I Did It!

Hi Everybody,

I know I have been away from this and my Glad Living blogs for the past couple of months. I thought I would update you all on what I have been doing. I took the NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month) Challenge back in November and wrote 60K words. I finished my novel on January 9^th and pre-editing I have 146, 548 words. This has been a wonderful experience overall, despite a few times where I doubted I could actually do it. I would encourage writers with novels inside them that have been putting them off for another day to learn more about the NaNo Challenge, and to look around the various communities there where writers can find plenty of free resources to help with writing that blockbuster novel. Bookmark this blog first and then follow this link for more information. http://www.nanowrimo.org/

What’s next for my novel? Editing, editing, editing! I am also researching going the route of obtaining a literary agent to do the work of shopping my book to publishers. I know there is a lot of “buzz” about self-publishing these days, however this just does not seem appealing to me at this point. I may change my mind on down the line, but for now I will polish my manuscript, draft a powerful query letter, and make a few submissions to literary agents and see what happens. I have read in various web articles and blogs that it can take a year or more for a good novel to make it onto bookstore shelves. I will keep you updated on what happens with my novel Wish me luck gang!

 

Writer’s Roundtable

Happy Valentine’s Day Wishes to everybody. I have my TV tuned to NASCAR, with the race delayed by a pothole of all things. Sounds like Indiana roadways to me. I have spent weeks editing my novel and I am now happy with everything although I accept the fact that an editor will suggest even more changes. Welcome to the realm of working to get your works published. I have also sent out queries to a few literary agents seeking their representation so I am now in a pins-and-needles wait mode which may continue for quite some time. Through my research, I have learned that waiting...waiting...waiting, is pretty much to be expected. I am trying to steel myself against the inevitable rejections which every writer gets. Wow! That is not so easy when writing is your passion and you pour your heart into the words you write. This is how it goes though and I have signed on to see this through knowing that I will gain experience and knowledge from each facet of this process of trying to get my first novel into publication.

In fact, I have already learned several aspects from the novel writing and publishing industries that I did not know before. I did know beforehand that I could not simply write a novel and “poof” it would somehow magically wind up on a Barnes and Nobles store shelf or listed for sale with Amazon.. I was under the false impressions that if I could write it in 30 days, I could edit it in 30 and have a publisher pick it up by day 90. Yeah...I will wait while you all laugh your butts off over that one. In actuality, it can take a year or more to get a book published and on store shelves and that is assuming you have an agent that can convince a publisher to take a chance on you and your book. Even many established writers still need a skilled literary agent to broker publishing contracts for them. I discovered that how you format your novel manuscript is ripe with controversy. Some say to format your manuscript using the font Courier 12pt. while others insist it should be Times New Roman 12pt. No one seems to be able to agree on word counts either. The more I read the more confused and worried I got that I was not doing something right. I finally decided to just write my novel and to worry about formatting it to suit a particular publisher’s editor when the time came which freed my mind up to let my creativity flow.

I will share more of what I have learned so far and what I discover as time goes on in with my first novel writing experience in future posts. Feel free to add your comments about this post and to share your own experiences with writing and publishing your book length works.

Chronicle Your Life: It Could Lead to a Novel

Dear Diary/My Life

As many young girls do, I kept a diary that I wrote in every single night before going to bed. Making my nightly diary entry was something that I really looked forward to as bedtime approached.

I had received one of those 5-year diaries as a holiday present at around age 12, and was immediately hooked on the idea of writing down my private thoughts and feelings. I especially liked that my diary had a lock on it to keep prying eyes from reading my most intimate feelings that I was not always comfortable sharing with others.

To be sure, there was not much room to write the days events in such a diary. That didn't sour my enthusiasm to make an entry however. I enjoyed the challenge of condensing the detailing of my day. After making the present day's entry,I would read the entries I had made previous years. I found it kinda "neat" to read them and remember what I was doing and how I felt on that same day, in different years. I even discovered times I had detailed an event thinking that what had happened was the end of the world, only to be reading it a year or so later, and realizing I was no longer even bothered by it.

I fell out of the habit of keeping a diary for a while when I became an adult and started to make my way in the world outside the walls of my bedroom, family home, and high school. I came back to it soon enough though with the grown up version of a teenagers dairy, the journal. Through the years, I have found that keeping a journal has served many purposes for me. I have recorded events that I never wanted to forget exactly how wonderful I felt when they happened. Journaling has helped me to sort out my feelings and work through some of the darkest times in my life as well. My journals could even lead to a novel or several: one day. Yours could too.

