The Weirdness of Ghostwritten Blogs

Blogs are proliferating so rapidly because they a) are fun to read b) rank better than just about anything in search engines and c) provide a personal way to get information. When you read a blog, you get the information from a real person, or group of people, rather than from a faceless website. You build up trust in the person you're reading week after week. I personally think that's the main draw- you get to know these people through what they write and how they deliver their information. So, what if the whole thing is put on?

I'm mainly a ghostwriter, meaning that I'm undead and float around. Ok, it just means that my name doesn't go onto most of what I write and often someone else's name does. It can be irritating to see something you slaved over being published with someone else's name on it, but that's the nature of the biz. The buyer pays, they own the work and they can put Bozo the clown's name on it if they so choose. The only time it really feels weird is when this occurs with a blog. I've ghostwritten several blogs now and I still find it strange. I enjoy it, blogs have been some of my very favorite jobs, but it's still a little odd.

Imagine that one of the blogs you read every week isn't really written by the name that's on it. Imagine that there is no one by that name- the name was made up by the blog owner who then pays the ghostwriter to create a personality to go along with it. That personality posts information in the blog week after week as readers come around and start reading it regularly. Pretty soon they feel like they know that fictitious person and trust what they're saying. Since I've been doing this I keep wondering- how many of the blogs I read are ghostwritten? How many of them have the owner's name on them when the owner has never written a word? And, how many have an entirely fake name attached to them? I'll bet I've made you wonder now too...

Creative Writing and Writing Jobs

Anyone who writes for a living is a writer, I believe. Sometimes I wonder, however, how much of my job is really writing and how much is marketing? Most of what I do as a web writer is work for hire- someone tells me how long the work should be and what it will be about. Sometimes I cam given keywords to add, and more often than not I am given a title. So, when I put it all together, can that be considered writing or marketing? After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that it's writing. I am not a marketer by trade, and yes, writing strictly-defined articles can be considered creative writing.

What you write, even if you are given a very detailed guide about what to write, is extremely colored by your own skill and attitude. You can make anything funny, sad, sympathetic or straightforward and unbiased. The particular path you take is a footprint you leave behind. Sometimes I think that having to work within such tight constraints and still being able to make the material alive and interesting is a harder creative process than writing whatever the heck you want.

I need writing jobs to turn to for money, and I do consider them to be creative writing in their own way. However, once in a while the need to strike out in my own creative direction hits me and I have to follow where it leads.

Not Looking for Work

It can actually happen. You can get to a point in freelance Web writing where you don't have to actively search for work. It took awhile, but I am so grateful that I don't have to search for a couple of hours every day before I start the actual work.

How it Happens:

The first step is to have a visible Web presence. I have a writing sample site, Squidoo lenses and a couple of blogs to keep my name out there. Clients write to me through the sample site or the lenses and ask me about rates and tell me about their projects. Most of them then disappear, perhaps believing me to have too high a price, perhaps simply capturing my email for the purposes of evil. But, some offer little projects that I can do without having to search out the gigs.

I also frequent a fabulous writing forum full of women writers. I regularly do projects for some of those ladies and have had nothing but good experience with them.

I have a profile on Elance full of good feedback and a portfolio full of writing samples. I get invitations for projects through Elance as well as scoring regular clients through the site. Many of my regulars are people that I first worked with through Elance.

I write directly for a company. I've been writing for a specific content company for almost a year. That work is there all the time and brings in a steady check. I'd like a second company to contract with so that I have two meaty checks every month instead of a bunch of small ones. Perhaps soon.

I write directly for websites. Suite101, AC and others pay me residuals that add up to a small passive income. If I wrote more for them, I'm sure it would be a more impressive amount. My payments are small, but it's a good revenue stream.

I make a little from this 'lil blog. I haven't done it as much lately, but I've made a little money by writing sponsored posts for various companies. There are people out there who do quite well by blogging and using paid posts.

When self employed, having different income streams is incredibly important. If you don't have a boss who will write you a check for the same amount every month, you can't rely on one single source of freelance income. Keep the work diversified and keep your name out there and there will come a time when you no longer have to hit freelance job sites.

Selling the Rights to Web Articles

For Web writers, the issue of rights can be a sticky one. When writing for magazines or anthologies, many writers keep the rights to their work after giving up the first print rights or first North American rights. I see a lot of writers who are transitioning into Web writing and are shocked at the idea of giving up all rights. But, that's what work for hire is. You are hired to write on a specific topic and the article that results is transfered to the buyer. The writer has no rights in those cases.

Personally, I have no problem whatsoever with giving up rights to an article when I have been paid for it. The only time I don't want to give up rights is when the site or client in question is paying on a profit-sharing basis. I write for several sites that pay based on pageviews or a portion of the revenue generated by pay-per-click ads.

If you want to write for a website and keep the rights to your work, there are several that allow it. Suite101 allows its writers to keep the rights to all of their articles but asks that the articles not be reproduced elsewhere for one year. BellaOnline has the same one-year policy.

