I'm Just Sharing

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.

Learning More Lessons About Writing

Posted by Mitch on Aug 19, 2009

As most of you know, I’ve been talking more lately about writing for others. Indeed, I have been making money writing articles, and I have some blogging clients also.

The thing is, there are two problems with my model. One, I’m not generating the kind of money I thought I’d be generating; two, some of the things I’ve been asked to write about have been, well, kind of impossible for me to write on.

That’s hard to admit to because when I first announced I would do writing services, I assumed there wouldn’t be a topic I couldn’t write on. What I hadn’t thought about was if there’s no information to research on, then I’m stuck. And trust me, not everything is on the internet, it would seem.

So, this weekend, I went to the Digital Point forum to ask a general question about how much research people do on topics that seem impossible to write on, especially when asked about specific keywords and the like. I got some responses, and they seemed, well, a little harsh. Still, I decided to write two of the people private messages to explain to them what I was talking about and what I was getting paid.

Both of them enlightened me. They both said that I’m basically giving my writing away; I was stunned. I did know I was underpaid, but I hadn’t realized by how much I’ve been underpaid. If I were getting paid the rates that I should, research time becomes affordable, and easier because people aren’t asking for stupid stuff.

It was something I needed to hear, and sometimes something we all need to hear. With my main business, or what up to now has been my main business, I knew how to price my services because I understood just how exclusive they were. With writing, I thought I had to compete with the low ball folks and scratch out my living by trying to write so many articles that my mind goes nuts. Nope; turns out that, based on what some of these folks have been doing, and are recommending to me, I could actually make a very good living writing as few as 10 articles a week.

Wow; that would be great! I could still write my blogs, still have blogging clients because I enjoy that, but I could drop all the low dollar writing gigs and concentrate on other stuff all around. Man, life would be sweet doing that.

I share this with y’all because most of us go along doing things that we think is the right way to do it, only to learn that someone else is doing it easier than we are, and succeeding. This doesn’t mean I’m giving up on my affiliate marketing either; I have plans for doing more of that, as well as plans for adding at least two new blogs into my repertoire. It does mean, though, that I’m ready to embrace a new mind shift towards bigger and better things.

Anyone got a problem with that?

Credibility, Article Writing, And Marketing Products

Posted by Mitch on Oct 28, 2008

A few posts ago, I wrote about Lynn Terry and some of her tips on making money online. Well, a month ago, I had the opportunity to participate in one of her weekly marketing sessions, and I got to ask her a couple of questions during that time.

The first question was what she thought about writing articles to put on article marketing sites. The second question was what how she felt in advertising products that one hasn’t really used. She gave me some interesting answers, and I’d like to talk about those answers.

On the first question, she answered that she thought writing articles and posting them at article marketing sites was a great idea. She felt that the traffic one could get from one of those sites could be important traffic; that you’d get links from those sites; and, if someone else decided to pick up one of your articles for repost, with the caveat that they give you attribution, your articles have a chance to give you a lot of publicity in other ways, possibly driving traffic to your site.

I’ve given this one a lot of thought, and though I don’t disagree with her assessment on the topic, I decided that I would check my own statistics on this one. I couldn’t do it for this blog, though, so I did it for my business website. For that site, I have about 20 articles posted in various places, but on two specific sites I’ve got maybe 16 articles posted. Maybe it takes more than that, but hey, it’s a sample. What I see doesn’t give me much encouragement to post any articles to any of these sites. Checking Google Analytics over a 60 day period, my site shows that I haven’t driven a single person to my site via any of these sites. And, before anyone asks, yes, one of those sites is Ezine Articles. Now, some of those articles have been picked up and are in other places on the web (it’s amazing where you’ll find your stuff on the internet), and I’ve verified that none of those places has driven any traffic to my site in the last 60 days either. Now, I’m not going to claim that this is overly scientific, but it’s not quite a catalyst in making me think that article marketing is going to help me much. I’m not saying not to do it; I’m just saying I don’t see it working for me.

On the second question, she said that one doesn’t have to use everything that they market, but that it helps with credibility if you’re writing about products that you’ve at least used some of them or have tested some of them, or that you know something about the people you’re pushing at least some of the time. On this one, I wholeheartedly agree. Building credibility is a big deal; as a matter of fact, my new friend Dennis Edell of Direct Web Sales Marketing also just addressed this issue ((though Dennis won’t believe this, I hadn’t read the article until just now, but I’d seen that he had written an article on it via CommentLuv). And, since he’s linking to another article, it’s obviously a subject many people are thinking about, and works well with my post on sales, to a degree.

I decided to take a look back at some of my posts, things I’ve recommended, items I have on my sidebars, to see how balanced I’ve been. When I first started this blog, I wrote posts on affiliate ads that I was marketing via Commission Junction, which shares most of the bottom ads I put on this blog with the Google Affiliate Network. I talked about Ultra Diamonds and Things You Never Knew Existed, all with “CJ”, but none of which I’ve ever bought a product from. I also talked about and posted links to the Harry Potter series of books and movies, which I have read and seen all the movies for. Not quite balanced, but it was the first month.

As time has gone by, I’ve gotten more into talking about things I’ve given some type of thought to, and have fully participated in them. The last five products I’ve endorsed, not including the latest, Startup Rebel, which I just started looking at a day or so ago, are eHealth Insurance, Tweet My Blog, Recover My Data, Error Doctor, and FreeCreditReport.com, I’ve used or still use four of those, with the only one I don’t use being eHealth Insurance, but since that was more about an opinion on why people should have health insurance if they don’t, I don’t count that one against me.

And, as a further extension, with the ads I have on the side, which I’m not going to list here again, not including the Text Link Ads (which I may still remove at the end of the month), I’ve used or read every link that’s over there (at the top, since, by this time, we’ve gone down the list a little bit), especially the book I wrote, Embrace The Lead (run over and buy that one now! ), and of course Joel’s book, which has helped my website and Adsense revenue jump almost 400%.

As for the individual ads I put at the end of each post, I’m not going to claim that I’ve used or purchased most of them, because it wouldn’t be true. I have visited every website that I put up, though, just to see what it’s like, something I like to do before I decide to market them unless I’m already familiar with the product or company. And, of course, everyone’s familiar with Adsense, and will soon be familiar with Widget Bucks, if they’re not already. Goodness, as I’ve gone back through some pages of my blog to research this post, I realize I haven’t really spent a lot of time marketing as much as reviewing things and giving my opinion; that’s somewhat enlightening to me, so I’ve learned something about myself writing this post.

Anyway, I believe I’ve shown some balance in my recommendations of products through my blog, actually leaning more towards someone who has used, or at least tried, many of the things I talk about. Now, does that boost my credibility? I think so, but only you, the reader, can tell me so for sure. I feel fairly secure in what I’ve written about on this blog, and how I write this blog as honestly as possible, and in my own way addressed the issue I’ve been discussing with another online friend Rich regarding a post he directed me to regarding his belief that if one accepted ads on their site that it would make them less likely to speak their minds honestly. He may be right in general; at least, in my mind, he’s not right as it pertains to me. By the way, he writes some pretty good and heady stuff, so check him out.

So, there you go. How credible am I to you? Trust me, I care. How credible are you to your readers? I hope that, many decades down the line, that I remember how I felt when writing this post, and how I felt while writing this blog. Can one be too old to dream? I hope not, but if so, well, then take this little bitty video with you on that subject (y’all do remember that I’ve said before how much I love the Muppets, right?):

Muppet Show Season Three