Category Archives: content writing

content writing, Writing

Plans for writing for “Decoded Science”

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Back in 2009, with my writing career kind of stalled, or at least in a state of uncertainty, I decided to follow a path for a while of writing magazine articles. I studied the genealogy magazine market, picked a target mag, pitched an article to the editor, and had it accepted within 20 minutes. Two months later the article was written, two months after that it was in the print magazine, and four months after that I was having to send e-mails to the editor to have them send the payment they promised.

During this time I discovered Suite101.com, an on-line site, sort of a magazine, sort of a wiki, a place for authors to post their 400-800 word articles about almost any subject. Supported only by advertising, the author received a share of the revenue from ads that appeared on their article page. It all happened more or less automatically.

The “promise” made by the editors of Suite101 was that an article typically earns a dollar a month in ad revenue. So put up lots of articles, and eventually it adds up. I decided to do that rather than chase the shrinking number of print mags. As I published articles, my revenue began to trickle in. Eventually I made payout. Then I won $101 in an internal contest. I never made even close to the magical dollar per article per month, but at least revenues were going up.

I was up to 127 published articles, and at a point where I was going to evaluate my continued participation, when Google changed their search algorithms. Page views and revenue plummeted, then recovered, then Google changed again, page views and revenues again plummeted. I’ve lost track of how many times this happened. Now, three years after starting to write there and a year and a half after deciding not to add more articles, my revenues have stabilized at about $5 to $6 per month. That’s 4-5 CENTS per month, or roughly 1/20th what had been advertise.

I don’t regret my time there. Those articles are all in my areas of interest. I could still use some of them for other purposes. And I actually had fun writing them. I did push aside novel and non-fiction book writing for a time, but I don’t really feel that I was hurt by the experience. Still, I’m not planning to write more for Suite.

But I do plan to write more articles for a different on-line site, Decoded Science. Based on the same principles as Suite (writers chose topics and self-upload articles to the site and share in ad revenue), it is a more focused site, as the name implies. My first article for it was an overview of the stormwater problem facing the USA today. This comes mostly from my own experience, with a couple of references to government publications.

Having just published the article a few days ago, I have no idea how well this might pay off in terms of money. I know it has more editorial input than Suite ever did, which I like. I like that it is a focused site, which could be an intentional destination for on-line readers rather than one accessed only after a search engine result.

My plans right now are to write two other articles for DecSci, following up on the stormwater issue. One will address stormwater quantity, and one stormwater quality. This may wind up being three articles, since the issues of quality and quantity have kind of leapfrogged each other in importance over the years.

After that, I plan on writing a few articles on low impact development, which is a primary way the engineering community addresses the stormwater problem. I’m not an expert in that; I’m a learner and a studier. I’m organizing training about that in-house, learning it myself, and trying to bring our industry from treating it as art rather than as the science it should be. Seems the perfect subject for DecSci. Right now I don’t know how many articles that could be. I could easily see it being as many as twenty, though possibly that would be going too deeply into the subjects for the intents of the site. We’ll see.

After that, who knows? I’ll see how well the revenues are coming in. At Suite I seemed to under-perform compared to what other writers were earning. Either my topics didn’t excite people, or my writing didn’t. I was never unhappy with my page views, just with the revenue. And I don’t plan on setting aside other writing to concentrate on DecSci as I stupidly did for Suite. When the urge strikes to write another novel, or short story, or to work on a book-length non-fiction piece, I’ll work on that.

Hopefully I’ll carve out time for DecSci. Over the next week I’m going to plan my series as to topic, but probably not to schedule. It’s a good gig, I think, but I need to approach it more slowly than I did the last one. Stay tuned for updates.

articles, content writing

First Article for Decoded Science

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We have just finished the Labor Day weekend in the USA. Three days to be away from the office, to rest and relax, to sleep in a little, to worship on Sunday, to read, and to write. Last Friday I looked forward to it.

And it played out as it should have. Except for having trouble sleeping Sunday night, which I believe was due to a pill I took, it was quite relaxing. As far as writing goes, I didn’t do a whole lot. Friday evening I relaxed, and read in The Art and Craft of Storytelling, by Nancy Lamb. Saturday I devoted to family finances—when I wasn’t reading or napping. Sunday I wrote about at my An Arrow Through the Air blog.

Monday, finally, I set to the task of writing. I’m not quite ready to begin my next book-length project. I was still waiting for my beta reader to respond about publishing my short story, “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango”. So I decided to do something I had put off for a long time, writing an article for the website Decoded Science. I know the editor there from my time at Suite101.com, and had told her I would write for the site. I actually did that back in June, but, alas, I had missed a rules change about what type of articles they would accept, and the article I submitted didn’t comply with the new rules.

