I'm Just Sharing

Your Creativity Is There Inside You

Posted by Mitch on Feb 12, 2010

I’ve written enough times on how it seems I’ll visit a blog because a topic got my mind going, only to see that it’s something I’ve not only read before, but almost word for word at the same time. A question I addressed in my blog writing series was how to think about what to write about.

Here’s a great example of how I find things to write about. Someone I met on Twitter named Rachel Lavern writes a wonderful blog that used to be called “Fearfully ‘n Wonderfully Made, but is now called… actually, I’m not quite sure what it’s called. If you follow the link below, you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, it’s a great blog with lots of content made to make people feel good and to think about things, but it’s one of those Intense Debate blogs, kind of like Disqus, which you know I don’t like, so I won’t comment there. Instead, I will comment through this blog which she’ll see on a trackback.

Anyway, her post is entitled What Will You Create, and in this case she has a short video on creation, then 10 ways to stem creativity by a guy named Jeffrey Baumgartner, whom I thought I knew but I don’t. Anyway, his 10 ways to stem creativity aren’t bad, but no one says you have to do it his way. As a matter of fact, though I’m not going to go through the 10, as I want you to check out Rachel’s blog, I will counter one of them.

He recommends that you don’t watch TV. I’m not going to suggest that, but what I am going to suggest is that you think about what you’re watching and see if there’s any concepts in any of those shows that you think are something worth commenting on. I mean, could I have written a top 10 TV shows if I’d never watched TV? You know, the most mindless drivel is entertaining to someone, and maybe if that person wrote about it, others would see it in a different light; or not. lol

I once wrote that I thought creativity was obsolete, but I really don’t think that’s the case. What I believe is that there are some of us who don’t want to challenge ourselves to be different, to make a statement, to give something that no one else has given before. That’s the safe route; what fun is being safe all the time? Well, unless you’re thinking about doing something really stupid like this (this is going to take you to a video that’s kind of an adrenaline rush; no embed, otherwise I’d put it up here). Then again, watch that video and tell me this guy wasn’t creative.

Probably one of the most creative blogs out there is Marelisa’s Abundance Online. Man, talk about wonderful words to read each time I’m ready for it. She really puts a lot into each post, like her latest one called The Paint By Number Approach To Accomplishing Your Goals. She writes beautifully, gives a lot of information, often gives a lot of leads, and I’m telling you, if you ever needed to find ideas on what to write about, her blog will give them to you.

How will you show the creative side of yourself in your next few blog posts?

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The Ethics Of Your Writing

Posted by Mitch on Jan 21, 2010

Last summer, Sire and I noticed that one of our blogging friends seemed to be posting things that were lifted from another source. They were word for word what was on another website; we considered that a serious breach of ethics.

I finally had the opportunity to ask him about these posts, telling him that I had noticed that they were the exact same thing is on some other websites. He told me that he had purchased some PLR (private label rights) articles and was using them because he didn’t have time to write anymore but wanted to keep new content on his website. I pointed out that it didn’t look right, and that when people usually use PLR articles that the idea was to modify them so that they would become one’s personal articles.

As some of you know I now offer writing and blog writing services as part of my business. With one of my blogging clients, I knew his industry really well, so I didn’t have to do much research with it. With most of the other writing that I’ve been doing, there has been a fair amount of research. What you start to find out is that as you read on the subject enough times, you start to get the feeling that you know it fairly well and can pretty much write totally original content more than half of the time without having to do any research at all.

But there are those times when you have to do some kind of research. On most topics, what I will do is think of what I want to write about, pull up four or five resources, read them all, and then start writing. If the majority of the resources quoted exact same information, then I would use that exact same information, but will alter the words if it’s possible. Sometimes it’s not; if you have a list of things that have to go in a particular order, you’re pretty much stuck using what’s there. For instance, I once wrote an article regarding something called “revenue codes“, which is a health care term. I listed a whole bunch of numbers and descriptions, and no matter what resource I might have had to look at, those numbers and descriptions would have been the exact same everywhere.

I think when it comes to writing there has to be some kind of ethical standard that a writer has to have. It doesn’t do a writer any good to copy blocks of words from someone else’s articles without giving them attribution. One of the gripes I’ve written about often on this blog is seeing people on other blogs saying the same thing over and over that they got from another blog. True, there may not be many new ways to say “create great content” when talking about ways to improve one’s blog or to encourage visitors to stop by, but that’s part of the essence of what writing is supposed to be about, that being creativity. I’m sure that someone else has probably written about ethical writing in the past, but I’m also betting that no one is ever written about it in quite the same way that I’m writing about it right now. That’s the kind of thing that makes us all unique.

