Use the “Magazine Method” To Avoid Blogger Burnout

October 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

One of the biggest challenges that bloggers face is “blogger burnout”. How do you keep your blog fresh, day after day, week after week, so people will come back for more and search engines will love you?

Well, newspapers and magazines have to fill up their pages all the time and they have to provide fresh interesting content. They do this by using an editorial calendar.

The editorial calendar is used to plan out content month by month, many months in advance. This allows you to take advantage of things like holidays and national awareness months to generate ideas for blog posts. You won’t have to sit there on the spot struggling to find ideas; you can come up with ideas for your blog post content in advance. When you feel inspired to write something not on your editorial calendar, that’s fine too…but you won’t find yourself frustrated and caught up short day after day.

Is November coming up? You can write blog posts about spending time with family, travel, making reservations, recipes, diet and fitness over the holidays?

Is April coming up? You can write blog posts about Easter, Passover, decorating eggs, spring cleaning, summer holidays…

You can also hold sales or charitable events based on the month, and blog about them in advance.

You can schedule guest speakers who fit in with whatever is going on that month.

Also, you can use your editorial to plan out content for different days of the week. Monday could be Guest Post Day. Tuesday could be Useful Tips day. Wednesday could be Inspirational Quotes Day.

And so on.

You can use a free service like Google Calendar to plan out your editorial calendar.

You’ll find that once you start planning your content out in advance, it will be much easier to fill up your blog with excellent, targeted posts.

And now, again, we come to the blatant self promotion part of this post. Copywriting genius Dawn Abraham, and little ole me, are holding a two-part teleseminar next Wednesday and the Wednesday after that – the 19th and 26th at 8:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
http://www.qualified-lifecoach.com/How-to-Write-an-Article.html

This teleseminar will teach you how to write blog posts and articles that generate multiple streams of income.  We are charging for it, but I guarantee you that if you attend both classes, and follow the steps laid out in the classes, you WILL make money from your writing!

Filed Under: Blogging For Business, Productivity Tips

Why You’re Not Getting Paid Enough For Your Writing…And What To Do About It

October 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In a recent blog post, I suggested that one way to make a little quick cash, if you’re a good writer, is to write articles.

But I also emphasized the “little” aspect of it.  Unless you luck into writing articles for a really wonderful client, you will not find many people willing to pay well for articles. Why? Two reasons:

1.) Supply and demand.  Not only has this economy flooded the market with people desperate to make an extra buck – many of them people who formerly worked as journalists or teachers, so they know how to write – but thanks to the internet, you are competing against people from developing countries who may charge as little as $1 an article.

2.) Many people are seeking affordable articles, not quality articles. A lot of people who seek article writers want to fill up blogs or websites with content, any content, as long as that content is stuffed with keywords. They want to use those articles to make money from adsense or other programs, or they want to use the articles for SEO purposes.  They aren’t using the articles to build up their personal brand, so they don’t care less about whether the articles are well written or not; they make their profit by buying content in bulk, basically. It can be really challenging to find people willing to pay more than $5 to write an article or blog post.  Which is ridiculous money and not worth the effort.

If you’re trying to make a living writing articles, and you are a good writer…I can just about guarantee that you’re not being paid what you’re worth.

So you should just give up, right? Find some other way to make money?

Well, no. I have used my writing skills to build up a solid online business. I know plenty of people who have done the same. It can be done.

Here are some tips to help you do the same:

  • Write a few articles cheaply to get testimonials about your writing skills – and then move on! Writing articles full time is no way to earn a living wage these days.
  • Write content that pays well. People pay more for: press releases, ebooks, ghostwriting, memoirs, white papers.
  • Use your content to fill up your website and get people to come to your website, by giving away useful information. Then, when you have decent traffic, put adsense, affiliate ads, and banner ads on your site.
  • Create info products about what you know and sell multiple short ebooks.
  • Always use your writing to generate multiple streams of income. You will have busy months in some areas, and slow months in some areas. Ebooks will be selling well one month, and not the next month.  Your affiliate sales will be ebb and flow.

And now, the shameless self promotion part of this blog post.  Dawn Abraham is a copywriting genius who’s written articles that generated as much as $9000 in adsense income. That’s more money than most published authors make these days.

And when it comes to finding ways to make money from my writing, I’m not too shabby , if I do say so myself. We are teaming up to teach a teleclass which will take you step by step through how write articles that generate multiple streams of income.  And I guarantee you this: If you pay attention in class, and follow the blueprint we lay out for you – you WILL make money with your writing!   https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=166403983447910

Filed Under: Blog, Blogging For Business, Productivity Tips