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?
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. 
Dragon 10 Software Review
Posted by Mitch on Jan 8, 2010
As y’all know, I do a lot of writing. I even wrote a real book, which is the second book listed over there to the left, Embrace The Lead.
When I wrote that book, I didn’t quite finish it by typing. I started out that way, then 9/11 hit and I got discouraged from doing anything. Then my dad got sick and I was inspired to get it finished so he could read at least some of it.
I knew that I needed some help in getting it done. So, I bought a voice recognition program, and with its assistance I was able to get the book done in record time. Voice recognition software pretty much writes down what you say; at least what it thinks you say. The first program I used, which wasn’t great, did okay for the most part, as all I then had to do was go back and edit things.
A year later I bought my first Dragon software program, which worked much better, and I loved it. I only had to use the one program, which I used often enough, until I bought my present computer. Vista, it turns out, isn’t compatible with Dragon 8. But now that I’m writing as much as I am and earning money from it, I knew I had to get the updated version at some point, and now I have it, Dragon Naturally Speaking 10.
Here’s the first thing you need to know; this sucker is huge! It’s going to take up to 1.5 GB of space on your hard drive. I guess with what it does that’s not so bad. It’s going to grow, however, but I’ll come back to that. Anyway, because it’s so big, it’s going to take awhile for it to load onto your computer. You know how you’ll often get that message about “it could take several minutes to load onto your computer”, but then the programs load really fast? This one took about 45 minutes to load; at one point I wondered whether it had frozen up.
When it’s finally ready, it doesn’t just start like some programs, so you’ll have to start the program. It will ask you a couple of questions, including whether you want to register it or not, and it also asks you if you want to activate the program. I recommend getting that out of the way so it never asks you that question again.
Next it’s time to do some testing. It will test your microphone to make sure it works with the program. It gives you a headset with a microphone that you can plug into jacks, but I wanted to use my USB headset instead, and it works just fine. It will test voice levels.
Then it’s time to get a sample of your reading and speaking patterns. I chose the very elementary first sample, as there are a bunch of them, just so I could get started. You read the entire sample, then it takes some time in processing how you read; it’s this file that’s going to get bigger and bigger as you go along, because not only will it grow as you do more testing, but every once in awhile, and it will ask you how often you want to do it, the program goes back and looks for new things you’ve produced so it can add to the file. You can read more samples or come back to it later on, and I recommend you eventually get through as many of them as you can because the more it can recognize your speech patterns, the more accurate it will be.
One last thing before you get to actually do something is it does a scan of documents in your computer to try to get a sample of not only how your words flow on paper, but adds some words that you have in documents that it might not have. For instance, my wife’s name is Robyn, obviously with a “y”, and it picks that up and knows when to use that as opposed to the bird.
Then you can finally go for it. You’ll see a little window, which you can close and just use the icon in your taskbar. Here’s the thing. You can read your words into anything. You can use it to write your blog right into the program. You can use it in Microsoft Word, email, Wordpad, etc. Anything where you usually have to type words, you can use Dragon instead. And I have to tell you, from only my first reading, it did really well. A few times when I spoke really fast it messed up, but that’s understandable since I only did the one training with it. I’m actually using it now to write this post; how neat is that?
Of course, it’s not totally as easy as that for new people. There are many commands you’ll want to learn to use it with much more efficiency so that you don’t have to keep coming to the keyboard. Things such as “capitalize that”, “scratch that (that will erase the last phrase you said), “correct that”, etc. But they’re easy things to learn and remember.
Do I recommend Dragon? Wholeheartedly! It makes the writing process easier for anyone who says they hate typing or that the words they’re thinking never seem to show up on paper the same way. I will admit that when I’m using the program I speak in phrases right now, because, oddly enough, I actually type faster on some things than I speak, and you might decide to do that yourself, or once you feel that it’s got your speech patterns down just go for it. If you do a lot of writing of any type, this bad boy is the way to go.
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.
How I Write Blog Posts
Posted by Mitch on Nov 22, 2009
Lately I’ve been seeing a rash of posts on blogs that are telling people how to write blogs. Of course, I have my own blogging tips, which I hope some folks have checked out here and there, but what I’m seeing are the same tips over and over from other people.
Let’s face this fact; just how many times do you want to read “first come up with a keyword rich topic, then write a keyword rich article on your niche?” No matter how many times you read that and how many ways someone tries to write it, nothing is different. How different is reading “write in your niche so that people will find you on search engines?”
I’m not saying it’s not true; I’m just saying it’s boring seeing the same thing over and over. And I’m not saying what I’m about to write is any better than what you’ve seen someone else say. But it will be different, and I’m thinking that’s my little niche. Let’s begin.
Believe it or not, the longest part of my blogging is trying to figure out what I want to write about. For someone like me, that doesn’t often take long. For this blog, since I pretty much write about what I feel like, it doesn’t usually take me longer than a couple of minutes. The same for my business blog, because I know my topic there. For my finance blog, it takes a little longer. I usually scour the news to see what feels like it might be interesting enough for me to expound upon, then I’m ready to go.
The next step, if needed, is the research. For instance, when I wrote my post the other day on my 13 favorite singers, that one took a long time to put together because I had to first list my singers, go find the videos for each of them, and then find the product links for each artist. For the last post, 34 questions, I had to actually answer the questions first. I could have answered them once I started writing, but I had some formatting I wanted to do so I answered them before I posted everything. For my finance blog, research is always essential, because I don’t want to use only one news source to write those articles from.
Next it’s time to either start writing or paste certain things into the writing area. When I’m writing, I go into my zone and just write, and I don’t usually stop until I’ve finished the article. That’s why it doesn’t take me all that long to write. If I have an opinion on something, my mind just puts things in the order I want to talk about them in and I go for it. Kind of my own Mozart thing going on. If I’m just pasting something, most of my work is already done.
Now it’s time for my internal linking. I don’t have full recall of every article I’ve written, but obviously I know my topics. So I go back through my topics to search for articles I’ve previously written on a topic. The internal linking serves two purposes One, it helps my site show off previous material that I’m hoping someone might be interested enough in to want to check it out. Two, at least on my finance blog, it helps with the SEO in reinforcing topics I write about there. This blog does okay in the search engines, but it probably will never get its PR back, which means probably only my affiliate advertising will ever be here, whereas that blog has a high PR, does okay on Alexa, and if I can increase the visits a bit more it’ll be prime property for financial advertisements.
Next is something I don’t always do, but I will check for it. Since everyone says text advertising is supposed to be so great, I go back through my words to see if there’s anything I said that can link to a product. Then I go looking for a product that I can link to and add that link, with the new blue lines.
The next to the last piece is trying to decide what I’m going to highlight at the bottom of each post. Will it be a product? Will it be just a banner ad of some sort? I certainly have plenty of stuff to choose from, so that usually doesn’t take much time either.
And now, the final pieces of the puzzle. I go to All-in-one-SEO and I write something in the description box on what the piece is about. I type in my keywords. Then I go up and type in my tags for the post, which is something I just started a few weeks ago. I select the overall category for the post. The last thing depends on if I’m posting the article immediately or on a delayed basis. If I’m delaying the post, I set the schedule for when I want it to post. Sometimes I write my posts a couple of weeks in advance, so that works great.
And there you go. Now, it takes me less than 5 minutes to write a post, but all the other stuff I add on is what builds up the time. It may eventually take me 10 to 20 minutes to fully complete a post, but that’s okay because the possible rewards for the extra stuff are worth it if you ask me.
Now, whether you fully agree or not, wasn’t that better than the cookie cutter posts you see all the time?
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?
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