write4money

I have decided to put up my articles on Twitter. It’s not that I have not done so before. But I have not done them systematically. As such, yesterday, I sat down to submit all my articles there. If you have a lot of articles, I suggest that you submit them on different days or at different times. But I didn’t have time to do that. I did it all at one shot.

Anyway, today I was quite surprised to see that a few more people are already following me on Twitter. For those of you who are not on Twitter yet, you can be missing out on possible people who may interested to read your articles.

At Twitter, people update what they are doing at the moment. The same feature can be found on Facebook as well. Many people use it to increase their business, to gain traffic to their websites or blogs, or to increase the number of pageviews for their articles (as in my case!).

At Twitter, you can follow others you find interesting and see what they are doing at the moment. Other people can follow you too, if they are interested to know what you are doing at the moment. A couple of people are following me now. I hope they help to increase the pageviews as well as my earnings.

I want to publish a book next year. There are two ways this is possibly going to happen. First of all, my friend is getting me to write a book with him. It may or may not materialize. It all depends on whether these people have the time to write one, considering the fact that they are working on a full-time basis.

I may be doing freelance writing, but still I have very limited time for writing. I can only write when my daughter is asleep at night or taking a nap in the afternoon. She is very active and as such, there were many days this month that I have abandoned the thought of staying up to write, as I was so tired from taking care of her. It is especially stressful these days when my hubby and I are trying to toilet train her. She just doesn’t seem to get it. I’m sure many full-time mothers will be able to empathise my situation, especially those who are also trying to earn some money on the side.

The second way for me to write a book would be to publish one that I have been working on. There are a few things that need to be done with this piece of writing though. It needs to be rewritten, to be given a new twist and I would need an illustrator for the entire book. I wonder how much that would cost me to get done. I’m thinking of hiring someone from Elance to do it.

But I must think in the long run, it is going to mean residual income for me and my family. Have you though of writing a book to increase your income? Publishing a book now is so easy. You can even publish it on your own, even if no other publisher would want to do it. You can also arrange for the book to be printed on demand. I think that this is a great new technology that writers need to embark on to make more money with the talent they have been blessed with.

I think that one of the fastest way to write would be to write in a conversational style. If you do not knwo what this means, it means that you write as if you are taking to your audience. However, I did not normally write articles and blogs in this manner. It used to be that I was writing in an authoritative manner. But nowadays, as I become more relaxed when writing my pieces, I just let all the things in my head flow out into my writing.

It’s just so wonderful. Okay, I can’t type as fast as my thoughts, but it does help to keep mental block at bay. By writing as fast as my thoughts, I’m able to come up with more blog posts and articles in teh same time if I were to write in any other styles.

Here’s how you can write in a conversational style. Use the pronoun “I” frequently thoughout your blog posts. It will give a more personal feeling to your blog or article writing. It would also mean that you are forced to give your own opinions and thoughts about things, and this comes naturally as you think about what to write in your blog.

Second tip is to write as fast as you can. Just type whatever words that comes to your mind, even though you may not know how your sentence is going to end. I’m using this method everytime I write a blog post. I think it helps me develop my creativity in writing different sentence structures as I go along, and I avoid using the common starting words in a sentence such as “The…” or “There is …” My English teacher used to say that these are boring ways to start a sentence. She advocates variation in our writing.

Third tip is to pretend that you are actually talking or discussing this issue with a partner, a friend or your readers. I think it is a great way to feel that you have someone listening to you when you talk. When I first started blogging, I was not very comfortable writing in this style, but this is the only way to get my writing going on and on…

I truly believe that it is a cause for celebration. I have published my 100th article in Triond. How does it feel? It feels so good. I have never thought that I would be able to create such a large repertoire of articles in Triond.

I know that there are some people who has written hundreds and thousands of articles. These are professional freelance writers. Although I have been doing this for almost a year now, but I have not reached that level as yet. It takes a lot of time and effort to push article after article on a daily basis. But if you love doing it, there will be nothing to stop you. As for me, if I can churn out one article per day, I would be more than happy.

