Showing posts with label Article writing. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Seekyt Goes Off the Deep End on Payment -- Unfair to Writers

I know this PWG blog is defunct, but since I posted here several times about Seekyt, I have to report the admin has made a decision about payment I not only disagree with, but it has made my previous articles false advertising.

Seekyt has now hit upon the terrible and unfair idea of rewarding their top 10-20 (or 30 depending on how you read the past couple of correspondences) for the revenue on ALL their articles. That means if, like me, you are taking a hiatus from writing to pursue much more lucrative work, rather than me earning my residuals or ad sales from my hard work, someone else will get paid.

As soon as I have time (whenever that will be because business is booming!) I plan to move my entire Seekyt library to my own blog or to Examiner if appropriate, but in the meantime I hope Seekyt changes this terrible and unfair policy. I enjoyed writing for them in the past, but giving my earnings -- no matter how large or small -- to someone else is certainly a deal breaker. I believe their referral program is also dead in the water.

Make up your own mind if you followed me to Seekyt, but be aware of the changes there and make an informed decision.

Best wishes and happy writing!

Related:

Earning Money Writing for Seekyt.com

Earning Money Writing for Seekyt.com
Referrals: Another Reason I Like Writing for Seekyt
Earning Money Writing for Examiner.com

Thank you for reading and thank you for sharing the link to this article with others. This article is © Kathryn Darden, all rights reserved, and is not available to repost on websites, blogs, discussion boards, Facebook, or to translate and post elsewhere without written permission.

Post ID KD214

Monday, February 24, 2014

Writing Tip: Why Seekyt Uses VigLink

This may be the last in my series of articles about Seekyt for the Preferred Writers Blog as I have covered that writing site fairly thoroughly from top to bottom. However, since several from the PWG community have signed up to write for Seekyt, I wanted to do a post for the writers here about the new affiliate program Seekyt now uses which appears to be better than Amazon and AdSense. The program is called VigLink.

One reason signing up for VigLink should appeal to PWG writers is there appear to be a lot of international writers here, many of whom cannot participate with Amazon because of geographic or local restrictions. VigLink is a good fit for international writers.

VigLink will also work for those who have been kicked out by AdSense and who aren't earning enough with Chitika. Even if you are successfully using all of the above, you might find even more value with VigLink.

What is VigLink?

VigLink is affiliated with over 30,000 sites, so Seekyt writers can sell products from virtually anywhere online through the program: eBay, Amazon, Walmart, Macys, Nike, Home Depot, Forever 21, Neiman Marcus, Dillards, etc. You can now earn money on your articles by mentioning products from any and all of the websites which are VigLink merchants, so it is obvious why VigLink is a good option. -- Seekyt

The article VigLink for Dummies breaks the VigLink affiliate program down into ten simple steps to understand how it works and how to get it working for you. VigLink DOES NOT WORK if you do not use it correctly. Just posting the code in your blog is not enough.

VigLink also has a referral program. If you would like to use my referral link to sign up, Please Click Here. Read the article to find out how to maximize VigLink.

Related:

Thank you for reading and thank you for sharing the link to this article with others. This article is © Kathryn Darden, all rights reserved, and is not available to repost on websites, blogs, discussion boards, Facebook, or to translate and post elsewhere without written permission.

Post ID KD214

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Referrals: Another Reason I Like Writing for Seekyt

In my recent article "Earning Money Writing for Seekyt.com," I provided a summary of how Seekyt works as a site for writers and why it is one of my favorite sites to write for. However, I neglected to add one of the unique things Seeky does to encourage writers to support and share each other's posts.

We are each given a unique referral ID (mine is /referrerId/2158) which not only allows people to sign up as our referral if they click on our articles or links, but also allows us to refer someone else's article and attach our referral code to the end.

If a new writer registers a new account within 30 days of clicking on a link to someone else's article I shared with *my* code at the end, *I* will be credited with the referral. This is a great reason to share, not only your own content, but everyone's content and potentially make money doing it.

So, to summarize, Seekyt pays writers a percentage of all ad sales on our articles. We increase our ad share by writing articles, by referring new writers, by gaining new followers, and by interacting on the site in other ways. My earnings percentage is currently 72%. If I refer 10 people, I increase my percentage by 1%. If I refer at least 50 new members I will earn an additional 5%. So, I can earn up to 6% additional revenue on my articles just for sharing Seekyt with my friends, in addition to increasing my revenue share by writing more articles and increasing my followers.

