Many freelance writers do not feel blogging is important. The biggest complaints are that it is a waste of time, that it is ineffective, and that it is "giving away" your work for free. Although I have reservations about some content, I have to disagree that blogging is giving away work for free.
I obviously use my blog to vent. Sometimes, when I am bogged down by work, I have to forgo making entries, but in all, I enjoy it. I am a writer, and it is such a free form of expression it helps me to clear my mind. However, I also try to provide useful tips to my readers, so they can build their writing careers - be it through freelance work, self-publishing, or traditional publishing.
Blogging helps you build an audience for your work, if you use it correctly. I don't. First, you need to post regularly - preferably once a day, but at least once a week. I have giant periods of time where I am trying to raise funds for my family to survive on through freelancing, and I cannot post. (Blogging doesn't pay well for obvious reasons. Hence the reason I added the "Donate" button - in hopes I can get enough donations to focus more on my blogging content and providing useful tips and less on where I am going to get the money to repair my transmission.) In addition, I should push my own writing on here more often, but then I hate pushy salesmen. I have plenty of links that are visible on the page that will take you to where you can buy my work or read about it.
Now, my reservations concern what you blog. As I mentioned in an earlier post, you do not want to blog an entire book. Once you have given the whole thing away for free, your chances of selling it to someone are slim. However, you can use your blog to generate interest in your books or your writing style. Several of my Google+ and Goodreads friends have great blogs that sell their brands. Check these out for better ideas on how to set up a good themed blog for selling your books or your freelancing services (note, not all of these bloggers post as frequently as they should, but they write on focused themes that should help them sell their work):
http://joymcculloughcarranza.blogspot.com/ (Freelance writer trying to break into traditional publishing.)
http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/ (Professional script reader)
http://timothyhurleyauthor.blogspot.com/ (Self-publishing)
http://pebbleinthestillwaters.blogspot.com/ (author/ book blog)
Monday, July 30, 2018
Monday, July 23, 2018
SEO Debacle
SEO is important for self-publishers since your website is what attracts others to it. As a freelancer, it is also very important because chances are good you are going to get jobs that require you to SEO. This post is about the freelancing end, but if you are planning to SEO your website, you can find some advice here, too.
I cannot tell you how many times I have applied for a job that required SEO and when hired, gotten a huge list of "keywords" with rates to stuff them. There are so many keywords that it is ridiculous. This should not be the basis of anyone's advertising plan.
Consider a recent project that I was glad did not continue beyond one article. Now the project description for this particular SEO product was to write an article of 3500 words about the topic. I was given 109 keywords to use 704 times (20% of the total content). Some of these "keywords" were "won," "it's," "often," "new," "find," "them," "how," "day," "two," "2018," "don't," and "make." Now, what was I writing about? You see, your keywords are supposed to be the words someone would use to look for your product on the web. They should be specific to your product. Got a guess?
Here is another hint: I was supposed to use 43 keyword phrases a total of 183 times (making up another 461 words unless I doubled up with some of the "keywords." These contained phrases such as "such as" (I kid you not), "New York," "York City," "e-mail address," and "mild to moderate." Figured it out yet? If I get 10 guesses in the comment section, I will post the answer to what I was writing about there.
So confident am I that these "keywords" are "non-keywords" go ahead and put these into your favorite search engine and see what you come up with. I am sensing another poem along the lines of Chicks Dig War. (For those of you who don't know, this is a poem created when the author, Drew Gardner, typed three seemingly random words into a search engine and the poem documents his results which spawned the flarf genre of literature.)
For this project, I had 1165 words of a 3500 word article randomly chosen for me, and I was supposed to write something interesting and relevant. Don't do this to freelancers who are writing for you, and don't do this to yourself!
A single word or phrase should appear no more than 1-2% of the time in your work. If it appears more than 5% you can get permanently banned from Google (or so the rumor goes). One of the search phrases I on the provided list needed to be used 1.5% of the time or once every 60 words. More importantly, look at the word totals: I was supposed to use a specific keyword or phrase every four words. Yes, some were non-keywords, but that doesn't help the situation much because I still had to make sure they were there.
Google has said repeatedly that after the first couple-few uses of a word, your topic is recognized and now synonyms count toward that. A Forbes writer took this further and discover the top ranked web pages used 0.7-0.9% keyword density. (Note this word is not plural. If you have more than 5 keywords/phrases, you are doing yourself and your writers a disservice.) Ironically, the lower the density the higher the page ranked. Why? Because it is impossible to write something that is interesting and relevant if you stuffed it full of keywords!
