Happy New Year's

As we stand poised on the eve of another year, many are remembering the events of the months gone by.

It's surprising what changes a year brings. My daughter and granddaughter moved back to B.C. to warmer winters and I settled more firmly into life in Atlantic Canada.

As always, my writing work morphed and went in new directions. If I had to sum up the year's writing endeavors in one word it would be "content." This was the year for production.

My writing took me in many directions, from content sites, to paid blogging, to blog monetization, to finishing two children's stories. I joined another venture for published writers and am excited to see where that will lead.

As always, my thoughts go out to other entrepreneurs, writers, bloggers, and dreamers, to those who are navigating "the road less traveled."

May the new year bring you your heart's desire.

Writing Tip: Using StumbleUpon to Generate Ideas

Today's writing tip centers around using StumbleUpon to generate ideas. If you've been using StumbleUpon for any length of time, you can now put it to good use to help you in your writing endeavors.

Writers are always looking for ideas and StumbleUpon makes that whole process easier.

How?
Go to StumbleUpon, "Interests," and update your topics. Make sure you choose topics you would be interested in writing about. If you haven't done so already, download the StumbleUpon toolbar so it sits up top in your browser.

Now, hit the Stumble button and start browsing through sites. You'll have instant access to sites that match your interests. When you see something you think you would like to write about, bookmark the site for future reference.

It doesn't get much easier than this.

Make The Most Of Triond: Adding Pictures To Your Articles

If you are writing articles for Triond, you should be adding photos to your work. This adds eye-appeal for readers by illustrating your stories and, more importantly, when you bookmark your articles, you can choose from one of the pictures you've incorporated in your article body.

Why is this important?
Internet surfers are obviously going to be drawn to a picture and will be far more motivated to check out your story when they see something visual. It goes without saying that this will generate more interest and over the long term lead to more revenue for you.

You can use your own pictures, saved in JPG format or use pictures from free sites, such as Freefoto or Morquefile. In your Word processor, Click on "Insert," "Picture," "From File" then locate a spot in your article body where you want your picture to appear. Just make sure to credit the site or the photographer when using free photos. Always read photo user guidelines before making use of any photos.

What does an article look like with pictures?
Here are a couple of samples. See how pictures bring them alive?

10 Love Lessons For Stronger Relationships

Boisterous Bailey: An African Grey Parrot that Changed our Perceptions about Avian Intelligence

By adding pictures to your article submissions, you'll appeal to a wider reader base.

Earn More with Triond

Why You Should Create Hub Pages

Hubpages offers writers an excellent opportunity to showcase their writing and to earn revenue from their pages.

What is Hubpages? Hubpages is a community of people who share their interests and passions. You don't have to be a "techie" to create a Hubpage.

You can include photos, news links, revenue capsules, Google AdSense, your RSS feed linking to your other articles/stories, and just about anything else your heart desires.

What Does a Hubpage Look Like?

Sample 1: K.D. Lang
Sample 2: Best Ever Biscuits
Sample 3: Blogging at PrintnPost


Make your own hub page. If you can write, you can make your own Hubpage

More exciting, you can make money with your Hubpages!

You can even benefit from other Hubpages to learn how to increase your Hubpage earnings, with articles such as The Hubpages Cash Machine .

If you are a writer or blogger interested in creating content, Hubpages is another opportunity where you can put your skills to good use.

Blogging Pays!

The other day, I did a blog post for $5.00. Now, this isn't exactly an earth shattering amount but . . . I got thinking about it. The required number of words was 50.

It was easy to do and I had it written in 5-10 minutes. $5.00 for 5 minutes of work. Hmmm . . . when you crunch the numbers, that works out to 10 cents per word. Not bad at all.

For my readers who are interested in paid blogging, here's my master list of companies that will pay you to create blog posts.

I've included the applicable links, as well.

Paid Blogging sites
BloggerWave
Blogitive
Blogging Ads
BlogToProfit
Blogvertise
CreamAid
LoudLaunch
PayPerPost
PayU2blog
Printnpost
ReviewMe
Smorty

Sign up at multiple paid blogging sites for your efforts to really pay off.

