In visiting some of the other posts on PWG, I see quite a few that are journal posts: chatty, about me, what-I-did-today, what-I-am thinking kinds of posts, what my pet did, what my toaster did, how much PWG has changed since I last visited, etc. It looks like those posts are fine here, so this is not a complaint, but there is a difference between a journal post and an article, and if we are attracting readers by promoting our news, journalism, creative writing or other articles, they may quickly lose interest in Preferred Writers Group if the next post that they read is just journal-type chatter.
However, what if we prefaced any chatty posts with the word "Journal?" Like "Journal: What I Did Today," "Journal: My Thoughts" "Journal: What My Toaster Did" etc.? That way a visitor would know they were heading to a journal-type entry when they clicked on a post marked "Journal."
I would like to suggest the same for PWG Discussion posts--again, visitors are not going to be interested in our discussion posts. We, on the other hand, do want to read other people's thoughts, ideas and suggestions about this group. Maybe we could earmark our discussions to make it easy for our writers to find them, and easy for our visitors to avoid them. For instance, I used "PWG Discussion" on this post. We can also use the labels/tags "journal" and "discussion" to help earmark them.
We all want page views, but we absolutely WILL LOSE READERS if they come to read articles and hit upon group discussions and idle chatter or daily accounting posts from the other site some of you guys post about so much. If we just post for each other to read, that is a maximum 70-ish readers now--hardly enough to earn any income. We need to be attracting outside readers who will enjoy reading several articles while they are here.
Honestly, I don't want to promote my articles to my professional circles and then have them stumble on something stream-of-conscience here unless they know ahead of time they are about to read someone's journal entry. I know we are supposed to be "good connectors," but there are some posts I am just not going to share or feel obligated to comment on if they don't have a point worth passing along.
Maybe I am the only one who feels that way, which is fine. I am just testing the waters here anyway, and this may not be a good fit, but I thought I would toss my ideas out there and see what the rest of you think and at least give you something to chew on.
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Post ID KD214
By the way, it is not censorship to have rules in place to encourage quality writing. Poor writing hurts us all. Poor writing will definitely drive away readers. Poor writing lowers the entire site's ranking. If the purpose of creating a new site is to help increase our page views and earnings, we sure cannot afford to include random ramblings.
ReplyDeleteIf the site is rated poorly, it will be very difficult for prospective readers to find us by search. If a visitor lands on a poorly written article, they won't click on anything else.
As for professional writers not using penny sites as some have claimed, many of us with a background in journalism earn a decent part-time income ($1,000 a month or more) writing for larger sites and then rewriting and posting shorter articles on penny sites with links that point to our main articles. This is simply good "professional" networking and is one of the main reasons I joined this site.
It is a privilege to get to post on the penny sites, especially the ones that allow linking. Just because I am writing for a penny site does not mean I will produce junk. As Laurie has stated, our writing is our brand--wherever we write.
The place for ramblings and daily anecdotes is a personal blog, not a collective effort as writers to raise the profile of our writing.
I agree and I'm on the ball with that. As we are fast approaching our author limit on our debut site here at PWG, new category specific sites are in the works. News, Entertainment, Technology, Creative, Journals, etc. These new sites will be made available for new authors as well as our present authors. All the same benefits/feature will remain the same except for the general content. The sites will be integrated in a way that allows authors to easily link from one to the other. We may try an open comment system as well, until "that kid with the rich aunt who makes $10,000 from home" shows up. Also, I think the writers will moderate themselves to some degree as I often see on forums. "This site is for "Tech" take that Twilight Post over to Entertainment! O.o
ReplyDeleteAs long as you are OK with us doing a little self-moderation. I have made a couple of suggestions on a couple of posts and don't want people thinking I am overstepping. I do like the idea of a separate Journal blog where writers can socialize and get to know each other better, and learn a little while doing so, and maybe a blog for PWG discussions -- or possibly Journal and PWG Discussions could be one blog. Should we move our news posts from here to the News blog or repost them there, etc.?
DeleteI agree with you. I'm going to do title my posts with Journals if I write about personal stuff. I never thought of that so thanks a lot :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, David. I do think that will help until the PWG Journal blog opens. Until then, at least if visitors click on a post with "Journal" in the title, they will know what to expect. After the PWG Journal opens, I hope folks will move their journal posts over there to help build that site and unclutter this one.
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