More on Freelancing, Blogging and Giving Out Free Information

At SXSW last weekend I had a chance to attend a small, intimate gathering made up of many of the top writing bloggers and social media professionals in the space. We had an interesting conversation regarding email and how many people write to us on a daily basis requesting advice. Most of us described receiving [...]

3 Lessons Learned from Yankee Doodle

//

“Yankee Doodle went to town,
riding on a pony,
stuck a feather in his cap
and called it macaroni.”
I must have sang “Yankee Doodle” at least a thousand times over the past 45 years and never really gave  a second thought to its meaning. Today, while attending a second grade social studies presentation about the beginnings of [...]

Are You (Ab)Using Your Online Friends?

//

Does this sound familiar?
You’re an aspiring blogger looking to make yourself known in a popular niche. All the blogging books and blogs tell you in order to do this you have to network heavily including commenting at other top blogs to bring in traffic. You do. You don’t just comment you become THE top [...]

Asking Questions VS Confrontation

//

Overheard at the supermarket: “I don’t like the way they do things over there. I’m going to give them a piece of my mind. There’s going to be a confrontation.”
To be fair, I don’t know what prompted the above-referenced quote. It stuck in my mind for a variety of reasons, the first is that [...]

Your Turn: What Makes a Qualified Freelance Writing Blogger?

In the past few weeks I’ve received a flurry, no a barrage, of angry emails asking why I’m qualified to be a freelance writing blogger.
Though I don’t quite get the anger, I’m happy to receive these questions because it means writers and aspiring writers are thinking about who to trust and that’s always a good [...]

Building a Blog into a Blog Network without Funding, Backing or Partners

//

The news regarding the b5Media blog network’s  restructuring and restaffing is leading to a lot of speculation around the webosphere. Specifically folks are wondering about the future of blog networks in general. Will they all be taken over by the venture capitalists who are funding them and turned into impersonal content portals, or will [...]

b5Media: I’m in a Better Place Now

When I first began working as a blogger, b5Media was at the top of my list of places to work. I mean, Liz Strauss, Brian Clark and Darren Rowse, all bloggers I looked up to, were part of b5Media. As someone who wanted to make a name for myself as a blogger, I felt this [...]

Your Turn: What’s Your Definition of a “Good” Freelance Writing Job?

//

Credit where it’s due: I’m writing this in response to a Skype conversation I had with Mark Narter, a friend and writer who doesn’t have a huge online presence but writes full time for a local business. Every now and then Mark pings me to talk about something I wrote and whether or not [...]

What are You Reading…and Where?

//

My Dad was a librarian. As you could imagine, our house was filled with books. I mean, floor to ceiling books. Our living room contained non-fiction and the more formal library was filled with fiction, including many first edition literary works. Upstairs in Dad’s office were the “stacks,” where he kept the periodicals. All [...]

Your Turn: What is Your Dream Writing Job

//

I’ve been thinking about this blog, and the Freelance Writing Jobs blog network  a lot lately. I don’t mean planning ways to bring in traffic or dominate my niche. That part is a lot of fun and all, but there’s more to it than that. To put it simply, I enjoy what I do [...]

Next Page »