Category Archives: Suite 101

Buildipedia, Engineering, flood studies, Life Group lessons, Suite 101, Writing

A Full Week Ahead

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Yesterday was restful, sort of. I began the day with lots of aches and pains, especially in my left arm, after the home improvement work of Wednesday through Saturday. Even the after-church walk down the trail to the Crystal Bridges Museum construction site overlook was restful. Ten minutes each way in 95 degree heat, but with clouds obscuring the sun.

So I face the new work week a bit tired, but not so much as late last week. My main engineering work this week will be two flood studies: Little Osage Creek in Centerton AR and Blossom Way Creek in Rogers AR. The Little Osage one is tweaking the computer model based on recent survey information and tweaking the mapping as a result, and getting it sent off again to FEMA. The Blossom Way one is more substantial. I finally have data on the previous study, and need to extend that floodplain into new areas upstream and merge new survey data with the existing. There is a major difference in the amount of flood water between my calculations and the previous study, and I have to work that out this week. Some training may also be on the docket this week.

For writing, I have an assignment for Buildipedia, deadline next Monday. I’d like to have it wrapped up and in the mail this week, though. It’s on America’s wastewater infrastructure, a subject I know fairly well but haven’t looked at for a while. Still the research will be easy. I may also receive a contract this week for the series of articles they want me to write on construction contract administration. Those will be shorter (300-500 words), and should appear on the site during September, maybe four or five articles, though I proposed as many as seven.

I’d also like to get two articles written for Suite101.com: the next one in my series on technical analysis for stock trading, and one about the St. Jacob’s Well site in southwestern Kansas. I’m ahead of the article quota required by my Suite contract, but these are two fairly easy articles. Might was well get them written and posted and give them a chance to be earning a little revenue.

I also have two more lessons to write in my adult Sunday school (a.k.a. Life Group) series Sacred Moments. I taught one on ordination yesterday, that seemed to be well received. The next one is on last rites/death, then one on foot washing and the series is over. I will need to write a sell sheet on this and perhaps market it as a potential publishable Bible study.

I don’t anticipate that the week will give me time to work on my novel. I’m not sure about carving out time to go to writers guild meeting tomorrow night, though it’s possible. If I complete the other items, that will be enough.

Buildipedia, Suite 101

Deck Invasion

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Yesterday was a better day at work. At least part of my mind has now followed me home and is no longer in southwestern Kansas. I got more done at work than I did the three days I worked last week. In off hours I was able to better concentrate on writing tasks, and did required brainstorming of a new article series for Buildipedia and began drafting a new article for Suite 101.

Most of the evening was quiet. I tackled family finances, getting all debits from our trip entered, the checkbook added, and a few bills paid. I read forty pages in a book we picked up at Meade, Tales of a Sod House Baby. It was all quite enjoyable.

As I was sitting in my reading chair in the living room, about 10:30 PM, I heard noises behind my head. They sounded like they were in the exterior wall of the house, and I thought we might have mice in there. The sounds were repeated, and I was able to distinguish the noise was out on the deck, a critter of some sort, kind of loud. It persisted for a couple of minutes. Finally I told Lynda (who hadn’t heard it), got up from the chair and turned the exterior lights on. Two raccoons were there, now fixated by the light and not doing much but stand still. I saw movement over to the left; four more raccoons were over by the bird seed and water.

It’s not enough that we have to feed the squirrels as a consequence of trying to feed the birds. Now we have to feed the raccoons too? Six of ’em at one time? I suppose that’s what happens when you live in a thinly populated area. Our street includes about twenty platted lots, but only four houses have been built. The rest is all oak forest with a few pines, sassafras, hickory, pecan, and persimmons.

Having to chose between a fully populated neighborhood and raccoons and squirrels stealing the bird food, I guess I’ll take the latter. Some day these lots will be built on, at least some of them. Our time in the woods will come to an end. But we’ll enjoy it while we can.

Buildipedia, miscellaneous, Suite 101

New Gig, First Article Posted

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I arrived home last night at the usual time, anticipating a busy evening, and hurting greatly due to my rheumatoid arthritis. Clean-up of the basement from the hot water heater leak was on the evening schedule. That had consumed most of the at home hours Friday, Saturday, and (less so on) Sunday. I also figured I’d have to cook supper, as my wife has been “on strike” from cooking for a while now. Not on strike in the union sense, but just having no desire to do so.

I whipped up taco salad with ground turkey (low fat, of course). It had been a hot day, but a shower came up as I was driving home, and the brief dash from driveway to garage was through cooler air. I didn’t walk through the house, but put my portfolio and calculator on the kitchen table and went straight to work.

