Examiner, freelance writing, Suite 101

The Debate Continues: To be an Examiner?

Leave a comment

When I drove to a noon hour meeting of an engineering organization, I had time to thing about pros and cons of applying to Examiner.com. I’m no where near making a decision yet, but more arguments concerning it are buzzing around in my head, and I’d better get them out in this hour I have before I’m due at church.

For: The visibility will be great. Since Examiner.com is like a newspaper, it will have people subscribing to the topic and checking it out daily. Traffic is not based on search engines alone.

Against: Since it’s like a newspaper, the writing work will be more journalism than essay and general articles. It will involve interviews, perhaps sometimes attendance at events, variety. At Suite101.com variety is of less importance than conforming with the house style.

For: The position I would apply for is Christianity Examiner for Northwest Arkansas. This would be a great position. I believe, with the right combination of articles, I could really impact people. I don’t know that it would lead to conversions, but it would likely strengthen Christians, even if in just a small way. I would have no shortage of articles. It could include: church news, interviews with clergy, news of events, devotionals, Bible analysis, Christian issues, perhaps some editorials. It would not really have to be exclusively about northwest Arkansas. I could write about almost anything Christian that would be of interest to northwest Arkansans. I could even invite local pastors to provide guest devotionals and sermons. I would think with the right mix of articles, and with a good posting frequency, I could establish a popular site.

Against: The work would almost be more that of a reporter. I’d have to learn new skills. I’d have to do interviews. I’m not sure that’s what I want.

Against: I would be quite exposed. I’d have to make sure, really sure, I was right in what I post.

Against: Examiner doesn’t have a site for northwest Arkansas.

For: They would probably let me piggy-back on the Little Rock site for a while, perhaps a long while, until we had enough examiners to justify a local site.

For: The pay would likely be better than Suite 101, and probably more consistent. Since the traffic will be more predictable, I suspect I would make more total money, faster than at Suite 101. Examiner pays about 1 cent per click, or $10 per 1000 page views. Right now at Suite 101 I’m in the neighborhood of $1.45 per 1000 page views. The Suite 101 income will likely continue to rise with time, regardless of whether I have more posts or not.

Against: With the pay being better, you have to wonder if Examiner has a long-term business model that can sustain that rate of pay. With Suite 101, since my income is based on Suite’s income, which is all on advertising dollars, the long-term prospects for continued pay seems viable, so long as the entire Internet advertising scene doesn’t collapse. But Examiner’s paying per click, the payment is based on traffic not revenue. Can it be sustained?

Against: What happens when I want to quit Examiner sometime in the future–if I want to quit? Since the site would be based a lot on current events and less on “evergreen” content, the clicks might stop and with them the revenue stream. At Suite 101, if I quit today my articles, which I’ve tried to make “evergreen”, would continue to earn revenue at their slow pace, even increasing at least for a couple of years.

For: Not everything on Examiner has to be current events. I can mix in some “evergreen” topics and keep some level of page clicks coming.

That’s about it for now. More debate coming later.

freelance writing, Suite 101

Debating Myself About a Possible New Writing Gig

Leave a comment

I’ve been publishing at Suite101.com for just over six weeks. It’s going well, I think. I have 30 articles up and running. I’m getting about 60 to 70 page views a day (not great, but I’ll take it). I’m earning a little money, emphasis on the little right now. I have no shortage of topics to write about. I’ve written in five categories so far, and have a couple more I could tackle with almost no research. Fulfilling my ongoing contract commitment of 10 articles every three months should be a breeze.

Yet I’m starting to wonder how posting at this site will help me with my stated goal of building a platform to enhance the chance to publish my books with a royalty publisher. A platform in this sense would consist of two things: a ready-made audience, and a history of successful publishing. Suite 101 sort of fulfills the second. While my articles are not edited before I post them, they are subject to an editor’s scrutiny after posting, and the editor can call for edits or even disable the article if the writing isn’t up to expected standards. So I see these as (somewhat) real publishing credits.

