What New Online Writers Need to Know or Learn - The Basics, Part IV

English Grammar

This is just a note about English grammar, because many online writers are under the impression that it isn't doesn't matter much. There are even people who believe that too much "good grammar" can be "too formal" for the Internet. They may be correct, because I recent got a nasty comment on an article, based not on any of the points in the article but simple the fact that I came across as "an expert" when I'm really "only a writer". Still, anyone who has spent any time online knows that if you don't use a basic, acceptable, level of good grammar readers (particularly those looking for information, rather than a personal story, from what seems like a reliable writer) will be turned away immediately (but often not so immediately they don't have time to rate/vote down your material).

People who have spent much time on writing sites know that there is an amazing number of contributors who don't even bother capitalizing the first letters of sentences or the pronoun, "I'; space between paragraphs, or using any commas (ever).
The importance of using English grammar reasonably well has been addressed in a previous section. If you need help with grammar and spelling (or even if you generally don't):

• Always use a spell-checker after writing.
• There are sites online that offer grammar information. All you have to do is search for whatever it is about which you have a question. (For example, "comma use" or "basic grammar help").
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Taking a look at the AP (Associated Press) Style Guidelines (which is a pretty universal set of guidelines used on a lot of "serious" writing sites) will give new writers an introduction to a few things that may not otherwise have occurred to them.

Here's a quick reference site that may come in handy:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2664713/Associated-Press-AP-Style-Guide-the-basics

What New Online Writers Need to Know or Learn - The Basics, Part III

Promoting Your Work Takes Work

For the complete novice just sitting down to write on a writing site, talk about how to promote the writing can be mind-boggling; because the person with no knowledge of how Internet writing, marketing, promoting, and whatever else there is to know, just may not know what anyone is taking or writing about when the matter of promoting work comes up. I now realize that the reason my mind kept coming up blank when I tried to learn about promoting my work could be compared to someone expecting me to bake a cake if I didn't have the ingredients to do that. We don't send five- or six-year-olds into tenth-grade (or even fourth-grade) and expect them to pick up the material. The complete, online-writing, novice is like that five-year-old who doesn't have knowledge of fourth-grade material. Like school children, we can't learn by only muddling through one new subject. Being new online means having to learn several, elementary-level, things - not just how to post writing on one writing site.

The following includes information I wish I'd had when I first started writing online and on HubPages, in particular. The first thing with which you really, really, need to familiarize yourself is. With the exception of the advice to read all terms-of-service for all accounts, my thoughts on promoting are not expert advice. They're only thoughts about what I would have done differently, now that I have the benefit of hindsight.

• Google Terms of Service (with regard to links, unacceptable material, etc.)
• The Terms of Service on Any Writing or Social Networking Site of Which You Are A Member

Promoting your work is always better than not promoting it, but some Hubs may actually do quite well being just the right kind of Hub and having the right title and keywords. I'm not discouraging anyone from promoting their work, by any means, but when it comes to promoting there's a lot of bad information that gets passed around under the "Everyone-Says" school-of-thought.

You have to be careful with what "everyone says", because much of the time what "everyone says" turns out to be something that backfires. An example is that when I first started writing online "everyone" was saying to post links on social networking sites. "Everyone" wasn't saying, however, that just wildly posting links on every social site you can find could backfire, and what "everyone" didn't know was that over time these sites would get more and more sick of having people do nothing but post links; and as a result, such posting would eventually backfire. Between things like these sites' banning all links from some individual writing sites, and Google's "no-follow" approach to some of these things, what "everyone" once said has either changed completely or has, at least, been carefully modified.

Most sites allow members to post links to profiles on other sites, or to their own website, on their profile; so there's no doubt that being an active member with a lot of contacts/friends on the site can potentially lead to traffic. Just joining and posting up a storm of links (particularly if you don't know anyone else on the site, and aren't inclined to get to know anyone else) doesn't work and isn't advised. In fact, when too many people from a writing site do that kind of thing it can result in all links from that site being banned.

