Most everyone we encounter blogs on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Blogging has become the go-to method of getting the word out and sharing your writing style with anyone who might stumble upon your content—or if you’re lucky—follow your content.
How do you know if you are any good at blogging? I suppose you can look at your page views and follower counts, however, E.L. James may be enough proof to throw that theory out the door. Do you blog to keep your writing sharp? Do you blog for exposure? Continue reading “Improve Your Writing and Make a Few Bucks”
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks up to my eyeballs in cheese and honey. Not quite literally, but there was a point when I had to requisition a shelf in my neighbour’s fridge to accommodate all the samples I had acquired.
I recently got two commissions at the same time, both with the same tightish deadline: an article on cheese and another on honey. The publication I write for has recently succumbed to the effects of the global downturn, and freelancers like me are feeling the pinch. Eighteen months ago it was 4000 words and take your time, John, we reserved the flight and hotel. This time it was 1500 words and buy your own sandwiches. Continue reading “The Limits of Cheese”
“Catching up on all the stuff I didn’t do last week,” I replied, compiling the list in my head. “Uploading clones of the website I’ve just had approved, putting up a blog post, editing a podcast and writing a load of advance pieces for Indies to send in before I leave.” I was preparing to take off on another book research jaunt and attempting to get ahead of myself.
Enough with the social media already.
“Cool, do they pay well?”
“We do this one for love,” is what I said. I should of course have said that we also do it for kudos, backlinks and kickass exposure but if I had, I wouldn’t have had the conversation that followed.
We spent a while ruminating on the point of free writing. I kept on using that word ‘branding’ and the eyebrow raisings began to look like the sort of facial exercises you see in ads for fabulous secret alternatives to cosmetic surgery. Now we’ve had a good few articles on the subject here at Indies and the consensus seems to be that, um, you should get your little self out there and make sure the interwebs know who you are and also that marketing is a time sink and everybody hates you for doing it anyway. They put it kinda better than that (here and here for example) but we mostly seem to conclude that the writing is your brand, if only you can get it out there. Continue reading “Back to Branding”