You might not think that your life is interesting enough that anyone else would want to read about it, much less buy a book inspired by your life. However, people find first-hand accounts of common and not-so-common situations of living, quite intriguing reads. Sometimes mere curiosity draws people to such personal chronicles,while others want to know they are not alone in having certain life experiences. For some writers there would be no greater accomplishment than if something they have lived through might offer someone else hope as they face a similar circumstance in their life. Perhaps your journal or multiple journals, could lead to a book that offers understanding and hope to someone who really needs it.

Whether your personal journal ever results in a publication for writer creds: and money, there is good reason to consider keeping one. A journal records happy times you want to remember always. Journaling can be therapeutic and even help you to know, understand, and love yourself more. A journal can be a keepsake, a legacy of you that generations of your family can read and know the person, and the times they lived in of the person who wrote it-You!

Include photographs with your journal entries whenever possible, to add pictorial documentation that will aid you in keenly recalling or better illustrating for others, those memories later.



Author: Julie Morris. Freelance writer and blogger, all rights reserved. Visit my website: http://thewritestation.yolasite.com/ Contact me: twsstaff@yahoo.com

Social Media and Marketing Continued

In a previous post on social media, I mentioned several applications that most of us are familiar with through using them ourselves or by having heard about them. This is a continuation in my series on social media and the effectiveness of marketing your business through social media. I hope readers will find the information presented useful in helping them to take advantage of the social media applications they are using just as the top online moneymakers are now doing.

Turning your Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter account into a successful marketing machine is not difficult at all. Keeping the following tips in mind can help transform basic online socializing platforms into mega-successful traffic, income, and profit generators. I have condensed things a bit here by only mentioning 3 of the many popular social interactive sites available to users online today. Insert the name(s) of the social media applications that you use if they differ from the ones I have listed. The principles for using them to your advantage in business marketing remain the same nonetheless.

Ø Let the popularity of top social media applications do the work of finding traffic for you. Make sure that you set your profile or updates page to ‘public’ so that the larger flows of traffic to these sites can find you. Keeping it private will mean that you will have to find and invite people to visit your pages, which can be time-consuming and slow to show positive returns for your efforts.

Ø If you are using your social account for promoting yourself, your business, or business programs, be careful about posting negative opinions without some substantial information to back it up, or stuff you would be embarrassed for strangers to know about you. You will find that posting some personal things like having attended a concert or what you had for dinner will bring visitors and a lot of times followers to your social pages. You never know what seemingly mundane activities or subjects may spark someone else’s interest until you post something about it and gain traffic from it. Just temper such personal postings with common sense. Remember that once you post something in cyberspace it can exist forever.

Ø Do not use your social media applications to hard sell your business interests. No one responds very well to such tactics. Include links to articles, web tools, and sites that are likely to be of interest to your target audiences. Space these between your regular updates on your business products, services, etc.

Ø Learn how to create intriguing headlines and short sentences that really grab people’s attention. Space for communicating with others is typically limited in these social media applications so make the best use of the space that is available to you.

Ø Shortening links to your websites, blog entries, or articles you have posted online will give you more room for expressing why someone should want to click on the link(s) provided on your profile or updates pages. Many people use http://www.tinyurl.com/ for this purpose and I have used it myself.

By following these tips, you can supercharge the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns using various social media platforms with less effort and time. Did you find this article helpful? Please share your comments.

In the next in this series on social media and social media marketing, we will be looking into synchronizing your site, blog, and forum RSS feeds and updates for greater visibility and productivity, and blog and forum postings for creating web presence and for branding and marketing your business products, services, and programs.

Author: Julie Morris. Freelance writer and blogger, all rights reserved. Visit my website: http://thewritestation.yolasite.com/ Contact me: twsstaff@yahoo.com

Beginning Series on Social Media and Social Media Marketing

This is the first in a series of articles on social media and channeling the power of social media into massively effective marketing campaigns. Many of us are already using popular and highly trafficked social applications like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Plaxo, Linkedin, and others to connect with family, friends, and colleagues. Then there are the zillions of blogs, bulletin boards, weblogs, vlogs, podcasts, forums, and niche sites that exist in cyberspace to enable people from around the world to socialize and communicate with one another on small and mass levels. Let us not forget communication tools like Skype, MSN Live, Yahoo Chat, IGoogle, and other instant messaging applications that also allow people plenty of online socializing opportunities as well.

