No, this isn’t a post about the colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert monatomic chemical element that heads the noble gas series in the periodic table and whose atomic number is 2 (thank you, Wikipedia!)
This is about helium.com, one of the newer article repository web sites, and about how I intend to make a bunch of money writing there in the next 45 days.
I hope that doesn’t put you off. Making money by writing on the Internet is how I buy Pop Tarts for my daughters, pay my electric bill, and buy dog food. I’m not particularly greedy or materialistic, but I’m also not ashamed to say, “My writing has value. You can use it, but you should pay me for it.” If you are skittish about wanting to make money from your writing, you should choose another profession.
Don’t skip this paragraph. It might cost you.
Before I provide you with links or more information, let me mention that Helium.com does have a referral program. If you do think you’d like to write for Helium, please send me an e-mail with the words ”Helium referral” in the subject line. I will send you a sign-up email as soon as possible. Helium.com only allows referrals via their own e-mail referral system, and they limit each writer to 50 referrals. If you’re interested, let me know as soon as possible before my referral emails are all gone. See below for more reasons to sign up via a referral from me.
The Helium.com Reward-athon
Helium.com is currently running a promotion designed to increase the size of their article repository. This promotion runs until April 15, 2008. At the end of the day on April 15, Helium.com will tally up the number of articles that you submit between January 7 and April 14. You will receive, in your PayPal account on April 15, up to $3 per article submitted.
This bonus payment is in addition to any revenues you accumulate due to page views, which is normally how Helium.com pays its writers. It is also in addition to any revenues generated by placing in the top of a Helium.com contest.
There are specific guidelines that determine how much you will receive per article, and those are available at the Reward-athon page on Helium.
How I am going to make a bunch of cold hard cash.
So, how am going to earn a bunch of money? I’m going to do the following:
Write a minimum of 12 articles each day for submission between now and April 14. I’ve already got 30 articles at helium.com, so that will put me well above the 500 articles that I need to qualify for a “5-star rating.”
Rate at least 5 times each day.
Participate in at least 1 contest every week.
Spend 20 minutes each day browsing the site or reading the forums trying to identify what sorts of things provide higher ratings at Helium.com.
Why you should try to make some cash, too.
Also, as I love a good competition, I have my own reward for anyone who:
Submits a minimum of 400 articles to Helium.com between March 1 (today) and April 14.
If you meet all three of these criteria, I will send you a copy of Jane Strauss‘ Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation (see below). This book is indispensable for any writer. I am pen pals with Jane, and I can tell you that she has put a lot of work and devotion into this book. I can also tell you that this book has made me money by helping me keep my writing at the top of its game.
Anyone who does the three things above AND tops my total number of articles submitted between March 1 and April 14 will also receive ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett which is scheduled for release on May 12, 2008. No Internet writer, regardless of whether or not you blog, should be without this great book. Like I said, I love a good competition, so be aware that I will do my best to top you if I can!
But for some reason, you can’t seem to make any money doing it. You go on, day by day, pounding away quality content on your keyboard, but you can’t seem to catch a break. No one wants to hire you to write articles for their web sites, or your blog hovers at just a few readers. Why is this? Isn’t content king, when it comes to Internet writing?
Yes. Content is King. If you don’t write good content, no one will want to read it. And as you know, readers means money, whether you’re writing content for someone else or for yourself.
But content isn’t alone in its role as making money. Content may be king, but marketing is the queen of Internet writing.
So, how do you market your Internet writing? The answer to that question is going to vary a little bit based on the type of Internet writing that you do. However, there are several proven tactics that can help you get started on the right path.
Tactic #1: Use Web Site Marketing
Create a web site or blog profiling yourself and your writing. This technique is more reactive marketing, as opposed to proactive, but it is absolutely essential, especially if you are trying to land Internet writing contracts. Keep this blog or web site professional. Don’t put too much personal information and don’t treat it as a diary. That might be fine for some other types of blogs, but you want to project an image of professionalism here. Angela Booth has some further advice for building your web presence as a writer.
Tactic #2: Sell Yourself
This tactic has worked well for me in the past. When I was trying to find clients for my writing, I would search for web sites that had content or product related to the topic I wanted to write about. I would then email the webmasters a sample article or two, along with a brief paragraph about the value that my writing would add to their site, and about how I could drive traffic to their web site using Search Engine Optimization. I would close the e-mail asking for a sale. In some cases, if I could see that the web site was run by a specific individual and they listed contact information, I might even give them a follow-up call in a couple of days to see if they got the e-mail, and if they had any questions. This technique relies a lot on your personal charisma and sales ability, and you have to get used to being rejected a lot before you get some gigs from this technique. However, I discovered 3 of my top 5 longest-lasting clients this way.
Tactic #3: Leverage Your Existing Client Base
Success in Internet writing, as it is in many areas, is often more about who you know than what you know. Once you have done some Internet writing for a given client and that client is happy with the work, you can use that client to help spread the word. You might, after doing a few writing jobs for the client, ask if they would provide a link back to your portfolio web site. You might ask them to be certain to let their peers and other business contacts know about your availability.
The downside to this tactic is that, unless you’re an Internet writing phenom, this won’t happen by itself. You usually have to ask someone for a recommendation. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: if you screw up work for a client, it is likely that the news will spread like wildfire. To avoid this, there are only two things you can do: 1) don’t screw up, and 2) try to do damage control when you do screw up.
