Read + Write + Report
Home | Start a blog | About Orble | FAQ | Blogs | Writers | Paid | My Orble | Login
 
Years of scholarly instruction can make your writing technically correct; Wordophilia can help you give your words more meaning. From vocabulary to style, grammar to creativity - a place for writers of all kinds to read about and discuss their craft.

Valentines Heads-Up

January 27th 2009 22:12
Mr Deeds
Schlubs In Lub

Who can forget the Hallmark card the eponymous hero comes up with in Mr Deeds? Well, now is perhaps the time for you to show that you, too, can write icky, sickly, honey-covered prose: Valentine's Day is approaching fast.

With this momentous occasion - which, as you've probably gathered by now, I think is an over-commercialised bag of poop - comes the undeniable opportunity for freelance writers to make a few extra bucks. From now until the 14 February, there will be millions of hopeless romantics (and other hopeless people) desperately searching the web for a blast of lurve. As content producers, now is the time to write, not later: remember it'll take time to get stuff published and seen, for word of mouth to bring the Pulitzer people running.

Helium hasn't posted any special content requests for the day, though they have many titles that are appropriate if you are of the bodice-ripping ilk (or just feeling warm and fuzzy).

Associated Content, on the other hand, has two Calls For (written) Content up at the moment, as well as a couple of audio ones. They're both for Valentine's Day poems, but one has a limitation of a maximum of twenty words. Now that's quite hard to do unless you happen to be good at writing haikus!

So get your best poet hat on and head on over. With bonus cash and promotion on their special V-Day pages (presumably the front page on the day itself) up for grabs, it's a great opportunity to earn some money and some publicity.

Oh and yes: I entered my 20-worder, but didn't use the word 'schlub'.
46
Vote
   


Traffic <> Money

January 24th 2009 14:19
Queues

When people talk about earning money online, one of the most common aspects is ad revenue. AdSense, Kontera and a bunch of other services provide keyword-generated ads and our visitors click them to generate a few cents. That's the theory.

In practice, although I've not been doing this whole online thing for long, I've noticed that the reality is a long, long way from the theory. Take that article I published yesterday, for example. In one day, my traffic on the various HubPages I've written tripled. OK, so it's not as big a deal as it sounds - the actual figures went from around 30 hits to 90 or so - but it's still a pretty significant change.

However, looking at the ad stats is depressing. On this particular piece of work, I paid close attention to the important key phrases. I even went off and used Google's tools to find which phrases were most popular in a stunning use of SEO techniques (well, stunning for me, anyway!). Twenty-four hours on (roughly) and I had a quick peek at the stats: lots of lovely page impressions and not a single ad click. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Now, it may just be me, but I find that disheartening. Twenty four hours isn't long, but it's still pretty indicative, I'd say. Personally, if I like something on the web, I'll click an ad - not only to see what's available behind some of those weird bits of advertising text, but also to show that I appreciated the creator's efforts in posting their work. Apparently, there aren't that many other people who think like this.

Presumably, this is the practical upshot of ads invading everything on the web. Commercialisation has perhaps made us almost blind to the ad text - our brains simply cut that part of the screen out, marking it as useless bumpf. Or maybe Windows has a built-in ad detector that pushes our mice away from the clickable area. Who knows?
64
Vote
   


Thank Heaven For Hot Spots

January 23rd 2009 18:26
Making Money Online

Well, so much for my Internet connection being reliable. It's been down for ages now, so I've resorted to jumping onto a nearby hot spot instead - that's one o' them thar wifi places with an insecure connection available to all and sundry. Thankfully, it's just in range of my house!

[ Click here to read more ]
35
Vote
   


Fan Fiction

January 16th 2009 18:26
Fan fiction fans
Hey, ladies: I write fan fics. Wanna come up and read my drafts?


I was off trawling around a few blogs today, just kind of killing a bit of time and seeing if I might happen upon something interesting, when I was suddenly reminded of a fan fiction story I wrote years ago. How? Let me explain


[ Click here to read more ]
40
Vote
   


Scribble Scribble

January 12th 2009 01:13
Helium

I finally sat down and wrote one of the articles that was crawling around inside my noggin yesterday. It's not very spectacular, but it's one I'd been having trouble with, since it's somewhat more commercially viable than most of the nonsense I produce.

[ Click here to read more ]
39
Vote
   


Moving House

January 9th 2009 15:45


When I was living in France, I moved house a lot. Well, that's not actually true: I moved twice, but my lady moved frequently and, in seven years, I participated in something like ten different moves. By the end, I was sick to death of packing, lugging boxes and all that crap. I even destroyed my back doing it, getting a free ride in an ambulance, a night on morphine and ten days of excruciating pain into the bargain.

[ Click here to read more ]
39
Vote
   


Top Menu Section

January 8th 2008 19:13
25
Vote
   


Moderated by SpikeTheLobster
Copyright © 2006 2007 2008 On Topic Media PTY LTD. All Rights Reserved. Design by Vimu.com.
On Topic Media ZPages: Sydney |  Melbourne |  Brisbane |  London |  Birmingham |  Leeds     [ Advertise ] [ Contact Us ] [ Privacy Policy ]