The Internet has Granted Media Access to Everyone

Traditional or broadcast media remains primarily a restricted medium with access reserved mostly for industry professionals with a few exceptions. Social media on the other hand is an open-access medium that allows almost everyone with an internet connection to generate web content and to share that content with small or large audiences, locally, internationally, and as most of us know-globally! You do not have to have professional associations, media-related degrees, or a huge bankroll to participate in social media. Most social applications are free to use and basic spelling and grammar skills or a quality program that checks for mistakes before publishing to the web, is all one really needs to begin building an audience of readers The more skills that you have the more you can take advantage of all that this platform known as social media offers

Well-informed entrepreneurs have found these online social media applications to be great sources for excellent business advertising and branding with little or no costs to them and requiring barely any effort at all besides catchy headlines and some carefully chosen words. We will be exploring social media business marketing, branding, and other concepts involved in utilizing the power of social media successfully in other articles in this series.

I would love to read your thoughts or any additional information and knowledge that you could share with readers about social media and social media marketing.

Target Searches for Better Results

You are too busy to be wasting time scrolling through long pages containing only general listings results for the search queries you make. Target your searches to gain better results and significantly reduce the inclusion of tons of generalized listings on the results page that offer you little in respect to the information and resources that you are searching for.

You can target your searches and save yourself loads of time and the tedium of having to weed through volumes of garbage to find the true treasures in the mix, using specific keywords, and keyword phrases in the search window.

For instance if you are a writer looking for writing jobs you might consider using the following terms to mark your searches to experience better returns for your search queries.

• Authors
• Article writer
• Article writing
• Article submit
• Paid articles
• Ghostwrite
• Paid to write
• Writer
• Writers marketplace
• Writer forum
• Buy/Sell articles and content
• Freelancing
• Freelance writing work
• Writing and translation jobs
• Work for freelance writers


If you want to find the best online places to help promote yourself and your business, targeting your searches will help tremendously to provide you with more useful information and links to follow than general searches produce.

Determine where the people who are most likely to be interested in receiving information about and buying the products and services that your business offers congregate in large numbers. Forums, blogs, discussion groups, and social sites are excellent places to find eager consumers.

If you have a work from home or online business opportunity that you want to get more exposure for consider trying these terms to target your searches to narrow results down to the best places for you to promote your work or business opportunity through.

• Wahm
• Work from home
• Work from home jobs
• Work from home business opportunity
• Online business opportunity
• Online jobs
• Online services
• Online business listing
• Webmasters
• Webmaster forums
• Online business advertising
• Free classified ads


Sometimes even when searching the web with a couple of different keywords you can keep seeing the same results appearing on the results pages the search engine you are using presents to you. Click on your tools tab and clear your browsing history and cookie files, and then try searching with a new keyword. You might also find it helpful to use the search suggestions that search engines like Google and Yahoo often recommend in a box that opens below the search box as you are typing your query. Switching to another search engine may also provide you with different results.

If you have a niche business opportunity or services to offer use a keyword, keywords, or keyword phrases specific to your businesses niche to get better results from your search queries.

Increase your productivity and find exactly what you are looking for more successfull by targeting your searches.

Professional Directory for Freelance Writers launched

Writers: Submit your free listing in the new Professional Directory of Freelance Writers. Most writers spend a bulk of their time looking for writing jobs. With a Free or Paid listing in this directory, you can gain more exposure and help employers find you to offer writing work to you.

Employers looking for qualified writers for their writing projects can save themselves a lot of time and hassle by looking through the author pages of listed writers in this professional freelance writer’s directory to find writers whose qualifications meet their business writing needs.


Writers can submit their information for listing in the directory, and employers can browse the directory to look for qualified professional writers by visiting Find/Hire Writers, the professional freelance writers’ directory.

Professional Assoc. for Writers

The Editorial Freelancers Association is a professional association for freelancers whose members represent a diverse range in professions, including writers. You can learn more about this professional association for freelance writers and other freelancers, membership fees, benefits, events and more
Here

I am posting this for writers who might be interested in joining a nationally recognized association for freelance writers. I am not suggesting however, that membership in this or any other professional association for writers is mandatory. Certainly, certifications, degrees, and association affiliations could be worthwhile to many writers. I do not belong to any as of yet, and have not found that to be a hindrance to me in securing an abundance of net writing jobs.

The Marketing Power of an Opt-In List

Your online business can soar to new heights with a powerful opt-in list. You can build one gargantuan opt-in list and then duplicate that same winning formula to build multiple big and profitable opt-in lists for your business. Why are opt-in lists such a powerfully effective marketing tool for business owners?

An opt-in list by its very name tells you that this is a list populated by people who OPT to place their names on your business list to receive information about your products and services and offers from your company to purchase those products and services. They do this because they have a high interest in the products and services that your business offers. You can easily deduce that people with a higher interest in the products and services that you sell are more likely to make purchases from your business. You could spend a great deal of your time trying to convince “cold contacts” as to why they should want to buy a product or service from you and not get the same high sales response from them.

