Results of the link campaign
As you know I have recently invested £8 into a link campaign for Teahon.co.uk. The campaign has begun and ended, and my site is appearing or due to appear on a 100 directory sites. Though this has made very little difference in terms of where I appear in search engine results, I am getting fairly regular traffic to the site from one of the directories in particular. I am now considering a further £8 to do another 100, I mean why not?
The sites are ticking over, and the quality of the content continues to improve. I have made up my mind not to write stale content, or content for the sake of it. This may mean a reduction in the number of posts, but 3 good posts, has to be better than 5 average ones?
Also, if I understand the results correctly, I have 5 RSS subscribers. One of which is me, but even so it is all good news. I know this is not setting the world on fire, but nonetheless an obscure little blog from Norwich, England, is doing fairly well. Cheers.
Sometimes you need a night off!
When you write for many hours in your free time, there comes days like today, when you need to take a break from all of it. Just shutdown the PC and do something that does not involve using a mouse. I guess it is just human nature and indeed human biology, to take time to recharge.
Tonight is one of those nights for me, but I am going to try and get an article or two out, mainly because I'm slightly behind where I wanted to be, and also buying a house has taken up a lot of my time.
Talk soon
Words, words and more words, and an update!
The freelance writing world has been a little quiet of late, with my focus on Link-optimise and our other projects. The former has just launched its resources page, and this is proving popular among visitors. Those of you who accessed the blog via the homepage may have noticed a few changes to it, but we'll say no more about that. I recently had 13 articles rejected by pure-content, and though one of them was ropey, I do feel the others were not 'off topic' as they stated, but were ok. Anyway, the upshot of this was that I rewrote them. We'll see what happens with that one.
Dr Teng paid me for my efforts, and asked me to write a poem about Star Wars, as his daughter is selling Star Wars trading cards on Ebay, and wanted a suitable rhyme to go with it. Can't say I ever envisioned I would ever write about that.
Chris, from Digitpedia recently asked me to write six press releases and not to write about Blackberry Curve smartphones any more. Both were good decisions on his part!
I have recently paid a company to conduct a link campaign for Teahon.co.uk. This is in part a test for the company to see it is something we can offer to Link-optimise's clients, I'm also hoping that we can generate ad revenue through extra traffic. We'll see.
The next step for both this blog and Link-optimise is to add ads. This will be done via Google Adsenseand is currently in Phil's hands. Sadly, we have been dogged by more IT problems as every night for about five hours, Phil's Internet crashes. All very puzzling and annoying. That being said we are making progress and are currently investigating what sites work with children, and should we have a character to introduce the site. Personally, I'm against this as I prefer to think of the site more like a very interesting book, but I could be being old fashioned in my outlook. Phil and I are agreed that the site's character should it have one, have an interesting character that is appealing to children, and not too annoying for parents. If we can't achieve this then we will scrap the character idea altogether.
Phil and I, have had another website idea of having an online comic. This site will be just like a comic with updates happening every week or month, and telling a story which is continued with each new installment. Though we do not feel the ad revenue will come in quite as often as our other ideas, it does allow us a way of flexing our creative muscles. Of all the projects we have started or are planning to start, this is the one that I would like to work on the most.
Talk soon.
Freelance spam, sex, and nastiness.
Though I love writing this blog, and I love WordPress, I'd be lying if I said the spam element was not getting to me. Not only is it largely unimaginative crap, it is also, in the main, Russian. Though to be fair to our former communist friends, I have received American and Italian spam too. The most horrible spam was one where the URL would have hacked into my computer had I clicked on it. Not that there is anything valuable on this computer, as sadly I do not have need for a Swiss bank account, but it is truly despicable nonetheless.
Most of the URL's however, point to various forms of porn. Cartoon, teenage, the full plethora of sex seems to be coming my way. I find this strange for two reasons, one, sex is like beer, you do not need to advertise it as people seek it out, and two, why target a freelance writing blog? Surely a blog on sexual dysfunction would be a better bet, or even a dating site. I wonder who they think is reading this blog? Maybe freelance writers look at porn all the time, maybe it's just hit and hope, maybe I'm thinking about this too much.
There seems to be few measures to stop it other than to use a captcha, but they are real pain to genuine readers. All ideas welcome.
Needless to say I delete the spam as it appears.
A little change in freelance writing direction
The last few weeks has a seen a slight sea change for my freelance writing work. Not only did I acquire a new client, but I also realised that working for less than $1 per 100 words is fruitless. I also attracted a good job yesterday, which was easy to do and paid nicely for what was involved. What made this nicer, was that the reason I landed the work was due to the work I had completed for the client previously. It gave me a nice confidence boost to know that as a freelance writer, I am sort after.
This has led me to realise that I have a lot to offer the freelancing world, and so subsequently have created two new pages on my site. The services page and the short story page. The services page I am particularly pleased with. Should you be wondering what I can do from a writing perspective, now's your chance to find out.
I would also like to develop this blog as I feel this site could become somewhat of an inspiration to other writers. It is not easy to break into the freelance writing world at any level, and if you only ever land one job you have done well. I will try and bring writing resources to you as I discover them. Possibly, make a page dedictated to it. Food for thought.