There’s also the question of rewriting articles. Many people believe that’s unethical, because they’re taking one source and basically saying the exact same thing that someone else said only in a different way. I have kind of a different take on that one also. I have rewritten my own stuff from time to time, and as I am the original source for that information, I have no qualms about doing that rewrite. I also think that it depends on what you’re writing as to whether doing a rewrite of something is ethical or not. For instance, if you’re writing something about a new story you read, and you can only find that information in one place, I don’t think there’s anything unethical in writing that in a different way; after all, that’s news, and it’s what all the major newspapers around the country do when they get those newsfeeds from places such as the AP and Reuters. I do that on my finance blog all the time, although I also didn’t comment on those stories which make them unique.

What are your thoughts on ethical writing? Do you think I’m too strict, too lenient, or something else? Inquiring minds want to know.

How Much Do I Write?

Posted by Mitch on Dec 9, 2009

At the time I was originally asked this question about how much I write, I thought it was an odd question. My initial inclination was to say that I’m always writing, but that’s not necessarily the case. I do write a lot, but not all of it is what I’ll call creative writing. That being writing my blogs, writing my articles, working on my book, writing for webpages, etc. But most of it is. I thought I’d talk about it a little bit here, just so y’all can see what I do with myself most of my days, unless I happen to be on the road consulting somewhere.

Let’s start with my blogs. You can easily see how much I write here. The first full year of this blog I wrote 300 posts. At the clip I’m going now, it’s going to probably come in around 275 for the year, as my anniversary date is the 12th. I just hit my 200th post on my finance blog, Top Finance Blog and on the anniversary date I wrote post #201. On my business blog, Mitch’s Blog, I just wrote post #622 earlier today, and I’ve had that blog just over 4 years, which means I average about 150 posts a year for that blog; not too shabby if you ask me. So, all told, that’s over 600 blog posts a year.

Next, my newsletters. I write two newsletters, one on general business issues, the other on health care billing issues. I’ve been writing them since 2003. I put the first one out every 2 to 3 weeks, which means at a minimum 18 a year, and the second one, because it takes more time, I write maybe 5 or 6 a year. Each one is a minimum of 800 words, often getting near 1,500 words each.

I write blogs for other people. At this point I’m writing 3 other blogs, each one getting at least 200 words, but y’all know me; how often am I writing anything less than 350 words? Those are all at 20 articles a month.

I’ve been writing articles for other people. My main client has me writing 27 articles a week, almost all of them at least 400 words. One of my other clients has me writing one article a week of around 500 words. I write articles for two other websites that I’m not going to mention here and average 3 to 4 articles at each a week.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m subscribed to around 200 blogs or so. I’m starting to whittle that number down because some folks aren’t talking about things that are keeping me as interested anymore, plus it’s really time consuming trying to keep up with that many blogs, as you can imagine. Being kind of a news junkie, I also read a lot of news sources each day, plus research for articles has me reading even more material. Anyway, I make it a job, so to speak, to comment on at least 5 blogs a day, but some days it can go as high as 30. I don’t write one line comments because that would be disingenuous, and only comment when I have something to say, but I also know that blog commenting is what helps drive traffic to your own blog.

I write articles and other things for my other websites, some of which I’ve talked about here before. I try to write one new articles every couple of weeks for my medical billing site, Medical Billing Answers. I need to write more articles for my reviews site, Reviews of Everything, and I now have a different perspective on how writing reviews could lead to product sales, thanks to these ladies at Affiliate Blog Online, and at my anti-smoking site Smoke Not So Much. I should be adding more articles to my other site Services and Stuff, articles, which actually has a few of those articles being read often, and is my own ezine article exchange that I should be taking more advantage of. By the way, anyone else who’d like to have an article listed on that site, contact me.

I’m also always writing outlines for projects I’m either planning or am working on. For instance, last week I gave a presentation at a medical billing meeting here in town, and I put together an extensive outline for the presentation, which lasted a week. Sometimes I have even more writing that has to come out of those presentations. For instance, when I gave my presentation this summer that resulted in the webinar I’m marketing at the top left of this blog on social media, that came out of an outline I had to write.

And finally, I think, my books and stuff. I’m working on a detective story and, of all things, an advice book for young people. The second was supposed to be a joint project, but it looks like I’ll be doing it all on my own at this point. There was another story also that was supposed to be a joint project that I think, once I get extra time, I’ll be writing that one on my own also. And I have two more ideas for websites that aren’t even at the outline stage yet, as I’m trying to determine how I’d like to work it and what I’d actually put on it and whether I believe anyone would actually come to it.