Building a large opt-in list may take you awhile the first time around as you become more familiar with the best methods there are for building them. In fact, there are numerous ways to build solid opt-in lists. For the most part though, none of them is as complicated as those who would like to sell you their opt-in list building services would like you to believe. We will explore some of the best ways for you to build a powerfully effective opt-in list for your business in subsequent articles.

However, here is one to give you a start on building an opt-in list for higher sales and profits. Have a contest that rewards a winner with a prize. People love getting free stuff! You can either offer one of your products as a prize, or purchase a low-cost branded business promotional item to offer as a prize. Create a form to place on your website that allows people to enter your contest easily and conveniently. ( All Forms lets you create forms to use for this purpose at no cost. Web Address: http://allforms.mailjol.net/ ) When someone uses the form on your website to enter the contest your business is sponsoring, this person is also opting to receive future offers from you. These forms are essentially an opt-in list that provides you with the information needed for future marketing campaigns. Now how easy is that?

I hope you found this article helpful and will come back to read additional articles on opt-in lists, and building them with ease.

This Writer Has Had Enough With A Particular Writing Jobs Board

What you are about to read here about what I consider to be absolutely the worst place for online writers and content seekers alike, is strictly my own opinion.

The write jobs bidding board site that I cannot stand is that one that tells article buyers to get freelancers. Which from pursuing post after post for over two years now, I guess means an open invitation for content seekers to lowball writers with measly offers of compensation for writing articles for them? Like $1.00- $2.00 for a 500 word article! The fact that there are writers from another region of the world more than happy to accept such exploitation of their writing talents and labors does not help the situation either.

Two and half years ago, I sent a message to this job board’s owner to explain my frustration and disappointment that they allowed such practices. I received a reply back from them after a couple of weeks, in which they said that they were working on correcting these issues so that writers would be presented with projects offering just compensation, for their services only. The board owners assured me that content seekers who continued to make outrageous job projects like $30 for 50/ 800 word articles would find themselves banned from the site. Yeah right. In my inbox, this morning was another list from them of writing jobs created by content seekers offering next to nothing for quite a lot of work.

I am a rather patient person and that is why I have given them so long to change their ways before parting with them for good. I have no respect for the company running this board and continuing to allow these unfair practices to writers. I have even less respect for the content seekers guilty of these practices, which are the outright exploitation of the writers there, no matter how willing some of them may be. It would serve these underhanded content seekers to get poor quality content to match their unbelievably poor pay rates. I have to say that there are ethical content seekers in the mix who do offer writers respectable amounts of pay. However, the ones with little if any apparent ethics literally bury those who are willing to offer writers due compensation for their written works.

At the time, that I made contact with the company behind this job board to let them know of my dissatisfaction with the dismal substance of the writing jobs being offered there, I expressed a concern for new writers who might think they had to accept such low pay to get a start in online writing. I still have that concern today.

Although you may have to start out on a lower paying scale for writing an article that say I do now with the experience I have as a ten-plus online freelance writer. That does not mean you have to accept $2.50 for a 500-word article, because you are a new writer without any writing credentials to show a client. You may have to do a few of these 500 word articles for $5 each, but no lower than that. Only agree to do a few of them to give a client a chance to evaluate your writing skills.

It is wonderful that there are people out there who are willing to give new writers a chance to prove themselves. The opportunity to get our feet wet as new online writers is why many of us are willing to take a little less pay for our writing work in the beginning. Just be careful not to sell yourself and your writing skill too short. Luckily, the decent people who buy articles and other content from writers respect the work that we do, and are willing to pay a decent amount for our writing services. They may ask for a lower fee during an initial evaluation phase of receiving content from a brand new writer. However, they will typically offer to increase your pay after you write a few articles for them.

If the person or company that you are dealing with only wants you to keep writing articles indefinitely on a low pay scale, politely tell them you have taken on new clients and cannot continue providing content for them. I say politely, because we should all be careful about the bridges we burn behind us. I also unequivocally say that you should move on if you do not see higher pay in it for you within a reasonable period and number of produced articles. There are plenty of respectable content buyers out there more than willing to pay professional freelance writers fair wages for their services. To them I say “Thank You!” I really appreciate the clients that make it possible for me to afford to do the writing work that I love so much.

I only made a real-close association to the actual name of this shoddy writing job board at the start of this article to protect myself from possible litigation. I am sure many of you have heard of this place or can figure out its name anyway. Have you had an experience with them similar to mine? Alternatively, have you had a positive experience with them that you would like to share with readers? Click on the comments tab to leave your comments if the comment box is not already open.

Are Free Articles Worth a Writers Time?

Is writing and submitting free articles online a good idea for writers? It certainly can be for several reasons.