Review of PrintnPost

Well, I signed up for PrintnPost and have been submitting material in the form of short pieces (blogs) and longer articles.

To be honest, I found the site somewhat confusing (try submitting an article using the form and you will see what I mean!) but persevered and am now making a little from the advertising that is incorporated into my pages. I can see that it will take some doing to get any tangible income going but am willing to give it a chance, hoping that over time it will pay off.

As I've discussed previously, writers should consider multiple opportunities and look at the "whole" over pinning their hopes on a single high-paying assignment. This may seem obvious but for newer writers starting out, it might seem a bit overwhelming to juggle more than one writing project. You will find, as time goes by, that you are able to produce more in a shorter period of time.

Steps
You join PrintnPost for free and create a profile. You sign up for a Google AdSense account (if you don't have one already) and link your Google AdSense account info. back at PrintNPost. When readers click on advertising that appears on your pages, you earn income. The concept is simple.

How much income?
How much income you make is determined by number of submissions, reader interest and page views, keyword optimization, etc.

What I like about PrintnPost is that you can link to your blogs or to other articles, there-by increasing traffic potential at your other sites.

EHow: Another Opportunity For Writers

eHow offers to compensate writers for contributed work. This morning, as I navigated the Net, I came across this site.

What Does eHow Offer?
* You Join up
* you sign up for the writer's compensation program
* You write original how-to articles and include videos and photos.
* Your articles earn cash and you are paid via PayPal

At first glance, it appears that payment may only be offered to US writers. I haven't tried eHow personally so am not entirely familiar with their criteria; however, I thought I would mention it to writers seeking to augment their writing income.

If you enjoy writing how-to articles, eHow may be a fit for you.

A Writing Business That Grows Over Time

A writing business grows over time. "Rome wasn't built in a day" is a saying that is certainly applicable to freelance writing.

Writers work hard to hone their skills and often take on multiple projects to create ongoing income streams.

Types Of Income

* Regular content submission from sites looking for same (per blog or article basis and/or percentage of ad. revenue
* Blogging (paid for each post)
* Revenue share opportunities (percentage paid to writer from products purchased via links in article content)

These opportunities don't necessarily pay large amounts but, over time, if you submit regularly, your earnings grow.

It helps to set daily goals. Visualizing where you want to be down the road can help you in the present.

5.00 per day = 100.00 per month
10.00 per day = 200.00 per month
25.00 per day = 500.00 per month
50.00 per day = 1000.00 per month
100.00 per day = 2000.00 per month

Other higher paying writing endeavors entail being directly hired for assignments (you are paid a set monthly amount for work you produce) or freelancing to larger publications (you earn a decent amount for an article).

Combining all of these different approaches is probably the best way to see monthly + additional earnings.

Write and Get Paid: A Look At 4 Writing Opportunities

Today I'm going to take a quick look at 4 free-to-join writing opportunities where you get paid for content.

PrintNPost
At PrintNPost, you create articles, Google places ads, and you earn whenever someone clicks on ads. on your pages; as well, advertisers may bid to appear on a CPM basis. Both CPC and CPM compete in the AdWords program so that your ad revenue is optimized. You can also boost earnings by doing the usual linking to your articles.

Triond
You submit original articles and earn on advertising that is placed on your pages. Triond provides a large number of bookmarking sites. You receive monthly revenue and, if you submit on a regular basis, can grow a smaller side-line income. My recent article, Natural Treatments for Anxiety did very well.

Earn more writing for Triond

Helium
Helium works much the same way, offering bookmarking buttons and an About Me page where you can include 3 links to your other sites. Additional advantages are offered via contests and through the Helium Marketplace, which matches publishers and authors. You earn revenue on your articles. See what an article looks like at Helium.

Suite 101
You join the Suite 101 network and receive a direct share of ad revenue. You can write for approximately 400 topics and 3000 categories. If you can produce at least 10 articles over 3 months, this may be a good fit for you. You also receive editorial review and gain access to comprehensive tutorials on writing for the Web.

Suite offers a handy site widget so that you can spotlight your articles.

Become a freelance writer!

Latest Articles by Melody Rhodes

If you are serious about earning money from your writing, joining these opportunities may be a steppingstone to help you to reach your goal of getting paid for writing.