It was hot in the kitchen, but it’s supposed to be hot in the kitchen, so I paid no attention. Then Lynda said she was real hot. I walked across the great room to the thermostat, feeling the heat. It was 87 degrees, and the digital printout said “cooling on”. My first thought was that, during the hot water heater replacement, someone had turned off the wrong breaker by mistake and had never turned it on. But that was Saturday afternoon. Surely we would have felt a warming house on Sunday. I checked: all breakers on; inside air handling unit running; outside heat pump not running.

I went back and forth from stove top to various rooms in the house, opening windows. It was now cooler outside. About the time the taco salad was ready I finally remembered that our AC guy said that the first thing to do if the AC wasn’t running was to turn it off at the thermostat, let it sit a minute, then turn it on. I did so, and immediately that outdoor unit kicked on. Who would have thunk you’d have to re-boot your air conditioner? For 30 minutes I had visions of having to replace something on the AC, and they weren’t pretty visions.

What does all this have to do with the title of this post? Not much really. I went to The Dungeon after supper and did my thing with the carpet shampooer, sucking up more moisture. Then I went to the computer and wrote a new article for Suite101.com, the first in a series on technical analysis for stock trading. I hope to write quite a few in this topic.

During the day I had worked with the editor at Buildipedia.com to put the finishing touches on my first article there, which was scheduled to be posted at midnight. As of 7:45 AM CDT it has already been read 33 times. That’s good exposure. I don’t think I can reveal how much I am being paid for this, but for on-line writing it’s a good amount, much better than the little I earn at Suite101.com. I’m working with the editor at Buildipedia on concepts for several more articles, perhaps as many as 10 to 20. Right now they seem hungry for feature articles, and I hope I can provide many. Here’s the link to the article.

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.

Suite 101

Suite101.com – One Year Review

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I applied to Suite101.com on June 17, 2009, was accepted the next day, and posted my first article on June 21, 2009. By the end of June I had 10 articles posted, had less than 100 pages views, and a whopping 2 cents in income. So I’m going to transpose my effective anniversary to June 30, 2009. Having just passed a year, then, I thought I’d pull together some statistics. Here’s a summary.

Articles posted: 105
Page views: 68,033
Earnings from articles: $106.07
Earnings from contests: $101.00
Typical $/article/month: $0.15
Range $/article/month: $0.06-$0.20
Earnings /1000 PVs: $1.56

Even though I don’t like the way images load into this blogger template, I’m attaching several charts from my Excel spreadsheet. I hope they come out readable, though they never seem to organize themselves on a page the way I want them to. Each can be clicked on to get an enlargement. The first is a basic page view record with daily page views and 7 day running page views, the second page views per article per day. Both of these show the number of articles posted. The third is a revenue chart showing daily revenue, 7 day running revenue, and revenue per 1000 page views. The fourth is revenue per article per month, and the fifth is revenue per month.
These charts tell a story. First, that the amount of page views I’m getting has drastically reduced from a peak in November, but especially this last couple of months. Second, that I’ve never been able to figure out how to make money at Suite. The subjects I write in just don’t seem to generate much revenue. Third, that revenue is generally growing, not because my articles are becoming more popular with age, but because I’ve added more articles. Fourth that revenue simply hasn’t stabilized much; it’s still all over the place.
A year is a good time to evaluate whether this endeavor is a good use of my time. Probably not, but it’s something I mostly enjoy. There is a good community feeling in the Suite forums, and I’ve made friends there (Hutch, if you read this, may the Internet Force be with you). Possibly the 85,000 or so words I’ve posted in articles have made me a better writer and added in some way to my writing resume.
I’m going to keep at it, but at a significantly reduced rate than I did in my first year.
Now, time to post this and see how it all formats.
Buildipedia, holidays, Suite 101, Writing

A Long and Busy Weekend Lies Ahead

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Well, the boss just sent out an e-mail: Anyone not pushing a tight deadline may leave at 3:30 PM. I may just do that, if not quite at 3:30 then at least somewhat early. The pick-up needs an oil change, so I may go and do that.

We have Monday off for Independence Day, so it’s a three day weekend. But I enter it feeling as if I have a to-do list a mile long. Of things to do at the house, that is. At work I’m in the middle of–shall I say bogged down in–the next flood study, with it going much slower than I would like. But at home I have a ton of things to do. Here’s a few of the major tasks.

