Category Archives: Buildipedia

Buildipedia, Suite 101, Writing

Small Payouts Ahead

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My income from writing remains small, but is coming in slowly but surely. Most of it is produced by my Buildipedia articles. I have a twice per month column on construction administration. Here’s a link to my profile, which includes links to articles. I earn $100 for each of these articles. Payment comes about three weeks after the article appears, by check. I have a contract for one more of these, but the contracts have been coming in like clockwork, and my articles going out. My accounts receivable right now is, I think, $200 for two of them.

My Amazon income is slow. For my four titles on Amazon Kindle, along with the print version of Documenting America, I’ve made just over $56. More than half of that has come from personally selling print books. Amazon pays out once you accumulate $10 in royalties, during the second month after you get there. I had done so in December, and in February I had my first Amazon payout, $10.97 by direct transfer to my bank account. If my current calculations are correct, I’ve since accrued $10.44 in Kindle royalties. That means I can expect another transfer in June. A small account receivable.

Over at Suite101.com, despite the hard times they have experienced due to changes in Google’s search algorithms, and despite the fact I haven’t added any articles there since February 2011, I continue to ear some money. Revenues were really low the second half of 2011 and January 2012. They began to pick up some in February, and have remained up. The payout threshold at Suite is only $5.00. Through April 28 I had earned $5.17 in royalties in April (having made payout in February and March. Payment from Suite comes via PayPal, always before the 15th of the month after you hit payout and usually the first Tuesday of the month. Since the first Tuesday of May is the 1st, I don’t expect payment till the 8th.

All of which I’m sure has some readers laughing, that I would bother to track and worry about these minor income streams. I need to for tax purposes, of course. Someday I hope they will be bigger, much bigger in the case of Amazon. Learning to track them now and properly account for them should help in the future, when [dream alert!] I’ll be raking in the dough from several sources.

Buildipedia, Engineering, Suite 101

2011 Writing in Review: Non-fiction Articles

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It’s Christmas morning, and not everyone is up yet. So I think I’ll try to dash off the next in my year in review posts, this time about non-fiction articles.

I started 2011 with a renewed interest in writing articles at Suite101.com. For the first six weeks I added at least one a week, and had a couple of others in the hopper. Then around February 22 a major change in the Google search algorithm went into effect. Called “Panda”, this algorithm change pretty much killed content sites such as Suite101. Page views and ad share income dropped to very low levels over night. A slight recovery occurred in August, but then another Panda update killed it again. As a consequence, I have not written another article for Suite, and don’t intend to for a while.

I was contacted in March or April by a transportation industry newsletter to write an article for them. This was my first time to have an editor solicit me for an article. She wanted an engineer for this article, not a freelancer,  had seen some of my engineering articles at Suite101, and so contacted me. The pay was good, and writing this article required me to do some interviewing. That was good experience.

I wrote about ten (maybe a few more) articles for Buildipedia.com. That started out strong early in the year, but by June it started to fade, as they were assigning only one of every six article ideas I pitched to them. But they had an editorial change in November, I pitched a column on construction administration to the new editor, and it was accepted on a trial basis. At the end of the year I have had two columns published, and contracts for two more columns.

So it was a good year for non-fiction articles. Almost all my writing income came from them. It’s something I plan to keep doing into 2012.

Buildipedia, Documenting America, freelance writing, Suite 101

Posts in Real Time

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I have been away on a working vacation from February 17 until today. I attended the annual conference of the International Erosion Control Association, where I delivered three papers, met a lot of the leadership, and attended my first meeting as a member of the Professional Development Committee. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were all business. The other days were driving and vacation.

Before leaving, I took time to write a few posts for the blog, and scheduled them to post about every two days. I also wrote one from there and posted it for later appearance. I like that feature of Blogspot, something I never used before, and which turned out to be incredibly easy. It lets me keep the blog fresh while being unable to write and post.