At this moment, I’m taking a break from writing articles. I need to promote them more, instead of writing non-stop. I must look at the bigger picture, in terms of my earnings and reputation. I know that if I write on a regular basis, there are many people following my latest articles. Some of them check out my articles regularly. Others pop in my comments pages once in awhile. All in all, these are the people I count on for my pageviews. I love them!

I hope to be able to double this rate of writing new articles. 100 articles in a year (thereabouts!) mean that I’m writing one article very three to four days. I hope to write an article every one-two days next year. Let’s see if I can do it. All the best to me!

How often do you sit down and write your blog posts? Initially when I started blogging I was writing a few blog posts during the weekend and log in every day to publish each one on the net. That was when Blogger did not have this feature of scheduling the blog posts. It would mean that I might miss a day’s blog post if I don’t have the time to log in that particular day.

But nowadays I write all my blog posts for the week in one sitting and schedule them all throughout the week. In this way, it is possible for me to post at a regular time every day. My regular readers will be able to anticipate my next blog post at around the same time every day.

Scheduling my blog posts becomes a very important thing for me. I save time logging in and out of a blogging platform in order to publish a single post. Now I can do them all at one time. There were days when I have to be away for a period of time, let’s say, for a holiday or a course, and would not have access to the internet for days. It would mean that my blog will continue to be updated. I love this automation feature.

I know that there are some people who have written blog posts months in advance. It is possible if your blog is not time-sensitive. If yours is this type of blog, then there is a need for you to log in everyday, to post. As for now, I have written 5 blog posts, well, not really in one sitting. But at least I don’t have to write one for the next five days. I can now concentrate on other things like writing my reviews and articles.

I’m trying to write a blog post as quickly as I can. As a matter of fact, I’m actually timing this blog post to see how fast I can write a 200 to 300-word blog post.  I am trying to see if I can write this in under 15 minutes, or 10 minutes if that is possible at all.

Some people say that if you are taking an hour to write a blog post, you are taking too long. But you also need to include other things like grammar and spell check when writing a blog post. You will also need to add pictures wherever necessary or add links to certain websites within your post to guide your readers. As such, it may actually take a longer time.

So far, I have taken about 4 minutes to write the first two paragraphs. All in all, it would mean that I can actually write a blog post within 10 minutes. But is it wise to do so? Here’s what I think. I think that if you have planned what you intend to write before hand, taking that amount of time is reasonable, depending on how fast you can type, without making mistakes.

As for me, if the topic is very interesting to me and I have a lot of things to say or share with my readers, there is a better chance that I can write a blog post in the shortest amount of time possible. But if you are the kind of person who is a perfectionist, you will find that writing a blog post in record time will just stress you out, since you woul dneed to craft your words very carefully, to make sure that everything is prim and proper. I’m not a perfectionist, but I do believe that I do write well.

To conclude, I took 9 minutes to write this piece. Great work!

There is a new get-paid-to write site that came up. I have been receiving so many invites to join the site. I have received these invites from my Triond writing mates, claiming that you get to earn much faster at Bukisa than Triond.

I am very careful now with joining new writing sites, especially after my experience with Neowide, remember? I do not want to be in a situation whereby I write so many articles for them and they don’t pay a single cent. The first thing I noticed was the fact that the minimum payout is $50. Wow! That is a lot of money to accumulate. They pay on a pageview basis as well, similar to Triond.

But there is something that actually prevents me from joining it - the referral system. It is based on a pyramidal structure. It means that the more people joining the site under you, the more you will earn from their writing. You get a cut from their earnings. Pyramid structures have crumbled before. The only person profitting from this would be the one at the top.