Writers can write on the subjects that they know or feel most passionate about. Writing about familiar subjects generally makes it easier for a writer to generate several articles a week for distributing to free article directories.

Some of you might be thinking, “Yeah, but I won’t make any money off of free articles.” You do not make any up-front fees for the free articles that you create and display for others to see online. However, that is only a narrow view of what submitting free articles can mean for freelance writers, and especially net writers.

The broader picture here is that by submitting free articles, you can create a strong online presence for yourself as a freelance writer, promote your writing services and website, and gain increasing numbers of devoted followers. Accomplishing all of this through article creation, which should be a breeze for most writers, is a bigger payoff than receiving $5-$20 for an article would be, if you really think about it.

Establishing oneself online is a priority for internet and other writers. Producing free articles for web distribution is a very effective means for doing that. Each of your articles will include your bio (read submission guidelines for any restrictions on length) and a link to your website or blog, to help drive more traffic to them. You can also choose to provide contact information such as an email address so that folks interested in contacting you for your writing services, can do so.

The more articles that you write and place online, the wider your audience of dedicated readers can become. This can help you to build an extensive fan customer base of people eager to purchase your books and other works.

Writing and submitting free articles to online article databases is simple and has many benefits for net writers, and other freelance writers wanting to get the word out about their writing talents, and for securing more of the writing gigs that pay us well for what we love to do. Write!

I will be supplying the names and links to the free article directories that I use for submitting free articles to in a future post. Did you find this article helpful? Please share your thoughts on this subject of free articles and writers, with all of us.

Freelance Writers and Blogs

Having your own blog, or even several blogs, offers many advantages to freelance writers. However, they can also be detrimental to a freelance writing career if you are not careful. What are some of the advantages to having your own blog, or blogging as a guest in other blogs frequently?

•They can help freelance writers to create and maintain a powerful internet presence.

• Blogs can help freelance writers to display their writing talents to the world and to establish themselves as experts on the subjects they blog about.

•An RSS Feed from your blog can help build readership.

• Your blog can be used to market and sell your e-books and writing services to readers.

•You can point prospective clients to your blog(s) to view your writing style on various subjects when they request samples of your writing.

•With your own blog, you have more creative writing freedom than when you are writing articles and other content for clients.

• Blogging as a guest in other blogs helps build recognition of your name, skills, and knowledge as a freelance writer on different subjects among a broader audience, and you can link your comments back to your own blog, to generate more traffic for your blog.

• Your blog can create an extra stream of income for you and there are blogs that will pay you for making dally, weekly, or monthly blog entries on a wide variety of subjects, for even more income potential.

What are some of the disadvantages to a blog and blogging, which can be detrimental to a freelance writing career?

• Blogging on controversial subjects could be a turn off to some prospective clients.

• Once you have blogged about something, it will be permanently available for others to see. Even deleting blog posts and comments will not ensure that search engines have not already cached them for displaying in search result windows.

•When promoting yourself as a freelance writer through a blog you have to check and then double and triple-check every sentence for proper grammar usage and spelling, to make sure it is free from errors. Someone who has a blog for fun or as a hobby might get away with sloppy blog postings, with freelance writers on the other hand, polished copy, even in blogs, is an expectation you must accept and meet for success as a writer.

•When you blog as a guest in other blogs that permit or write their own questionable content, you run the risk of readers associating you with those blogs and the negative or offensive content they contain. You should read blogs thoroughly before sending entries to blog owners for posting, or leaving comments to them, in order to make sure they best represent you as a freelance writer, and the image of yourself that you want to project to the world.

• Keeping up with a single blog so that you are providing readers with a constant flow of fresh and interesting content to view is not easy. Add multiple blogs to the mix can make it even harder to maintain blogs readers will be enticed into visiting often.

•Some blog entries might be better turned into full-blown articles, and put up for sale to earn you money, rather than used as posts for your blog. Although, it is possible to use snippets from blog posts to enhance articles you write and offer for sale.

• Promoting your blog to increase readership can require a lot of your time and effort.

Overall, I think blogs are great tools for freelance writers to present their writing skills to clients and others in the favorable light that the popularity of blogs presents. It also gives writers another outlet for expressing the creativity that drives them as writers. I would only caution writers to be sure that they want others to see and read something that they have written before permanently placing it into cyber-space for all time to come.

Research-Reference Sites for Writers

Net writers and other writers need quality resources where they can find researched and catalogued information and facts on various subjects to aid them in creating high quality, and polished written works. I am providing in this post links to some of the sites I use to find reliable information and reference materials when I am conducting research on subjects I am not very familiar with, to get a better understanding of them before I begin writing about them.