During the trip I had a fair amount of reading material with me, but found less time for reading than expected. I had volume 4 of the Annals of America, which is my first source for documents for Documenting America. I read the first item in the book, a report from 1797 by Moses Austin, father of Stephen F. Austin, of a trip he made from Virginia to the Ohio River valley and even to St. Louis and a little beyond. The document was fascinating, and I have written two chapters from it, one during the trip and one today, typing both of them this evening. The book is now up to 29, 275 words, so is still coming along.

I also had a notebook with various writings of John Wesley in it. I read some in that, both on the trip and today, but found it more difficult reading. Still, I have pretty well identified some material that will form the basis of a chapter in my Wesley small group study, so the reading, if limited, was profitable.

The week ahead looks very busy from a writing perspective. I have to prepare and send an invoice for some writing I did, the first of those I’ve had to do. That’s a tomorrow noon thing. The editor for Buildipedia asked me to try to move forward an article I thought I could take till next week to do. That’s a tomorrow evening thing. Despite some new troubles at Suite101 concerning changes Google recently made in their search engine algorithms, I’d like to write at least two articles this week for Suite. They will be Tuesday and Friday things.

And, while away on the trip I learned from Facebook posts that a woman in our church is a writer, excited about recently having sold some of her writing. I contacted her, and she is interested in seeing a writers group formed at church. I know of five others who in one way or another have either written things or have expressed an interest in doing so. This will be a Wednesday thing, I think, to see what can be done about organizing this group, with an eye to begin meeting maybe in April.

So the week looks full, and I hope on Saturday I can make a report of incredible productivity. Of course, I’ll be writing here before then.

Buildipedia, Documenting America, freelance writing, Suite 101, Writing

The Storm is Almost Here

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The winter storm that is so much in the news is bearing down on us. The winter storm warning from the National Weather Service starts at 6:00 PM tonight for us, so that probably means we’ll start getting some frozen stuff around 8 PM. The forecast has called for sleet, ice, snow, mixture—it keeps changing. That’s to be expected as the time nears and the computer models come together. The best guess right now is we’ll have a half inch of ice followed by 3-5 inches of snow.

Rather than negotiate the hills of Bella Vista tonight, I’m going to stay in Bentonville with my mother-in-law. Here apartment is about 3 miles due north of the office, on flat streets. If need be I could walk to work from there. Tomorrow should be the worst, with an inch of snow on top of the ice at the time of morning commute, snow still falling. She doesn’t have a computer or Internet, so I’ll probably stay at work late, or perhaps go to the library until it closes.

The storm is hitting at work and in writing as well. I have to have one of my flood studies re-submitted by Thursday. I worked on it some Saturday, and am in good shape with the computer modeling; now need to have the CADD tech do the mapping and pull a brief report together. It would be a snap except yesterday our 18-inch diameter water transmission main advertised in the newspaper, so today we should be deluged by contractors coming by to obtain drawings and specs—which aren’t ready. Hopefully they will be by 10 AM. Plus I really, really, really need to make major progress on my Rogers flood study. I’m so close to being able to run the first computer model. Four hours of undivided might do it.

In writing, I will be a journalist this morning. I have phone interviews scheduled with two DOT officials in two states, for information on my article for Safe Highway Matters. That’s due on Wednesday, and since this is the first time I’ve written for them, I’d like to get a draft in Tuesday. It’s only a 400 word article, but short doesn’t necessarily mean easier. Then I have an article due for Buildipedia the following Wednesday, and another the Wednesday after that.

Meanwhile I’m working on Documenting America and on articles for Suite101.com. Both of these are discretionary, of course. I could drop them at any time. But if I did, I would in effect be saying, “I don’t have what it takes to be a writer.” So I keep going, keep my schedule a whirlwind, hoping that I get to the point where I have something more than freelance articles published. Having decided to go the e-self-publishing route, this year is the critical year. More on that in future posts.