All that, and the occasional request for other articles and such, and I’m kind of a writing fool. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention the forums, Twitter, Facebook, the 150 emails a day that I actually download and respond to as opposed to the hundreds of others that I eliminate through Mailwasher every day; oy!

Is it fair to say that writing is my life? How do I get it all done? Well, some days I plan it out, and other days I just wing it. But I never miss a deadline; my credibility is always on the line in that respect. And yeah, at times it’s pretty hard work. But I don’t think I’d want to have it any other way, at least right now.

Are Writers Taken For Granted?

Posted by Mitch on Nov 18, 2009

I’ve been a part of a couple of interesting discussions in the last couple of days. One occurred on a blog written by a commenter here, Anne, called About Freelance Writing. Another was on the Digital Point forums site.

On Anne’s site, she wrote a fairly innocuous article that took on a life of its own when one writer actually called some other writers “hacks” because they’ll write some low paying articles for other websites. That one pretty much sparked its own version of a class war that still hasn’t died down.

On Digital Point, the topic was whether people could find quality in paying writers a penny a word or less for articles, and if those writers were bringing down the rates for everyone else.

I have to admit that I’m kind of in the middle on both of these topics. Let me explain myself, if I can.

On the first topic, I certainly wouldn’t call anyone a hack. You already know the rants I just wrote about Demand Studios (which I might back off a little from, as I’m not as mad at them as I was before) and Helium (I’m still mad at them, so it’s not happening).

What my gripe was not about was how each of them paid. I mentioned it in passing on the Helium article, but Demand Studios pays a bit better, and if you can find something in a topic you know and don’t have to overly research you can make a nice chunk of change, though it can also be hard to find articles to write at times. If you could write one of their regular articles in an hour, or two of their shorter articles in an hour, and get them approved, that ends up being at least $15 an hour. That’s not overly great, but it’s twice minimum wage, and if you could do that 8 times a day during the regular work week, or 5 to 6 times a day seven days a week, it’s not bad.

For the year, that’s around $30,000 a year or so; as I said, not overly great, but not bad if you don’t have a lot of bills. But let’s look at the second topic. When I decided I was going to try to make some money writing, I started out with the penny a word thing. I was able to do it, but I hated myself with every article I wrote, especially on topics I didn’t know well, and topics that I thought were, well, stupid.

For instance, one of the last batches of articles I wrote were on epilators. For the guys, an epilator is a hair removal device. Women use them to remove hair from mainly their arms and legs, though they can be used in other areas as well (that is, if they want to use things like wax or electrolysis; I doubt most women would want to deal with the pain elsewhere). This guy wanted 30 articles on epilators. And he gave me the keyword phrases he wanted, and he wanted each phrase at least 3 times per article, for 400 words. They were all for a penny a word, and I barely made $100 for 14 hours of work; that’s why it was pretty much the last time I did it.

The point, though, is that, if I consider myself a quality writer, then it proves that quality writers can be found for a penny a word, possibly less. However, they won’t stay there for long, which means they’ll have to work hard to convince others that they’re worth more than that, or lose out to those people who really value quantity more than quality. And those people aren’t paying much attention, because when they have to rewrite stuff they’ve been sent, it’s killing their time and taking money out of their pockets.

The freelance writing business isn’t all that easy. Many people tend to devalue it just like they devalue training. I know because I do that as well. Remember the survey I asked people to take some weeks ago (it’s now closed)? The overall indication is that most people want live seminars if they’re in town, but will do online seminars. The survey also indicated that most people believe paying $25 for a live seminar is as high as they should go, and around $15 for an online seminar; $10 for a podcast.

Just like training, it takes a little bit of time to write. Sure, I write fast, but that’s on topics I know. If I don’t know a topic, it could take up to three hours to learn enough about some topics to be able to write a quality 500 word article. That’s because more people are protecting their information online, so it’s harder to find exactly what you need. Sure, you can be creative, but only if the basic information is solid. If you want something good, time is money.

I won’t take $15 for something I have to research more than an hour; it’s a killer. Does that beat not writing at all, thus not making any money? Probably not, but everyone has to draw a line somewhere. Been there, done that, looking for better stuff, better writing opportunities. I have gotten a couple of $100 assignments, but not nearly enough. That’s why I’ve been talking about it more often around here. I feel everyone has a right to make a nice living if they’re willing to work for it and someone else is willing to pay for it.

Just another thought for the day; what say you?