On the other hand, I don’t believe this is bringing me any audience. Almost all my Suite 101 articles are accessed from search engine searches. Someone looks into a topic and they Google it or Bing it. If I’ve done my writing correctly, using multiple key words in title, subtitle, lead paragraph, and subheadings, I’ll show up on the first page of hits and someone will click on my article. But no one is out there thinking, “I like Dave Todd’s articles. I think I’ll go to Suite 101 and see if he’s written anything new.” Ain’t gonna happen, even after I get to 100 or even 1000 articles. This is because Suite 101’s strategy and publishing model is based on search engine dynamics, not on loyal following. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a valid strategy.

Other alternatives exist for Internet publishing for pay, which I have been slowly evaluating. Some pay up front for targeted articles. Some pay based on page views. Some pay on a mixture. Each one seems to have a different strategy, though all include some degree of search engine optimization.

One site that seems to be a little different from the others is Examiner.com. This is set up as more of an on-line newspaper. When you click on the home site, you will be automatically be re-directed to the Examiner site nearest your location. In their model, the freelancers are identified by topic: the Boston Sports Examiner, the Denver Food Examiner, the St. Louis Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner, etc. They have numerous topics and numerous locations, and are expanding both all the time. Examiners post articles in their topics, each article generating a new web page. The site looks a little like a blog, but also a little like an on-line newspaper. People actually subscribe to the feeds, either through RSS or other means. The articles receive comments.

It appears Examiner is shooting for a combination of loyal reader following and search engine optimization as the means to attract readers. They pay based mostly on page views, but also on unique visitors and length of visit. Ad clicks don’t seem to enter into writer payment. Writers are less essayists and content writers than they are reporters. In fact, many examiners say they obtain press passes and get to attend events as the media. It’s a different model, and would seem to better fulfill the developing a ready-made audience than does Suite 101. Nothing wrong with either, just different approaches.

For a number of posts, not necessarily consecutive, I’m going to publicly debate this site as an alternate to Suite101.com. Not in terms of abandoning Suite 101, but rather as a second venue to better work on the dual planks of platform development. I don’t know how long this debate will last, but I’m thinking a week or so. If I do this, I want to do it fairly quickly. If anyone wants to look at either site and give me some ideas via comments, please feel free to do so.

I’ll start the debate now.
Objection: I don’t have time for another activity! What am I thinking, considering a new writing activity when I can’t get to the ones I have now. As I feared, most of my time available for writing has been consumed with writing for Suite 101 or pursuing freelance writing in print media. I would be out of my mind to take on something else.
Answer: I can easily back off on the time I spend with Suite 101. I posted 30 articles in just over six weeks., or five a week per average. I only need to publish less than one per week. So the time is there, I would just need to prioritize.
Answer: I actually have found time to write on other things. I’m working on my Harmony of the gospels, on Bible studies, and a little on my novel. I even squeezed in some poetry writing and critiques during this time. So I suppose I can’t really say all my creative writing time has been tapped out.
Answer: Even if I have to spend more time on freelancing to be able to write for Examiner, wouldn’t the time be well spent if it leads to 1) revenue in the short-term and 2) enhanced book publishing prospects in the long-term?

More debate in other posts. Let me hear from you.

book reviews, Harmony of the gospels

Book Review: A Harmony of the Gospels for Students of the Life of Christ

Leave a comment

No, this is not the harmony that I’m writing. This is the one prepared by A.T. Robertson, published by Harper & Row in 1922. The book I picked up at a thrift store (for a dollar) was printed by H&R in 1950.

Dr. Robertson’s work was based on that of Dr. John A. Broadus, published in the mid-1890s. Robertson was a student of Broadus, and took over and expanded on his work whenever some discovery of a new Biblical text came to light, or when new textural criticism better explained the difference between the different gospels.

I bought this book after I had finished my own harmony, while working on appendixes and passage notes (still an on-going, off and on effort). The is a parallel-column harmony. Neither Broadus nor Robertson believed that the texts should be interwoven, for to do so would eliminate the distinctness of the language each gospel has. My harmony is the interwoven type, with each gospel compared to the others and the different texts blended into one (hopefully) seamless narrative. But I thought this would be a good book to review to see how the chronology of the professors compared to the chronology I came up with (with the assistance of some study Bibles).