Monday morning, between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon I banged out an 800 word article on stormwater quality, and whether the Clean Water Act was meant to cover it. This is a lead-in article to what I hope will be a series of articles on stormwater, perhaps covering everything from flooding to normal conveyance to low impact development to rainwater harvesting.

By yesterday evening I had word from the editor that the article was accepted, pending my adding a few images/photos to it. I added those this morning before starting work at the office, and resubmitted. The article should go live sometime today. When it does I’ll edit this post and perhaps add a screen shot, or at least a link.

Decoded Science pays writers with a share of advertising revenue. I don’t know how much it will amount to. How long will it take for this article to earn $100, which would be a fair payment for on-line publishing based on the total amount of time I have in it? I don’t know, but I’m willing to take this risk.

Edited: The article went live this morning.

content writing, copyright, plagiarism, Suite 101

The Plagiarism Posse

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The writers at Suite101.com have become more active lately at fighting plagiarism and copyright infringement of their articles. Of course, that’s happened to me twice (that I know of): once at a site called gogreentoolbox.com, and one recently at a site called Market Mentalist. I’ve seen a number of my articles listed at news aggregation sites. These are sites that simply provide a link to an article found elsewhere, and maybe display the first 50 words or so. These are harmless, and the links may actually help a little to give your article “Google Juice”.

After my last event, which was more or less simultaneous to similar circumstances of other writers, we formed the Plagiarism Enforcement Posse. I lobbied for a name change, since we are fighting not only plagiarism but also copyright infringement (the two overlap but are not identical), but lost that argument. About 25 writers have signed on. The goal is to band together whenever someone on the site posts to the forums saying their articles have been swiped. We hope that with quick and overwhelming action the site owner will take the articles down, or the host will disable the site, or Google will de-index the site, removing their source of income.

Today another writer found a site that’s stealing articles, consolidate-debt-easy.com. Once he posted, the Posse was alerted. We began making comments to the stolen articles, saying they were stolen. Someone found the site owner’s e-mail address, in a country with abbreviation MD (not Maryland), and some of the posse e-mailed him DMCA violation notices. As of about 3:00 PM today, the four articles listed by Posse members as stolen were all removed.

Then the original writer, who just joined the Posse when this happened, just posted to say articles of seven other Suite writers are posted at this site. The theft is a curious thing. The articles are all posted saying the author is Danielle Nelson, but then at the bottom of the articles the name of the copyright holder is given—the original Suite101 author. And the site has no ads. Normally the site of an article thief is covered with ads. That’s the whole point: steal articles, keep the site with fresh content, hope to score well in search engines, and hope those who come to the site click on an ad. Or possibly they have ads that pay “per impression” rather than “per click”. If that’s the case readers don’t need to click on the ad for the thief to make money. But this site has no ads. What’s the point of stealing articles and plagiarizing them if you aren’t trying to get ad revenue?

So it looks as if the Posse is being successful this time, though much more work lies ahead with this one site. I wonder, though, if we are on a losing effort. The criminals are like the cockroaches we used to be plagued with in Kuwait. Every morning we went on roach patrol, killing those who came up through the drain the in the night into the sink and couldn’t get out. No matter how many we killed there were as many more the next morning. Same with copyright thieves. We’ll stamp out one today and find three more tomorrow and five the day after that. That’s the bad news.

But the good news is that these sites have a very low ranking with Google and the other search engines. The don’t score very well on search engine results pages. So maybe they aren’t taking much revenue away from us. Still, having your work stolen is disheartening at first, maddening second, and angering third. I hope the Posse rides on, into the night, through the day, finding the thieving cockroaches, capturing them, and herding them to the gallows. Cyber capital punishment is fitting, I think.

Don’t worry Neil, Damien, Joseph, Jim, Nick, Victoria, Asa, Brenda, Jennifer, and anyone else at Suite101 whose articles this site has stolen. We’ve got your back. Ride/write on.

Buildipedia, content writing, Suite 101, Writing

Writing writing writing

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Well, my third article is up at Buildipedia.com, the second in my five part series on construction contract administration. These are shorter articles and pay $100 each. I have also submitted my second feature article but they haven’t posted it yet. These are longer and pay $250 each. I’m quite pleased with the site, and hope they keep giving me assignments at a similar rate as now. I’m under contract to do three more contract admin articles, and one news article on the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

I’ve also been preparing a longer article pitch (or could be three feature articles), on asphalt solar collectors. Not sure how I came across this concept, but I’m intrigued by it. Use existing and new asphalt pavement as solar collectors, with required retrofit. Worcester Polytech (the university I was accepted to but couldn’t afford to attend) is doing some good research into this, though the data I found is about two years old. I hope to make this an interview article, as well as research and apply good old common sense and engineering judgment.

