Making A Living With Your Online Writing

The eWriter Project is all about empowering the eWriter to be able to earn a living from their content. This web site is designed to become a resource of choice for all those interested in producing web content and getting paid for it. Whether you are considering writing eBooks, web articles, blog copy or ‘killer’ sales copy for ‘squeeze pages’, you will be able to rely on the information you take from here. This is how I earn my living. If you feel what you have read here is worth a token of appreciation, please donate. All donations proudly accepted.

This term I am not presenting my Eat Your Words or Become A Published Author courses at either of the two community colleges I usually present at. I guess it is the colder weather that has killed the keeness. Or it might suggest the need to take a new look at what is offered versus what is wanted. I have developed two new courses. One is ‘Writing Better Fiction’ which will lead up to the Become A Published Author course and give people who are not confident their writing is up to snuff just yet. The other course is ‘Creative Writing For Migrants’.

This course was inspired by a student on my Online Writing Online eLearning course who has English as a second language. She asked me to help correct her English as she dreamt of being a writer. Then when I did very gently correct her mistakes she complained I had criticised her since the first week! She then resigned and demanded a refund so I guess no good deed goes unpunished as it was not part of my role to provide ESL teaching services on that course.

I think a lot of migrants will have some great stories to tell and may be just too shy or too worried their English is not good enough. This course will teach good writing skills while also giving some tips on where most migrants miss out. Prepositions and tenses are the key. Saying ‘marry’ when they mean ‘married’ as in ‘they were marry last week’. Saying ‘on’ instead of ‘in’, as in ‘he had lived in the island for a year’. I think in time any writer will self-correct but for now they need a confidence boost and to mostly focus on crafting a good story. The rest is basically just editing. I know the ESL writers that have joined the Rorschach School in the Become A Published Author course have given us some great new reading and I am sure there is more out there.

I feel the Anglo-centric world we have lived in for some time now is no longer going to be the dominant model. In Australia the Australian face hasn’t been an Anglo one for some time and yet many still equate ‘Aussie’ with Anglo-Saxon/Celtic. Part of what writers can achieve is to offer alternatives, to change opinions and if nothing else, to make people think. If we only have writing by writers who come from the ‘mainstream’ then we can only expect mainstream writing. The thing is, as scary as it may be to some, the mainstream is now made up of a lot of people who don’t fit the Anglo template and the country isn’t coming to a crashing halt, nor is society falling apart. Fancy that.

The Miles Franklin long list for 2012 reveals something those of us in the writing business are never surprised about; all the long listed entries belong to major publishing houses. See below:

• Tony Birch for Blood (University of Queensland Press)
• Steven Carroll for The Spirit of Progress (Fourth Estate – HarperCollins Publishers Australia)
• Mark Dapin for Spirit House (Pan Macmillan Australia)
• Virginia Duigan forThe Precipice (Vintage – Random House Australia)
• Anna Funder for All That I Am (Hamish Hamilton – Penguin Group Australia)
• Kate Grenville for Sarah Thornhill (The Text Publishing Company)
• Gail Jonesfor Five Bells (Random House Australia)
• Gillian Mears for Foal’s Bread (Allen & Unwin)
• Alex Miller for Autumn Laing (Allen & Unwin)
• Charlotte Wood for Animal People (Allen & Unwin)

I have no doubt all of the books are great novels and better than my own, rather experimental ‘Twenty Seven Seventy’ but, can small press offerings and even self published titles get a look-in?

It is easy to allege that the work from a writer publishing their own novel or using a small press like my  StreetWise Publications won’t produce a book of the same production quality and editorial standard. I challenge that and while I admit some of my earlier attempts were less than top rate the current product is as good as any from the big fellas. I do agree there are tons of rubbish books offered online from small and self publishing operations but then the big houses have pumped out their share of door stops also.

Another argument is that without the process of selection in place by big publishers who have to make a profit the odds are the small guy’s book is poorly written, not in demand and most likely little more than an icon of ego gratification. Again, I agree there are no doubt many books out there fitting that description but then again, there are many that are not. There is no reason the book can’t be well written and become a popular and profitable book just because it lacks the imprimatur of the big publishing house.