Done With Demand Studios Also; The Gripe

Posted by Mitch on Nov 16, 2009

Yesterday I castigated Helium for some issues I was having with them. Today, it’s Demand Studios turn.

I’ve written about them twice. The first time I wrote about them, I was introducing them to you as another site where writing might not be such a bad idea. The second time I wrote about them, I decided to update you on how I was progressing, so to speak.

Today, I’m telling you that I’m done with them, and I’m going to tell you why. In this case, it’s two things; I’m not sure how the third thing is going to play out just yet.

In the update, I mentioned that they had turned down one of my submissions. There were two problems with this. One is that they don’t tell you why they’ve turned it down, other than to say it doesn’t meet their standards and to read their pdf about it. Well, I’d read the pdf, wrote in their format, and they didn’t like it. I even totally rewrote the first submission, only for them to kill it.

It happened again on Thursday. One of the articles I wrote they asked for rewrites of a couple of areas. I did that, resubmitted the article, only for it to be rejected without a reason why once again. That’s enough of that, I figure. Understanding that I’m not perfect in writing in a style for someone else, I’m willing to try to learn and try again. However, if they don’t give you a clue, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Also, on the Demand Studios site, you have a work desk area where your performance, money, etc are all listed. Everything disappears once they process things except the articles that they reject. It stays there forever, like a scarlet letter, and there’s not a single thing you can do about it. Sorry, but I don’t need a constant reminder of my supposed failures; I’m not a dog who needs his nose pushed into his own urine on the carpet.

One other quick gripe. They changed up their article formats, and that really started to spell the end for me. They have articles in different formats. Two I worked on were “about” and “how to.” “About” was my favorite format, and relatively easy also, because you could write the entire article, come up with at least 5 categories to place your information in, and that would be that. There used to be lots of articles in that format, so you had a lot of pretty good choices. Suddenly, they changed up on us, and the majority of articles were now “how to.” Now, there’s not a lot wrong with that, except with those articles, you’re supposed to lay out a step by step process for getting something done, then provide reference links that back up your article.

What’s the problem? Here’s an example. Before I realized that they had changed the format, I wrote up an article on how to bring down one’s blood glucose, something I’ve talked about with my modified eating plan (and, by the way, it’s working like a charm; also lost 5 pounds). When I went to the site to post it, I realized it had changed to a “how to” type of article.

The problem now was that my article didn’t fit because there’s no one way to give a true step by step process for how to lower glucose levels. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to find any reference material relating to it. With the initial article, I talked about lowering carbohydrates, eating more fat, eating many smaller meals during the day, which are all covered somewhere online, so I had lots of references. With the new format, nothing fit. Then I realized that all the articles I’d selected to write on were in the new format, and none of them fit; at least they didn’t fit if you asked me.

So, earlier today I got paid for the last articles I’m ever going to write for their site. Once I saw the payment in Paypal, I went to their site to close my account. Lo and behold, once again, there’s nothing on their site I could find so I could close my account. What the hey? So, I’ve had to write them through their help desk to ask them to remove me. I haven’t heard anything yet; we’ll see.

One big thing I’m now learning is that, before I sign up with anyone else, I need to make sure I can easily leave if I want to. I always thought most sites had that sort of thing, but I now see that’s not true. Very lackluster on my part to not notice that; I’m going to try to learn from this mistake for the future. However, the main thing, once again, is that Demand Studios turns out not to be the panacea I had hoped they’d be. I did make some nice money there, but with the changes and other stuff, it’s just not going to get it done for me.

Oh well, back to the drawing board; who else wants some writing services?

My Gripe With Helium

Posted by Mitch on Nov 15, 2009

Last year, I decided to give Helium a try after having a guest post here by one of their editors. This past week, a couple of things happened that made me realize these people weren’t for me, and it seems to continue into today.

The first thing is that I got email from them telling me they had removed one of my articles because I had self promotion in it. The thing that irked me is that I posted that article with them last November or December, and this is the first I’m hearing about it? It was an articles I wrote for my business newsletter that I figured I would repost on their site. In that article, I allude to my book Embrace The Lead, and when I posted the article to the site, I hadn’t even thought about that one line being in there.

Anyway, that was enough to irk me, as I’m not much for letting folks get to me more than once these days, so I went looking for a way to delete my account. There wasn’t a single thing on their site about getting out of it; ugh. So, I decided to write the help desk to ask them to kill my account.

Within a couple of hours, I get an email from them asking me why I want to remove one of my posts. That showed they didn’t even take the time to read what I’d written them, which irked me even more. I responded to that email saying they hadn’t read it, and that I wanted to immediately cancel my account.

