Using Paid Directory Submissions 101

I've read a few posts where people ask me how come I have so many posts in the Hall of Fame. It is fairly simple. I follow the outline in my course, and I follow the advice in this blog.

Directory Submissions

That said, there are a few ways to fast track. If you want to make money from your blog, and you want to increase traffic and hits, there are a few ways to do it.

I mentioned one good method in the last post. Another is to submit through a directory submission tool. This is different than a website submission. Directories are not search engines.

http://www.directorymaximizer.com/

This is the service I use. They have 1000 directories in their list, and are always adding more. There is no 'reciprical link needed' increasing the value of the links. Each one costs $.14 and you can submit to as many as you need at a time. If you only have $15 to invest this month, then that is good.

After a few months you will have submitted to them all. This service has a 60-80% acceptance rate on the PR3 and higher sites.

I submit to the PR3 and higher sites first, while they are still new and looking for members. The PR0 sites will take anyone. The PR3 and higher sites will also pull your page rank and traffic exposure site up faster.

Page Rank Increased

But, beware of buying links based on the PR of the home page. A directory with a PR8 will not help you if it is on the home page, and the page your site appears on only has a PR0. (PR zero)

I have heard of the sites promising that if you pay a high price for a listing on a site with PR8 pages that your site will increase. I understand the theory. I was taught the theory in class. But, I've never actually seen a person who paid $200 for a listing on a PR8 site - a single link - actually benefit from it.


PS. If you don't use heading titles and the meta tag section of this blog, or any blog, this advice probably will not work as well as I say it will.

Fast Track Your Blog to Higher Page Rank and Traffic

There is a quick way to fast track your blog and get it ranked. It will only cost $20.00. Join Google AdWords. Here is how it works. You sign up for a Google Adwords account. Invest $20, Google says the minimum is $50, but they will accept $20.00 https://adwords.google.com/select/Login

To enter your blog or website into the program, they must rank and spider (read your website) within 24 hours. Your website is instantly submitted - no sand box. Your site is instantly ranked. And, it is rated for the campaign. Also, you will receive traffic to your site for the $20.00.

This reduces the time needed for your blog or website to be added to searches, receive search traffic, and to receive a Page Rank. A higher page rank equals more money from Google Adsense, more traffic from searches, and more exposure on the web.

However, there are a few 'tricks'

1. There should be 20 - 50 posts in the blog, even if these are 'free content' articles, reviews you wrote, or daily muses.

2. There should be at least 30 - 50 back links to the site. These can all be from another blog, forums, or directories. Many of these can be inside your blog, navigation links.

3. There should be inbound links from your site to other 'relevant' sites to help make your keywords solid. a) only use keyword anchor that matches the keywords you want Google to focus on. b) make sure the site you link to has the same keywords in the titles, links, and meta. c) use the keywords in meta information and titles on your blog

Following these rules will fast track your blog or website.

Google Basics

Google dominates the search engine world, despite the fact that the conversion-to-buyer rate at MSN is much higher. This forces most ecommerce businesses to try and dance Google’s waltz, without fully comprehending the ins and outs of how Google works.

Navigating Google is difficult. Most SEO optimizing specialists and SEO Internet marketers do not understand what they are doing. In fact, most of them are so far behind the times that their information is useless. Summer 2007 saw the latest change in Google’s algorithm leaving many ecommerce businesses with sharp decreases in traffic.

What is a Google Algorithm

The Google Algorithms are basically the math formulas used to determine which web pages rank high in the searches, and which ones rank low, or are banned. Google changes the rules every 18 - 24 months to help them sweep away websites that are not optimized and MFA (Made For AdSense) static sites.

Google also makes changes to meet the needs of the webmasters. When Google brought in their inbound link ranking system, it gave many webmasters an opportunity to build link farms, gaining an unfair advantage. In response Google now looks for content around a link. If there is no content, then the link has no value.