Freelance Writing Work

Monika Mundell over at The Writers Manifesto Blog mentions that many writers struggle to get enough work and that part of the problem is that they don't know where to look to find freelance writing jobs.

She discusses freelance job sites and gives a list of 13 sites that writers can access for potential writing gigs.

Monika shares her insights into different opportunities and gives valuable feedback.

If you haven't done so already, you'll want to check out her Writers Manifesto Blog.

A Look At Copyright

Copyright is the right to produce, reproduce, or perform a work. Anything written by writers is referred to as a literary work.

Copyright protects your work. Without it, anyone can take what you have written and use it as their own, without compensation to you.

Copyright enables you to sell your work, to earn income from it, and to know that whatever you have written is protected.

A freelance writer owns copyright at the moment of creation of material.

There are exceptions, however.

* Work done under a contract of service where your employer owns copyright. An example of this is staff writers on newspapers and magazines. These writers do not normally hold copyright to the work they produce.

You may choose to register with the Copyright Office of the federal government; conversely, you are also owner of copyright if you do nothing; however, the work must be in material form. Ideas cannot be copyrighted, for obvious reasons.

Some authors have opted to mail themselves a copy of their manuscript, registered mail, and have kept the envelope sealed, as proof that the article was written before the postmarked date.

Canadian law does not demand that you indicate copyright on your work; however, in other countries, a copyright symbol (c in a circle), your name and the year of publication must appear on your work.

With copyright, you never lose ownership of your material. You give a publisher license to use it one time only.

In all countries where the Berne Convention is applicable, copyright exists for the lifetime of the author, plus 50 years afterwards; thus it passes to heirs, so should be covered in a will.

Kontera Newsletter Launched

Kontera has now launched a newsletter for publishers, Kontera Central, which will include money generating tips and optimization ideas.

Kontera will be choosing a "Kontera Publisher of the Month" and will dedicate a post about a selected site or blog, illustrating how the publisher is effectively using Kontera Content Links.

What I appreciate about the new newsletter is the Publisher Login on the right, which makes it easy to check earnings via content link ads.

Additional links
Advertisers' Solutions
Kontera Home
Kontera Blog

Rounding Out Your Characters

If you've ever received a rejection slip with these words, "round out your characters," you may be wondering how to do that.

Keep in mind that your characters are your babies, your inventions, and naturally will seem very real to you. You know them intimately; however, your readers don't share your inner glimpses.

In crafting compelling characters, you'll need to include personality traits and physical characteristics. It is important to use words that paint a picture for your reader: what your character looks like, what he or she feels, and how he or she thinks.

For example, The man squatted down, then stretched out large callused fingers. He traced a dewdrop winking in the sunlight on a rose petal. This description allows your readers to picture a gentle giant, touched by the beauty of a flower. Far more effective then, The man touched the rose. The latter gives no hints as to the "why," the personality trait of the man in question.

Here's another example. She had brown hair. Boring, right? Notice the difference: Her silky bangs feathered across her forehead, sunlight captured in reddish brown highlights.

The Writing Life

The writing life is a reflection of the age-old question, "who am I?" Most of us have defined who we are and that is why we choose to sit for hours, squirreled away at our keyboards. We are an independent breed, tenacious about doing that which we love best. We can handle rejection because deep down we know we "have something."

The Upside
Being a writer is like experiencing Christmas over and over again. There is always something either in the mail or in your Inbox: The piece you submitted, sans the market tester, has been accepted for publication. One of your poems has won an award. You hear from another writer, asking for your advice. Someone writes and tells you how much your writing has inspired them. And always, your writing takes you in new directions. It is an ever-evolving, work-in-progress.

The Downside
That piece you knew was solid, has been rejected. You work to a deadline when the muse has gone on vacation, or done a vanishing act; or you don't feel like it, or don't feel good. You complete a piece--only to have your computer eat it for breakfast. Your computer bogs down, when you need it the most.

The writing life is filled with awe and angst, flights of fancy and frustration, creativity and cathartic moments. It is a complex and fascinating world that we, as writers, are privileged to be a part of.