I wrote for Triond for a while to test the revenue possibilities. The possibilities are bleak at best. I recently found out that Triond lets its writers keep all rights to the articles they post there. Therefore, I am going to take some of my articles from there and transfer them to HubPages, which has the same rights policy.

If you write for AC, you have the option to publish your work exclusively or non-exclusively. If you choose the non-exclusive route, you can publish the work anywhere else you desire. One way that I've found to make the most of that arrangement is to publish non-exclusive items on AC and then to offer the re-print rights on Constant Content. I have sold several re-print rights there, and though they don't go for much, it's been a nice sideline.

Back Again

When you're self employed, it can be pretty rough to take even one week off. I was out for eight days and had to prepare for it for weeks, taking care of work plus advance work plus notifying people plus planning and packing. I did work for regulars in advance, but had to end up turning away some work because there simply wasn't any way to take on more work at the time. I hate to turn away any work, but there are only 35 hours in a day.

Vacation!

I was in Orlando visiting the parks during my vacay, and it was a very different experience than it had been the other times I've been over the past 20+ years. Back in the day the park were insanely crowded with American families that rushed the park with their kids and grandmas. Since 9/11, the parks have been far less crowded. Chatting with employees last year I was told that the Disney park empire had not recovered since that time and that the parks were getting desperate to attract tourists. People have been much more hesitant to fly and the international tourists they had were simply not showing up.

This year was a whole new ballgame. I've never, ever seen the parks so full of international tourists. Actually, I've never seen anywhere so full of international tourists. I've been all over Hawaii, I've traveled through Japan, much of Europe, most of the major cities of the U.S., the Caribbean and Canada. In all of those travels I have never seen such a mix of cultures as I did during this trip. There were several days when we could count on one hand how many times we heard people speaking English. We heard Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Hindi regularly. There were also quite a few Scandinavian, Eastern European and Arab languages being spoken.

The whole experience was interesting in the mix of cultures and the variety of languages we were exposed to. But, it was sad in a way. The many languages kept families to themselves, each family group talking only to each other. There was none of the camaraderie that used to be present. While standing in the many lines, families used to talk, commiserate, compare notes, etc. I can only think of one time that we stood next to an English-speaking family during the entire week this time- and even they weren't American. Ironically, that was on St. Patrick's Day and the family was Irish.

Why the International Set?

I think the reason for the cultural shift was twofold: the failing dollar and the recession here at home. Americans aren't able to afford the trip, but to those outside the U.S., it's practically free. The question I had was why so many people had come from Europe and Japan- they have their own Disney parks. It might have simply been a good excuse for an exotic vacation abroad.

Cult Morons

On another note, while leaving Orlando, the traffic was horrific. We figured something odd was going on, as police cars and TV news trucks crowded the highway. A wreck? A shooting? No. It was a-holes. The people from that cult that protests funerals was randomly protesting outside a Catholic church. Why? Judging from the signs they were holding, they think Catholics are gay. Apart from the insanity of protesting nothing in particular, they caused us to be quite late on the way back. I won't name the cult or its leader because I don't want them getting more publicity. They are insane and stupid people who should never be taken seriously by anyone.

Writing While Away

In theory, it should be fairly simple to keep working while on vacation. I'm currently in Orlando for spring break and purposely stayed in a place that has high-speed internet just for that purpose. Unfortunately, when you aren't at home, there are far fewer factors that you can control. The main issues are:

Internet access has been intermittent, as the hotel is new and they still have some kinks to work out.

There is some kind of insane firewall here that is making it difficult to do much.

The schedule during vacation is not as easy as sitting around at home, and some days the time to complain about the internet access and to try to conquer the firewall is just not there.

My Spanish is not that great. Most of the people that are here to complain to can't speak fluent English, and some not at all. My Spanish is fair but not good enough to communicate seamlessly.

So, I am available, sort of, if a client has a problem and needs to get ahold of me. But, getting real work done is difficult enough to make it worthwhile to wait until I get home. That's the only lesson I have about freelance writing from a hotel- you can try, you can plan, but ultimately you are at the mercy of hotel employees and wiring.

Weird and Not About Writing

I saw this footage the other day and keep thinking about it. It's the kind of thing you see and then desperately want to know answers about, but there may never be any. Is it real? I think no one but the one coming out of the bushes knows for sure. It could be a prank, it could be someone who was simply misunderstood or it could be something else entirely.

I showed this to my spouse, who decided, sight unseen, that it was a fake. Yes, before even viewing it. I think that says a lot about the general lack of open mindedness that's the norm these days. If it's not explainable, it must be fake.

I've seen people all over the Web say that the people in this area are poor and uneducated and that's why they believe this. Are they poor? It's pretty likely that most of them are. Are they uneducated? Probably. But, what kind of effect does that really have? People who have a great deal of education sometimes start believing that they know everything they need to. With that mindset, it's easy to dismiss anything that doesn't fit into what they already know. But I think that really being educated means knowing that you don't know everything and never will.