This Week: Pinterest, Kindle Ebooks and More

If you’re a Pinterest fan, you know how addictive the site can be, but did you also know that the site can do great things for you as a writer — it can help you to stand out from the crowd.

Consider Pinterest if you’re writing a book, or if you’re looking for writing jobs. A presence on the site gives you credibility. The site’s a lot of fun too, of course.

Farewell, Blogging for Dollars

I’m currently working on a new coaching workshop, so our Blogging for Dollars program won’t be available after this weekend. Check it out, if you’re not aware of it.

Kindle Day Job Killer — highly recommended (with goodies)

I’m heavily involved with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program, primarily for my clients in my role as a ghostwriter, although I’m working on a couple of books of my own.

Everyone who’s selling ebooks wants to sell more of them, naturally. So when a friend recommended Kindle Day Job Killer to me, I had no hesitation in taking a look. I knew that if I could pick up just one new tip, the program would repay itself many times over.

Long story short, the program’s much better than I expected, and I recommend it. More on Kindle Day Job Killer here.

It’s been a busy week, and the weekend’s here — have a great time. 🙂

Adventure Is Just a Romantic Name for Trouble

“Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it’s hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.”

– Louis L’Amour

Can You Still Write Articles For The Web?

New writers want to start off writing simple material. For many years, that’s meant writing Web articles. I had a couple of questions this week: can you still make money writing these articles?

These days businesses need web content for their websites. They also need content to draw traffic. One of the most popular ways to do this is by using content to market their site. “Content marketing” has become hugely popular, because it’s cost-effective. An online article can stay online and attract traffic for years. Advertising on the other hand, stops drawing traffic when the advertising stops. Moreover, online advertising has become expensive.

Yes, you can. The article will get you started. If you want to make a career of Web writing, SYWON (Sell Your Writing Online Now) helps you to do that.

Coming Up This Week: Web Writing, Blogging in 60 Minutes a Week

Here we are at the start of another week. I hope you’re looking forward to it.

If you’re in the northern hemisphere, I hope that spring has sprung for you. Down in the south, in Sydney Australia, we’re headed for winter. Thank heavens the humidity has gone, and that the nights are cooler.

On the freelance writing blog this week, our theme will be Web writing. I’ve chosen this theme in conjunction with the prelaunch of my new program. Check it out of you’re a Web writer, and want to increase your income without writing.

I created this new program because writers develop blinkers. (I know I do.) We’re too focused on just the writing, and we fail to see other opportunities. Let’s see if we can remove the blinkers. 🙂

On the Creativity Factory, we’ll be discussing blogging. Our theme is managing your blog in just 60 minutes a week. If you’ve been putting off blogging because you don’t have the time, I hope the series will help.

Back to fiction (again)

In 2010 I started a couple of novels for Kindle publication. I’d given up writing novels after too many hassles with literary agents. The writing progressed brilliantly, until I was commissioned to ghostwrite several novels. Never one to turn away writing work, I let the work on my own novels lapse.

That’s the challenge of writing in the age of the Internet: there’s SO much work around for writers, that we get sidetracked.

I woke up the other morning with a complete plot for a new novel in my head. So, I wrote it down. I love the idea of this new book, and I’ll be writing this novel first, before I go back to my 2010 novels.

Do you plan your week’s writing? Please share.

Onward… 🙂

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Five Minute Blogging? Yes (and you can make money too)

Think blogging takes too much time? 

As I said on my freelance writing blog:

Blogging’s popular, and perhaps you’ve considered blogging, but: “It takes too much time,” you decided.

Untrue.

Let’s create an “instant” profitable blog, a blog to which you can devote just five minutes a day. To do it, we’ll take a lesson from the popular blogging platform Tumblr, which in late March of 2013, hosted 100 million blogs.

Just follow the directions. 🙂

Once you’ve created your blog, you’ll want to promote it. Here’s an excellent article which describes five simple ways to promote your “five minute” blog:

Take Advantage Of Free-To-Use Sites
There are many, many sites out there that allow you to publish content free-of-charge, so take advantage of them to get additional exposure. Places like HubSpot or Squidoo are good places to start if you don’t want to deal with a lot of setup. Tumblr, WordPress and Blogger blogs are free, easy to create and fairly well-optimized for search engines. I call these types of sites “supporting sites,” as they help me get additional exposure in Google and help my target market find my work.

Enjoy your blogging, but do remember SEO…

Get up to speed on SEO for writers

This week on the freelance writing blog, our theme was SEO (search engine optimization) for writers. I created a slide deck for you, if SEO is new to you.

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SEO and Writing: This Week’s Theme

Sell your Web content creation services to clients.

This week on the Fab Freelance Writing Blog, our theme is writing, and search engine optimization (SEO.)

We kicked off with an article on selling your services to clients:

If your clients have websites, they’ve been affected by the ongoing Google updates. This provides a HUGE opportunity for you, the competent freelance writer.

Your clients need you, and they need you to be up to speed on search engine optimization (SEO.) Although you don’t need to be an SEO wizard (that would be impossible, because SEO requires advanced Web engineering skills at the highest levels), it’s essential that you understand how today’s increasingly complex content and search landscape affects writing for the Web.

In this article, we’ll look at five easily-understandable points you can make to your clients to sell them on your SEO-enhanced content creation services. It’s an easy sell.

Watch for more on Web writing and SEO on the blog, and in our weekly writing tips ezine.

Flipboard, Springpad, Evernote, and more

On the Creativity Factory, I wrote about:

* Using Evernote’s shared notebooks if you hate paperwork (but love your business);

* Flipboard – an iPad news app  which lets you create magazines, and share them with others. I’m creating one for this blog, and I’ll post the link soon;

* Springpad: a cross between Evernote and Pinterest. Springpad’s created a fascinating way of sharing notebooks with others: embedding them into websites.