When Google started to focus on content, webmasters and programmers created Content Management Systems. Unfortunately, until recently, Google could not read database pages. Now, the programmers have created a static page method of page creation, and search engines learned how to read content off databases.

Search Engine Optimization

Many webmasters do not understand what this means. And, many SEO optimizers do not understand what this means. To many, it still means coding a page so that the keywords are highlighted, and under .05% of the content (including link bars). They believe it is a method of web design.

Ecommerce businesses are still scrambling to pay SEO optimizers big bucks to make their pages rank high, when meta tags and SEO tricks have very little importance. Now, the search engines are looking for good content, with heading titles, and a site full of similar content, with articles linked together using the same ‘keyword anchors.’

Google’s new algorithms have made it possible for many small ecommerce businesses to build their page rank, and search engine rank, without ever paying a dime to a SEO specialist.

The Google Sandbox and Supplemental Index

Both of these cause chills to run up most webmasters spines, but only because they are not understood, Google does not have a Sandbox. Yes, it may take a few months to get your website listed and showing up, inbound links may not appear for a long time, and a website may not show up when searched - but that is not a sandbox. It is just a backlog. One way to overcome it is to take part in Google’s PayPerClick program. Even if you only invest $20 a month, being a part of that program immediately links your site, so you do not need to wait.

The supplemental index is as easy to get out of. First, take a look at the meta information - is it too generic? If so, then do not use keywords but use keyword phrases. The keyword ‘ecommerce’, is too generic, so is ‘ecommerce business.’ However, ‘learn how to start an ecommerce business’ will help that page target. Next, make sure the page is linked to a high ranking page. This can be done by putting links inside the page - or by adding it to the website’s navigation system. Within a short time, that page will no longer be in the supplemental index.

How to Write Paid Reviews

You'll have noticed a couple of paid reviews in the last few posts. I chose obvious ones, because I wanted you to see that you can stay on topic, while writing reviews. The important thing is to 'not trick' your blog's readers.

Do not write 100 words about your love of chocolate, and then hit the readers with an ad for an online chocolate store. This is rude, and can turn people off. Instead, write about your topic, and include the link. Even if you mention only briefly the keywords.

The important thing is the link, and the keywords. Not the message. So, write the keywords and links for the advertisers, and the message for the readers.

I Started This Blog to Prove a Point

I started this blog to prove to my students at www.writersonlinecourses.com in the 'make $1000 a month blogging' that it is possible to make good money writing blogs, in less than five months.

I reached the mark this month. This blog has a few dozen posts. I have not purchased any directory submissions - yet. But, it is active. I checked the ranking yesterday, and had a PR3. So, I submitted it to a couple of directory ad sites.

The first one to bite is smorty. Smorty is a service that connects advertisers with bloggers. the advertisers pay bloggers to write opinion posts, much like this one. The purpose is not to promote the service, but to build links back to the advertisers site.

This is how bloggers get paid to blog. They are paid for their blog advertising, from about $5 - $100 per ad. The ad does not need to endorse the product although I find that smorty pays my above norm to advertise on blogs.

This is all there is to the program. You will notice over the next few posts that some are reviews of products, some are just links. I use my discretion whether I feel a product is worth promoting. If not, I will just skim over the advertiser's blog and write 'on topic' and include the link, but not actually promote.

If your blog has PR2, and you want to get started in blog advertising then visit smorty.

Changes at Blogitive

Blogitive is making changes again. Now they only want bloggers who are using a wordpress blog on their own domain name.

There have been some changes with Wordpress that has made it very 'search engine' friendly,and I can understand that. But, is it worth it to run out and make the new blog?

Blogitive wants 10 000 bloggers on their site. Yet, I have gone for many weeks without a single job posting. At one time, I made about $100 a week from them. Now - nada.

If you are a paid post blogger, then you want to be listed at every site. However, I am not sure that it is good business to start making blogs, paying to host them, buying domains, and embarking on a search engine and directory submission program - just for a company that hasn't proven they are able to keep bloggers working.