Examiner remains my favorite writing site because I consistently earn a decent monthly income for my articles there, but I really like the options Seekyt provides its writers to earn money from the ads. I have done well writing there and feel like it provides an excellent alternative to writing for page views.

This is my Seekyt referral link if you want to use it. Be sure and follow me if you sign up. Seekyt pays bonuses for followers, comments and other activity on the site.

More Writing Tips:

Thursday, February 20, 2014

How Can You Get People to Read Your Article?

Writing article takes time and effort and once you have published your article you wild want people to read your article. Many authors write articles but fail to get many people to read their work. It is frustrating when readers pass your article and move on the other articles. Today we will discuss a few tips to help you get more traffic for your articles so read on.

1) Write a good title
An attention grabbing title is one of the first thing that can help you increase readership for your articles. You should spend some time working on your article title so that it works perfectly with your content and also attracts people to read your article.

2) Keep it short and simple
Today people don't like reading long articles so its a good idea to keep it short and simple. You should aim to keep your article within a few short paragraphs because without it you would find it difficult to build readership. You can use short sentences and bullet points to help your visitors with faster and easier reading.

3) Use appropriate language
You should write an article keeping your audience in mind. You cannot write articles with same vocabulary for adults and kids. They should find your articles interesting and easy to read which will attract them to come back and read your work again and again.

How much a writer will earn in PWG

I do not know how much a writer will earn here in PWG. I know there are some out there who are also like me with their uncertainties in mind. Like me, they just give it a shot and write.

I believe these individuals behind this blogs are all professionals and persons to trust. I have been to different website that published different contents and they pay me according to my written articles. However, there are also plenty of sites elsewhere that will promise you big bulks and will leave you nothing but unpaid works. Those that are earning yet a small time writers like me are behind their successful business are unpaid and “crying”.

Seriously, I hope that this is a start of a long time relationships between writers all over the globe.

It's Time For Me To Give PWG The Attention It Deserves

I have to admit I had a rather slow start here on PWG. Although the news that a new and fresh writing site is ready to take off the world by storm was truly exciting, I didn’t start my new adventure at full speed. I preferred to wait for a while and see the site grow, but I promised myself that I would write my first original PWG post by the end of this week, and here it is. I can finally say that from now on the Preferred Writers Group is officially part of my writing life.
I can’t deny the fact that I am in a position where I find it hard to make up my mind on where to post a new article, and from now PWG is going to make my choice even harder. It will enter a tough competition with several other sites, and especially with FullofKnowledge and Bubblews. Therefore, whenever a new idea crosses my mind and I start to develop it, I also have the difficult task of choosing where to publish the final product. It will always be hard to decide which site should have priority, but I’m glad there are several options to choose from.

I can see that PWG is growing really fast. It will soon have more than 100 members and the blog’s earnings are also going up fast. Therefore I am eager to be an active contributor to the site’s welfare by writing, meeting new people and interacting with them. It is basically the beginning of a new and exciting journey into the wonderful realms of knowledge and communication, and why not, it may become my preferred writing and earning site as well.

At the end of my first original PWG post I want to say hello to all the members of this new and very promising site. I hope we’ll get to know each other better and share our thoughts and impressions as often as possible. Long live PWG!

Post ID Tag : 30177

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Earning Money Writing for Seekyt.com

Seekyt is another great writing platform for aspiring writers. It has similarities to Examiner and other sites that pay based upon page views, but it is quite different in how the money is earned.

Instead of paying a percent of a penny for each page view, Seekyt pays their writers a percentage of ad revenues. However, as page views translate into purchases, there is a direct correlation between page views and earnings.

Seekyt requires original articles of around 250-300 words with the more words the better. Longer articles tend to get more search traffic, which translates into more revenue for the writers.

Seekyt accepts writers from other countrie, but the only way a writer can earn is by incorporating one or all the following ad types into their articles: Google AdSense, VigLink, and/or Chikita. Writers are actually paid by the advertisers, not by Seekyt, so if you can get one of these accounts, you can earn money on Seekyt, no matter where you live.

Seekyt is looking for quality unique articles. Articles cannot be copied, reposted or translated. The BEST kinds of articles to write for Seekyt are product reviews or articles like "how-tos" and "top-tens" that mention specific types of products that can be linked to and sold from your articles.