As someone who have always considered myself, "social-networking-challenged", what I've run into is that I've followed advice to sign up with one site or another, only to discover that once I'm a member I don't really know what to do next. These sites will tell people how to find "friends"; but because I know I'm only there because someone else said it as a good idea, I'm not really interested in finding any "friends". In fact, I don't even know what being this kind of "friend" means. What I've realized is that, as an online writer, it's a wiser thing to sign up with these sites after establishing a few other things (writing collection, blog, etc.). Why? Because those things offer some "guidepost" with regard to what direction to take in seeking those "friends".

When you just "go in cold" you may not know where to begin to find people with similar interests to you, or your instinct may be to think up what, in life, interests you and go with them. If, instead of going in cold, you sign up once you have established areas of interest in relation to what you write about you're more likely to know exactly what to aim for once you're at any social-networking site. If nothing else, you can head for the people who are interested in writing, who write where you write, and who are interested in what you write about. Contacts and links can grow from there. So what you, the absolute novice, may want to consider before expecting too much from social-networking sites is:

• Consider having some Hubs articles already written.
• Consider what, exactly, the type of writing you most plan to do over time.
• Consider starting a free blog with a good, search-able, title related to the subject first.
• If your plan is to "one day" get your own website, consider getting it sooner rather than later.

Here's why:

Having a blog and/or your own site (each with a title that will be found by search engines, rather than a title nobody is going to be searching for) is a good way to have a site where you can place your links. Here's where being a well-rooted member on a social-networking site can pay off in increasing traffic, because you can send people to your own sites from there. Being "well-rooted", though, takes a lot more time than just opening an account, completing a profile, posting links, and hoping someone will find them.

Whether it's related to social-networking sites or any promoting in general, what you need to learn about what "everyone" seems to say is:

You should run what "everyone" seems to say about promoting by enough experienced writers/members before even thinking about doing it; and even then, be very careful about it.

With regard to starting a blog or getting your own website, you may not think you'll need either when you first begin writing. Whether or not you'll ever need a website can depend on whether you have professional aims or not (although there are free websites that can serve as personal websites and that could potentially give you one more place for posting your own links). If you have professional aims and plan to "one day" get a website you're probably better off getting one right from the start. You can always change what's on it, and you can always get others. Having one "starter website" can give you that one additional thing into which you can incorporate promotion aims. Having it sooner, rather than later, can mean not having to adjust the way you do things after you've built up 500 pieces of writing and suddenly decide to get a website and figure out how you can use it in promotions efforts.

When I first began "hobby-writing" online what writing sites offered this novice was generally, "Write and then promote you work. Social-networking sites are good places to promote your work. Get your friends and family to read your stuff. You'll earn if you promote." Well, since my family and friends consist of a handful of adults who don't do online reading for fun, or who don't have a lot of time to read my stuff for the fun of it, I didn't know there were ways to promote other than signing up at social-network sites and then not knowing what I "should do" when I got there.
Neither did I realize that a "social-network-challenged" person like me would benefit from starting a blog and/or a website at the same time I began online writing. Because I had no particular visions of earning much online I didn't see my "hobby" writing as "business thing", so I saw no need for any blogs or websites. I'd read the advice offered on writing sites and just think, "Well, since I don't know what to do with social-networking sites, and since I have such a small circle of friends and family, I guess that's it. I'll earn 'whatever'". Adding to the belief that earning much through such "hobby"/online writing wasn't very likely were all the writers on writing sites who made no secret that their earnings were really low.