I know that there are still some bloggers who are making good money. And, I know that blogger is favoring bloggers with their own domain and wordpress like Sharon Hurley Hall's www.getpaidtowriteonline.com. But, I wonder how much it is worth it.

I believe that one reason they are making this change is because Wordpress accepts their directories. This is all good for them, but what about 'my' readers on 'my' blog. I know that a lot of bloggers are building blogs to get clicks and money from Google and other venues - but what about those of us who want to keep our visitors right here, on our blogs?

I will probably start an experiment soon - but I just wondered if anyone has current positive results.

Basic Tutorial

There are so many sites that tell writers they can get paid to blog. Most of them have something to sell. Few are written by people who are actually doing it. Except now.

I am making about $300 - $700 a month blogging, and that is only after ten months.

HOW TO BUILD A BLOG

You can get paid to write blogs. The first step is to set up about 10 blogs. You need to also set up a squidoo lens and a myspace lens - at least one. The most important thing to remember is that this is 'not' a get rich quick scam. You will need at least 400 posts online before you will start seeing any income.

TYPE OF BLOG

-ADSENSE
The most important thing to do is find out what type of blog you need. If you want to make Google Adsense money and learn from an expert then go to www.writingup.com (Here is my referral code. If you do sign up, please give me the boost. http://www.writingup.com?referer=4062)

Another good site is bloggerparty.com. These two sites get hundreds of thousands of hits, and more important, they come up on Google searches. I make 90% of my Google Adsense money from blogs on these sites.

Yes, I have received Google Adsense checks. I expect to be receiving one every month within the next four to six months.

It may take several weeks, or even months, to learn which blog communities people are clicking at, and which ones they are not.

www.writingup.com, www.bloggerparty.com, www.blogger.com are good for this. Wordpress.com is good, but you need to download a plugin.

-PAY PER POST
This is where companies pay $5 to bloggers for posting their client's press releases. This can be tricky. You usually get 20 at a time, and only 24 hours to post them all. If there is a mistake, the post is kicked back into your inbox and it must be fixed before you are paid.

One such company is Bloggingad.com another is reviewme.com
If you are going to use PPP then do not use www.wordpress.com - they ban sites with PPP ads.

www.writingup.com, www.blogger.com, www.bloggerparty.com is great for this.

-AFFILIATE
I was paid to write one person's blog. This person had so many affiliate codes on the page it was impossible to navigate the blog. I have Amazon code, and I write book reviews and then link to the code. I also have code for my web hosting - a great webhost company that offers me server quality and size, for only $4.50 a month. This is all the affiliate I do.

I also don't try to use general code. If you go to my blog www.Historical-Novel.blogspot.com, you will notice that I have linked single book pictures and code.

www.wordpress.com is a great place for this because the blogs look professional and have credibility. I receive very few clicks from my www.writingup.com or www.bloggerparty.com blogs.

-ALternatives
Along with blogs, there is also Heliumknowledge.com, ww.reviewstream.com, etc.

HOW TO BLOG

Each blog should have similar topics, but not the same. If all the blogs have different topics then it will be too hard to make a living. The best bloggers write one article or post and then write 5 versions to put on five different blogs.

The content must be personal, conversational, based on your own experience, and link to references.

Write as if you are talking to a friend on the telephone. Do not preach or teach. Conversational language uses simple sentence structure and a grade nine vocabulary. All posts should be based on experience. Do not write a post 'how to make money.' Write 'How I make money.'

Reference links are important. 1. Google will use them to increase the rank of your blog. 2. Readers will know that you are not making the information up.

LINKING

This is as important as hits. The more incoming links the better. The best way to get dozens of inbound links is to write free articles with a link to your blog at the bottom.

NETWORKING

Post in other people's blogs. Reply to threads. Talk to people. This will attract readers to your blog.

You also need to promote your blog on Tecnorati and then go to www.pingoat.com and ping it 'AFTER EVERY' post.