So, can the little guy get a lookin with the major prizes like the Miles-Franklin or is there truth in the rumours of big publishing having more influence than the independent end of town? I will make this a mission in life and each year I intend to enter a new novel. I plan to work on my writing and my publishing and bring them to the stage where it is obvious they are as good as they get. I don’t buy into conspiracies although I am pragmatic enough to accept that we do tend to favour those we personally like and the big publishers have employees whose task it is to create and maintain networks of contacts; but there is nothing to stop a small publisher or author making the same connections.

I also believe in the integrity of the judges chosen for the prize and I think this faith is neither misplaced nor more than they should expect. We need to have at least a basic level of faith in our literary institutions and these institutions are made up of individuals and unless they make it clear otherwise, they deserve the respect and common courtesy of the benefit of the doubt. As I said, my mission is now to write a better novel and to publish a better quality book. The ball is in my court and pointing fingers at ‘the system’ won’t do anything more than make invisible holes in the air.

Google have been busy slapping hundreds of black hat SEO types and a stack of white hats, too. Basically SEO as they knew it is dead. Now the focus is on the content and that needs to be quality content, not poorly written rubbish of 200 words or less, stuffed with keywords and basically making no sense to anyone, even the poor schlep who wrote it for a buck or less.

I feel for the writers of developing countries like Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Nigeria, Alabama and so on as the gravy train for them is coming off the rails. No longer can second rate composition and poor grammar be offered as an ‘article’. No more the scrapers and the blog networks set up solely to raise the ranking of sites at the expense of the reader. For all those SEO gurus who just wanted tons of content to fill out a place to advertise and sell from, the game is over.

Content must not only be of a decent standard, it also has to be relevant. Google and other search engines are ranking differently now. They are presenting searchers with results based on relevancy, not just how many back links the site has bought or how many times the keyword is stuffed in the text. I feel vindicated as I have always railed against those spinner programs. I have understood that there is a market for poorly written articles which keep ESL writers in rice and curry and feed their families- they have a right to earn a living too and we in the developed world need to adjust. Still, it is time now for good content providers to say this is what we can write for you and this is what we charge.

So how much do we charge? That is an entirely different blog, perhaps even a page of its own. Stay tuned. Hit the RSS icon and grab the feed.

I borrowed the title from a blog post by Dean Wesley Smith, a writer who has literally dozens of books and short stories published both trade and self. If you want to invest several hours of your time in personal education of a professional kind, read his blogs and follow the links to the blogs he refers to. To my ears, he speaks a lot of sense and his blog about the ‘Big Six’ of publishing is spot on. I won’t second guess that blog, go and read it and learn something, just like I did.

What I will discuss is how we tend to form opinions and then let them set themselves in place like fast drying concrete. Before you know it, you can’t budge from that point of view. In fact to do so makes you feel insecure, even stupid for having held the view in the first place. The louder you defended that position, the harder it is to say maybe I was wrong. At the very least, I now have new data and have adapted my initial position.

As I age I hope I am finding it easier to let go of what I once believed to be the absolute truth. Usually though it is the opposite. Young people tend to be staunch supporters of the last book they read or lecture they attended, movie watched or whatever. That was the be all and end all and is the only opinion to hold. Then when they get older, middle aged and beyond, they form their opinions and remain glued to them because now with age they have wisdom and thus, can never be wrong.

As a writer I challenge that. I say I can be wrong. I will defend my position staunchly and articulately until someone comes along with a more reasoned argument and then I will evaluate and adjust accordingly. It doesn’t mean you have to be wishy washy and blow with the wind. It doesn’t mean you have to defend a dogma deep down you know is flawed to say the least. It means that you are prepared to stand by your beliefs until such time as those beliefs are found to be up for adjustment. To my mind that says more about you in a positive way than if you were right 100% of the time because that is impossible. Nobody can be right all the time and even those who are aren’t in the minds of people who analyse the situation using different criteria or processes.