So, what I was looking at were the writing-site tips I couldn't see myself using, and all those other online writers who essentially pointed out that earning any "real money" wasn't at all likely. With that kind of thinking it didn't occur to me that it may make sense to start a blog and/or a website right along with starting to do the "hobby-writing". Now I see that building one or more of those at the same time I was building up my writing collection would have given me that "middle venue" that would have been a "connecting point" for efforts to promote. Something like a free blog can always be closed down if you get a better one later (or stop writing online), and it costs nothing to create. I was laboring under the impression that I had to have a lot of stuff before starting a blog, or having a blog that didn't have much on it. Now I see that starting it right away, and adding stuff to it later is better than not having one at all (if only from the standpoint of encouraging you to have that one other venue and additional approach to promoting, especially since online efforts can evolve from being "just fun-writing" into earning more than you may expect.

This may just be my personal preference, but it's easier to get started with online writing/Hub-writing, a blog, and a website all at the same time than to blindly build up hundreds of Hubs/articles and "retroactively try to make the website/blog apply".

What I did was make the mistake of thinking I didn't want or need a blog ("because, after all, I'm only going to write some articles online, and I'm not into blogging,"). I wrote for a couple of years and built up a big collection ("big mess") of writing, which eventually created the need for feeling better organized online and having a way to tie together writing from different places. It became clear that different material fell under different categories, which meant I started blogs for each category (with the idea of building them up "later"). Tying together the different ones meant creating a "hub" blog, with my writing as the theme. Internet-ignorant as this may seem to more experienced people than I, without even thinking in terms of each blog standing on its own, I created a lot of titles with some version of my name in them (not out of ego, but simply because my name was the common thread between the different pieces of writing). So, at this point, I have a big collection of blogs where I either post or add links to other writing, most of them with titles that won't stand on their own in searches. The point is it would have been less messy, wiser, more helpful, and more effective had I know to start a blog when I started writing, and use my experience with it to start additional blogs as the need arose. So, things to think about relating to blogs and website are:

• Consider starting at least a blog (a website if you aims are business-related) as soon as you begin writing.
• Think of the theme for your blog/site. Give it a good, search-able, title related directly to the material you'll be posting. Add whatever you have to add to it, but don't worry about filling it up all at once. Add to it as you build up your online writing collection, but add things besides just links to your writing.
• Keep in mind that even if you don't think you want/need a blog now that may change later, and it's easier to promote with an existing blog than with a new one.

Then there's the "What-A-Lot-of-People-Say" advice. The difference between what "everyone" says and what "a lot of people" say seems to be whether the advice is coming from "plain, old, online, writers" or from people who claim to have expertise in Internet promotions. Many of the latter group are people to whom novices may listen because seeking someone's expertise only makes sense. The trouble is that many "experts" give advice that goes against the policies of a company like Google.

In the "What-A-Lot-of-People-Say" advice category, many of those people stand to make money from their own advice; so that's one way to recognize them. Advice that could cause you to lose your online accounts is often offered on forums by people whose profile or links on it will make it clear they're in the business of selling advice or services associated with online marketing/promoting. Other people who offer this advice is often young/new online people who think they've discovered a quick way to get the kind of promoting your material (in other words, people who think they've discovered a way to quick-and-easy success because they don't that their ideas break the rules). Again, when it comes to promoting your writing, always run any tips by a number of experienced, reliable-seeming, long-term, members of whatever site you're writing on. Be very careful taking the advice of anyone who has been on any site for only a few months, weeks, or days.

There are ways to promote your work (or to indirectly promote it via promoting your blog) that are not as widely publicized or effortless as just posting links on social-networking sites. Those ways usually involve things like contacting site administrators and asking for links, getting your blog into directories, etc. Promoting (beyond beginner basics) is a whole subject "for another day". The information provided above has been intended to serve only as the most basic information for completely new writers.

Different Types of Material Attract Different Types of Ads

With regard to different types of material attracting different types of ads (some of which pay more than others), what you need to ask is:

• What subjects/kinds of audiences will what I'm about to write attract?