It should already be understood what the intended use for these sites is, but just in case there is any doubt, let me put it to you in clear terms here and now. These researched and catalogued sites provide information and facts that writers can glean further understanding from on a wide variety of subjects they want to write about but are not well versed in themselves. The information and facts that you find through such useful sites are not there for you to copy or copy and paste into the documents that you are working on. That would be stealing and an infringement on the copyright laws protecting the original authors of the materials found on research and reference sites.

Now that we have gotten the legal and ethical use of the many online research sites writers can use to familiarize themselves with a huge array of subjects out of the way, here are the five research sites that I use the most, in random order. I will admit though that I use numbers (1 and 5) more frequently than the rest of those on my list. Yep, you will have to keep reading or scroll down, to find out what the two research sites I use most are.




!. http://www.about.com/ Scores of articles on many different subjects found here.

2. http://www.ehow.com/ Many articles on a vast array of subjects in a how-to format

3. http://www.howstuffworks.com/ Plenty of useful articles various subjects outlining how that stuff works

4. http://www.webmd.com/ Useful informational articles on medical conditions, treatments, medicines and side effects, and health tips

5. http://www.wikipedia.com/ Find informational user-developed articles on almost every subject you can imagine, and even some you have never thought of


If you know of some more useful research-reference sites writers may want to visit to look for reliable reference materials to help them in their writing, please share them in this thread Thanks.

The "Lingo" of Net Writing: Part Three

Telecommuting: refers to working from home, while traveling, or outside the office.

Telecommuter: is someone who works exclusively from home, from a mobile station, or away from an office.

Usage Rights: refers to a type of license a writer may grant someone else in using the writers’ written works on webpage’s, in newsletters, and elsewhere, without making any changes to the piece and properly citing the writer as the author of the piece.

Unique Rights: refers to another type of license that writers may grant to others in using the written works they produce. This differs from usage rights, and is also known as, “full rights” licensing. This means, that a writer grants permission for the use of their works, as is, changed to a users preferences, without having to credit the writer, and a user may even claim the work as their own. Writers also agree to not to sell these full rights more than once, or to display works, whose full rights have been transferred to another, anywhere else, so that duplicating of content does not occur.

Unique Article: refers to an article that has 100% original and unique wording created by a writer, and not information copied from somewhere else and then pasted into the body of an article.

Unique Content: is the same as unique articles in that they must be a 100% original and unique. However, it spans the entire spectrum of writer-produced works, not just articles.

Julie M. 2009, twsstaff@yahoo.com, all rights reserved.

I hope that you have found the series: The "Lingo" of Net Writing, informative and useful. I will share new ones with you whenever I come across them and certainly, if readers have any, please share them with the rest of us here. Thank You.

My Dear Fellow Writers:

Do any of you other writers suffer from a chronic condition like me of writing in the passive tense, in every other sentence (according to that annoying paperclip dude in WORD, anyway.)

If you used to, but found a way to overcome your tendency to write passively so much, could you share some tips with me? Please!

How many of you have tried to revise your sentence in hopes of appeasing the little bugger, only to say “screw you, know-it-all proper grammar freak ” several sentences later? Maybe I am the only one who has ever behaved in such an irrational manner. (Can you believe that I had to re-do this sentence because HE said my first attempt was a split infinitive?!) I chose to use 2 punctuation marks there and ignore his warning that I should not, so “up yours” WORD program grammar coach!

I guess when you put your dukes, ready to throw down with a program icon intended to keep your grammar usage and spelling in check: it is a clear sign of a very long day of writing. Could be insanity too I suppose. I am choosing to go with too much writing for one day though. My possible insanity is my prerogative to call “writers exhaustion” instead. If you are nuts too, by all means, give it whatever name floats your boat.

I started out with this post in all seriousness and rational thought….How did I fall into the crazy zone?

If you do have some suggestions that may help me to curb my tendency to write passive sentences, I sure would appreciate you sharing them with me here. (Wow, the paperclip remained silent on this sentence!) I guess that is my cue to stop while I am ahead. Thank You and Good Night!

The "Lingo" of Net Writing...Part Two

Here are some more terms commonly used in net writing.

DL: refers to the deadline of when a writing assignment is due.

Escrow: refers to the placement of payment funds into an account where they are (held) until a project is completed, and may include other terms such as, hold until buyer is satisfied with completed project.

FFA: refers to free for all, which indicates that parts of projects are fully open for claiming by writers on job boards without a maximum number of project part claims (per writer) restrictions.

Freelancer: refers to writer who works independently from the companies or institutions they provide writing services for

FIFTC: refers to a fairness policy for writers in place on many job boards of “first in, first to claim” posted jobs.