A few hours later I got another email from them, but it’s not addressing my request. Instead, it’s saying that they’re deleting another of my articles for plagiarism, and one more instance of that and I’ll be banned from the site. Now, as nice as that would be, the thing is that I’m the original author of the article. I have it on one of my other sites, and last year, when I had talked to the lady who wrote the guest post through email, she said that if I wrote it, even if it was previously published, I could use it. So, great, I’m now accused of plagiarizing from myself; sheesh!

I returned that email also, saying that I was the original writer and that the article was on my site, and that I had put through a request to cancel my account and I was still waiting for that to happen. Today I get one more email, but this time it’s a Helium newsletter; what the hey? Isn’t anyone at Helium paying attention to my requests?

Well, I’m done with them. In the course of time, I earned 7 cents; they obviously can keep that. I was still left with the same feeling I had when I wrote my original post about them and freelance writing woes in general, only I can take it further now. One of the things you really have to do, if you’re going to decide to look into it, is to go really deep in trying to find a topic already listed that someone else supposedly has already come up with. Man, that was more work than the articles themselves were the first time I wrote them.

Then, after you post an article, you have to spend at least 10 minutes rating other articles. They give you two articles on the same topic, and you have to decide which one you like better and by how much you like it more than the other one. Then they put the article you favored against another article, and you rate once more. After that, it’s two more articles, and it all starts again. They also score you on how you rate articles; wow!

So, I’m done with them, and I’m hoping they cancel my account soon. If not, so be it, as I won’t be going back. No, I don’t recommend them, and there you go.

Now, if you think this is my only rant against a writing website, stay tuned for tomorrow’s rant.

Demand Studios, The Follow Up

Posted by Mitch on Oct 10, 2009

Back in August, I wrote about trying to join, then finally being accepted to, Demand Studios as a writer. I thought I’d post a follow up to let you know how things are going.

Let’s start with this; I’ve made money. That’s a big deal, I must say. I’ve made $15 for every article I’ve written except one, where I made $7.50. I was doing really well with it until Mom got sick; then I just couldn’t concentrate on it. At some point, once a consulting gig I’m doing completes, I’ll get back to it.

Next, finding things to write on isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. They set all the titles, and you don’t get to change them up. In my field, there are some titles I haven’t touched because they just don’t quite fit, and I couldn’t figure out what kind of article to write about it. With others, I knew the information, but one of the things Demand Studios wants are links to places where people can get more information, and that I just couldn’t find. Well, some of it I could, but it’s restricted, which means no one else could get to it.

Titles are my worst problem, though. When you run out of titles in your topic, and you will, then you have to determine to see if you can write on topics you know nothing about. That’s where the research part comes in, and I’m not bad at that. What I’ve found happens often, though, is that there’s either no information about something or the information you find doesn’t conform to the article title you’re hoping to write. For instance, there was one topic on something that wanted an article on the side effects of this one thing I’d never heard about. I went looking for information and it turned out there were only two side effects; headache and nausea. Kind of hard to write a 400 word article on two things, so I had to give that one up.

Next, you find that trying to write to someone else’s style can be difficult. They require what they say are action words, not passive style words, and passive is the style I write in best. So, we’ve had some issues with that one. They also say they don’t like any throwaway sentences; in other words, you can’t set things up for the big hit. I find that hard to do also, since it doesn’t quite conform to storytelling, but of course this isn’t storytelling with them. And sometimes it’s confusing when you use a term that they pick out and say they need more information on it, when at another time they didn’t pick it out at all. Adding definitions helps you with the word count, though, so there’s no real gripe there.

I’ve had all except one of my submissions approved. On the one that wasn’t approved, I actually rewrote an entire article, just so the guy could tell me that he didn’t think he was learning anything new. Well, sometimes you’ve communicating information that someone else just might already know; that’s the title you selected after all. My thought is that not everyone else would know that information, but they have their standards. I’ll probably find a place for that article somewhere; have to work on that one, though, as it’s a topic that doesn’t fit here in any way.

If you can figure out a way to write at least one article an hour for 7 hours, you’ll earn $105 a day. That’s not so bad if you have nothing coming in. I haven’t tried to write any of their revenue sharing articles, which I mentioned in the last post, mainly because I haven’t seen a title that I feel I can research yet. But one of these days I will, if I need to. After all, it would be nice seeing some residual cash coming in from something I wrote.

These folks aren’t easy to write for at times, but overall, they’re fair, and it’s money if you can write at all. Of course, me being me, I’m always on the lookout for better paying things. As I find them, I’ll mention them; stay tuned.