Although there are some areas, more than others, that are known to attract "better" ads (and I've not researched this sufficiently, nor am I sufficiently knowledgeable, to "safely" be more specific here); in general, if your profile and material come across as being aimed at grown-ups with some money to spend you'll attract better ads than if your profile and material aimed at thirteen-year-olds, or material that isn't likely to be very search-able. Good first steps in learning more about the differences in ads might be:

• Go to your AdSense account and learn what the different headings on earnings pages mean.
• Read through as much AdSense material (relating specifically to ads) as possible.
• Search Writing Sites (A good resource is HubPages Hubs and forums for information on ads.

The main point here is just that some subjects will attract better ads than others, so you should know to ask whether any subject you're thinking about writing about is one of them or not (at least if you're at all interested in earning).

What New Online Writers Need to Know or Learn - The Basics, Part II

The following includes information I wish I'd had when I first started writing online. The information was "out there", but I didn't know enough to look for it. I was either too short-sighted (in assuming there wasn't much earning potential on sites like HubPages) or too ignorant to know what I should be looking for. I'd done online writing in the past, and I'd done offline writing in the past. Heck, I even received formal training for using keywords back in the late seventies, when "database-searching" required formal training, a paid-for account, and a telephone-line connection. I pretty much thought I knew how to approach things until I started seeing the same words over and over again (keywords, promoting, blog, etc.) and feeling completely befuddled at how, exactly, the role of each fit a larger puzzle-picture that I couldn't yet see.


The Basics of How Earning With Online Writing Works on Sites Like HubPages

Everything in this "basics" section may be found in greater depth in writer "help" sections on writing sites, forums, and elsewhere online. These are the tips that most of us have heard time and time again, so I will only be including the "most basic" of basics for who is truly a novice.

There is a type of article that tends to do better earnings-wise,than some other types. Writers need, also, to know how to construct a title that is most likely to be picked up by search engines, how to use keywords, and how promote their material. Something else to bear in mind is that some subjects/audiences are more likely to attract higher-paying ads.

Skilled use of English grammar shouldn't be underestimated. On marketing/product-focused articles it isn't necessary to be a brilliant wordsmith, but noticeably poor use of grammar will "scream", "English-as-a-second-language", or else, "Uneducated," - neither of which get material rated well (which helps with traffic). With "writing-focused-only" articles writing skill can make the difference in whether something gets a very high author score/rating or a kind-of-high one; although traffic and other things factor into each Hub's score, good writing alone isn't necessarily a guarantee of high ratings on any site.

The point is that even though many people will say that "perfect" use of grammar is not crucial, there is a basic level of "decent" grammar that remains important. The difference between "business" articles and "writing" articles may be that "business" pieces often have fewer words and less need for artful crafting of words; while "writing" pieces usually have a lot more words and run the risk of losing readers if those words aren't particularly engaging.

The Type of Article that Tends to Do Best

In general, the online material that gets the most traffic will be on a subject that is widely searched for and that offers cold, hard, information about that subject. I now understand that "unique", within the context of writing sites, means more, better, or particularly "individual" (something everyone else may not be offering) cold, hard, information about that subject.

In general, marketing-related/product-related articles do better, and those about things that are "heavily" searched for do best. It's not enough, however, to just write the "right kind" of article. You also need to know how to use (and be "bothered with" using) keywords.

That doesn't mean that non-marketing-related/product-related writing won't earn, but it can take more of them. In other words, if you're not going to write about a "high-search-demand" product every time you create an article you need to write a lot more articles (but you also still need to pay attention to title, keywords

Article Title - How It's Worded

When I first signed up with HubPages, I was just looking for a site where I could "write for myself". I had been writing web articles on assignment, and that was fine, but I wanted to just write what interested me, rather than what someone else was paying me to write. I found HubPages and didn't really know what I was "supposed to be" writing here. Somewhere I did read that unique and useful information does best, but I didn't really know what "unique" and "useful" meant, within the context of online writing. (In a way, it seemed to me that "unique" was one thing, and "useful" might be another.) In any case, what the aim should have been was kind of vague to me at the time.