Job board: refers to any number of places where writers find writing jobs online. Such as websites, forums, blogs, ezines, classified ad sites, social networks, etc.

Keyword: refers to the key word or phrase that online searchers are most likely to use when looking for an article or other information related to the subject of the content a writer crafts.

Keyword density: This is a ratio of how many times a specific keyword or phrase, should appear in an article for seo purposes, while maintaining a natural flow for readers.

MB: refers to message board. These are often where you find the full details of listed writing jobs and can make bids, or ask for clarifications from the buyer prior to bidding.

Master Resell Rights: there are several definitions given for master resell rights and no one seems to be able to agree on any one in particular. This is because master resale rights cover a wide variety of products and branded services. For writers, you are the master of your works. Others cannot take your works, change them, or share or sell them without your permission, which you agree to grant through either the sale or transfer of your master rights to someone else.

Payout: refers to how much, when, and through what payment provider compensation for your completed works will occur.

Plagiarism: refers to copying, pasting, or in any other fashion using the works of another without the express permission to do so, and representing them as your own. This is a major NO-NO- in writing. Writers should hold themselves up to the highest ethical standards in all their writing and business practices.

PLR: refers to private label rights.

PLR Articles: refers to the private label a writer owns and can choose to sell on the articles he or she writes.

PM: refers to a private message

PMB: refers to the private message board found on some writing job sites, in which some details of a project are (hidden ) from public view, with access opened only for logged-in writers.

Project: this refers to the content that a buyer is requesting and typically includes buyer specifications on what the buyer is expecting the finished product to look like.

Service Provider: this is just an Internet fancy-smancy name for a writer who is in the business of writing and selling their written works.

Seo: refers to search engine optimizing of content to attract the attention and favor of search engines.

Snail Pay: refers to paychecks that come to you the old-fashioned and slower way of the United States Postal Service.

Specs: these are the requirements that a content buyer states in the description of the writing job they are outsourcing.

Julie M. 2009. twsstaff@yahoo.com, all rights reserved.

I will share more of the terms common in net writing in part three of this series. Do you have a few of your own to share? Leave them in the comment box so that we can all learn what they are and what they mean. Thanks!

Check This for Writing Jobs

Checking various job boards for writing projects daily, is an all too familiar task for many writers. You have to look for them and then go after them if you want to earn enough to turn your writing into a full-fledged career, or work from home job.

Over time, you may be able to build a list of clients that request content from you on a regular basis, and earn the bulk of your pay for your writing services from them. I started my own writing company about 5 years ago and I have "ongoing" and new clients that come to me for my writing services.

I still maintain memberships in a few sites for writers, as well as check job boards for writers on slow days or weeks, when my schedule is open for writing gigs, separate from the writing I do for my personal clients.

Anyhoo, I thought I would pass along this link to a site for writers to find writing gigs. There you will also find many useful tools for writers. You may want to bookmark this website so you do not have to search for it when making the rounds looking for writing work. Good Luck, Hope You Catch Some Writing Gigs Today!

Copy and Paste the link below into a new window, or bookmark us before clicking on the link so that you can easily find your way back here.

http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/

The "Lingo" of Net Writing

As with most industries, the writing industry employs the use of common and some not-so-common terms in defining different aspects within the scope of the writing profession. Although you may find many of these terms throughout the various fields in writing, a few of them are "unique" to the specific writing fields where their names and definitions are created and used.

Below are eight terms that you will see frequently as a net writer. I have included definitions of those terms for the benefit of newcomers to net writing.


Bidder: refers to a writer who makes a “bid” to a posted job, stating price and estimated completion time, on job boards where writers receive projects based on bid(s) accepted by buyers.

Buyer: refers to the buyer of content. On some boards, you may see “project creator or job poster” which also means the individual or company intending to buy completed works from a writer they have contracted with to produce the content.

Commission Scale: This is how your pay breaks down on many writing job boards. Typical it is a 65/35 pay- split between writer and job board provider for completed work, with 65% going to the writer. . There are writing job boards offering the writer greater than 65% compensation for the works they produce.

Content: refers to articles, documents, images, presentations, and other works writers produce.

Content Provider: This is a name given to writers offering their writing services to buyers.

Copyright: This is a law that protects a writer’s work from being copied, or used without permission, or without proper citing of the true author, by others.

Copyscape: refers to an online resource for checking content to ensure that it is not copied, copyrighted, or duplicated material.

Copywriter: refers to a writer who writes copy for advertisements, press releases, and website mainframes.

Julie M. 2009. twsstaff@yahoo.com, all rights reserved.