For more information read www.writingup.com/gracepub There are more than 500 posts to help you learn to start a career as a work at home freelance writer.

Do You Use BlogCatalogue Properly?

At another blog community, I found a post stating that Blog Catalogue is a waste of time. I had to look twice, before I realized that the author was serious. Then, I went to their blog neighbourhood and found why.

1. This blogger never helped promote other people's blogs

2. There was no 'recent visitor' widget (high enough on the bog that the screen shot captures it and show other blog catalogue users) So, the big bloggers who will trade a 'view' for appearing as a recent visitor will over look him.

3. He did not collect a neighbourhood of similar blog communities - so no one knew he was there.

4. He obviously didn't appear on other blogger's 'recent viewed' widget (my neighbourhood is good - but it offers no incentive for people to repeatedly visit your blog)

5. He himself had not chatted with other bloggers or even participated at Blog Catalogue

So, there is nothing wrong with Blog Catalogue - there is something seriously wrong with this person's expectations. If you give nothing - you get nothing.

Directorie Enteries

The SEO world is buzzing with the news that Google is now giving 'exec' status to links from inside directories. This is leading many bloggers to rush out and start listing in directories, but instead - stop and think.

You need at least 500 links, think of how many widgets this will add to the bottom of your blog. This will make a big mess. Buying for links means that you do not need to put a widget on the website - but -

Paying for links is not a fool proof method of being listed. Many directories are started by people who want a 'get rich quick' scheme and then just abandon the directory when submissions get to the point where their 'get rich quick' scheme turns into a 'job.'

My experience shows that if you pay for 250 directory submissions, then you'll actually get about 70 - 80 links. Now, if you are paying less than $.50 each - this is still good value.

There is also a 'scheme' to make people think that paying $200 for one link to a PR8 blog will 'do the trick' and pull your blog up. While it is true that high PR pages pull up low PR pages - it is not true that paying $500 for one link on a PR8 page will not increase your blog's PR.

The important thing is to remember that blogging is a job. Part of that job is linking.

Now, what can you do? Well - Forums are also receiving a big boost when it comes to PageRank. As much as directories, but few people make money from forums, so no one is writing about it. If you want to build great PR, I suggest that you start participating in forums - and leave the directories alone until you have the money to buy links.

Freelance Writers - Five Reasons Why You Need A Website

By Sharon Hurley Hall

These days, if you're starting a career as a freelance writer, it's no longer enough to ring up a few editors and distribute a few business cards. Most of the people who want to hire you will ask if you have a website. If the answer is 'no', you could lose out on some valuable sources of income. Here are five reasons why you should have a web presence.

1. Developing the brand of you

As a writer, your name is your brand. People will like or hate your stuff, trust or distrust your opinions. Either way, they'll have positive or negative feelings every time they see an article with your name on it. So your job is to build editors' and readers' trust in that brand.

2. Writing is your business - you need to treat it like one

Every reputable business has a website that showcases its products and services. You should too. How else are people going to know what you have to offer? A website allows your potential clients the luxury of accessing your information in their own time. You should include a resume, references, services (types of writing), samples of work, links to where you're published on the net.

3. Efficiency

A website is a time saving way of showcasing your past and current work (an online portfolio or selection of clips). You can point editors to it as well - a time saver for you and them. No longer do you have to spend time selecting and printing your best work. Instead, upload examples to your site and link to other places where your work has been published.

4. Make your passion work for you

Some of the writing you do will be for love rather than money, but that's no reason why you can't make it work for you. Upload your short stories, poetry, novel chapters and so on to show how creative you are.

5. Skills development

If you do the web development yourself, you'll also be gaining another valuable skill. The discipline of editing your material for a website will be invaluable when you're trying to get a commission to write 40 web articles for a pittance (we all have to start somewhere).

So what are you waiting for? Get your stuff on the net and start building the brand of you.