I browsed the site's "questions" section (then known as, "requests") and decided to just challenge myself by scanning for something that caught my eye and writing. The questions were often very specific, such as, "My toddler calls my boyfriend, 'Daddy', and his real father isn't around, so what do you think I should do?" (That wasn't exactly the question, but it was similar.) I just wrote what seemed to me to be the kind of response I'd give to a friend who had asked such a question, which meant many of my earlier Hubs were written without regard for the wording in the title. I didn't know enough about the importance of wording the titles properly, and I didn't know enough to use the "request" as inspiration-only, rather than so specifically address the question/request. As a result, I ended up with a "ton" of Hubs that require major re-writes/revisions if they're to get more than accidental traffic. Today HubPages has "Questions" which allow for choosing to just answer the question quickly or be inspired to write a whole Hub. If you're going to write a articles (or Hubs, in the case of HubPages) from questions on the site, consider re-wording the title before doing anything else.

There's plenty of information on how to construct titles if you search each writing site, and its blogs and/or forums, and I'd advise doing that. (I didn't know enough to ask, "How do I create a good title?") So, what to learn about titles is that they matter a lot, and you should ask:

• How do I construct a good title?

Using Keywords

As with titles, I didn't know enough to "be bothered" using keywords. It wasn't that I didn't know what keywords are. It was that when I first signed up with HubPages I didn't really think there was any money to be made. Most of us are pretty familiar with any number of writing sites where earnings dribble in pennies and get paid out through PayPal once ten or fifteen dollars has built up over a period of, maybe, months. I thought HubPages was yet another one, so I just wrote what I felt like writing and didn't bother with keywords. Yes, I knew that keywords matter in all online writing; but in much online writing they don't make a whole heck of a big difference. My approach was to have a lot of things in a lot of places and be happy to get my twenty dollars from as many of them as possible. So, as with the "tons" of Hubs that have bad titles, I have even more "tons" of them on which I didn't bother with keywords. That's one heck of a lot of Hubs that need major re-writes, revisions, or other improvements to them.

There's lots of information to be found on using keywords, so what you may need to learn (if you don't already know) is:

• What is a keyword?
• How many keywords should I use in each Hub? (There's something called "keyword loading" - and it isn't good.)
• What is the keywood tool?

You may not think you need to know even this little bit of "technical"/"Internet-related" information, but why write for nothing if you can write for something? Take the time to learn how to use keywords effectively.

In "What New Online Writers Need to Know or Learn - The Basics, Part III" promoting your work will be covered.

What New Online Writers Need to Know or Learn - The Basics, Part I

The thing about a lot of people who find writing sites to post their writing on is that they are, of course, "writer types". "Writer-types" tend to say things like, "I don't care about earning," and "I want to write what I want to write - not write just to make money." That's all very lovely and even lofty, but (even though some marketing-focused articles do tend to do better "without really trying") what many writers of less-business-focused material often don't realize is that even their "loftier" endeavors can earn, provided they understand that they shouldn't rule out the possibility of earning just because their work isn't geared toward more "nitty-gritty", business-related, subjects.

With regard to how the writing-only-inclined can earn "Big Bucks", I'd like to say I have the answers here, but I don't. What I do have is two years' worth of online-writing experience and the benefit of two years' worth of hindsight. I also have some experience earning, lots of experience not earning as much as I could have or would like to, a tendency to be better at analyzing some kinds of problems better than solving them, and a willingness to share. In other words, I'm pretty good at coming up with the root causes of the slow-earnings problem (as "writer-types" often experience it), and with coming up with the questions new writers need to ask/things they need to learn to be better at; even if I can't offer specific answers as to how you, personally, can earn more. For the most part, each writer is different; so even if I had specific tips for each and every writer, it would be impossible to put them all in one article anyway.