  • Finish writing and studying for the Life Group lesson I’ll teach on Sunday. The series is called “Sacred Moments”, and we are on lesson five this week. I’ve done the basic research, but each week I prepare a class handout. That’s only half done. Then I have to do some more studying. I should read at least two more chapters in my reference book and have separate teacher’s notes.
  • Write my assigned article for Buildipedia.com. It’s not due until July 14, but I’ll be driving east on that day, and I want to beat editor expectations. It’s to be 500 to 1000 words, though I think I’ll need about 1200-1300 to do the subject justice. The editor said that would be fine. Most of my research is done; it’s a question of pulling the final information together and write it.
  • Pick blackberries. I went last Saturday and picked 3 quarts. I’d like to get that many again today. The patch is huge, and I don’t think too many people know about it. If I can get 3 or 4 quarts between tomorrow and Monday, I’ll consider it a good year.
  • Finish cleaning the interior of the pick-up. I started that two weeks ago, and should be able to finish with another hour of work.
  • Take down a “leaner” from the back of my lot, before it falls where I don’t want it to and it takes two other trees with it. In North Carolina they called these “widow-makers”, so I’ll be careful. It’s cut about 1/2 way through, and I think I should be able to finish it this weekend.
  • Filing and clean-up. Always have this kind of work.
  • Adding an article to Suite101.com would be nice as well.

I think that’s enough. I’m sweating just thinking about it all. I’ll get in some good relaxation too. The weather should be nice, so maybe I’ll get a couple of long walks in as well. And maybe post here.

Buildipedia, Engineering, flood studies, Suite 101

A Week of Expectations

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Well, a number of projects from last week remain loose today, part of the mix of things that need to be done. One is the stock trade I wrote about on Friday morning. It’s a trade that should make money as the market goes down. The market went up on Friday and the trade lost ground, though not terribly so. The market went down today, but the trade still lost a little ground, perhaps due to option time decay. My assessment of market direction appears to be correct, but I may have waited too long to trigger the trade and lost more of the trend than I hoped.

Engineering-wise, I have a flood study to work on this week–two flood studies actually. I have a smattering of miscellaneous stuff to do as well, but the flood study will dominate. It would be nice to have the entire 2.75 miles of waterway keyed in and initial runs made by the end of the week. I’ll have to have a little CAD help to do so, but it is doable. The one thing in my favor is the cross-sections are all short. It’s a narrow waterway, and only five culverts to model. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m optimistic.

Also engineering related, this is the week I should hear on the proposals I turned in for presenting papers at the national erosion control conference in Orlando next February. At most only two will be accepted, so submitting three ideas was to improve my chances of having two accepted. Wednesday is the day they are supposed to notify us by.

Writing-wise, I’ve already begun work on the first article I will submit to Buildipedia. I won’t finish it till I talk with the editor and get a better feel for the style they want. From reviewing the site I believe I will be okay with what I’m planning. These articles will take considerably longer to write than those I do for Suite101.com, but then they pay considerably more. This is a bit of an experiment, maybe even a gamble, but certainly a risk. I approach the week optimistic that it’s going to work out.

And in personal matters, I’m in the last big push to lose a few more pounds before I meet my classmates of 40 years ago in three weeks. It seems no matter what I do I don’t lose any more. On Saturday I picked blackberries (3 quarts) in the heat for a couple of hours, and ate only what I’m supposed to eat, yet this week I was barely down from last week. I must have breathed some heavy air along the way. I shall have to go on my dad’s diet: only water, and that just to wash in.

Buildipedia, freelance writing, Suite 101

A New Writing Gig

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On June 16th I reported that I had applied for another on-line writing position, something to counter my Suite101 writing and perhaps earn some real money from my writing. I said that I was waiting for “the other shoe” to drop, meaning for something to go wrong in life, since something always seems to go wrong when I try to ratchet up my writing. The day the other shoe did indeed drop, which I wrote about on June 21st.

Well, I now have the chance to see if that other shoe is as big as it seemed the day it happened. Today I heard back from the site, and they have accepted me as a contributing writer. The site is buildipedia.com. It’s a site dedicated to the engineering-architecture-construction industry. Heavy on building issues, it also deals with the infrastructure engineering and heavy construction that consumes eight to nine hours of my weekdays, and some on weekends. The pay is very good for web writing. In fact, the per/word rate is better than for that genealogy article I had in a national print magazine last August.

Next week I’ll be discussing the contract and expectations with the editor. It seems they want me to write in three areas, two different types of articles. And some of it will be article ideas that I generate myself. That will be fine with me. Each article will be similar length as those I write for Suite (or a little longer), but it appears they will take more research. The word-smithing requirements should be about the same.

So, I’ll keep everyone posted here, and let you know what happens. I’m trying not to get too excited, for this may be a more involved process than I think it is. For right now, though, it’s a good way to head into the weekend.

