I'm Just Sharing

Bloggeries

Posted by Mitch on Dec 18, 2009

Bloggeries is an affiliate program I signed up for a long time ago, last November as a matter of fact, and I posted one banner ad and never thought about it again. But in going through my stuff I realized I had it, and figured I should at least try to do something positive with it.

First, Bloggeries is not only an affiliate program, but a blogging forum. People ask all sorts of questions and get all sorts of help, and I have actually gone there a few times, including earlier this evening where I was sharing some of my time answering some questions of new bloggers.

So, it’s a directory; what’s the affiliate program all about? Some people like to pay for advertising, and if someone clicks on your banner, or links within your posts, goes to the site, and purchases a directory listing, you earn money for that. That’s fairly simple; truthfully, I’m not sure how many people pay for that type of thing, but I do know that the big time marketers are always looking for a way to separate themselves from everyone else, so maybe that’s the market.

Bloggeries is worth a look, even if it’s only to see the forum or to sign up for the affiliate program yourself. As an incentive, they give you $10 just for signing up to market them, but you don’t start getting paid until you’ve generated at least $50. For each sale, you earn $20; that itself is almost worth having a banner listed for it somewhere, I’m thinking.

What I don’t know is if you sign up by clicking on my banner below if I get a piece for that if you’re only looking to sign up as an affiliate, or if I’d get a piece of anything you sell. Doesn’t really matter, I guess. Truthfully, just having another place where I can link my blogs and make my contributions here and there was worth it for me.

And now I’ve rectified another injustice I’d been doing to myself; nice way to close out 2009, eh?

Affiliates | 15 Comments

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.

Writing | 5 Comments

Everyone’s Got An Opinion

Posted by Mitch on Nov 5, 2009

Yesterday I was going through some of the forums with my little bit of advertising on my writing services. When I’m posting those articles, I always include a link to some article samples so people can see that I can write different ways on different topics. None of them are overly long, as it’s only supposed to be a sample.

I ended up getting a response from one guy on one of those forums. He wasn’t looking for a writer; he was looking to basically be a jerk. He wrote that he didn’t like my presentation and that no one would ever hire me as a writer if that’s all I could do.

What did I do? I went back to that forum and thanked him for his comment, and moved on. I figured there was no reason to get into a back and forth with the guy because, after all, what would it have solved? My articles are what they are, on my website that I really market the writing services from, and that’s that.

Now, what he could have been griping about is my website, and if that’s the case, well, then that’s only one person’s opinion of what they expect certain websites to look like. Now don’t get me wrong, because something I’m known to do is look at websites and judge them on how well I think they look. However, what I look for is more balance and readability than whether I overly like something or not.

There are things that put off many people, and one of those things is a lack of balance from page to page. Another is multiple fonts on a webpage, and images that suddenly show up without any rhyme or reason. Or content with lots of spelling mistakes. Or a lot of flash or too little flash or, or, or… you decide it.

The truth is there are many different websites, over 120 million at this juncture if we include blogs. Many that look the same are template websites, and many of us hate those because, well, they’re template websites. There are also websites on free platforms, although many of those are starting to go away. There are people who put a website together using programs like MS Publisher, which isn’t really a website tool, and, well, you get what you get. Usually those people haven’t studied some of the nuances of what might make a good website, but still, it assaults your senses.

With that being said, not every webpage is going to be pleasant for everyone. And not every style is supposed to be the same either. My SEO website looks like it does because I wanted it to look that way. Every page is outlined the same, and the menu is in the same place on each page. I marked a couple of my products on each page also; that’s fair, since they’re my products.

No, I’m not asking people whether they like that page or not. I probably should, since it’s supposed to be a business website, but I’m not. It is what it is, just as your site is what it is, and your blog is what it is. I like it, it’s doing okay, and until I get sick of it, that’s just how it’s going to look.

Because, in the end, everyone has an opinion; how often are we supposed to bend to everyone else’s opinions?