Buildipedia, Documenting America, Suite 101, Writing

The Schedule is Getting Crowded

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I mostly took yesterday evening off from writing. The reason? My wedding anniversary. Our 35th. We had plans to go out to eat. I scheduled a 4 PM meeting with a client who is only three or so miles from the house, which put me home about 4:30 PM. But we stayed home. Lynda had a persistent headache, and my stomach was doing jumping jacks for some reason, so we stayed home, worked on a puzzle, ate left-over enchilada soup, read some, watched a couple of our favorite news shows, then three episodes of Criminal Minds. A good evening, despite the change of plans and doing nothing special for our special day.

While we were sitting and watching TV, I worked on the next chapter of Documenting America. It’s going a little harder than I’d like. Later, from 11:00-11:30 PM, I read in a biography of John Wesley, which I consider research for a future small group study I’ll write. But that was it for evening writing.

Of course, during the work day, in my pre-hour and noon hour I worked on some things. I did some research for the article for the “Safe Highway Matters” newsletter. I read two writing related blogs, one by an agent and one by a writer. That’s not a lot of writing work, but it counts.

Now, I have a week and a day to complete the highway article. Tomorrow I’ll have my call with the Buildipedia editor and we’ll establish a schedule of articles for the next couple of months. Those will all have fixed deadlines. My two floating deadlines are articles for Suite101.com and chapters for Documenting America. I’d like to write two of the former and three of the latter each week. However, that alone would require about 15 hours, perhaps more than I can dedicate to them.

ETA: Shortly after I posted this, I learned of another on-line writing gig that would be just up my alley, I think. Did a little investigation on my noon hour, and it continues to look promising. The pay would be great, if I would be approved for the premium section of the website. I’m waiting on replies to two e-mails before I do anything else about this, other than some more research into the site tonight.

So I see things backing up very quickly, as they often do, and a logjam not too far in the future. I’ll just have to see if I can do a good job of managing my time and completing as much of this as I can. Lofty goals are good, so long as they don’t become stressful. As an long-gone evangelist in our church is quoted as saying: “I’d rather shoot at a star and miss than shoot at a toad in the road and hit it.”

Buildipedia, freelance writing, Suite 101

The Freelance Writing Report

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I wrote yesterday that I had a good day of writing, being at home due to the snow storm. That continued into the evening, as I completed the research on the next chapter of Documenting America, and wrote most of it. I also did the work I needed to do on Life Group class teaching prep. I haven’t quite finished typing the handouts yet, but I’ll get that done after work. So the day started well and finished well.

I thought it was time to make an overall report on my freelancing activities. Here it is.

  • Suite101.com: I’m up to 120 articles there, having posted 4 so far in January. I’m working on a series of genealogy articles right now. After that I may get back to stock trading articles. Beginning with the month of December, we now receive data on which articles actually earn money. I’ll watch these new stats for a few months to see if there’s any pattern, then maybe change up my article mix. The month of January is on track to be my biggest revenue month there, though I’m earning a paltry $0.14 per article per month. I do it because I enjoy it, seem to be somewhat good at it, and, well, I just want to.
  • Buildipedia.com: I had another article posted there today. I’m not quite sure how many this is, somewhere around 15 I think. I need to get my records up to date for them. Yesterday I sent the editor an e-mail, pitching 5 more articles. He’s interested, and we’ll talk next week. I’d like to do an average of two articles a month for them. They pay pretty good, and I think the exposure I get there is excellent. They also seem to be growing, which can’t hurt. I’m also getting articles by assignment for them, which is nice. The whole query-go-round for freelancing is not particularly enjoyable for me.
  • I reported yesterday that I had been approached by an editor about writing an article. The publication is “Safe Highway Matters”. Today the editor and I agreed via e-mails that I will write the article. I’m waiting for the exact assignment details. This may well be a one time gig, but having an editor come to me, based on writing of mine she saw on-line, is sweet. And maybe in the future she’ll need another article. Or maybe some editor will see my writing in that publication, and….
  • I have given up trying to find print publications to write for. I won’t say I’ll never go back to seeking that publishing outlet, but for right now, no. The pay wasn’t much better, the query process stinks, and my limited experience shows they don’t pay on time. For now, I’ll stick with on-line publications. It has been a good, professional experience for me.