Sharon Hurley Hall is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor. Sharon worked in publishing for 18 years, writing articles and editing and designing books and magazines. She has also lectured on journalism. For more information or to contact Sharon, visit doublehdesign.com. Read more of Sharon's writing at her blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sharon_Hurley_Hall

writing, brand development, freelance writing

Freelance Writers - Five Reasons Why You Need A Website

Freelance Writers - Five Reasons Why You Need A Website
By Sharon Hurley Hall

These days, if you're starting a career as a freelance writer, it's no longer enough to ring up a few editors and distribute a few business cards. Most of the people who want to hire you will ask if you have a website. If the answer is 'no', you could lose out on some valuable sources of income. Here are five reasons why you should have a web presence.

1. Developing the brand of you

As a writer, your name is your brand. People will like or hate your stuff, trust or distrust your opinions. Either way, they'll have positive or negative feelings every time they see an article with your name on it. So your job is to build editors' and readers' trust in that brand.

2. Writing is your business - you need to treat it like one

Every reputable business has a website that showcases its products and services. You should too. How else are people going to know what you have to offer? A website allows your potential clients the luxury of accessing your information in their own time. You should include a resume, references, services (types of writing), samples of work, links to where you're published on the net.

3. Efficiency

A website is a time saving way of showcasing your past and current work (an online portfolio or selection of clips). You can point editors to it as well - a time saver for you and them. No longer do you have to spend time selecting and printing your best work. Instead, upload examples to your site and link to other places where your work has been published.

4. Make your passion work for you

Some of the writing you do will be for love rather than money, but that's no reason why you can't make it work for you. Upload your short stories, poetry, novel chapters and so on to show how creative you are.

5. Skills development

If you do the web development yourself, you'll also be gaining another valuable skill. The discipline of editing your material for a website will be invaluable when you're trying to get a commission to write 40 web articles for a pittance (we all have to start somewhere).

So what are you waiting for? Get your stuff on the net and start building the brand of you.

Sharon Hurley Hall is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor. Sharon worked in publishing for 18 years, writing articles and editing and designing books and magazines. She has also lectured on journalism. For more information or to contact Sharon, visit doublehdesign.com. Read more of Sharon's writing at her blog

PageRank: Link Words

In the last article I linked you to a website that talked about pagerank. Part 2 of that article also talked about internal linkes. A lot of bloggers and web owners never think of putting links inside their website to their home page (to increase its web rank). You may also want to make 'promo blogs' These are blog posts that you actively build inbound links to - from inside your site - and from other articles/posts.

You never know which page will reach a PR5 and pull the rest of the pages up with it.

But - not all links are created equal. A link exchange from a page with nothing on it but a big lists of links is useless, and if that page has nothing to do with your topic, then you can actually damage your page rank.

However, if the first page uses Heading titles every 100 - 150 words, with a keword in them ...say MAKE ME MONEY... and the keyword in the article that is being linked is MAKE ME MONEY...we want to link this to a page with a URL, title, sub titles (as many as possible) called MAKE ME MONEY. And better, we want that page to link to other pages called MAKE ME MONEY on your site and off your site.

Now - I heard several of you scream 'how do I control links off my site' - I can't make people create pages for me.

Why not? In Diva networking, we are going to do just that. We are going to get everyone who wants to participate to pick a keyword. Let's say that five of us write an article on MAKE MONEY BLOGGING. Each of us can title the URLS - MAKE MONEY BLOGGING. Each of us can have a H1 title with MAKE MONEY BLOGGING. Each of us can link to our friend's articles called MAKE MONEY BLOGGING.

Now - we have one article in our blog with the title MAKE MONEY BLOGGING, and it has 5 outbound links in it. And, 5 people have articles with links to our site.

Only 5 links? Does that really matter? YES. Because these are 5 links that google will pay attention to.

Now, here is where you can get creative. You can write another 5 posts an spread them through your network, each with MAKE MONEY BLOGGING, and each linking back to that one page. You can even put 2 or 3 links in each of those posts.