The book does a couple of things I like. First, it is not based on the King James Version, but rather the Revised Standard Version. This is still difficult to read compared to my preferred NIV, but it’s an improvement. Next, it gives the Gospel of Mark the left hand column, believing, as I do, that Mark’s gospel was the first one put in final form, and that Luke and Matthew used Mark as one of their sources. Next, it does not waste a lot of blank column space when less than four gospels cover an event. If only one covers it, the text of that one utilizes the full width of the page. If two cover it, wide columns are used. If the number of lines needed to show parallel passages differs greatly, narrow columns start out and then wider or full width is used later. This is all done in such a way that the reader has no problem figuring out which gospel contributed which text. Not only does this save paper, it makes reading much more enjoyable.

The end of the book contains a number of discussions, equivalent to the appendixes I’m writing, to explain decision making that went into the Harmony. This is in addition to many footnotes added to passages to clarify, cross-reference, and explain something in a way that doesn’t require a long note at the end. In these end discussions, Robertson explains not only the way he thinks the harmony should be but also the main competing theories, and explains why he chose the route he did.

I did find a couple of negatives with this book. First, the font is small, very small by today’s standards. The main text is probably an 8 point font, Robertson’s footnotes 6 point, and the RSV footnotes 5 point! Too small on many evenings for my $5 reading glasses from Dollar General. Next, Robertson (probably after Broadus’ example) is overly concerned with exact dates. One of his notes goes into considerable length to discuss what year Jesus was born in; another into what year he began his ministry. I’m not really concerned about the exact year so much as the exact order of events in Christ’s life. Then, the footnotes and end discussion are perhaps too brief. Many decisions on order of the gospels, for example how Matthew seems to be non-chronological whereas Mark is chronological, could have been much better developed.

I found this book most useful in explaining Jesus’ movements. When was he in Galilee? When in Jerusalem, or Judea? How does Jesus’ statement in Luke chapter 9 about going to Jerusalem make sense in light of all the rest of the material in Luke 10-21? How did Jesus’ trip to Tyre and Sidon happen relative to other departures from Galilee? These relative movements are nicely explained. I will have to review my chronology and see if I need to make any adjustments. Of course, Robertson doesn’t agree with some of the decisions I made. I probably should re-think those areas, but I won’t. I feel pretty strongly about some of those.

This is a keeper for me. It would be a good book for anyone who is a serious student of the Bible to have.

Engineering, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, goals, Good King-Bad King, Harmony of the gospels, Life On A YoYo, Suite 101

August Goals

Leave a comment

Well, I’ve had two fairly productive months, and hope to make it three in a row. Here’s what I have at present, subject to editing, of course.

  1. Write 10 articles for Suite101.com.
  2. Blog 12 to 15 times.
  3. Study: search engine optimization; sources for royalty free pictures; and picture types for digital photos.
  4. Finish chapter 7 in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People; Begin chapter 8
  5. Finish one appendix in a Harmony of the gospels; also one passage notes section.
  6. Complete the engineering article on storm water detention that is due Sept. 1.
  7. More work on Good King, Bad King. Try to identify and outline at least four more lessons.
  8. Work on The Strongest of All study from the apocrypha. I have the five lessons prepared, but need to add some lead-in and conclusion discussions.
  9. And, based on my incomplete goals from July, get some more work done on Life on a Yo Yo, in an attempt to make it a publishable study.
Fifty Thousand Screaming People, goals, Harmony of the gospels, Life On A YoYo

The July Report

Leave a comment

Okay, let’s see how I did relative to my goals.

1. Blog at least 12 times. Did this. I think I was at 15 or so.

2. Post 15 articles at Suite101.com. I beat this, posting 17.

3. Research, prepare, and submit 2 other freelance queries. I got the research done, but not the queries themselves. I drafted one but haven’t yet sent it. I had to re-query one from the previous month, due to it being lost in that magazine’s system.

4. Complete one set of passage notes for my Harmony of the Gospels. Got this done, as well as proofing and editing the appendix I almost finished in June.

5. Complete the first two lessons in Good King, Bad King (already started and maybe half-way done) and outline the full series. I can report only partial progress on this. I got the lessons done, and taught them last week and today. However, I have not yet outlined the rest of the series. I’ve brainstormed it a little, but brainstorming without getting something down on paper doesn’t count.