Writers above everyone else by dint of our role as attitude adjusters, must be willing to adjust our own attitudes when faced with new information that might turn everything we have believed up to that point on its head, but we can’t deny the validity. It is hard and it hurts but it has to be done. It’s our job. Pain comes with the territory.

According to my research, the ‘Big Six’ are Random House, Penguin, Macmillan, Hachette, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins. When you see how many imprints they have under their individual umbrellas it really is mind blowing but… independent small publishers and author-publishers can compete now we have the force multiplier called the Internet.

I went to a Writer’s Group the other day and met a bloke who is putting out a not for profit literary review, a magazine for writers called Mosaic. It will be an A5 print item with colour cover and some great writing within. They will have a web site and eventually an online presence, maybe even an eZine version but to begin with it will be traditional and on paper.

I will assist by advertising my Online Writing Courses and my Become A Published Author courses as well as offer my expertise in various ways as I support the initiative. Writers need more outlets for their work and this will be put in the hands of up to 2,000 readers via free distribution at bookshops and other locations.

Rob and his partner Nick also run a Writer’s Group called Novel Ideas which I hope to attend and perhaps be able to pass on some of my knowledge about ePublishing and what have you. Who knows what talent is waiting out there to either be discovered or learn how to get in front of readers.

First of all the censorship of a certain category of books under threat at Smashwords and elsewhere by PayPal is not driven by Smashwords or PayPal. I am disgusted to read that some writers of this category have been abusing and accusing Mark Coker, Smashwords founder and CEO, of being responsible. Even PayPal is not the culprit, it is the credit card providers and thus the banks behind them. Once again the big bankstas hit the little guy.

This is about hurting the indie book publisher, make no mistake. I was accused last night of being a conspiracy theorist because I believe there is a valid argument that the big publishers, who put a lot of business through the banks, have exerted pressure for the banks to force credit/debit card payment processors like PayPal to cut out this category. It is part of a category that has seen major growth from indie publishers and and writers. Obviously it threatens the bottom line of the big publishers. If they weren’t afraid they wouldn’t attack. This is why it didn’t happen four of five years ago. Back then the indie publishing industry was not a big enough threat to their control of the industry. Now eBooks and self-published/small publishing house books are threatening their domination.

Amazon doesn’t use PayPal but they do use credit cards so expect them to be next, if they haven’t already banned the relevant category. This is censorship by stealth,this is monopolizing by the back door. It happened before in teh good ole US of A. A few years ago they snuck the IMBRA bill in on the back of a bill nobody could argue against,one for the protection of women in domestic violence situations if I recall. But IMBRA attacked penpal sites that introduced US men to foreign women. The excuse was because these women are exploited and murdered and sadly a few have been. But so too foreign men marrying women in Russia and the Philippines and elsewhere once they realise the woman was already married and just after a Greencard and their money. Abuse was two way and neither is right but the IMBRA law only targeted the little guy. Big penpal service providers like Yahoo Groups and other didn’t have to comply, only the little ones, usually run by a US man and his foreign bride wife to help other women from her area find a foreign husband and escape poverty, have a better life etc. The bill was hidden at the back of a huge document, passed at 3am or something and was basically a way for the big penpal agencies to get rid of the small time competition. It was the sneaky way the power was wielded that upset many. This is no different. Again the big power wields its might to club the little guy.

Plenty of people see nothing wrong with this,that this is the way of the world, that credit providers have the right to choose who they will do business with and who they won’t. They are correct, but they are not right. This is not right because it is an abuse of power. It is ‘might equals right’ at work.Yes it is the way of the world but that doesn’t mean we should accept it. The world has been a tough place since Day 1 but we have fought hard to make it a better place to be. We used to have 6 yer olds working 14 hour days in the Poorhouse for the debts of their parents but not any more. We used to treat our women little differently in many ways to how they still suffer in tribal areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan and even in urban areas of these and other countries, but not any more. We used to consider our women as chattel goods the husband or oldest brother could do with as they wished, even marry them off and keep any payments, but not any more.

