Valentine's Day 2011 for DeHaan Services: Writing
Mike DeHaan
My first task is to review and respond to a previous client, with a bid for a new project. I love it when clients ask for more!
It took about an hour to research and submit the bid for 20 articles.
I updated some minutes for a non-profit board, and also researched how their web page is doing in SERP (Search Engine Result Page), as well as in Alexa and other site ranking tools. The usual answer is "poorly", although, it is Number One when searching for the name of the site or its top headline. Let us be thankful for small mercies.
I drafted and posted a new article to Environmental Graffiti. It may take a day or two before it is published; then I can reveal it to the world. This article is an experiment: my recent "Chocolate Vs Carob" article is doing well, so I used some key words that may have been strong triggers for that site. Let us see what happens to the new article.
Speaking of chocolate and carob: the Suite 101 article has had page-views from Reddit/food, but only one up-vote and no comments. With no down-votes, I suppose I am doing well enough; but I would really enjoy a response such as received by The Simple Logic of Hawking and Mlodinow's "The Grand Design" : 22 up-votes and one down-vote. (Sigh).
Most of my Squidoo lenses have enjoyed an uptick in rank. Part of the reason may be that I just updated them on the 12th. Another part may be that large numbers of other lenses were flagged as "inactive". I really have no idea how to make a high-ranking lens, other than to put far more content into them than seems worthwhile.
On the other hand, one of my fellow writers proudly announced, on Facebook, that she had just made her first revenue on Squidoo. The lens is earmarked for charity, so she personally did not benefit financially. However, it was the first sale through her lens. So hope may still arise from time to time. Her lens rank was not too high, so someone must have been persistent or lucky to find her lens.
I added a news reference to my "serious" e-book, which is currently in pre-pre-draft form. I also finished chapter 2 of the fantasy fiction e-book. It is almost amusing to bring my own difficulties, as a writer, with assigning names in my fiction...into the story itself. "We call our village XYZ", someone finally says. "No, it would be more accurate to say you do everything you can to avoid calling your village anything other than 'the village'!", shouts the exasperated questioner.
It took about an hour to research and submit the bid for 20 articles.
I updated some minutes for a non-profit board, and also researched how their web page is doing in SERP (Search Engine Result Page), as well as in Alexa and other site ranking tools. The usual answer is "poorly", although, it is Number One when searching for the name of the site or its top headline. Let us be thankful for small mercies.
I drafted and posted a new article to Environmental Graffiti. It may take a day or two before it is published; then I can reveal it to the world. This article is an experiment: my recent "Chocolate Vs Carob" article is doing well, so I used some key words that may have been strong triggers for that site. Let us see what happens to the new article.
Speaking of chocolate and carob: the Suite 101 article has had page-views from Reddit/food, but only one up-vote and no comments. With no down-votes, I suppose I am doing well enough; but I would really enjoy a response such as received by The Simple Logic of Hawking and Mlodinow's "The Grand Design" : 22 up-votes and one down-vote. (Sigh).
Most of my Squidoo lenses have enjoyed an uptick in rank. Part of the reason may be that I just updated them on the 12th. Another part may be that large numbers of other lenses were flagged as "inactive". I really have no idea how to make a high-ranking lens, other than to put far more content into them than seems worthwhile.
On the other hand, one of my fellow writers proudly announced, on Facebook, that she had just made her first revenue on Squidoo. The lens is earmarked for charity, so she personally did not benefit financially. However, it was the first sale through her lens. So hope may still arise from time to time. Her lens rank was not too high, so someone must have been persistent or lucky to find her lens.
I added a news reference to my "serious" e-book, which is currently in pre-pre-draft form. I also finished chapter 2 of the fantasy fiction e-book. It is almost amusing to bring my own difficulties, as a writer, with assigning names in my fiction...into the story itself. "We call our village XYZ", someone finally says. "No, it would be more accurate to say you do everything you can to avoid calling your village anything other than 'the village'!", shouts the exasperated questioner.
The Final Glimpse of Suite 101 Articles from the Past
Amish Bedroom Furniture in Cherry Wood by steve-and-diane
Checking my Reddit results reminded me to resurrect this feature. This is also the final installment; this brings me up to date for all my Suite 101 articles.
Three of today's articles come from my cluster about Mennonites. The other relates to a topic which I expected to have significant page views; indeed it has done rather well on that score.
The Clean Style and Quality Manufacturing of Amish Furniture continued my attempt to cash in on the semi-annual rush of online searches for furniture and appliances. It also tied in with my mesh of Mennonite articles.
How the Amish Split from the Mennonite Anabaptists deals with both history and religious beliefs.
Introducing Mission Furniture and the Mission Style derived from the "furniture" mesh, which indirectly came from the "Mennonite" mesh. The word "mission" refers to Spanish Catholic missionaries working in California and Central America.
How to Download Music Legally, Safely and Cheaply was a real departure from my other articles. It also led to a scathing comment about what types of files cannot possibly contain viruses; I actually had to do further research to provide a decent response.
In a long list of new learning experiences, today I also learned that Suite 101's URL link dialog box has a useful feature buried in the fourth tab: to put the "hover" text. This is good because it provides a feature for people curious about what the link may do. From an SEO perspective, it may also help as an additional key for the search engines.