Inspired to Write

Reassessment of Goals in the Life as a Writer

by Julie McElroy on September 3, 2010

Summer is winding down and the cold days will be here soon enough. This is a sad time for me as I love the warm days with flip flops between my toes and the warmth on my skin. Sigh. As the days get shorter and colder, there will be less time outdoors and more time indoors.

Which means more time to write.

Not that I have not been writing, but I will probably write more as winter approaches. Many of you may have noticed all of the guest posts here lately. There are many reasons for this.

Value of Guest Posts

While I have discussed the value of guest posts previously, I want to mention some more reasons I have done this lately.

Time to enjoy summer activities
Time to submit guest posts on other sites
Exposure to me AND the guest blogger
Creating a stronger community
AND…

Juggling Your Writing Priorities

During this time, I also did some juggling and reassessing my writing goals. There is a time in every freelance writer’s life where things get shuffled, priorities change, a reassessment of goals needs to be down. A cleaning up house, if you will. It was that time for me.

Stopped writing for eHow and Bukisa

There was some changes with eHow and they are now solely a part of Demand Studios. I am not sure I will be writing for them – atleast not for now.

I also deleted my account at Bukisa since that really was not earning me squat. I picked up an account a HubPages, and put the few Bukisa articles on Suite 101 and HubPages, wherever it was more appropriate.

Started writing for HubPages

There are a few things I really love about HubPages. The ability to write about a variety of topics, the forums are great, and the high page ranking of the site. There are a few ways to make money with Hubs, including Google Adsense, eBay, and Amazon.

There is a great tutorial on the promotion of your Hub. It has a lot of information and gives you ideas on how to promote you hubs.

If you are interested it writing for HubPages, it is a great place to let your creative juices flow as the topics are diverse.

Began simmer mode with additional blog

I created my Love Musings blog a while ago, but I have not done too much with it. But, I am not giving up on. I just want to put some energy into article writing.

I also decided to make my blog, Inspired to Write, a priority. My traffic is increasing and I now have a PR of 3!

Juggling the right balls

So right now, the balls up in the air are:

Time Spent as a Writer in Non-Writing Activities

Social Media. As a writer and a blogger, some of your time is spent promoting your writing and blogs.

My Twitter profile and Facebook Fan Page automatically update every time I write a blog post. But, this does not cover the time I spend promoting my other articles.

Article marketing is a whole other ball of wax. The typical way I promote articles is through Twitter and Facebook. I use this sparingly depending on the article and the social media site. Facebook is a different audience than Twitter. It is important in social media to not have one continuous self-promotional broadcast that eventually people will just turn off.

So I share only what I think is relevant, quality and appropriate to the audience. The last thing I am interested in is annoying people!

A new site I discovered is She Told Me. I have not too much with this site yet. But, it is a Digg-like site where you can promote yours and other peoples articles. It seems promising, but I have not fully dived in yet!

Getting Involved in the Community. This is another non-writing activity that I have been spending more time doing. You can not live in a bubble as an online writer. I mean you can. but people may not notice you as much if you never make an appearance. It is important to take the time and see what is going on in the community. Make comments, respond to comments, read other people’s blogs and ideas. Get involved in the writing and blogging community!

Focusing on What you Enjoy

I chopped down my list of writing sites because I want to focus on what I enjoy. Suite 101 (especially with their new editorial changes) is a great way for me to focus on writing about one nice that I love – travel. While HubPages gives me opportunities to write about different topics. I do have so many interests, it is nice to have a place to write about them!

The bottom line is as a writer, you do not want to get stagnant, bored, overwhelmed, or lose interest in your work. So, occassionally all writers will have to reassess goals. This is simply the life of a writer.

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Tips for Being a Successful Blogger

by Lena Morrish and Dima Nikolayenko on September 2, 2010

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Lena Morrish and Dima Nikolayenko. For more information, please read the bio footer.

When it comes to being a successful blogger, there are different yardsticks to determine if you are successful. You could decide it is based on how much money you are able to make, or how many comments you make, or the amount of people that want you to write a guest post for them. But regardless of what you use to determine your success, without traffic, you will not be successful at anything.

Good Content is Good, Great Content is Better

The base of a blog is content. And in order to have a good blog, you need to have a lot of content, and the content has to be great. Not all of it has to be good, but definitely some has to be.

This is like many things in life, they are not always perfect, you blog doesn’t have to be either. You draw your traffic in with the great posts and keep them with the good content. The great content should be posted at least once a week. Make sure all content is good and makes sense and is quality, but don’t stress about it too much. People return to your blog due to the overall content, not just one great post.

Provide Value to Your Readers

Your blog has to provide value, or else people have no need to subscribe or recommend your blog to others. To get the traffic you need to be successful, you need this to happen, so make sure you are meeting this requirement.

If you are not sure what this means, think of it as a “how to” or “tips” blog. Following this format is likely to give value, as you are solving a problem when you do this.

Write about Something You Love or At Least Like a Lot

The blog is likely not being written about you, but you need to write about something that you are passionate and excited about. While this may seem silly, if you are not interested in what you are writing about, you are not likely to continue with your blog, and you will not be successful.

When you are interested in something, you keep up with it and keep working it.

Write in your Blog Consistently

To continue on the theme of writing what you are interested in, you need to write on a consistent basis. This does not mean a post once a month; it means post at least a few times a week.

Some people believe you should also post multiple times a day, but depending on what you are blogging about, this may not be realistic. It may take you a bit of time to find what works best for you.

To achieve this, you may find it beneficial to set aside time every day, or once a week to work on posts. If you write something that is long, for instance, over 500 words, you may want to split it up into two or more day’s worth of posts.

While this is not a complete list of methods to get traffic, these ideas are a good base to get you started. Once you able to do these successfully, you are ready to move onto other tasks and methods of getting traffic to your site.

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15 More Awesome Blogs for Bloggers to Bookmark

August 31, 2010

After I wrote my previous post on the 15 Essential Blogs for Bloggers to Bookmark, I realized (as a Academy award winning thank-you acceptance speaker realizes) that I really left off several other blogs that I think are ALSO awesome and should be bookmarked. Truthfully, I did not forget these folks, I just thought one [...]

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Does Your Business Need a Blog?

August 30, 2010

Editor’s Note: If you are looking for serious SEO benefits, than having a blog is beneficial to businesses. Find out why in this guest post by Bethany Ramos. Anyone and everyone out there has their own blog these days, but can it provide benefits when it comes to marketing your company online? Believe it or [...]

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Don’t be Afraid of Good Keywords

August 28, 2010

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Thomas Urville. Please read more about Thomas in the post footer. Creating a website isn’t easy. First, you have to figure out how to get a domain name and hosting. Then, you need to learn a content management system. Once you pick up some HTML and PHP, [...]

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