Now, you have the original 5 inbound links.... you have 10 blogs x 5 posts x 3 links = another 150 inbound links to that page. So, after a few weeks (months) that page has a PR4.

To expand this, you can write free articles on MAKE MONEY BLOGGING, and say 'if you want to read another article on this go to my article MAKE MONEY BLOGGING - this can generate 20 - 20 000 more inbound links (but don't count on them all being from pages called MAKE MONEY BLOGGING)

Now - you put a link in that article to your home page - and the PR of that page pulls up the PR on your home page.

Page Rank and Inbound Links

One of the problems with people who are in the business of blogging is that they do not understand page rank. They have a vague idea that Google wants lots of inbound links. At first they generate dozens, then realize that Google counts very few of these - and stop.

Unfortunately, they do not realize that it may take several weeks - to months for Google to actually apply the pagerank to their site. If you use the Google page rank tool to test www.inspiredauthor.com's back links, you'll see about 20. If you use yahoo, you'll see 175. If you use an actual web software program that tracks, you'll see 280 for Google and 3000 for yahoo. This doesn't mean that the sites do not count them. It means that it will take time for Google to apply the page rank to my site.

One the other hand - WHERE the links come from is important. For example, if you have 2 or 3 inbound links from a PR8 site, then you'll have a PR 4 or PR5 site. But, it may take thousands of links from a PR1 - PR3 site to bring up your rank.

Why do you want to do all this work?

One - so Google AdSense will pay you more. When you check your AdSense earnings, you'll notice that at PR1 - PR2, you may only earn a few cents, even if the CPC (Cost Per Click) is $20 - $200.

Two - so your site's pageranks higher, and Google will include you in more searches. The higher you rank in searches, the more traffic your site receives. And, of course, the more traffic you receive, the more hits you get.

Inbound links are not the only aspect that effects Google page rank, but it is a good place to start.

Why Post Often

Bloggers are consistently told that they should blog daily. Most of us do not have the time to do that, even if they cross post articles between their different blogs.

What the articles do not tell new bloggers is why they should blog daily. There is a lot of competition out there. Each blogger wants readers and wants hits. Most of this traffic will come through 'pings.' Unfortunately, very few blogs rank high enough to receive hits from search engines. The only way to attract a new audience is to ping blog search engines and remain active in the blog directories.

Another way is to join blogging communities, but be careful. There are several solid blog communities that are owned by serious companies - mypace, www.squidoo.com, www.bebo.com, www.authorsconnection.com, www.communati.com, www.bloggerparty.com

Blog communities receive hundreds of thousands of hits. They usually have a higher PR than a personal blog, meaning that links from there are good for your blog's ranking.

The problem arises when new bloggers do nothing but promote 'off site' products. People in the communities want to make friends and communicate. If you don't participate, you won't benefit.

This is the same with blog communities - you'll only benefit if you remain active.

Does this take a lot of time? Maybe at first, but after a while, you can network with 20 or 30 bloggers in less than an hour.

Why Blog Daily

We wrote a course that helps bloggers learn how to make $1000 a month. Basically, this number is not high when it comes to blogging. I personally know a blogger who works part time, about 15 hours a month, and makes $1500 - That is $100 an hour.

We've been talking about increasing pagerank to get more money from Google, and to increase hits. But, we are bloggers, so the blogsphere offers us more tools than webmasters are limited to.

We can submit to search engines - every one possible. We can submit to all the manual directories like DMOZ. But, we can also list in the blog directories and ping them.

Take a look at this article on Data Recovery. It received hundreds of hits when the rest of the posts received only 50 - 100. This blog community is set up to ping automatically, but I tagged this article with technorati, stumbleupon, voted with Google's new tool, digg, delicious, etc. You can see the difference.

This article does have good content on avoiding a computer hard drive crash, so other people will link to it, but the Tagging and pinging brought hits.

