Long Tail Writing

Many people dream of being a writer, but the reality is that most writers need to have a day job in order to provide for themselves and their family. In this article you will learn how to be a writer without quitting your day job. At the end of this article you will find a link to an interview with a full-time writer who explains exactly how she manages to write and publish novellas while holding down a day job. What does a writer do? Writers tell stories. If you can write, you can be a writer. Once you have learned how to create the worlds and characters that populate your story, you need to learn how to put them on paper or electronic text so someone else can read it. Before jumping into writing full time, consider what kind of stories you enjoy most and whether they would appeal to others as well. This article will teach you how to write faster with minimum editing, so start small by telling the story of something that happened in history or fiction (no fair writing about yoursel

Let’s start off this writing platform process by clarifying what content marketing is and isn’t about. Content marketing is where you build content that people want. They go to you to get that content. With any luck, you show them more content that is relevant and they enjoy that information. Before long, you are set in their mind as an authority on the topic. As an authority, you can help steer people to products and services that you believe in, but that also have a referral program. Or, as an authority, you can steer people to your own products and services. For non-fiction authors, this works fairly well. You build a website full of workout advice, then offer a book that shows a number of other workout options. People want the advice, trust you as an authority, and then buy your book for new workout options. However, that frame of reference doesn’t work for fiction writers. I can’t give you advice about avoiding alien politics, then give you a book about a space captain. So, how ca

There are two types of writing tips you will often find while searching for truth. The first are writing tips that mean well, but are empty. The second are writing tips that seem simple, but reflect a greater pool of wisdom. While it’s arrogant of me to assume the following will fall into that second bucket, I will do my best. I am going to call these two types of writing tips the humblebrag and the peer. So how do you identify which is which? The Humblebrag Writing Tip: In this format, the author “just wants you to succeed” by telling you how wonderful they are doing. This can a number of forms, but one of the most popular are sharing financial figures. They then pretend to break them down, so you can “learn from their success”. This is an easy to spot humblebrag, and often times the key to their success is… wait for this shocking revelation: hard work and luck! (Sarcasm filter being added here) Aren’t you glad you dug into their financials to learn that? But wait, there is more good

Writing a fantasy book can be a sunny vacation or a tooth ache. I’ve done what I can to make my practice as an artist as pleasurable as possible. Whoever said art gets better with suffering was not an artist. Art become better when you practice it and you are only going to want to practice art when you enjoy doing it. So, what can we do to make the adventure feel more sunny and less like a trip to the dentist? Here are five tips to help you write a fantasy novel. Everyone’s process is different, so I don’t want to prescribe this as the only method. Some authors start with scenery as inspiration, others use music, and still others their past experiences. No matter the process, these tips are fairly universal. Tip 1: Know the tropes. Writing an odd ball book may make your soul happy for a time, but if no one “gets” it… that’s soul crushing. The best middle ground is to make your art with a few key elements to help the typical reader. Not every trope needs to be jammed in, but having a fe

In this article I will discuss my review of Hubpages, what you can expect as a payout, and how I use the service. As a writer, my goal is to have my writing read. The best way to have that happen is through marketing and practicing my craft. However, marketing costs a fair amount of money. To help offset that cost, I write several non-fiction articles on Hubpages. Before I begin my love letter to Hubpages, here is the niche this service provides in the market:Anyone can start a website blog and build content on that blog. However, search engines may not rank small blog information relevant. The market niche Hubpages provides is to bring your content alongside similar content. That makes the search engine rank your specific information higher. The higher the rank in the search engines, the more clicks you get. The more clicks you get, the more ads that can be shown. The more ads that are shown on your content, the greater your share of the revenue. In addition, Hubpages adheres to searc

Opportunity cost is a fallacy that is often treated like a law. In addition, the opposite of opportunity cost provides more value than the idea of opportunity cost. To start, let’s examine the definition of opportunity cost and an example. Opportunity cost is described as losing a potential gain because you chose an alternative. For example, if you invested in bonds and make 1% back you may not be happy (Ex. getting $1 yield for that $100 bond investment) . You might be disappointed because you look at your stocks and you got 9% ($9 for that $100 stock investment). That lost $8 from deciding to invest in bonds, instead of stocks, is opportunity cost. However, opportunity cost can be described outside fiscal frameworks as well. A student who spends time studying history may have some opportunity cost, when compared to their engineering classmate. They both had the same amount of time, but the engineering student may received a job offer for more money than the history major. The way mos

There is a particular prestige gained when you can boast that you are an author. Everyone wants to be an author, to have their innermost thoughts and desires shared with others. However, few are willing to put in the long effort to get this completed. From the surface, the concept is easy. You have this story with twists and turns and a satisfying ending. Going deeper, an author needs to understand the multiple arcs occurring and thematic feel of the book. This article isn’t going to focus on the craft of building a book, nor will it focus on building the routine necessary to author a book. Instead, we will cover the higher level outline of what self-publishing means. Let’s start with an overall pros and cons list: Pros: Writing a novel can be extremely cheap. You have complete control over everything: the content, the cover, the marketing. Everything is up to you. [This could also be a con] No gate keepers / barrier’s to entry. No one will tell you that you are not allowed to

Social proof is a complicated matter, regardless of the product you are trying to sell. However, social proof is one of the top factors shoppers take into consideration. After all, most shopping done is not repeat business, but rather first time. This means that we need to not only verify the function of what we are buying, we need to ferret out all the potential problems. It’s only in the completion of that shopping pre-work that we find success. The question then becomes, how can we help assure readers that our book is free of potential problems? The best answer to that is in getting book reviewers to weigh in. How do we get book reviewers to discuss our particular product? We do this through providing advanced reader copies (ARC’s) and setting up a review timeframe. All of that information is good, but where do we start as authors? We are, by typical definitions, self-deprecating creatures who fear and feast on feedback. We loathe to seek reviews out, but they are so crucial to our

These two services provide similar functions, but often to different levels of success. I’ve spent the last year and half marketing the same books on both services. The idea was to build my mailing list as much as possible. In addition, I wanted to have a mailing list that interacted with my work as much as possible. After all, it doesn’t make any sense to build a list of freebie seekers if they never intend to buy books or work with your offers. Let’s break this service competition into three rounds: type of users, value for money, and speed of list growth. Please remember: Your mileage may vary! Some books are wild successes and others wild failures. Round 1: Type of Users As mentioned in the introductory paragraph, having a person’s email address doesn’t mean much if it’s a burner email. If they don’t intend to regularly check their email, open your specific offer, and take you up on those offers… what is the point of having a mailing list? You want people to regularly enjoy your w

I’ve had this blog for some time, but I don’t make any real money on it. I believe I’ve totaled around $1.13 via Google. Instead, I decided to take my content to two other major sources. The reasons for this are varied. The main reason I take my content over to Hubpages is that they care about the searchability of your articles. The goal is to build good articles that Google wants and that rank high because of value. That means they will tell you the quality of your article and will even make edits on your articles to make them rank higher. On the other side, there is Medium, which has a built in audience. The focus with this platform is to build an ecosystem outside of Google so that you can make money without having to worry about ranking. Instead you get your stories “published” in their virtual magazines. Let’s break down an essential focus right away: visits for money. The whole reason you write blog articles online is to eventually monetize what you create. That way you can cont