At work today I wrote also. Item 1 was to re-write a contract for a water transmission main relocation. We are already under contract for this, but since the Arkansas transportation department is paying the bill, we have to restructure our contract in accordance with how they want to see it. As I worked on that, I had to retype the whole thing because the electronic file mysteriously disappeared. And I found the description of the work to be performed very inadequate. Item 2 was also marketing related, a brief scope of work to go in a proposal for a major development in the Tulsa suburb of Catoosa. Naturally the developer wants to destroy a floodplain and wants us to assist him. I wrote the scope for the flood study portion of the project.

Ideas for articles for Suite101.com continue to flow into my head faster than I can capture them on paper. The Catoosa flood study has given me ideas for about three articles I could write—and that’s before we do the study! The flood zone we will be working in is a Zone A, which has the least degree of attention to establishing it of all the regulatory flood zones. Consequently it is least written about of all the flood zones. I have an excellent FEMA manual on these zones, but it’s a difficult read. I could see doing a Frequently Asked Questions type article, or the three I mentioned, and doing a real service to the regulated community, maybe even my wallet.

My other area of concentration at Suite is in stock trading articles. I have four or five planned, and maybe over the next week I can get a couple of them done. I feel good about these articles being better earners than my US history and Robert Frost poetry articles. The ads Google puts on the pages are all relevant and reasonably attractive. A couple of Suite veterans (I don’t consider myself a veteran there yet) have said I ought to write about 20 trading articles and see if that makes a difference in my revenue. Since I earn less than 50 cents a day there on average, a hub of 20 articles should tell me something.

We, I’d better run and do some of that. Those articles don’t get written when I practice Internet writing on this blog. Also better add the checkbook since I paid some bills tonight. And, St. Athanasius and a NatGeo issue are beckoning to me.

content writing, freelance writing, Suite 101

A Few Thoughts About Internet Content Sites

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The battle is raging concerning the type of writing known as Internet content sites. That’s the type of site Suite101.com, where I write, is. The pejorative term applied to them is content mill or content farm. Some call them content aggragators. I think I’ll stick with content site for now.

Those who consider themselves journalists run down the content sites based on: low quality of the information provided; low quality of the writing; low pay for writers; lack of editorial input; and quick turn over of writers. Where are the editors, they ask, who will make sure the story/article is “balanced” and complete, and that the writing is good? Where are the fact-checkers, they ask, who verify that the information given is actually correct?

These are all valid concerns. I can only speak for my experience at Suite 101. Management there says that about 20 percent of those who apply to be writers are actually accepted. Articles are to be 400 to 800 words. Writing is to be based on SEO-search engine optimization–so that people can find the articles. Quality of writing is a secondary concern, but it is not ignored. Suite has no fact-checkers, relying instead on the writers to do it right. Suite is constantly advertising for new writers, and consequently have a lot of educational tools to bring new writers up to Suite style.

Suite does have editor input. I’ve had about 10 of my 106 articles either flagged for correction or had the editor make minor changes. But I’ve seen lots of other articles go by with misspellings, grammar errors. Some have poorly constructed sentences, and poor organization of information within the article. Suite 101 definitely has quality issues.

Yet, the site provides a service that seems to be wanted: information. Information that is easily found electronically. Information that may be shallow, but tells just enough that the reader goes away satisfied.

America has changed, perhaps not for the better, but it has changed. Writers need to change with it. Print publications will be with us for a while. Perhaps fewer of them, and maybe more specialized, but they will be with us. I’m not sure the average information reader really cares much about the quality of the writing. Sure they will notice horrendous grammar, but many other things an editor would fix for a print publication seem to be of no consequence to a reader.

Content sites–or maybe they would be better called “Information sites”–are part of the new information supply dynamic that is being tested through the search engine Internet. Whether this is a temporary thing while the world transitions from print info to electronic, or whether it is the future, I don’t know. I know that I’m trying it for now, with no plans on quitting any time soon.

content writing, environment, Suite 101

The HEED-onist Rises

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I’m thinking of applying for a Feature Writer position at Suite101.com. Right now I’m a Contributing Writer there. The CW earns money when people click on ads, and when they get to fifty articles they earn a 10 percent bonus on those clicks. If one is a FW, the bonus changes to 20 percent and, when you get to 100 articles, it changes to 30 percent. A FW has a slightly higher commitment for writing articles, and must write so many articles in the category they are FW of. I would like to be FW of engineering, but that’s taken and I don’t know if I want to wait around and hope it is relinquished.