6. For Life on a Yo Yo: Write a “sell sheet” for the Bible study; complete the first four lessons in publishable form. I totally dropped the ball on this, not even thinking about it all month. And it’s not even in my draft goals for August. I may have to amend them.

7. Complete the new chapter of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People that I got half-way done in June. It would be nice to both complete that and start another chapter, but I’m not making that a goal, not with everything else I have going on. Plus, I’m a freelancer not, not a novelist. I did a little more work on chapter 7, but I cannot say it’s done. I imagine it needs another hour or two to be called done. I sent the book as is on to a new beta reader who requested it. We’ll see what he says.

So, I hit some things but missed others. All in all it was a productive month. I’ll next post my goals for August, a month which I hope will be even more productive.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, freelance writing, Harmony of the gospels, Writing

Progress By Inches

Leave a comment

Last night, as promised in yesterday’s post, I went to the Bentonville library after work. They forgave me the fine and renewed the book. I spent a little time in a genealogy magazine, checking to see if I could write for that one, then went to the coffee shop, bought a large house blend, and sat and wrote my article on The Notebooks of Robert Frost. I didn’t quite finish it, but I came close.

This was my first time to sit in a coffee shop and write. My son writes or studies in coffee shops all the time. Somehow he shuts out the noise to background and then effectively uses his time. He says he can do certain work there better than he can in the quiet of his lodgings. I’ve tried reading in coffee shops before, but never writing. I was surprised to make as much progress as I did. The TV mounted up high behind my back kept blaring a sitcom re-run, then a CNN program. I looked its way on occasion. Still, in about an hour I wrote 500 or so words in a steno notebook. Having previously studied the key words for this article for search engine optimization, I felt I had incorporated most of what I wanted to. I headed to the house with the article needing only a closing paragraph and editing.

At home, after a simple supper, I keyed in the article, added a photo, and published. This was my first Suite 101 article in a week, and it felt good to be back in the saddle. I then shifted gears to working on my Harmony of the Gospels. I’m pretty much done with the appendix covering the trial before Pilate, so I went next to the passage notes required for passages in that chapter. I actually finished notes for two passages! I think I have two more passages and I’m done with this chapter. Except…

..as I consulted my workbooks, from which I pulled the passage notes, I noticed that what I wrote in the workbooks did not match what I had previously typed in the Harmony. One of the differences was significant, incorporating something in the gospels I had missed in the workbooks. Had I made the changes while typing, or did I have other notes in the workbooks? I searched a little for other notes, but didn’t find any. I never got around to indexing the workbooks, so I have no way of knowing if I have supplemental notes in another book (I have three all together for this project, the last one being only 2/3 used). So I spent fifteen minutes indexing that workbook.

The hour was such that I could still afford more computer time, so I spent a little time on Facebook, still trying to learn how to navigate on that site and to use it for a combination of promotion, friendship, and networking. Found two high school friends who didn’t show up on the alumni list and invited them to be friends. Last, before leaving the Dungeon for the Upper Realms, I e-mailed a friend a copy of my incomplete novel, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. He’s a huge baseball fan, and when he visited us in April and we discussed this he said he’d like to read it. Only took me three months to comply.

I concluded my productive evening by reading in Robertson’s Harmony of the Gospels (the book at the top of my reading pile), and read one article in a 2008 issue of Writers Digest magazine. Then I went to bed on time.

So, I’m making progress on most fronts. The checkbook is up to date. The budget is up to date. Papers are being filed. Dishes and kitchen are being handled (batching it again). Writing progressing on several fronts. Reading moseys along. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t play computer games.

poetry, Robert Frost

Robert Frost on Poetry

1 Comment

Last night I was dead tired when I got home, for some reason. Was it the emotional letdown after the successful class I taught during yesterday’s noon hour? Or was it my bagworm ministry for 35 minutes before church yesterday evening? Or might it just be over-eating and under-sleeping while the wife’s away? For whatever reason, I slept the sleep of the dead last night–until about 3:30 AM, when I woke up and felt something crawling on me, something insect-sized. I pulled it off, squished it between fingers, and rolled over. I suspect a tick picked up from the bagworm infested bush. Of course, after that I imagined every little itch to be a tick and probably pulled off several imaginary ones. Still, I got back to sleep and slept well.