There are more terms to know and understand in the net writing industry. New terms crop up on a regular basis too. I will continue sharing even more of the lingo in net writing that I have run across in my ten years writing for the net, and any new ones that pop-up as well in future posts.

Laws that Protect the Rights of Writers and Their Works

When you are a creator of any kind, it is important to know exactly how to protect your ideas and your work, and how the laws connected to these protections apply. Inventors apply for patents, and artists of any kind, including writers, get their work copyrighted. Copyrighting is the protection that applies to your words, preventing others from using them without your permission, and imposing a legal penalty if others use your work in their name.

The good news about copyright is that it happens automatically. Anything you write, from love notes to grocery lists are technically copyrighted, although you would probably get laughed out of court if you tried to sue someone for copying your grocery list. You do not have to draw a little c with a circle at the bottom of your page, or notify anyone, or pay anyone to have your work protected under copyright.

For some people, the concern that someone might steal your work, and then claim that you, not they, are violating copyright law is present, or you may wish to have the option to file a lawsuit for use of your work. If this is the case, you will want to register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office. That will help you protect your work in a public way, and will be eligible for statutory damages and legal fees in the case of successful litigation.

Some writers, though, do not feel the need to retain a copyright to their work. There are many writers, usually freelance, known as “ghost writers”, who write works for others, usually allowing the other person to list their own name as the author of the piece. In normal cases, this would be a violation of copyright law because the “author” is putting their name on a work that you created. This is made legal by selling the rights to the piece.

Different levels of rights can be sold. Use rights allow your work to be reproduced as long as it remains unchanged and your name remains on the piece. Master resell rights allow you to resell the piece that you buy from a writer, and to also sell the resale rights to others. This is a right that is sometimes included in Private Label Rights, or PLR. There is no one definition of PLR because the rights sold vary. Check the contract to be sure what rights you are getting.

In general, PLR may or may not include the rights to resell the piece, resell the resale rights, change the content, and claim the content as your own. In the freelance industry, most people will require full rights, meaning that you sell every right to your piece, including the copyright. In some cases you even lose the right to use the piece as a clip to show potential customers, so make sure that you read the contract carefully to be sure, and to ask questions if any terms do not make sense to you.

Please keep in mind that the “poor man’s copyright”, which means mailing your manuscript to yourself, is not legally sound and does not count as registration. The law is there to help protect you and your work so that you can continue to do what you love. Write on, secure in the knowledge that your work is protected, and learn to sell your work with a full understanding of the rights that you sell with it.

Is Freelance Writing for You?

The field of freelance writing is exciting, but it can also be difficult at times. Like when the inevitable “dry spells” inherent in this industry hit and finding writing gigs is harder. If you plan for these times when writing jobs become leaner, you should be able to ride them out and still pay your bills! Having multiple sources from which you get writing gigs from is a good way to plan for those times when there are less writing assignments available. However, you need to be asking yourself some questions to find out if freelancing is the right choice in career for you before worrying about having enough sources to get writing jobs from to buffer you through dry periods.

● Do you enjoy working alone? If you would miss the camaraderie of working alongside others, freelance writing is not the right choice for you. Aside from interviewing people for some of your writing assignments, as a freelance writer you will be working on your own most of the time.

● Are you a detail-orientated person, who can also follow instructions and guidelines given to you in written form? For the most part, you will receive job descriptions and specifications from clients via fax, email, and instant messaging. You may be able to speak to some clients by phone, though not always. This is an important question to think about because if you need to have a supervisor present to guide you as you work, freelance writing is NOT for you.

●Can you handle the pressure of working under tight deadlines? Clients have deadlines they must meet themselves, and require freelance writers to produce content for them within a specific amount of time in order to meet those deadlines. For some writing assignments, you may have months to complete the project, while the requested turn- around time for other projects may only be a few days to a week.

●Are you organized and can you schedule blocks of uninterrupted time weekly for writing? Organization and scheduling are very important for the following reasons. So that you know what a particular project entails, when it is due, approximately how long it will take you to complete it, and whether you have scheduled yourself enough writing time to get it done to the clients’ specifications, and for delivery to them on time.

●Can you accept the up,-and-down, and even spurts of little freelance writing jobs available for the taking? This is just how the freelance writing jobs ball bounces at times. Freelance writing is quite competitive and many job boards are a FTCFTG or a first to claim, first to get the jobs scenario for writers.

Really asking yourself these questions and answering them honestly, will help you in figuring out whether freelance writing is truly the “right” career choice for you.

After you have given this some careful thought, perhaps I will see you around the freelance writing job boards.

A writing career was definitely the best choice for me. I love to write…I live to write…Getting paid to do it, is just icing on the cake for me.

Please share your comments on this article.