How to write

All types of business owners face the challenge of optimizing their strengths. A Baker who wants to own a bakery may spend his days managing employees, balancing the books or meeting with suppliers.  A shopping enthusiast who owns a store, may find themselves receiving shipments or planning seasonal inventories.  If you are a baker, shopper or writer, your job should be baking, shopping or writing. 

As a freelance writer, you have to market yourself and your writing to succeed.

Internet marketing is a labor and time intensive endeavor.  One way to begin is to write articles. You can submit your articles to online directories or create a blog in which you publish consistently.  There are several sites which will host a blog for free, such as: Peoplefuel, Word press or Blogster, or sites where you can publish individual articles, such as: Hubpages, Squidoo or Peoplefuel.  You can also create your own blog for a nominal sum, just the cost of a domain name (~$10 a year) and hosting (~100 a year). 

I decided to start my own blog and here are a few lessons I’ve learned along the way:

1.  If you write it - - - they probably won’t come.  Writing articles isn’t enough to ensure anyone will actually see them. You have to understand the way search engines rank sites for search results. Then you have to spend considerable effort and energy to get ranked for relevant search terms.

2. Ranking is a full time job. Writing the article and posting it to your blog is just the tip of the iceberg.  What you don’t see are the external links which link back to a specific article so it will rank higher in the search engine results.  Google will rank your site according to releavancy (criteria includes: site’s name, article title and content) and authority (number of links incoming to your site for a key word or phrase). 

3. Key word research = 2+2.  As a writer, you’re probably right brain-centric, creative and spontaneous.  Key word research requires left brain thinking because it’s a numbers game.  Assuming you have a key phrase in mind, determine the number of searches a month for a specific key phrase * position in search results (1^st place receives ~60% of the traffic, 2^nd place ~15% with steady decline thereafter.)

Here’s an example -

You have a great new book that you want to promote so you choose the Key Word Phrase “GREAT NEW BOOK”

Google indicates there are 210 searches for this term a month. 

210 *.60 (assuming you’re in first place) = 126 searches per month.  However there are 113,000 sites which reference that key phrase.  Google returns only the top 820.  The work required to achieve the number one spot with that amount of competition would be staggering, for very little return. 

This is where the research comes in. You want to find a phrase that will attract sufficient visitors with relatively little competition.  You will probably go through several candidates before you find one that’s suitable. 

4.  Networking is still work - Blogs can fail or succeed based on the network you build. There are dozens of forums dedicated to writers.  If you haven’t already joined one or ten, do so. You’ll benefit from the experience of others and form life long friendships. 

I believe in writers helping writers. I’ve decided to accept submissions from writers who would like to promote themselves or their work and since I’m doing all the behind the scenes labor, you can do what you do best - WRITE!  

If you’re interested, email me at fictionway@live.com or see the FEATURED WRITERS page for details.