The Weekly Resource RoundUp

This week's roundup is all about blogs and blogging. While most of these resources focus on running your own blog, some of the tips can also be applied to paid blogging for other people.

Jade Craven highlights 892 tips you can learn from some of the top bloggers on the web. Darren Rowse (Problogger), Michael Martine (Remarkablogger) and James Chartrand (Men with Pens) are only a few of the gurus on the list.

Learn 10 tips to help tidy up your blog categories. I've been working on this myself here on The Freelance Experiment. As you can see, I still have work to do.

The Weblogs category at About.com has a nice directory of advertising opportunities. If you're wanting to monetize your blog, you might want to check it out. While it doesn't cover all the options for monetizing your blog, it's a good jumping off point.

Daily Blog Tips shares 4 ways to promote your blog offline. The blogger at Balkhis shares 13 ways he promoted his blog. Between these two, you should get some good ideas on blog promotion.

Finally, check out Dragos Roua's list of 100 ways to improve your blog. The list covers content, layout, plugins, promotion, networking and money. It's a long read, but full of great tips.

Promoting Your Writing

If you write for content sites that pay for page views such as Ehow or Associated Content, getting traffic to your writing is important if you want it to earn money. While SEO (search engine optimization) and good writing may attract some traffic, promoting your writing exposes more people to your work.

RedGage is one method of promoting your writing. After registering for free, users can upload their photos, videos, blog posts and links to their work. Other RedGage users view your content, sometimes rating or commenting on it, and you earn cash for each view. While RedGage promotes the potential to earn, my goal for the site is simply to drive more traffic to my writing. It's paying off. In just a couple weeks, I've managed to gain over 200 views.

Twitter is another option. If you have a lot of followers, tweeting links to your articles can gain some views. However, be careful not to overwhelm your followers with links as this is considered by many to be spamming. I would suggest breaking up link tweets with conversation or only tweeting links that would interest your followers. For instance, if many of your followers are parents, a link to an article on how to get permanent marker off a hardwood floor would probably be a welcome tweet.

You can also post links on your Myspace or Facebook profile. Again, you want to be careful not to overwhelm with links. A few well-chosen links will do. If your readers enjoy your writing, they will go looking for more of your work.

If you're a member of a forum, linking to an article or your profile on a content site may be an option. On the WAHM forum I frequent, it's not unusual to see members with links to their Ehow or Associated Content profiles in their signature. Answering a post in a niche forum with a link to your work may also be a way of getting views. For instance, if you're a member of a crafting forum and a member has posted asking about free patterns, you may be able to link to your article on finding free patterns.

Advice sites such as Yahoo Answers may send some traffic to your writing. Don't be afraid to link to your writing if it's relevant to the question.

As a final option, your blog may be a way of promoting your writing. While you should not plaster your blog with links to every article you've ever written, occasionally referencing an article in a blog post or putting a feed of recent articles in a sidebar can bring traffic to your writing, especially if your blog has a high volume of traffic.

*Picture by Yamamoto Ortiz.

The Weekly Resource RoundUp

A few more good resources this week. If you know of any that may be helpful to me or other readers, please comment and let me know.

If you're looking for information on how to monitor for content theft or how to deal with it if you find it, you need to check out Hey That Blogger Stole My Content at Blog World Expo.

If you're constantly fighting distraction, then check out 155 ways to work at home without distractions. There's lots of great tips from people that work from home.

Twitter has become the new social media. Learn 62 ways to use Twitter for business.

Ever wonder why you are not more productive? Check these 6 reasons on Dumb Little Man and learn how to get past them.

Your bio is an important part of how client's perceive you. Learn how to write a killer bio that lets clients see who you are and what you have to offer them.

Freelance Progress Report: July 2009

July ended up being a pretty hectic month for me and I fell short of my income goal. Between my husband and my father-in-law both being hospitalized and running here and there taking everyone for doctor's appointments and tests, I wasn't home that much. When I was home, a lot of my time went towards designing new business cards and a website for my husband's business.

Most of my writing was done the week my husband was out of work. He took over taking care of our daughter and the house, which freed up my time for writing. I registered our daughter for Head Start and now we're waiting to hear if she got in. If she gets in, I'll be able to do more writing during the day, which should increase my income substantially.

I started my phlebotomy classes the last week of July. It's paying off in an unexpected way. Thanks to what was covered in our first two classes, I came up with a few article ideas. I've set aside some pages in the back of my notebook I use for class to jot down article ideas.

I picked up two more writing jobs this month, Need An Article and Ecopywriters. I'm still getting used to them, but so far I'm enjoying writing for both sites. NAA has really impressed me with their open communication policy. Unlike other sites where you rarely get to speak to the staff, NAA encourages communication. I'll have more details on both sites once I get a little more versed in them.

The Breakdown
Ecopywriters
4 articles-$35.08
NAA
4 articles-$21.60

Associated Content once more got pushed to the side in favor of better paying options. I did do one article, an assignment, but other than doing a little promotion to drive traffic to my articles there, that was the extent of my work for them.

The Breakdown
1 assignment-$2.00
June PV bonus-$2.91
Total for month-$4.91
Total since start-$108.05

I had joined eHow a while back, but for some reason, I never followed through. This month I did put up a few How to's. I'm pleasantly surprised by the result. While they don't pay upfront like the other sites I write for, their pay for page views is better than I expected. With only 5 articles, I made close to what I got from Associated Content and I have 36 articles up on AC.

The Breakdown
5 articles
PV earnings-$1.65

With joining two other writing sites this month and learning the ropes with them, I did very little writing for Text Broker. Despite being told that the move to a level 5 would take a few weeks, I still haven't heard anything or noticed a change in my rating. I'm a bit disappointed.

The Breakdown
1 article in the 4 category-$4.55
1 article in the 3 category-$2.00
Total for month-$6.55
Total since start-$169.25

This month I joined RedGage in an effort to get more exposure for my writing. I added links to all of my Associated Content and eHow articles. It seems to have helped a little. The day after I added links to my articles, my AC page views went up. They did come back down, but are slightly higher than they were before. I'm going to keep experimenting to see if I can find a method to consistently drive traffic to my articles.

The fact that you can earn money when people click your links on RedGage was an added bonus, but since I joined just before the end of the month, I only made a few pennies. I'm not too concerned about the money issue since my main reason for joining was to get more views on my articles.

*Photo by Marc Garrido i Puig