I like Seekyt because it isn't solely locked into page views. It is a way of diversifying my earnings. I think if it as a safety net, and I have earned well there, especially when I was writing articles regularly each month.

I relied heavily on Goodle AdSense, and then my browser had problems with the AdSense site for many months when I tried to log in. I temporarily stopped writing for Seekyt during that time because I could not check my earnings or get paid. Now I have a bunch of articles already written I am about to upload since I can finally get into AdSense (at least some of the time) again. However, I have been spending all my extra time on PWG and not on Seekyt this week, so I will have to change direction a little to get all those new Seekyt reviews published!

By the way, if you ever see anything you are interested in buying from Amazon on one of my articles, please click on the link to buy it. It won't cost you any more, but I will earn a percentage of the sale.

This is my Seekyt referral link if you want to use it. Be sure and follow me if you sign up. Seekyt also pays bonuses for followers, comments and other activity on the site. Can you see why I like it?

Related:

Earning Money Writing for Examiner.com

More Writing Tips:

Easy Tips For Writing A Good Article

Article writing is a rare skill and although millions of people write articles there are few who can make them interesting and useful. If you write articles but sometimes find it difficult to keep them interesting and useful for your readers you can change all that by following a few easy but important tips. In this article we will discuss some easy to follow tips that can help you to write better and interesting articles.

1) The first and most important tip for writing better articles is to know your audience. You should know the people for whom you are writing and the kind of information that they are looking for. This will help you come up with better articles which connects well with your target audience.

2) You should do your research well before writing the article as this is another important step to writing a good article. When you research on any particular topic it helps you analyze on how different writers have approached the topic and decide on what approach you want to take yourself.

3) Articles should be short and to the point as long articles are generally not very popular among readers. You should also keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Most readers don't have the time to read long articles so the effort may not be worth it.

4) You should also choose the title of your article carefully. This is often the first thing that your visitors see and having an attractive title often helps to get traffic from various search engines.

5) Avoid plagiarism at all cost as this can destroy your reputation as a quality article writer. You can lose readers if they come to know that you are copying someone else work. Plagiarism would also mean your work may never be indexed in various search engines which means no targeted traffic to your website or blog.

6) You should always proofread your work before publishing it on your blog or website. If you don't do it your articles may have some spelling and/or grammar errors which can make it difficult for your visitors to read them. This may have a negative impact on your viewership over time as people don't like to read something which has spelling and grammar glitches.

Article writing is a precious skill to possess but even if you aren't good at it you can easily get better. You can just follow the above discussed tips and it can have a huge impact on the quality of your articles and help you increase your website or blog traffic.

Why Professional Writers Write for Pennies: A History of Recent Journalism Trends

Do professional writers REALLY write for pennies??? Why, yes. Yes we do. We just earn a lot more pennies than those who don't strive to be professional in their writing.

The trick to writing successfully for the web is to BE PROFESSIONAL.

It all started back in the days when print was king. Many of us could earn on average $450 per article writing for major publications in the 1990s. Some writers earned more--much more. Of course, we had to write 1,000 words or more to earn our lofty fee, as well as sometimes produce or pay for professional images, but it was well worth the time and effort.

Then the internet took the world by storm, followed by iPads and smart phones. Large newspapers and magazines--some of which had been around for 150 years or more--began to go out of business.

In addition to writing for several local newspapers and national magazines, I published a local monthly magazine for gospel music in Nashville from 1992 to 2008. I held on as long as I could, but eventually the print version went out of business. It just could not compete with instant news at your fingertips. The web version celebrated 20 years in 2012, and I do earn some pennies from Google ads and Amazon writing for myself, but I learned I could earn more pennies writing for other sites as well.

During the two years proceeding my own paper's demise, all TEN of the publications which I wrote for on a regular business went out of business, so suddenly, there were a ton of very professional writers on the market: writers, editors and publishers competing for fewer and fewer remaining jobs in print. Some went into other businesses. Some lost everything. And some of us learned how to successfully write for pennies. Pennies turn into dollars, you know.

I don't earn as much as I did when I was paid $450 an article... on second thought, sometimes I do. Some months I only published two or three print articles, and some months I have earned over $1000 writing for the web part-time. As mentioned in a previous post, I have been especially successful earning money writing for Examiner.com.