Tactic #4: Use Article Directories
Most article directory web sites will provide you with a link back to your web site from within the article’s byline. In other cases, the link will take you to an “About Me” type of a page on the article directory’s web site. Put some time and energy into your “About Me” pages on article directory web sites in order to maximize their marketing potential. But be careful here: some article web sites stipulate that you are not to provide personal contact information or try to promote your own site in any way other than providing a link.
There you have it. If you can master these 4 simple techniques, you will greatly increase your ability to market your Internet writing.
Not sure what all of the jargon on this Internet writing blog and other web sites means exactly? Get a handle on it with this Internet Writing Glossary:
Article Directory
An article directory is an online depository of articles. Think of an article directory as a library tucked away in one little corner of the Internet. Article directories provide value to their readers by 1) providing information that the readers are interested in, and 2) providing resources that readers can use in other formats, such as eZines and newsletters. Some article directories, such as Associated Content, pay Internet writers for their submissions, while others like eZineArticles don’t offer payment, but do provide links back to the Internet writer’s web site. Interested in knowing more? Check out my Directory of Internet Article Writing Sites.
Blog
A blog is short for “weblog.” A Blog is a specific type of a web page with very unique characteristics that set it apart from other sorts of Internet web sites. What are those unique characteristics? Well, for one, blogs have a temporal (time-related) component to them. The articles on a blog are typically listed in chronological order, beginning with the most recent article. Blog archives tend to be arranged by date, and you can browse through a blog’s history in this manner. second, blogs are unique in that they don’t require specialized knowledge to use. Just about anyone who can use a word processor can set up a blog. This principle has caused the “blogosphere” to explode in size in recent years. This is important, because blogs allow individuals, like you, who have specialized knowledge or interests to have a way to share that knowledge or interest with the entire world. Finally, blogs tend to have a very personal component to them. While not every blog is a personal journal or diary, many blogs do tell personal stories. This tends to be an especially effective method of communication.
eBook
An eBook is a book published in an electronic format. Today, most eBooks are published in PDF format, and require Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to view them. eBooks may be read on your computer, on a handheld device that supports eBooks, or on a portable eBook reader like the Kindle Wireless Reading Device. eBooks can cover any topic that a traditional book can. Often, eBooks will contain within them clickable links that can take the reader right to related web pages.
Freelance Writing
When I have told people in the past that I am a “Freelance Writer” I get one of two reactions: puzzlement or curiosity. I explain to them that, in the middle ages, a “Free Lance” was a knight with no allegiance to a particular lord. Various nobles would, from time to time, hire a Free Lance to fight a battle, put down a peasant rebellion, or serve as personal bodyguards. Today, a freelance writer is someone who uses his or her writing to serve someone (or a number of different someones) for a fee. This might take the form of web content, eBook writing, article writing, or even paid blogging, as well as writing for various tradition print media.
Ghostwriting
Ghostwriting refers to writing that you do for someone else, to which your name is not attached in any way, shape, or form. Generally speaking, ghostwriting means that you can never brag about what you’ve written, and that you won’t receive a byline. On the other hand, ghostwriting tends to be more lucrative than other forms of Internet writing.
Niche
A niche is, simply put, a particular area of interest that you write about. Finding a niche that is both interesting to you and that can make money can be a challenge. The more narrow of a niche you use in your Internet writing, the less competition you will have, and the more marketable you may become.
Monetization
This is the Holy Grail of Internet writing. Monetization is what you do to something to make money with it. If you have a blog, you put up ads or affiliate links, or sell your own product. If you write articles, you submit them to article directories for payment. If you do contract writing for a specific client, you are monetizing your writing through that process, as well.
Page Impressions
I include page impressions here because so many of the potential markets for Internet writing rely on it to determine exactly what the payout will be for the work. Page impressions are the number of times that a page, with your writing on it, is loaded into someone’s browser. The more page impressions your writing gets, the more money it is going to make through monetization. This is true whether you are talking about an Article Directory like Associated Content that pays you a certain rate per 1,000 page impression, or whether you are talking about your own blog where you can use page impressions to gauge the popularity of your web site.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO refers to the process that an Internet writer goes through in his or her writing to make that writing friendly to search engines like Google and Yahoo. SEO can be tricky, because you don’t want to sacrifice readability so that the search engines can find you; if you do, web visitors will simply search, arrive at your site, and then leave without adding to your monetization.
Self-Publishing
Self-publishing refers to the process of publishing your writing, typically a book, without using a traditional publisher or press. Self-publishing means that you alone are ultimately responsible for the marketing and distribution of your book. There are a number of online services that can assist you with self-publishing your book. Understand that, with self-publishing, you always pay up front for your printing costs, as opposed to getting a share of profits. You don’t make any money self-publishing until you sell your writing.
Web Content
Web content is nothing more than the words, pictures, sounds, and anything else that you see on any web page. Internet writers provide web content to many web sites. It is web content that webmasters use to draw traffic to their web sites through search engines. Web content can cover any topic at all, and may or may not have profit in mind. Writing web content for others is, very often, one of the most lucrative types of Internet writing that you can do.
. eBooks can cover any topic that a traditional book can. Often, eBooks will contain within them clickable links that can take the reader right to related web pages.
