Pandering With Keywords

I've written a lot about keywords both as a ghostwriter and under my own name. I just recently published this keyword article on Suite101. I'm starting to wonder, however, how important keywords really are.

Most of the keyword information out there is just anecdotal- search engines do not tell you to have any word repeated over and over. They do not specify keyword densities. Yet, everyone believes that if they just have the right keyword density, they will rank better. Based on my own anecdotal evidence, I'm starting to wonder if that's true. I suspect that it may once have been true but that search engines got hip to the keyword density race and scraped it in favor of content that sounds more natural.

In my own experience, and I do Internet research for hours each day for various writing projects, keyword density doesn't do a heck of a lot. I pull up articles every single day that fleetingly mention a topic once and yet are featured on the front page of results. I've also seen that I rank in the top one or two results for several search terms, and I have never put any term in this blog with an eye toward keywords or keyword density. Some of the most obnoxious blogs in the world are ones that peg a niche and flood it with keywords, or worse- awkward keyword phrases.

What does look like a better way to get a ranking is to continually add to a page or a website. The top-ranked pages are almost always ones that are new or that are added onto frequently. If you really want to get a better ranking, I highly recommend taking the time to add onto your site every few days or even more often. And don't worry about keyword density- there's no proof that search engines do.

Freelance Bidding Sites vs. Freelance Job Sites

This is a post that I've had in mind for awhile but wasn't sure I should post. But, in the interest of sharing useful information and helping other freelance writers, I feel the need to write it. Let me preface by saying that I don't mean any disrespect to any one site, nor do I think that there's anything wrong with any site or its intentions.

There are those who visit freelance writing sites that post jobs regularly and apply to the many jobs that are listed. There are several interesting jobs sites that post jobs daily or every few days. I have heard from several people that they get most of their clients from those sites. I also hear that there are people who have gotten lucrative gigs from them. However, that has not been my experience and I don't think it's the norm. I believe that the people like me who have had nothing but bad luck with them are afraid to say anything because it will make them look like a loser. Well, so maybe I'm a loser, but here's why I don't see those sites as worthwhile for serious freelancers:

There are one or two sites that I visited every single day for close to a year. Every day I gathered the urls of the jobs I would apply to. I spent literally an hour or more a day just applying to those sites. Sometimes this would take several hours. It took months of this before I was offered anything from a client that I found through the site, and even then it was extremely low paying.

About 90 percent of the time I got no response whatsoever from the people I applied to. About five percent of the time I got a form email saying that the position had already been filled. These emails were often sent within one day, meaning that the jobs were assigned very quickly and with little consideration for quality. The first person offering a cheap rate was chosen. After talking to countless freelancers, both people on the jobs sites and those who had gotten jobs through them, I found that this was certainly the case. Most of the ones who had gotten gigs got them within hours of them being posted. So, to even be considered for many of these, it's necessary to apply immediately with the cheapest possible price.

Compounding that problem, I later found out that many of the people applying were offering to do the projects for even less than was offered, and the prices offered weren't that great in the first place. And even worse, I found out that the jobs listed on one of those sites had hundreds of people apply to them the first day they were listed. So, to get them, you had to check the jobs sites constantly, since there was no set time that the jobs are listed. Then, you had to offer as little as possible immediately and compete against hundreds of people doing the same thing.

What happened the other five percent of the time? I got scammed over and over again. I either got a form letter inviting me to pay to join some job list or I got added to a newsletter about working at home. The jobs that looked like they paid a lot, the ones that I was most interested in, were most often scams. When I did hear from someone about a project, they either asked me for free work as a "test" and wouldn't accept the samples I already had (scam), or they would offer me much less than they'd advertised because, as they said, so many people had applied with cheaper prices.

After about a year of this, I'd had enough. I can't count how many hours I'd spent on those sites, looking for jobs, sending hundreds of cover letters, resumes and samples. I can't count how many times someone had made it sound like I would get a project, only to find out that it was a scam.

There are people who get projects through freelance job sites. I know there are. But, I'm no amateur. I have a four-year degree in journalism and years of experience in print and Web writing. I have a good resume, countless references and a nice writing sample site that offers hundreds of Web article samples. If I couldn't get one decent project in all of that time, there's something wrong. After almost a year, when all was said and done, after the communicating and emailing and checking and trying, I got one paid project. That project was extremely low paying and I did it only briefly because the pay just didn't make it worthwhile. One. Project.

Meanwhile, at the same time I was spending an hour or two a day looking for projects on Elance and RentaCoder. I got countless projects through those sites and got clients that stuck with me for months or even a year or more. I bid a fair price, not always the lowest, and competed with far fewer people. A lot of competition for a project was about 20 or 30 people, a far cry from the hundreds that competed for each of the job site jobs.

So, why did I even both with the job sites? I certainly wish I hadn't bothered. I wish I could have seen how useless it was and how much time it wasted. I wish I had that time back and could use it for the actual paying work I got through bidding sites. I think part of the problem was certainly that I heard from so many people that they got great projects through the sites. I never heard a bad word about them and never heard people telling stories like mine. I thought there must be something wrong with me and that I should try harder, apply faster and keep going. I'm over it. I think there are a lot of people out there who had similar experiences with those sites and were too afraid to admit it. They're afraid it will make them look like bad writers who couldn't score a project because they were terrible. Let me tell you, I'm no Dickens, but I'm far from terrible. And, I've seen some terrible writers talk about getting projects through there.

So, I don't think it has anything to do with being good, bad or ugly. I think it's simply a skewed supply and demand system that is no longer worth the time for a serious freelancer. Perhaps it once was, before everyone found out about the sites and rushed them, but no longer.

This isn't to say that smaller job sites aren't still worthwhile- some of them are. But, for the larger sites, their useful time has come and gone.

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.