Engineering, flood studies, Suite 101, Writing

Two Down, Two to Go

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Yes, yesterday the SW “I” Street CLOMR project was stuffed into a FedEx envelope and today was dropped off at the LOMC Clearinghouse in Maryland. My second flood study is done–until I get comments back from FEMA, if they don’t approve the submittal. While the work was tedious and intensive, I actually enjoyed doing this project, or so it seems in hindsight. I just need to figure out how to generate some articles for Suite101.com from the project.

Speaking of that pursuit of mine, I published my 99th article there last night, about recent stock market trends. Despite that, my page views are considerably below where they were two months ago, and still well below my highs from October 2009, when I had just 50 or so articles posted. Today looks better as far as page views are concerned. Revenue is still in the toilet, however, with no turnaround in sight. Oh, well, I guess I can go back to thinking of Suite as just “platform building”.

The rest of this week at work I’m trying to do some miscellaneous tasks that I’ve put off for a month or longer. One is a water system evaluation in my own town, Bella Vista. I had the first of two site visits scheduled for tomorrow morning, but will have to put that off one day due to a health situation with my mother-in-law. That will give me more time in the office tomorrow to get other miscellaneous projects out the door. It feels good to finally have some time to spend on them.

As far as getting back into the thick of writing, I don’t see any light yet. My wife will be gone for ten days beginning today. Normally I get lots of writing done at those times, but if I have m-i-l duties in her place, writing time may be difficult to come by.

So next week I begin flood study number 3, the Perry Road flood study. We’re designing the widening of Perry Road, and installing larger and longer culverts. This will affect the floodplain, though I’m not sure how yet. On the heals of that will be the McKisic Creek flood study in Centerton. I may actually try to work on that simultaneously with Perry Road. I’d really love to knock both of them out in a month and see my way clear to get back to training.

plagiarism, Suite 101

Dealing with Internet Plagiarism

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Today I spent considerable free time (and in truth some employer time) dealing with plagiarism of one of my articles. On March 25, 2010 I posted Environmental Progress in the 1960s – the Courts to Suite101.com. Around April 16 I did a check for plagiarism, selecting five articles at random. I do this by selecting a phrase or sentence somewhere in the middle of the article, and search for it using Google. Well, actually, before that I search for the article title through Google.

On this day I found my article posted at gogreentoolshed.com. It had the full article, including attribution to me, the links included in my article, some links to Suite 101 internal pages (daily posts and writer’s bio), even the Google ads embedded in the middle of the article, and even the Suite 101 contest code I put at the bottom of the article. The scraper didn’t even bother to clean up the article or disguise it before he stole it.

I couldn’t find a “contact us” link on the site. A whois search revealed the site owner’s address, phone number, and e-mail, so I sent him an e-mail request that he remove my copyrighted material from his site. It bounced. I called the number of the owner, in Metarie LA. It wasn’t his phone no. I didn’t particularly want to spend 44 cents plus the cost of an envelope on a printed Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice, so I sent Google a complaint, hoping they would pull their ads from the rogue site. I received an auto-responder e-mail, saying my complaint would be investigated, but it might take some time.

I visited the site every couple of days only to find my article still there. In searching a little deeper I found the article of another Suite 101 writer there, also apparently stolen, and e-mailed that author. I also posted an alert to the Suite 101 forums.

Today I went back to the site for the first time in about a week and saw my article still there. I checked whois again–same wrong info. At the site I saw a link I’d missed before–the site’s privacy policy page. I clicked it and saw it had a different e-mail address. So I sent off an e-mail asking that the stolen material be withdrawn. Within fifteen minutes I had a response: he pulled the work he stole from me, and I confirmed it was so.

In digging deeper I found articles from eight other Suite 101 writers, all verbatim. I e-mailed a number of those, and updated my thread at the Suite 101 forums. My intent was, once he pulled my article, I would cancel the Google complaint. However, having found nine articles there, and with other Suite writers finding copyrighted photos and some of their articles at other web sites he runs, I think I’ll just leave the Google complaint in place.

This kind of operation is called “scraping”–pulling copyrighted material, posting it on your own site, hoping the original authors don’t see it, and hoping you make enough from Google ads and/or page views to make it all worthwhile. The DMCA was written to prevent this sort of thing, but it takes the authors whose copyright is being infringed to police it. So we Suitees (as we call ourselves) have banded together in a posse to either put this guy out of business or severely inhibit his ability to make money: no Google ads, no easy income.

And it’s too bad, because some of the articles he has posted make a lot of sense. I would like to read some of the material he has posted, but I don’t particularly want to support his site.