Which is what finally brought me to my soapbox. I saw yet another job for SEO today. The poster stated that the article didn't flow nicely. They wanted it to be readable and interesting, but the freelancer was not allowed to change the SEO (read- I have stuffed this article full of keywords to the point it could make anyone throw-up if forced to read it entirely, but I want you to rewrite it so it won't make readers sick without fixing the problem). Amazingly, people actually apply for these jobs all the time and get them. Apparently those commissioning the work have grown so accustomed to the moldy bread they are producing that simply adding a little mayonnaise makes them entirely palatable even though they still make normal people ill.
I cannot tell you how many times I have applied for a job that required SEO and when hired, gotten a huge list of "keywords" with rates to stuff them. There are so many keywords that it is ridiculous. This should not be the basis of anyone's advertising plan.
Consider a recent project that I was glad did not continue beyond one article. Now the project description for this particular SEO product was to write an article of 3500 words about the topic. I was given 109 keywords to use 704 times (20% of the total content). Some of these "keywords" were "won," "it's," "often," "new," "find," "them," "how," "day," "two," "2018," "don't," and "make." Now, what was I writing about? You see, your keywords are supposed to be the words someone would use to look for your product on the web. They should be specific to your product. Got a guess?
Here is another hint: I was supposed to use 43 keyword phrases a total of 183 times (making up another 461 words unless I doubled up with some of the "keywords." These contained phrases such as "such as" (I kid you not), "New York," "York City," "e-mail address," and "mild to moderate." Figured it out yet? If I get 10 guesses in the comment section, I will post the answer to what I was writing about there.
So confident am I that these "keywords" are "non-keywords" go ahead and put these into your favorite search engine and see what you come up with. I am sensing another poem along the lines of Chicks Dig War. (For those of you who don't know, this is a poem created when the author, Drew Gardner, typed three seemingly random words into a search engine and the poem documents his results which spawned the flarf genre of literature.)
For this project, I had 1165 words of a 3500 word article randomly chosen for me, and I was supposed to write something interesting and relevant. Don't do this to freelancers who are writing for you, and don't do this to yourself!
A single word or phrase should appear no more than 1-2% of the time in your work. If it appears more than 5% you can get permanently banned from Google (or so the rumor goes). One of the search phrases I on the provided list needed to be used 1.5% of the time or once every 60 words. More importantly, look at the word totals: I was supposed to use a specific keyword or phrase every four words. Yes, some were non-keywords, but that doesn't help the situation much because I still had to make sure they were there.
Google has said repeatedly that after the first couple-few uses of a word, your topic is recognized and now synonyms count toward that. A Forbes writer took this further and discover the top ranked web pages used 0.7-0.9% keyword density. (Note this word is not plural. If you have more than 5 keywords/phrases, you are doing yourself and your writers a disservice.) Ironically, the lower the density the higher the page ranked. Why? Because it is impossible to write something that is interesting and relevant if you stuffed it full of keywords!
Which is what finally brought me to my soapbox. I saw yet another job for SEO today. The poster stated that the article didn't flow nicely. They wanted it to be readable and interesting, but the freelancer was not allowed to change the SEO (read- I have stuffed this article full of keywords to the point it could make anyone throw-up if forced to read it entirely, but I want you to rewrite it so it won't make readers sick without fixing the problem). Amazingly, people actually apply for these jobs all the time and get them. Apparently those commissioning the work have grown so accustomed to the moldy bread they are producing that simply adding a little mayonnaise makes them entirely palatable even though they still make normal people ill.
Now, in an attempt to "stuff" this article have used the word "keyword" 16 times in this
post of 772 words, which is about 2%. Can you image how awful
this article would be if I had used it twice as much?
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Getting a Hardcover on CreateSpace II
I posted a blog post on this topic a few years ago: http://onbeinganauthor.blogspot.com/2014/05/getting-hardcover-on-createspace.html
This by far has been my most commented on post. However, sadly, CreateSpace has discontinued this service. Those of us who already had hardcover books through them were allowed to purchase until this year.
Currently, I am looking into having a local print shop (that I have used in the past) perform this service for me. I had also used Staples print service to create hardcovers (prior to CreateSpace). I will do some research and plan to have a future post about this. Until then, I am placing a note on the other post and linking to this one. I will also update this post with a link(s) when I finish this portion of my journey.
This by far has been my most commented on post. However, sadly, CreateSpace has discontinued this service. Those of us who already had hardcover books through them were allowed to purchase until this year.
Currently, I am looking into having a local print shop (that I have used in the past) perform this service for me. I had also used Staples print service to create hardcovers (prior to CreateSpace). I will do some research and plan to have a future post about this. Until then, I am placing a note on the other post and linking to this one. I will also update this post with a link(s) when I finish this portion of my journey.
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