I could go on but the message is surely clear. This is the thin edge of the wedge. Now it is a certain category dealing with three or four specific subjects. What’s next? Who’s next? Will the banks deny credit to small pharmacies? Little mom and pop corner stores? Will they claim these family businesses often exploit the children of the owners, forcing them to work behind the counter after school and this is their moral justification? Or any small business because the owners don’t employ enough people or some other, spurious justification to wipe out the little guys. Let’s face it, even with computers dong all the work, it is easier to have a handful of huge clients like Wal-Mart and Costco than it is to have hundreds of thousands of small stores putting their take through their accounts every business day.

Bottom line, don’t blame the wrong people, fire your arrows and throw your brickbats at the right target, the mega rich banks and the mega rich bankers. Not the teller behind the counter trying to hold onto her job as more and more jobs are cut and sent overseas. Not the help desk person who is one of the few left in your own country as more and more jobs are outsourced to people who might speak English, but it isn’t the same language. Not their fault and they are only trying to feed their families too. No, blame the rich who are not like you and me and can’t comprehend how we can not accept we are here to serve them. Didn’t someone once say “eat the rich”? I know what they meant.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemoller

 

 

Yesterday I received an email from Mark Coker, owner of Smashwords. Basically he told how he had been pressured by PayPal to remove any books that contained certain material. One of the 18 titles I distribute through Smashwords  was classified in the category being targeted. I changed the category because it did not fit given the content and I had tried it there as a marketing exercise to gain new readership. The category and the content is not relevant. It is the censorship that is the issue. I understand Mr Coker’s position and I feel for him. PayPal control the money and that is the bottom line. They are controlled by the banks who process the credit card transactions. They feel they should charge very high fees for some categories as sadly there are more chargebacks in those categories. This is all about money. Or is it? Coming from the USA where religious extremism is what kicked the country off back in the day of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims, why should any of us be surprised?

 

Read these other posts and decide for yourself what this is really all about. I also think there is an argument that this is pushed by the big publishers, exerting pressure on their banks, to wipe out indie publishers. They don’t like the power being regained by the writer and the little guy, they have too much invested in their grip of the market. This is happening all over America. A report the other day studied how today, pharmacy graduates have no hope going into business for themselves thanks to the big four drug store chains ruling the market. What about any line of retail? Forget it. Supermarkets? No point. Books, same deal. It is all about massive firms with lots of money, invested by share holders who want huge dividends and who cares who suffers? They have enough money to be part of the 1%. Now it is spreading all over the world. First they want us to be aspirational and think we are middle class, then they con us into believing we can afford it by taking their credit, then they wipe us out while getting bailed out by our tax dollars. They don’t pay taxes as they have very smart people on their payroll figuring out how to minimize their tax obligation, or bring in laws to change things. We are here to work for them, serve them, make their lives easier. As F.Scott Fitzgerald once remarked to Ernest Hemingway, “the rich are different to the rest of us”. He was so right.

 

This time it is books in this particular category that are being targeted. Who is next? Pick a genre, perhaps me for having a blog where I call these people out on their actions. I don’t write for that category and I don’t read books in that category, in fact I find some of them very objectionable. But nobody who writes, reads or sells them has ever threatened my writing, my business, my income and thus my family. None of those writers, readers or sellers have ever put a gun to my head and forced me to do anything. Or threatened to take anything of mine away. As Pastor Niemoller is alleged to have said, “Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

I have been given permission to reprint some very sage advice from Deb McAlister-Holland, who is pretty switched on when it comes to marketing as well as being a published author of some repute. It sets out what you should include in your query letter to sell your book or manuscript idea to an agent or publisher and never doubt you are selling them your writing. If they can’t see the commercial viability of the book they will not publish. They try not to lose money on purpose. It is aimed at those going for a printed book but the advice holds true for eBooks too. Give it a read, then apply the lessons and good luck!