I’m working on several articles for Suite101.com, including one on a book I checked out from the Bentonville library, The Notebooks of Robert Frost. I waited for this book to come in, then was somewhat disappointed in it when I finally got it. I guess I expected to see drafts of all of Frost’s famous poems and observe how he went about his compositions. Or maybe I expected copious notes of his poetic philosophy, or preparation for his many lectures.

The book has little of that. I’m going to write a review of it for Suite101.com, so I can’t put all of what I want to say here. But I did find an interesting segment with some quotes on poetry. Quotations allegedly from Frost about “Poetry is…” are rampant, such as “Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” Maybe he said this, maybe he didn’t. I never see those with source citations. But this book documents some things Frost wrote about poetry. In his Notebook 38, he wrote the following under the heading “Poetry”:

  • Poetry is prowess
  • Poetry is the renewal of words
  • Poetry is the dawning of an idea
  • Poetry is that which tends to evaporate from both prose and verse when translated.
  • Poetry is the Liberal Arts. The Liberal Arts are Poetry.
  • A poem is a momentary stay against confusion
  • Poet is a master of sentiment

According to footnotes in the book, the prowess comment would be related to Frost’s lecture titled “Poetry as Prowess”, and the renewal comment is related to his lecture titled “The Renewal of Words”.

Now, I have not yet studied these sayings of Frost. Perhaps he wrote them together in notebook 38 as a list of lectures given or that he thought he might give someday. I see that he repeated a couple of these in notebook 26.

The notebooks are hard reading, and I can see I would need to own a copy to really get much out of them, for in the little time I have the book for (actually, it’s already three days overdue), and as difficult as it is to read for long sittings, I’m not getting all that much out of it. But he has some gems in it that are worth thinking and remembering. In the same notebook 38, after his list of what poetry is, he has this statement, evidently intended to be another statement of what poetry is:

  • Difference between smoke and smoke rings.

That’s good enough for me. Off to the library now to beg forgiveness and hopefully renew this overdue book for a couple of more weeks. I need to see a few more gems in it.

flood studies, Suite 101, Writing

Progress in Tasks, but not Much in Learning

Leave a comment

Well, the Planning Commission meeting last night was not as long as was expected by the City. One or two items were pulled from the agenda, and I was up to the podium about 7:20 PM, done at 7:40 PM, home just after 8:00 PM. I now get to pull together the FEMA submittal. I’ll set a goal of one week from today for sending that in to the City. I can’t remember if the legal advertisement goes in the newspaper before or after the submittal to FEMA.

Last night I really didn’t feel like writing. Not sure what was going on. I had eaten before the meeting (half-price night at Sonic), so gathered up my financial records to enter in my budgeting/planning spreadsheet. But I didn’t feel like doing that task. Got on my user page at Suite101.com and had a pleasant surprise: I had a record revenue day: $0.72! Whoopee! That brings my average per 1000 page views up to work out to about $90 a year if I don’t post anything else. Two or three tanks of gas is nothing to sneeze at.

That should have spurred me on to writing. But instead I began climbing up the learning curve at Flickr. I think I understand that, and will begin using some of the photos there. I have two articles for Suite in the writing stage, and about six others somewhat planned. Hopefully I’ll get back to these tonight.

What I decided to do next was join Facebook. Everyone says you have to be on a social network. You have to promote yourself (but don’t abuse your friends on the network; be a friend first and a self-promoter second). So I went ahead and did it. I had a fair amount of difficulty registering. My screen partially locked up and I wound up putting in my high school and employer three times each. I managed to delete the two bogus ones, and began looking for friends. I published one short item, but did so before I had any friends. Hopefully it shows up on my “wall”.

One more learning curve to climb. I’m determined not to let this become a time sink. I’m not even going to try to log on to Facebook from the office; I imagine it’s blocked anyway. Tonight I’ll set a time limit, say 15 minutes to learn a little more about it, then I’ll need to write an article, wash it through an SEO tool, lace it with apt images, post it, and wait for the revenue to roll in.