One other thing I should mention. The article I did for Buildipedia on the Crystal Bridges Museum, which posted there on January 6, 2011, was new ground for me in that I had to interview someone I didn’t know. That was a definite first. It made me feel like a journalist. Not that I really know what that’s like. I have absolutely no journalist training, took no classes on it in college or in writers conferences. But the editors I work with seem to like my writing, and other editors are taking notice, so maybe in a sense I am a journalist. That wasn’t planned. I just want to be a writer when I grow up.

I originally shifted to freelancing as one plank in a “platform” to present to editors or agents to whom I would shop my books. Now that I’m considering e-self-publishing my books, as I have discussed in recent blog posts, the platform doesn’t count for as much. My freelancing doesn’t generate fans of my writing. Yet, I think I’ll keep with it for a while. It never hurts to learn to write to deadlines, to figure out when something is done rather than to endlessly revise, to learn how to please an editor, and to make more and more contacts.

Buildipedia, Engineering, Writing

Day(s) of Accomplishment

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Some days are just better than others. Maybe it’s a burst of energy, pent up from slackard days in between. Maybe it’s biorhythms. I’ve never figured it out, but some days seem destined for accomplishment.

Yesterday was one of those. I’ll just bullet a few items.

  • We received permission to begin some culvert construction in a floodplain here in Bentonville, based on a “no-rise certification” I prepared and submitted to the City. We had been anticipating a 3 month delay, so this was good. I told our project manager to tell the contractor we pulled a rabbit from our hat.
  • I made contact with a fellow genealogical researcher who is researching tangential to the Todd family. Turns out we can’t help each other much, but just making the contact was good.
  • I e-mailed the art teacher at Gravette High School (the school district we live in) about making the illustration of my poetry book a class project. Just doing that, in a burst of energy lasting ten minutes, felt good. Of course, when I got home after church I learned the e-mail bounced. But it only bounced because the spam catcher caught it. I’ll have to make a phone call today to see if they will accept my e-mail. I don’t know if anything will come of this, but I’ve done nothing on this for almost a year until yesterday.
  • I received permission from Worcester Polytech to use some of their graphics in an article I wrote for Buildipedia based on some research they did. This turned out to be a major effort, as WPI had the wrong phone number on their web site, and I wasted a couple of days, phone calls, and e-mails on it, putting us right up against the deadline.
  • I completed what seemed like numerous minor tasks in the office, having finished the last floodplain study and not yet started the next. Invoices, filing, training records, soil borings ordered, and more. All done (or close to done), all checked off the list. One more day like this on the miscellaneous tasks and I’ll almost be caught up.
  • I learned of a writers retreat in Orlando in February that begins the day after the erosion control conference I’ll be presenting papers at, and contacted the hostess to learn more. I’ve never been to a writers retreat, only conferences. I don’t know if this is something I’ll do, but the successful research and making contact felt good.
  • The Christmas tree is up and almost all decorated. I don’t like it up this early, but the kids, grandkid, and amniotic grandkid are coming for Thanksgiving, so we like to have it up for them. Only the tinsel and garland are left. It’s so nice to have something done ahead of schedule. Now I can concentrate on making the Chex mix.

Today the article went live on Buildipedia. I know I’m biased, but I think it’s one of my best. It had a good number of views as of 7:15 AM, so the headline on the Buildipedia home page must be creating interest. As it turns out the editor didn’t use any of the WPI graphics. Go figure. Now I need to develop and pitch a follow-up article.

So what will today hold? So much energy spent yesterday on so many separate items. It’s going to be hard to have as much accomplishment. If I can just get that reimbursement spreadsheet done, something I’m doing gratis for a client, and maybe get a few edits done on my Orlando papers and get them turned in (two weeks ahead of schedule), this will be a day of as much accomplishment as yesterday. Oh, and somehow get the e-mail through to the art teacher.