Yesterday, I learned the the FW position for Environmentalism is open. I learned that somewhat by accident. I had been planning to write some articles on Earth Day, this being the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day. Yesterday I was researching ED for some in-house CEI purposes, and decided to make an article out of it. Hopefully I’ll be able to write four or five related articles.

Why now, you ask, when ED is not until April 22? Well, just as in print publishing, articles in on-line publishing need some lead time. The problem is how Google and other search engines index articles, which includes some of how Suite101 pages are organized. Google, I take it, is not constantly crawling the web to find every new article. The web is too big, and just as a city will plow the snow off the main roads first and the side roads second, the search engines must prioritize. Some areas of the web they crawl regularly, some less frequently. Suite101 has a home page for each category of articles, and on each of those home pages is a list of latest articles. Google crawls those pages multiple times a day, and the new articles get picked up right away and indexed. However, once the article falls off that page, as newer articles are added, Google somehow de-indexes the article.

Also, I understand that Google et. al. gives a page rank boost to new content. So in the first few days of a web page’s appearance, Google gives it a boost. However, once the new page boost ends, a page sinks to lower ranking in the search. It then has to sink or swim on its own based on quality, back-links, and whatever other factors the search engines put in their search algorithms.
So that all means that if I want my articles to stand out from the Internet crowd as much as possible as April 22 draws near, I have to write them and get them posted now. The lead time in on-line publishing is much shorter than for print, but there’s still a lead time.

So I posted the article, then went to the home page for Environmentalism to see how it looked among the new ones. When I got there, I didn’t see the picture of the FW for Environmentalism. A light bulb flashed. Ah ha! There is no FW for Environmentalism. Why, that’s something I could probably do. I was one once–an environmentalist–and still believe in much of what the movement stands for, though not what I consider the excesses. Perhaps I could apply for and get this position and add some balance to the environmental debate on the WWW. I’m thinking about it. The time and creativity commitment is really minimal. I would probably change my article mix at Suite101, but that’s no problem. I’m taking a day or so to ponder and pray about it, but will probably make the application.

Those of you who didn’t know me in college are probably wondering about the title of this post. The student environmental club at the University of Rhode Island was H.E.E.D.–Humans to End Environmental Deterioration. I joined right away freshman year (fall 1970) and became active. I never was an officer in the club, but made some significant contributions. Some one of my friends at college (not sure which one, though I think it was CJN) started calling me the Hedonist, getting a chuckle out of the play on words but not really getting the spelling right. So that became one of my college nicknames, and continues to this day among the (un)informed.

I suppose, if I get that FW position, I will once again be the HEED-onist.

content writing, Suite 101

3329

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That’s how many page views my articles at Suite101.com have had: 3,329. As I mentioned a few days ago, someone is reading my stuff there. I’ve written a variety of articles. I have forty articles posted: 10 in Civil Engineering; 10 in two poetry topics; 13 in three history topics; 4 in Bible studies; 2 in personal finance topics; and 1 in genealogy. I have two articles partly done in draft that I hope to finish and post today, and about six in mind to write next. I hope to do two or three of them over the weekend.

On the revenue side of content writing, things are still slow, but beginning to pick up a little. I keep a spreadsheet of some basic statistics. Each day I enter how many page views I had and how much revenue I earned. The spreadsheet calculates a few things, including a projection of how many daily page views I’ll have a year from now if the current growth continues, and how much revenue I’ll be earning a year from now, again with the same trends. I also calculate annual revenue projection at the current rate of earnings. With recent averages for page views and revenue per 1000 page views, I could be earning, a year from now, at an annual rate of $2,242 dollars! That includes posting more articles at a good pace, and making those articles a combination of good information excellently written with search engine optimization techniques added.

I wouldn’t exactly call that a “platform” as editors and literary agents would want, but it’s a start. Some thoughts on how to go about this platform-building thing over two to three years is beginning to gel. I may write more about it, or maybe not.

And, it now looks as if I will get a paycheck from Suite101.com this month. You need to accumulate $10 in revenue before they pay you. As of August 26 (last day posted) I had accumulated $9.47. So I only need to accumulate 53 cents in five days. That’s not for sure, but it is likely. I wonder what I’ll do with the money?

I still don’t know whether all this effort is worth it. At the current rate I’m earning revenue, I’ll earn $124 in a year–with no more articles posted. All my articles are what they call “evergreen”, that is, they are not tied to current events, and should continue to earn at the same rate theoretically forever. Actually, all the veterans say articles tend to earn at a somewhat larger rate over time. I’ll believe that when I see it, but it’s something to hope for. And hope makes many things worthwhile.