Writing Like A Maniac – And Saving!
I have just been writing writing writing lately. Mostly for eHow and Marlaine’s Musings blog. I’ve accomplished one of my goals – 75 articles written and posted on eHow! My next goal is to write and post 100! I see some people putting up 100 articles in their first month on eHow but their content is short and sometimes pointless. I have been trying to go the extra 10 miles to find out all I can about something – even if it is something I already know a lot about – and give extra tips and hints whenever I can. I do the same thing for Marlaine’s Musings quest guides and general guides for Runescape.
Someone on eHow said that they wished someone would write guides for WoW like the guides I have up for Runescape, making me tempted to go try World Of Warcraft out – but I’ve been told that it’s mostly a war game so not quite what I am looking for. I will probably look into it soon though.
I am working at putting together some kind of blog or site that I can start “managing” my eHow articles in a more logical and organized way. On eHow, they show what catagories you have articles in but……. you can’t go to that author’s articles on those subjects specifically. eHow sent a notice that they will be redesigning their tools and setup but it won’t be implemented until November. There is a lot of time between now and November. Even I am having a problem remembering all the articles. I need to store my eHow articles somehow…. So we’ve decided on a domain name of StoreHows.com. We haven’t got anything online yet but we did buy the domain name already. I’ll be working on the design for a couple of days and then we’ll start with a blog.
A friend on eHow recently lost her main account, losing over 500 articles! She has no idea how that happened but I can almost guess. If any of you have tried to earn money with AdSense – you might have experienced the “You have been banned for suspect clicks” syndrome with no other explanations or communication from AdSense once they “kicked” you. Brad and I experienced that and could never get an answer from them about why. We changed to AdBrite and they work with their clients a whole lot nicer! You can have suspect IP addresses blocked or even your own so you don’t accidentally click your own ads. I always put adblock on when I go to my articles on eHow, or when I work here or on Musings. I wish I didn’t have to use ads at all though…….
The days of submitting an article or story to a publication and selling all copyrights are over now though with the way the net works! Even when I was submitting hard copy to magazines, I never submitted to places that bought All Rights….. Selling First Rights is fine – I’ve sold to Woman’s World, Star and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among other places, and was paid fairly well but reprints rights are still mine! (I am trying to find the best ways to use my work and eHow so far has been the best for me.)
All that aside, I suggested to my friend that she should always make copies of her work for just-in-case. I do routine backup as I work through pieces I am working on but after giving her that tidbit of advise – I checked my “database” of articles. Raised eyebrow! I shall cut to the punchline here and save the sarcasm for later – I only had 24 of my 75 articles saved as posted on eHow! Tisk! Sure, I had lots and lots of saved drafts. I gather info, write up a brief draft and then tweak and fiddle with it, adding more research and whatever. Then I start working on the final draft on the eHow site, using their extended wizard. Rarely is the last draft I wrote in my word processing program the same as the one that ends up online! I spent most of yesterday copying and pasting the articles as they appear into a special file. I set up a document file much like the My Documents that is just for my writing! Now I am backing that up on a memory stick that my wonderful In-Laws in Australia sent to me! Mum and Dad – my writing files are over 900 MB now – Thanks again! (Lordy I would be so sick if I lost all that writing!) Eventually all that content (and more) will end up online somewhere – snickering! Geeeeeeeeeee – just finished the backup and it’s 1.01 GB now – see, I have been writing like a maniac!
I am starting to plan a cookbook, too….. Easy, Quick, Inexpensive, but don’t invite the Food Police to dinner!
One of the articles I have a draft of for this blog is how to make your computer run faster. You can find it on eHow but I will put it up in here soon. For now, I have more articles to write and designs to work on……
Have a great rest of the day!
Wow, thanks for the heads up about saving eHow articles–I’ll have to make sure mine are all saved. Did she ask the eHow people what happened? How odd!
She didn’t have the slightest idea what happened. I wrote a few people I know who work for eHow, including one of the managers and they all think she must have done something against the signup agreement rules. I asked her if she had copied articles from other sites or clicked her own ads – one of those two things were the suggestions from the manager – she said no. No one answered her questions about it. Now – that sounds like AdSense to me. While talking to my Mother-In-Law a couple days ago, she said she clicked an ad for our AdSense maybe three times once a week from our original affiliate on this site. So obviously she wasn’t the reason we had suspect clicks. Even I do that on friend’s sites – in normal curiosity! Shrugs! I really don’t trust AdSense!
I rarely comment on blogs but yours I had to stop and say Great Blog!!
Congrats! Good writing everywhere girl!
That would be terrible if i lost all of my articles.
I write my articles in a word document first and save it.
Then I post it to ehow.com and firehow.com which are both how to sites.
I love passive income.
How soon will you update your blog? I’m interested in reading some more information on this issue.
I write on StoreHows.com blog by Marlaine too…. Many of my eHow articles are about saving money as well. StoreHows seems to be the spot I’ve been using to talk about the writing ups and downs as a freelancer.