There are definite pluses to writing for the internet. For one thing, it is easier to write for the web. Internet articles usually only have to be 150 to 400 words long as opposed to 1,000 or more for print. For another, writing for several sites I now have my pick of topics and am not locked in to the specific columns I had to write before. In addition, I have chosen to write for sites where I earn residuals as long as I keep writing or checking in, so I am still earning those pennies on all the articles I have written for the web.

The trick to writing successfully for the web is to BE PROFESSIONAL and write about things that will interest more than just your close circle of friends. No one but your mother wants to read what you had for breakfast or how your toaster is working. Sure you can do that on your personal blog if you want, but you won't attract readers beyond your friends that way. If your friends give you enough page views to live on reading what your toaster is doing, more power to you!

You don't have to have an extensive background in journalism to be successful, but it helps to follow basic standards of quality so you can build your brand and your readership.

Here are a few articles that may help.

Writing Tips:

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Why You Should Write Evergreen Articles

Article writing is a great way to make money online and a lot of people make a full time living either by writing articles for clients or for their own websites or both. If you have been doing article writing for some time now you might have heard of the importance of writing evergreen articles. People who are serious about earning income for a long period of time from their articles need to concentrate on evergreen topics. When you write an article always ask yourself a question whether it can give you earnings even after a few years from now. Articles which have good income potential in the long run are the ones which can make you successful as an article writer.

Evergreen articles will continue to bring in views and hits for a long time because the interest in those topics is always there. The information contained in evergreen articles is useful to the reader over a long period of time and does not become outdated after a few days, months or even years. The content of these articles is relevant and useful for readers no matter when they read them.

You should write articles on evergreen topics as this will ensure they get readership which makes your effort and time worth more. Writing on topics which are hot now is perfectly fine but you should also concentrate on writing on evergreen topics to be rewarded with visitors again and again for months and even years.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Show Them What You've Got!

Your writing is an extension of you as a person. What you present to the world is what they will remember about you. I realize this is a subject that is not approached on many other sites, but I feel the need to make this a high priority here.

You see, I am also an editor on Fullofknowledge.com. Our standards there are very high. I do not want to be an editor here, I want you all to speak your mind, in your own voice, but do not hate me if I leave a comment on your article asking you to proofread it carefully.

I do this, not for my benefit, but for yours, and for every writer on this site! We are a team, and teams help each other out. Even though I do not have time to work with each of you one on one here, I still want to see you be the best writers you can possibly be. It is what I love so about editing.

You see, at Fullofknowledge, we don't just publish or decline. Our editorial team works with writers, so that they know where they need to improve, and can learn and grow from the experience. So, if you see me leave a comment about something in your article, please know that I do so with the utmost respect, and with the intention of helping...never hurting.

How you present yourself is important. The words you put forth speak for YOU! Make them the most well chosen words you can find, and you will see your readership grow. Make your subject matter interesting, and they will always come back to see more. Make your articles more readable, and you will have far more readers, and get far more views. Believe me, it is well worth the extra effort!

I have finally decided on the perfect subject matter for my writing here on PWG. I think many of my articles will include helpful tips for my friends in writing! So, stay tuned, if you want to be a better writer, and most important of all...always enjoy what you write, and others will as well!

Creative Commons -- Gateway to Black Hat Copyright Infringement

Will We Be Protected at Preferred Writers Group?

I am reprinting an older article from Bukisa for the Preferred Writers Group in hopes it opens some dialog on whether or not our articles will be copyright protected here. It would be nice to have a notice somewhere on the PWG that all articles are copyrighted by the writers, all right reserved.

Bukisa had so many issues with keyword stuffing, too many links and copyright infringement, they were shunned by Google search and reputable websites considered them spam links. My fears for Bukisa noted below were well-grounded; about a year or less after I wrote this article, the site had stopped payouts. I still can't log in to remove my old content.

Image from Wikimedia Commons/J.J.

Bukisa's Creative Commons -- Gateway to Black Hat Copyright Infringement

Why Bukisa's Creative Commons settings have become an open invitation for black hatters to steal your work

In the past two weeks, Google Alerts has been sending me a constant stream of my titles and quotes from my Bukisa articles appearing on other websites. Bukisa encourages use of the Syndication feature or the Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported so we can "Gain more exposure and more readers, build backlinks to your articles and thus increase your search engine positions = more traffic = more views = more money for you." The Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works seems to offer more protection while still getting backlinks, so many Bukisa writers have opted for that setting.

Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported

If you click the "What is this?" link next to the Creative Commons retting, you learn that Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported means people may copy the article - as long as they link back to the original content on Bukisa. Supposedly those who want to use your work will read the terms which state that anyone is free to copy, distribute and transmit the work and to make commercial use of the work under the following conditions:

Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported Terms of Use

Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

What does "Attribute this work" mean?
The page you came from contained embedded licensing metadata, including how the creator wishes to be attributed for re-use. You can use the HTML here to cite the work. Doing so will also include metadata on your page so that others can find the original work as well.
No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

With the understanding that:

Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Public Domain — Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations;
The author's moral rights;
Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.

Black Hatters Don't Follow the Rules

However, apparently the black hatters are not reading the terms, and many articles of mine on Bukisa, which were set with Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works, have been showing up on multiple websites with no back links and no attribution. Not only that, but the black hatters are back linking aggressively (some might say "spammishly") to MY articles on their sites, so those plagiarized articles rank HIGHER on their sites than the ones I originally wrote for Bukisa. What this means to me is NO INCOME. If people are reading my articles on other sites, I am not being paid for my work.

Interestingly enough, I never found one Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works article that was linking back to a Bukisa article - they were all simply plagiarized. The Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works setting seems to be an open invitation to copy. Apparently black hatters think by allowing some copying via the Attribution-No Derivative Works license, there won't be any ramifications for not providing correct attribution for intellectual property or backlinks to original articles.

Resetting the Creative Commons License

The first thing I did was check my settings and to my dismay, I found some articles had somehow slipped into Syndication mode. This must be a Bukisa glitch because I only set a handful of specific articles to Syndication. The rest were set for No Copying or the Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works. I immediately began to reset all my articles to No Syndication - No Syndication Allowed - No Copying/Altering, but I hit another snag. In my first couple of years on Bukisa, minimum article length was 250 words. Now it is 350 words, so to change the settings on my older, shorter articles, I must ADD ANOTHER 100 WORDS!

The Problem with Rewrites

This presents a couple of problems. One is I already wrote the article, and it is a pain to have to go back and add another 100 words just so I can reset the licensing terms. The second is -- you better believe I am going to get Google to remove the copyright infringing articles, and I hate to alter my original article when I am in the process of sending the links to Google to prove the articles were copied. I contacted Bukisa and explained the problem and received -- ABSOLUTELY NO HELP.

What Can You Do?

Read Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement: Thou Shalt Not Steal for a layman's look at plagiarism and copyright infringement.
Don't use the Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works or the Syndication license if you don't want your articles showing up on other websites and NOT linking back to you. The black hatters are ignoring the part about links, and you are not only losing your work, but you are not getting any backlinks. And Bukisa sure isn't going to go after these black hatters for violating the terms of the Creative Commons - Attribution-No Derivative Works license!
Set Google Alerts for your articles & poems
Visit Plagiarismtoday.com. They have Stock Letters you can send websites that steal your articles as well as contacts and other resources to help fight plagiarism and copyright infringement.
Use the Google AdSense DMCA complaint form when appropriate.
Add your own warning. Now I close all my articles with this:

Thank you for reading and sharing the link to this article. This article is NOT available for translating and/or copying to websites, blogs, Facebook, discussion boards or elsewhere. If you want to share this info, please share the link.

Also see: Earning Money Writing for Examiner.com

Much of this article was previously published on Bukisa with my byline on Jul 9th, 2011.

KD214

Sunday, February 16, 2014

The Importance Of Grammar in Article Writing

Article writing is a special talent which only a few people have and it requires a creative mind and passion for research to be successful with it. There is one more thing which is important for people who do article writing and that is grammar. A good article should not only offer interesting and useful information to readers but should also be easy to read and understand.

Grammar is vital when writing articles and you should try and ensure that your articles don't have any grammatical errors. It is not very difficult to write an article free of any grammar mistakes. English may not be your first language but you can still write good articles which are free of grammar errors. You should just have the passion to produce high quality articles for your readers and this will inspire you to write articles which are free of any grammar errors. If you think you make grammar mistakes with your articles you can read articles from other writers which can help you improve over time and produce high quality articles which don't have any grammar issues.