming and coming. If you run to the store, it builds up while you're gone. If you stay away for a few hours, you have it to come home to. If you should ever take a day or two off, you fear opening it and finding out just how much of it there is to get rid of. You may hit Inbox with your eyes closed, dreading the final tally.

If you work online, you may have come to hate the email, and I do about half the time. Sometimes it's to be tolerated. Sometimes it's a nice distraction from other things. Sometimes it has unexpected surprises in it (kaching, ebook sale!). Sometimes it's a burden that never, ever seems to be lifted.

Inspirations

I'm watching Beowulf right now. Somehow it has taken me awhile to see the latest adaptation. I think I have now seen every film adaptation of it and I will doubtless see any others that are filmed. I have always loved and been inspired by the great hall in which everyone slept. Imagine it- a dark night, no electric lights glowing outside, no 911 and no radio to find out what was going on outside. Absolutely anything could happen. I have dreamed about that great hall, wishing I could see it's stone floors and dark, silent nights, moving silently through it in the night as all those around me slept.

Writing that touches you is unparalleled by anything else. It's better than a day that's not too warm and not too chilly. It's better than getting great clothes at a superb price. And let's face it- it's better than sex. It lasts for a lifetime unlike just about any other experience you can have.

Here are a few passages that may bore you or inspire you, I don't know which. But, they have always inspired me:

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

-Frank Herbert, Dune

If the Scientologists worshipped Frank Herbert instead of the guy they worship, I would be first in line. This quote has gotten me through a lot of ordeals and it will certainly continue to do so.

"Everything popular is wrong."

-Oscar Wilde

My man Wilde was rarely wrong, and he was certainly not wrong with this little sound bite. I have always felt that the popular stuff was somehow wrong, tailored toward machinery rather than humans. Popular clothing styles, popular music, popular TV shows- all crap. Sorry.


"Be strong saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this."

-Homer

This Illiad quote is probably what I would get tattooed on myself if I wasn't scared of tattoos. When my dog died a friend called and quietly recited this quote to me. I am grateful for having heard it, and it continues to speak to me.

"You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way."

-Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

This quote is so central to everything that I believe in that it ceases to be a quote and becomes more a a veil that I try to hide behind. All the things that prevent you from being your true self are useless, stifling problems that should be conquered.

The quotes that inspire people are often the ones that validate who they are and what they believe the world is like. I would welcome Grendel on a night like this, stepping carefully through the sleeping men as mystery lay in the black night ahead. Other people may find inspiration in, actually, I'm not sure. I'd love to know what inspires other people to be their true selves. There are doubtless other quotes out there that would speak to me if I had the chance to hear them.