Buildipedia, freelance writing, Suite 101

Freelancing – Can this Rose Bloom Again?

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It isn’t all as bad as the title of this post sounds. Actually, my Buildipedia.com writing goes well. I had a conference call with the editor this afternoon, and he gave me another assignment. Don’t know if it will be a $100 or $250 article, but I suspect the former. Ah well. But, with the articles already turned in and in the queue to publish, I’ve earned in the four figures there in just two months of publishing, three of writing. This new one and the one on asphalt pavement solar collectors will make it all the more. Can this continue? I hope so.

Unfortunately, Suite101.com does not go as well. Page views have recovered. They are up 46% in September over this time in August. September revenues, unfortunately, are barely ahead of August. I guess students clicking on my history and poetry articles don’t click on ads. Oh, for the detestable flat belly ad to come back, and a bunch of anorexic high school girls viewing my poetry articles to click on it!

There’s something I’m not getting about web writing for profit. For fun, yes; all my articles are enjoyable to write. But either I’m not getting the concept of search engine optimization, or writing to lead people to click ads, or finding profitable niches. The graph I’ve added to this article is a new stat I’m tracking, page views per article per day, for 2010. It’s now below where this was in 2009.
I could accept this easier if my page views were strong and growing. But they are not. In this blog post I gave the same stat. Comparing the two graphs you can see I’m no where near the peaks I was at late last year. If I grasp for a silver lining to this cloud, it’s that I’m about equal or a little ahead of last September based on page views per article per day. I guess I can get motivated for a while based on that.
The most disappointing aspect of freelancing is complete absence of any work other than these two gigs. The one I thought I had in March fell through. I find solace in that it wasn’t for much money. I don’t want to do more content writing. If I have to freelance to build a platform so that someday I can sell a novel or non-fiction book, I need more than what I’ve got. Why don’t I have more? Mainly time, I suppose. Time to find and study markets. Time to formulate ideas geared to those markets. Time to prepare dynamite pitches. Could I get work—even print work—if I could find the time to pursue it? I think so, though of course I have no guarantees.
So maybe the bloom hasn’t come off freelancing so much as it isn’t reforming on life in general, as measured by time to do what I want to do. Not much I can do about that, I suppose, except to carry on and hope for a window, somewhere, sometime, that allows for a bit more of what is needed for a writing career.
Buildipedia, Engineering, home improvements, Suite 101

Good Days and Bad Days

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I have so many facets to my life that it’s sometimes difficult to say, “Today was a good day,” or “Today was a bad day.” It might be good in one sense but not in another. Take yesterday for example. Was it a good day? Here’s the things that suggest so:

  • My weight was down to the lowest it’s been in months, back to that set-point weight I always bump against but can’t seem to get through. I think I have motivation to break through it this time.
  • The mediation preparation in the morning went well, although I think the City (our client) is too willing to compromise. If they let the contractor sue them and they counter-sued, I think the City would win on 14 points out of 15. What some people do to avoid litigation.
  • I had a pleasant lunch with our Transportation department leader, after the mediation prep. He’s leaving us in a couple of weeks, going back to Texas, so this was sort of our goodbye lunch. He’s a good friend, and an excellent engineer. Hmmm, should this be on the good list or the bad?
  • I studied some floodplain issues I had been putting off studying, since our young engineers have been asking me questions about these issues. I’m aiming to give a training class on this within a month’s time. And, I found I could probably get three articles for Suite101 out of my prep. Of course, the bad news part of this is that my Suite articles still aren’t earning much.
  • The editor at Buildipedia e-mailed me, asking me if I wanted to write a certain article for publication in late October. I believe this is the first time that an editor has solicited me, which is a good feeling. Now I just have to see if I can write the article he wants.
  • I prepared a mailing to our former pastor, returning a book I borrowed from him. I included copies of the adult Life Group lessons I wrote from the book. To the P.O. today to mail. One more item checked off the to-do list.
  • I balanced the checkbook, an easy task this month. I had one $2 error, on the third-to-last entry. Took less than 1/2 an hour.
  • Even though I was tired in the evening, I went to the basement bathroom and did the trim work on the painting. I had finished the primer touch-up the night before, so this is the finished color, a nice lavender the wife picked out. In fact, she came down and helped me with some of it. I’m sure we’ll need two coats, but it’s looking quite nice. Progress in home improvements by inches and feet.
  • Went to bed at the time I wanted to, and fell right to sleep; slept well until 5:15 AM, when the arthritis pain woke me and let me sleep only fitfully thereafter.