If I had mastered the art of earning "Big Bucks" online I might also write a book about it and earn yet more "Big Bucks" selling it. What I've mastered, unfortunately, is the art of two years' worth of thinking about how my writing could have been earning more than it has, and the science of what I don't, won't, or don't know how to overcome in order to take advantage of the earnings potential on sites like HubPages.

Before I go any further you may want to know that while I will introduce categories (as a frame-of-reference only) into which most articles fall, the focus here will be on writers who, like I did, have come to a site like HubPages with the idea of writing and, ideally, earning through that writing.

Types of Articles/Hubs/Lenses (Whatever Any Site Calls Individual Pieces of Writing)

If you look through enough online articles you'll see that the kind that people write can generally be categorized as follows:

Marketing/Sales-Focused Articles. These are the Hubs with titles like, "flash drives", and that offer a general picture of many flash drives available.

Marketing-Related/Associated Articles. These are the articles that are either about marketing in general, about promoting one's own articles, or about something related to a writer's other online endeavors
.
This type of article may be about something like collecting old baseball cards and not appear to be particularly sales-focused, but the writer's profile will include links to his four other, related, sites which may or may not promote products or services.

Non-Fiction-Writing Pieces/Articles. These, as the category-title implies, can be any writing that is non-fiction; but they can generally be broken down as follows:

Articles
Essays
Opinion Pieces
Personal Stories

Creative-Writing Pieces. This category title speaks for itself, but includes:

Fiction
Poetry
Anything else someone thinks up to write that isn't non-fiction (like, "A Letter to the Child I Don't Have Yet" - that type of thing)

Photo Pages. Photo pages can be "good" (like someone's own, beautiful, photographs of historical sites around the world) and that offer some information about each place/photo, or they can be "not-so-good" ones (like those that are nothing but someone else's not-very-unique photographs and little additional information).

Spam Articles. Nobody likes Spam articles/Hubs/lenses (or whatever), and just about everybody reports them, so I'm not going to say more about them other to say they aren't going to do well on sites where spam is not welcomed.

The next post, "What New Online Writers Need to Know or Learn - The Basics, Part II" includes information I wish I'd had when I first started writing online.

What New Online Writers Need to Know or Learn - INTRODUCTION

Time after time, writers on show up on forums, asking whether one can "really make any money" on writing sites (like HubPages). Another question that arises over and over again is how long it takes to "really make any money". What "really making money" is depends on what any, one, writer thinks is "really making money". The individual who has been on a writing site for two weeks and has earned his first fourteen cents may just be looking for his first thirty dollars, while the writer who has been writing on a site for six months and is eight dollars away from his first hundred-dollar payment may think "real money" would be a payment each month. Then, of course, there are those who earn a few hundred dollars a month (not the majority, by any means) and would like to turn that into some version of a full-time income. If anyone is earning more than a thousand dollars a month I don't know about them, but they could be keeping their secret to prevent fellow site-users and others from becoming competition.

The people I do know about are the people who earn close-to-nothing, earn something but very slowly, or only a couple/few hundred dollars a month because they have come to writing sites as writers, rather than as marketing whizzes (or non-whizzes who want to become wizzes, for that matter). Of those who go to writing sites to write, many will say they plain, old, don't care about earning whatsoever. All they want to do is write. Many of the "mainly writing-inclined" (not marketing-inclined) among us, however, would like to also earn (or earn more) with their work. The lament, reality, and caveat are always related to the fact that it isn't necessarily the best writing that earns, because earning through ads and product referrals is about business; and the only way writing factors in is in its role in attracting search-engine traffic and readers.

I've been putting together a whole, big, piece on "everything I wish I knew then that I know sort of know now". It's mostly done, and I'm hoping to be able to post it in the very near future.

The Age of Online Writing

The Age of Online Writing

The Age of Online Writing

The Age of Online Writing