How? Well - one thing you can do is to update your blog post, and re-ping it.

The secret is pinging. If you write daily, the search engines send people to your site - daily. If you write monthly then they will send people to your site monthly.

I have met many people who will pay for traffic, but they will not write blog posts daily. The thing is - if you write 2 posts a day, your blog will be pinged twice a day.

You Can Get Mega Hits on Your blog

It always amazes me how people appreaciate good writing, whether it appears on a blog, in an article, or in a novel. The thing is, anyone can write well. You can write something that receives hundreds, even thousands of views. You can write a novel that sells thousands of copies. The secret is to write something that people want to read, by writing about life.

Take a look at two blog posts I wrote that received top hits, despite the fact they are on a blog community, www.communati.com, that has hundreds of great writers on the site.

My first article received almost 500 views in less than a few hours. Within 4 hours of being written, it was on the ‘most popular list.’ Gladiolas, Dahlias, Pear Trees and The Secrets of Life . This is nothing more than a look at a quiet summer afternoon that I spent with my family, and how it touched me, and also touched my readers. The writing is not literary and flowery. There is nothing poetic about it. I just wrote it in a way that made readers look into their own lives. This is the secret of great writing, making people look at their own lives instead of forcing them to see life through your eyes.

The second is a tutorial on saving time. I did not tell people to save time. Instead, I showed them how I save time. There is a big difference between talking about what to do and how to do. The world is full of tutorials that tell people what to do, but never gives them the tools to help them do it. How Much $$ Does Multitasking Costing You?
You’ll also notice that I made some great titles. Are titles important? Yes. They are so important that I have even returned to my blogs and changed titles. In some cases, the hits increased.

So, next time you write, don’t just put words on paper. Think about your readers. “Take care of your readers and they will take care of you.”



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Blog Writing: Getting Started

The life of a writer appears to have many perks. The uninitiated envisions us working in our pajamas while writing fluff about far away places, beautiful people, and spectacular adventures. After chuckling, we patiently explain how many hours it can take to research an article, or the number of times an article is submitted before it sells.

We possess an intangible element, which prevents us from taking the well-worn route. A regular paycheck with benefits is attractive. I even tried it once, and almost died inside. Face it, we are not free to enjoy an easy life while others toil, writers must write.

The life of a freelance writer is burdened with unpaid bills, deadlines, and rejection letters. But, there are a few blessings outweigh the heaviest burdens, like the joy of being published in a national magazine, studying a truly fascinating topic for a client, or enjoying the spiritual journey only a writer can understand.

Still, it is nice to be paid.

The initial lack of income is where most new writers give up. They soon believe the desire to write is a prank their muse is playing on them. It doesn’t have to be this way.

View the world of freelance writing as a forest. On one side is the writer; on the other is a client willing to pay to have something written. All a writer needs to do is climb through the scrub and deadwood to find the elusive client. It isn’t hard, it just takes a different method of thinking, and a little caution.

The number of companies intent on ripping writers off is daunting. There is no way to avoid every scam. Writers sign with organizations that promise to locate work, only to find they must pay and bid against other writers. We all signed up for at least one newsletter that promised to help us earn a living, only to learn it is only a clever marketing tool to sell products.

Making a living shouldn’t be this frustrating. There are paying jobs out there. There are clients willing, even eager, to pay a professional writer. It just takes a little skill to find them.

Make a Client

This can be fun. There is only one rule, never confess what you write. Many small businesses are more than willing to pay a writer for a good press release, especially if the writer submits it to the newspaper too, but only if the business is named as author.

They will also pay you to promote on your blog. However, you need statistics. It is vital that you keep good stats, and can prove they are real. Click through rates, are an important statistic to track. This will increase the amount of money people will pay.

However, saying that you have 10 blogs, can put 3 links in a blog, and will post 5 blogs each, equaling 150 links to a main website - for $25, will attract many local businesses. Remember, as a blogger you will only write 5 posts and 'cross post' them to different blogs.