Right.

Engineering, freelance writing, Genealogy, Suite 101

So Much To Learn

Leave a comment

Today I have two major tasks at work: prepare for Planning Commission meeting tonight, and prepare for the brown bag class I’ll teach tomorrow noon. The P.C. meeting is easy to prep for: ten copies of two figures and about three pages of text. The figures need some hand coloring, but that’s a throwback to childhood and not at all unpleasant.

The brown bag is tougher to prep for, because I want to include a PowerPoint presentation with it. This is my second PowerPoint to prepare. The last one was all text. For this one, I want to include photos and drawings. This increases the degree of difficulty (from about 1.0 to about 3.5, I’d say). Plus, the last one I did was back in March, and I’ve pretty well forgotten all I learned then. So it’s a learning day. When I get frustrated with building the slide show, I just pull out one of the figures to color. I have till 6:00 PM to complete them.

Then there’s the whole question of learning photographs for the Internet. I spent some time at Flickr, following a link to their Creative Commons, which is the area that’s supposed to have the copyright-free photos. I had a little time with this, then Internet Explorer locked up. So I exited and went back to Flickr, this time the home page. And on that page I could not find a link to the Creative Commons. Am I missing something? I’ll get back to that after this post.

I love learning, but this is almost too much today. PowerPoint alone would be fine, or maybe the photo study would be fine, but the two together are somewhat overwhelming.

On the other hand, the pleasant evening I wrote about yesterday came to be almost exactly as I hoped. The genealogy meeting was good. I actually knew the speaker, and met a few new people. Any time you are in a library, even if it’s just the meeting room, is a good time. At home I filed and wrote and read and talked on the phone for a long time with my son. I balanced the checkbook, which in two prior sittings had refused to be balanced. I didn’t get to my financial record spreadsheets, or paying a couple of bills, but I have tonight for that. Another pleasant evening coming.

Engineering, flood studies, Genealogy, Harmony of the gospels

A Pleasant Evening Awaits

Leave a comment

It’s 4:32 PM by the clock on my computer at the office. I returned here a little while ago from Centerton, where I presented my flood study to the mayor and department heads. This was for the purpose of presenting the summary of findings and recommendations, and to help them understand what their options are concerning future conditions in the drainage basin. Tomorrow evening I present it to the Planning Commission (for information purposes only).

I’d like to say that’s the end of the project, but, alas, it’s only the end of the study phase. I now need to pull together a submission to FEMA. This consists of reworking my report to include only those things FEMA will look at, filling out about 15 pages of FEMA forms, having one more exhibit drawn–the actual changes to the flood map, and getting the City’s approval of those. At some point this will involve a public hearing and newspaper ads. The actual flood map revision, which will be the end of the project, is likely 6 to 8 months away.

But, a burden is lifted. I look forward to a pleasant evening tonight. My wife is away (no, that’s not what will make it a pleasant evening), having gone this morning to Oklahoma City with her mother to spend a week with daughter, son-in-law, and grandson Ephraim. I’m going to take advantage of the time, however, and attend the regular monthly meeting of the Northwest Arkansas Genealogical Society at the Bentonville library. I’ve never been to this group. I look forward to the fellowship.

Then, what to do at the house? A quick supper of leftovers won’t take much time. I’ll probably read in Robertson’s harmony of the gospels, then go work on my own. I made some good progress on this yesterday, and would like to finish the appendix I worked on. That would feel pretty good, if I could finish that. The progress I made yesterday would have been greater except, having taken so long away from it, it was difficult to shift my mind from magazine articles (on-line and off-line)and Bible studies to that work. Tonight should be better, with me having not worked on other writing since then, except for this blog.

After that, probably about 11:00 PM, I’ll exit the Dungeon for the upper realm and read something lighter, say in an old issue of Writers Digest that I picked up at a thrift store. That will put me in the mood for bed, and I should get six hours of blissful sleep, dreaming about the Bible, genealogy, and writing, with a little successful engineering mixed in. What could be more pleasant to dream about?

Author | Engineer