If you recall last year I obtained writing work with Oxbridge Research, also known as WriteRighteam.com. I was a bit dubious but I felt it was worth the risk to see how this aspect on eWriting worked, firsthand. After a lot of waiting and asking again and again I received a payment of $175, then after several more months and lots of messing about, $200. I have been promised $400 more, which includes bonuses and there was also an offer of employment on $2,000 a month. This was amongst the many emails blaming the problem on SWREG, a payment processor. I contacted them and found they had a very different version of events every time.

I can’t be bothered going into details. Suffice to say I got sick of waiting since the last promised deadline fell weeks ago and there was no reply to my emails at last. I had actually been telephoned on a couple of occasions by one of the business owners, who swore I would be paid and this and that and by this date etc.

I don’t know what happened. I do know their software is unreliable, I had access to other writer’s PayPal account details when I first signed on, I wonder if anyone had access to mine. I could see how much they had earned and what their PayPal account name was, but not if they had been paid the money they had earned. I know my account shows I have been paid for every job and that was the case long before the first dollar got through.

Either they are shonks or just shonky. My advice is to stay away from these firms and if you wish to write model essays for students to use as guides as to how to write their own papers, do it freelance. Get paid half up front and caveat emptor.

UPDATE April 2012: After posting about this on a forum regularly used by the owner of the business I can say without doubt I am not the only writer ripped off by Hala Khalek, several others have reported her owing them far more than the $50 I calculate is still outstanding. One writer is owed $1,750 and another actually partnered up with her and is claiming $200,000 was promised by this con artist.

One of her tactics is to heap effusive praise on the writer and claim they are the greatest writer she has had the privilege of working with and is so grateful she has bought iPads for all your kids! I kid you not. Stay away from essay writing is my best advice. Because of the grey area of what the client does with their model essay (that is they hand it in as their own work instead of using it to help draft their own original essay) this industry will always attract shady characters. It is difficult to complain to any official if you have taken the model essay and used it as your own against the rules of the university. As a writer, while we merely write to order and I feel are not responsible for how our writing is used by the client one is on shaky moral ground when the middleman essay company rips you off. It is this facet that the con artists manipulate to their advantage with neither end able to effectively take action against them.

There are far more genuine and paying opportunities for writers. For a complete list and regular updates of vetted opportunities, write to write2earn@aol.com and tell Julie you found out about her $7 list of nearly 100 vetted writing sites here.

UPDATE II April 2012: After I posted that I forgave her on that essayscam.org site, I awoke the other morning to find $46 deposited in my PayPal account from her company. Seems you do catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I now consider the matter closed but of course, this doesn’t change the events as reported here. I just hope those owed more than me get their money too.

The reality is that eWriting is a little more technical than writing something and sending off a copy by email or in the post and leaving it up to others to publish. There is little chance of escaping the need to understand how the web works, how web sites are made and found and what a blog is, what it can and can’t do. As a proponent of ongoing education and learning I believe all eWriters need to keep pace with the Internet and how to make the best use of it. You don’t need to become a code writing expert, but you should know what html means and xml and what role they play.

Your web site or blog will benefit from knowing how SEO is applied by the different search engines and what it is they look for when they rank your site. Your page rank dictates where your site is listed when someone runs a search using key words. Writing your content to make best use of this is a skill you should achieve. Fonts, spacing, colour and sizing all affect the web page. Accessibility is another factor and this refers to how people actually see your page. Many don’t and rely on programs that convert text to speech. They might see blurry shapes and colours or nothing at all. Or they can see everything but it is jumbled up. If people with these problems are in your target market demographic then it pays you to learn how to design and present your web page so that they can understand the content. What about speakers of languages other than English? Do you offer a translation option so they can read the page in another language? This might make a huge difference to your success but keep in mind many of the free translation programs translate your page into gibberish! Have a native speaker check out any translation you haven’t hired someone qualified to prepare for you.

If you are not very technically inclined do not despair. There is someone out there who is and they will be glad of the work you can put their way. You usually get what you pay for so go for results and not lowest price. Paying a little more very often brings in a much greater return than the difference between what you can afford and the lowest bid.