Building Revenue Generating Blogs

All bloggers will have a few core blogs, but then they will have several that are for advertising and generating revenue. Making money from a blog is not difficult, but you can branch out farther than using the online blog companies.

Look at it this way. Making 40 blogs increases the inbound links to 500. You spend more time pasting your original 5 posts, but you can earn $100 - $200. All you need is 5 - 10 clients a month, and work 20 - 50 hours in the month to make $1000.

New Google Toolbar

Have you downloaded the new Google tool bar. If not, you will probably do so after reading this post. I put the toolbar on my new system, and just copied over the old system, on my other computer. Both methods worked.

The toolbar you want is the Google Toolbar 2008

Spyware

This includes a spyware software package that cleared 271 trackers and 4 malwar from my son's computer. It also includes a free- but fairly useless version of Norton, but, take it anyway. You never know when it will route out spyware and help your computer.

Social Networking Tools

You really want it for the social networking tools. It does not have stumbleupon - yet. You still need to download that toolbar, but you can download a delicious, dig, and technorati widget. When you find a page you like, just TAG them. When you are in a network, tagging articles becomes super easy.

In fact, just copy the first few 'intro' lines from the article and paste that into the description line. It may take some time to set up, but trust me. It has already saved me time.

Blogger Resources

I also added the blogger widget, so I could find my blogs. Other widgets I included were the spell check, youtube, yahoo home page (which is my home page), Facebook, Readdit (great for research), and most important....

VOTE NOW TOOL

That is right. Google has now gotten on the WEB2.0 bandwagon and included a tool that lets users vote for a web page - in essence - effecting page rank. I am sure that it is much more advanced than it looks ( a happy/a sad smiley) but time will tell.

The Pros and Cons of Blogging Communities

There are advantages of blog communities. They receive lots of hits, and have an inherent promotion aspect. The trick is to find a good one. No professional blogger needs to be reminded of the lesson learned from writingup, or should I say the now defunct writingup.

Out of the ashes, and managed by a different host, came www.communati.com. This blog, and www.bloggerparty.com are two relatively good posts. The webmaster at www.communati.com lets people use their blog for building links. Bloggerparty will instantly delete any blog with more than two links.

In the end, belonging to a blogging community has good emotional benefits, and poor financial/promo ones.

Good, because you will make friends and socialize. Bad, because you can spend hours a day on these sites, without ever creating your own blog network.

Step One - Make Your First Blogs

It took about three hours for a new mentor to start a Google AdSense account today, and start 5 blogs at blogger. She isn't worried about tagging, feeds, or the perks yet.

She did buy her own domain, something I do not suggest you do. But, if you want a private domain, then go to www.godaddy.com and get one. Then phone their customer service and ask for help. Godaddy is a great company, one of the largest on the net. But, what makes them great is their willingness to help newbies.

Once you are done setting up, have fun blogging. It will take several weeks to build enough inbound links to your blogs, and earn a PR rating of 2, so have fun through the first weeks.

There are thousands of places to blog on the net, but I suggest blogger. As you build your network, the dashboard here will make life easier. My second choice is WordPress they have a good dashboard, and great tools.

Blogger Pro Forum

Diva Network started a forum at yahoo groups. This forum is designed to give bloggers a chance to increase their PR. This group is cash free, but will involve a time investment each month.

Bloggers will need to tag 1 post from at least 10 blogger's blogs. This means, if a blogger has 20 blogs in the site, and there are 30 bloggers in the group. You need to tag with del.icio.us, digg, technorati - just one post for each blogger - not each blog.

Also we are also looking for one comment in each blog. This works two ways. It will improve the image of the host blog, and it gives you a chance to attach a url to the blog.

Last, we are asking that you review one blog a month.

All together, we expect this to take 1 hour a month. Not a lot of time, but it will increase our PR rating. and make it easier for everyont to 'get paid to write.'