In Triond, each for its own. There is no referral system at Triond. You write and you earn from your writing alone. You become responsible for all your pieces and answerable to your earnings. If your writing is lousy or you don’t write as much, you will earn less. If you don’t promote your articles, you get less pageviews and less earnings. That’s it. But on the positive side, if you write wonderful articles that gets the attention of many people, you will also find your earnings increase accordingly. For me, I prefer a simple structure I can trust. The more complicated it is, the more things they are trying to hide from you. So you have got to be very careful!

After writing a lot about Triond, my first love, I am inspired to write more about other writing sites that are worth writing for. Associated Content is one of the legitimate sites around that many know of.

I have not written many articles at Associated Content. I have about 5 articles or maybe less. Why have I not been inspired to write more for them? Hmm… There are a couple of reasons.

1) No upfront payment
I’m not a US resident and as such, I am not eligible for their upfront payment for each article I submit. That is truly sad I feel, because Associated Content has dual payment schemes. If you are from the US, you get upfront payment as well as performance payment from pageviews as well. That is fantastic indeed! But for me, it would mean that earnings are still going to be pretty slow, similar to Triond.

2) Approval time
They are taking a long time to review my articles. Maybe this could be due to the hundreds and thousands of articles submitted to them on a daily basis. I wish they could provide a better service in this area. Sometimes it took more than a week to know whether my article has been approved. If I had submitted them at Triond, it would have generated some money there already. Maybe that is why I always revert to Triond instead of AC. Habits die hard!

3) Rejection
I was faced with a couple of rejections at AC. One of the reasons is that there is duplicate content, without my byline. Even though I explained that I’m that same person in the other site, it was not accepted. Writing this makes me wonder whether there is a way to overcome this problem. I’m going to try something and let you know how it all turns out.

For US residents, this is a site you must try if you are keen to make some money from your writing. For others, it may not be entirely worthwhile, depending on your goals.

I have mentioned that I’m an avid Triond writer. Recently I published my 100th article there and was so happy. Yup! I have exactly 100 articles there, generating $10-$15 per month, without me lifting a finger. Well, alright, I have to promote them, so that they will still continue to get pageviews. But I have not added any more articles there, probably until next year.

I am also very happy to announce that I have received the money for my November earnings. It wasn’t very fantastic, just $12.98. I’m hoping that this month I will receive more from Triond. So far, I have more than $9 in my account there and it’s not the end of the month yet. I hope to generate $15 this month. I hope I can make it.

I have earned more than $100 from Triond since I started writing articles for them in January this year. Although I do feel that I could have earned more, but like most people said, earnings in Triond is very slow. I tend to agree with this view. Since I have already reached 100 articles at Triond, should I try another site to earn more money - like Associated Content or Helium? I’m still contemplating. Some people said that if I want to write more professionally, I should quit Triond. But I love the fact that it is so easy to submit my articles to them and they get published so quickly. I also get to see immediate results from publishing them. Earnings are updated every single day. Well, let me ponder over it.

It is almost the end of the year and it’s time for new year resolutions again. Let’s forget about the past year, if you have not been doing too well. It’s focus on the future and hope to make things better.

There are a couple of things I would love to do this year. And if I do complete all of them, it would definitely mean more income from writing.

1) Writing SEO articles

My very first goal is simple to achieve, but I have just been putting it off for a very long time.  I had wanted to learn to write SEO articles. I have read a couple of articles on this and would like to try it all the time next year.

2) Publish a book

It’s a great ambition to be a published writer. Well, not just an online writer, but a physical one. I have compiled a couple of pieces together. It needs to be reworked and have them illustrated. I have to invest a little bit of money for the illustration bit, unless my hubby is willing to draw them for me. He just have too much on his hands right now.

3) Get Paid from Blogging

I have started this blog here at Today.com in the hope of earning more money for the year 2009. I have my own blog, which I have been having trouble keepign up after going on short trips this month. I have been very disorganized with my writing and as such need to get back on track.

So, what are some of your goals related to writing for 2009?