Anyway, take care, and stay well.
Coping with freelance gloom…
It is not a good feeling when you are working hard but seeing little results. This is just one of the many unforeseen experiences I have had to cope with over the last few months. The hours of toil should yield there own reward but this is not always the case, and I have felt like it is all in vein. At least sometimes. The answer as always is just keep your head down and keep plugging away. This is helped by the only other option available to me at the moment, and that is quit. Not one I am comfortable with or planning to follow.
Link-optimise, is getting there, albeit slowly. We have learned a lot about SEO this week, and how it all changed in 2006. As a result we have initialised a link campaign which is progressing fairly quickly. To attract more traffic we are implementing an SEO resources page, and we have discovered the best place to place an ad is Facebook, rather than Google.
Playgameshavefun.com, has had the first bit of content written for it, and I'm just going to keep writing it until we get something up and running. I have a lot of faith and hope on this project, and Phil says he can see the advantages of it to. With Christmas coming, it would be good to have it rocking and rolling by October.
The future is optimistic, but the present is a grind.
Tips for freelancing
One of the great benefits about going it alone is also one of the downsides, and that is you work when you want to. The downside comes as very often you realise at the end of the day you did not do any work. And if you don't work you don't get paid, simple as that. So following on from my previous post, here is an expanded version of those tips.
- Schedule. Make a pact with yourself about what hours you are going to work, and stick to them. Once you have done this, make sure you have washed, had breakfast and dressed. This will put you in the right mindset for a days work. Sitting in frot of your computer in your pyjamas is appealing, but it wont give you that push to get on and do some work.
- To do list. Make a to do list, which includes both long and short term goals. You will find your long term goals will shape your short term goals. Be realistic about your long term goals, and specific about your short terms ones. So instead of writing work on this for two hours, say what you are going to do, it will help provide you with focus.
- Make sure your work area is organised and personalised. The work space is yours now, and so are the rules. Music, open windows are all you call. Make the most of setting a good working environment.
- Look to outsource accounting and administration. The time you save and can devote to working on projects will pay for the costs.
- Though the myth of multitasking is very much alive and quoted often, the reality is it's rubbish. Stick to one task at a time and you will find this far more productive than flitting between several tasks and completing none of them.
- Take breaks. Make sure you have half an hour for lunch, and that you try and ignore the temptation of working right through the day. This way your concentration levels remain more focused and make you more productive. A good thirty minutes is better than an average hour.
As you can see, these tips are largely about focus and mindset. See how you get on. If you have any more tips feel free to leave a comment about them.
Freelance writing and the way to schedule
I read an interesting post on freelancing last night, and re-span it for one of my assignments. It featured freelancing and how to make the best of it. One of the tips involved scheduling and timing. It advised to make a to do list, and fix your hours for writing. So if you decided to work from 9 to 5, you make sure you are washed, fed, dressed and at your desk for 9am. This way, you approach your day with the right mindset.
It also said it was a good idea to make a to-do list, and time how long the tasks have taken you so you can evaluate your performance and gauge your productivity, and to take breaks and make sure you eat something during the day. Research has shown that people that do not take breaks, but just work through do not produce their best work and tend to be inefficient. The article went on to say that multitasking was a waste of time as it just halved your focus, and the best thing to do was to focus on one task at a time.
So my freelance writing schedule has panned out like this tonight.
- Decided to work from 7.30 to 11.30pm. Started at 8 after talking to girlfriend on the phone. Not the best of starts but rescheduled start time to 8pm.
- Made to do list which involved writing 9 articles. This broke down into 2 articles for one client and 2 for another. 5 for the last one
- Had a short break after the first 2 articles, and then a short break after the next one. Finished the 5 articles at 12.15pm. This has proved to be a good night as though I over ran by 15 mins, I completed everything I set out to do.
I feel I will be using this method more often in the future.
Freelance writing and procrastination.
Freelance writing can seem like a mountain to climb. If you have lots of work about difficult subjects, sometimes it does seem like an impossible task and I often find I feel apprehensive about the night ahead. This leads to procrastination, and avoidance. Neither is good for any kind of writer, and for freelance writing, it can hit you in the pocket.
My advice to any freelance writer, is just jump in and get cracking. Try and avoid "I'll just do this and then I'll do that scenarios", and just start tapping away at your keyboard to get the creative juices flowing. It will make a world of difference to your freelance writing productivity, and give you confidence. Which for any freelance writer is invaluable.
It’s nice to get a job done when you’re a freelance writer, come SEO guru!
Well I know I have spoke about this before, but it is nice to get a job under your belt. Tonight, I have managed to get two jobs done, and for this freelance writer, that can only be a good thing. The first was a quotation for link-optimise. It has to be said that Phil's analysis of the site was first class, and providing facts and figures about keyword density and poor meta tags, made the quotation seem that much more professional.
The second job was my first ten articles for delegate2. They have all been about stag parties, and hopefully these will be accepted. I am hoping delegate2 will become a good provider of freelance writing work in the future, as they pay fairly well and so far the work has been fairly easy to turnaround. Fingers crossed.
This freelance writer has had three good days both in and out of the freelance writing world. That can only be a good freelance writing thing.
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