But in other ways, it was a bad day.

  • After a morning without too much pain, my rheumatoid arthritis flared up by the end of the evening, and I went to bed in considerable pain in my right wrist and arm, the place of “Arther’s” current interest. Woke up in the night with much stiffness (guess I said that already), and worse this morning. Typing is quite painful. Oh, wait, I can’t put that on yesterday’s good and bad list, can I?
  • My powers of concentration at work were poor. After the mediation prep took up the entire morning, I was not terribly productive. Yes, I did the floodplain issues study, but what should have taken me 2 hours took 4. I’ve got to recover my powers of concentration.
  • With the evening activities, I did almost no reading and no writing. The Suite floodplain article was 90 percent done, but I couldn’t push myself to pull up the article editing screen and do the work. I have two Buildipedia articles under contract, but I couldn’t push myself to spend even 15 minutes working on one of them.
  • I did nothing on stock trading. I had no trades on to take advantage of the recent market run-up. And I call myself a stock trader.
  • I missed my noon hour walk, although I walked 12 minutes in the evening, two laps around the circle plus up to the stop sign once. So maybe that wasn’t all bad.

So was it a good day? I say yes, though in many ways it good have been better. Today, except for the arthritis, is starting well.

Buildipedia, Engineering, home improvements, Suite 101, Writing

Improvements to Body, Home, and Writing

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The “hit by a bus feeling” I wrote about on Monday has ended. By bedtime on Monday I was much better. Woke up on Tuesday with the normal morning stiffness, but my right wrist and arm felt much, much better than it had for several days, perhaps even a week. When I weighed in at work on Tuesday I was down 5 pounds week over week, back on track for a net loss by the end of the year. Maybe the better eating, more exercise, and general level of activity did something positive.

Monday evening I was able to write an article for Suite101.com, the next in my series on stock trading. Tuesday noon I was able to finish the article on the Crystal Bridges Museum for Buildipedia.com and submit it. That leaves me two still under contract at Buildipedia, and of course as many as I want to write at Suite. The money at Buildipedia is nice, at Suite not so much, but I see little signs of improvement there. Perhaps these recent articles are generating ad clicks at a higher rate than some of my early ones.

Last night, instead of writing, I finished the primer coat in the downstairs bathroom. Well, almost finished. I found some places I missed on the trim, and other places I had failed to wipe away the dust of sanding. With wet paint in the room I didn’t dust and paint those. So looks like tonight will include a little more painting, maybe no writing.

And on both Monday and Tuesday, as the day ended, I had enough energy and brain power to read a good amount in Athanasius. I really liked Monday’s reading. It was in the place where Athanasius speaks about the Christian’s attitude toward death, basically that he despises rather than fears death. This was so close to one of John Wesley’s sermons on death that you know this is either a source work and derivative or the treatment of the subject hadn’t changed much in the 1,450 years between the two. I found it interesting reading.

So what will today hold, in this adventure called life, juggling devotion to God, being a husband, being an empty-nest father and grandfather, an engineer, a writer, and trying to maintain a house and property? I’ll be writing today, items needed for one of the papers I’ll present in February. So that’s good: any writing is worthwhile writing. I always feel good when I make progress in whatever I do.