Writers and Editors

To those of us who have made a living doing traditional reporting, writing, or editing, this whole new world of marketing "content" rather than "writing" sometimes feels like crass commercialism. One of the easiest passive ways of making money online, for example, is affiliate programs, where if I send a potential buyer to your site, and they buy, you give me a commission on the sale. This opens up whole new ethical dilemmas for reviewers: Do I recommend X, which is excellent, or Y, from which I get a cut, or Z, which offers a bigger cut? Egads. Do I send a potential book buyer to the local independent bookstore, which is struggling to survive and deserves every author's support? Or to Amazon.com (from which I get a few cents for providing a link to a book that gets purchased, which has mastered fulfillment, and which has a super database--but is behaving like a greedy gorilla in the marketplace)? Or to the author's website, whether or not the author is offering an affiliate fee, because the author will make more selling the book directly than from collecting royalties? Or just provide the name and let the book buyer google for a provider? For writers, who are not usually good marketing people, the options are mind-boggling. What would James Joyce do? And that's just with books, which may be disappearing anyway, as us old book lovers die off.

Here are some links to resources or explanations. For example, if you want to sell a PDF version of your very useful "100 ways to salvage your burnt dinner," you might check out eSellerate or Clickbank, who can handle sales and send you a check every now and then.

The survey and scheduling tools are particularly useful, and for small groups are usually free. With Doodle, for example, you can ask a group of 60 to indicate which of five dates would best suit them for a meeting (plus other kinds of choices). The free basic version of survey software such as SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang typically allows you to create a survey with a few questions and (say) no more than 100 responses, and view the results for a short time. You could use this to collect course evaluations, among other possibilities. For more questions, more complex sorting of results, and the ability to export results and add your own branding, you pay.

Tell me your experiences with these vendors and ways of making money online, and let me know of anyone or anything useful I've left out. I'm going to take recommendations here not from vendors but from writers and editors who have actually used these tools or resources and find them worth considering.

Clearly this needs organizing to make it more manageable, but I won't tackle that until I finish the book I'm writing now!

-- Pat McNees (email pat at patmcnees dot com)

Analysis: Which URL Shortening Service Should You Use? (file under Problems we didn't know we had) by Danny Sullivan offers a thorough analysis of which URL-shortening services are good and bad, in which ways. Of particular interest to Tweeters.

Basics of various social media explained on excellent teacher training videos from Russell Stannard. Includes tutorials on JING, iTunes, Twitter, Blogger, Survey Monkey, Delicious, Glogster. Great website.

Better User Experience with Storytelling (Part 1, Francisco Inchauste, Smashing Magazine). How user experience professionals and designers are using storytelling to create compelling experiences that build human connections. Read more about the UX Storytellers Project here. Then you will probably want to buy the book: Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design by Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks (foreword by Ginny Redish), about the power of storytelling to improve the user experience. Check it out a bit through Frequently Asked Questions.

Bloggiesta, hosted by Natasha from Maw Books, is a three-day challenge to improve your blog. Reading the entries will remind you of things to do to improve your own blog.

Citrix systems include GoToMeeting (for online meetings) and GoToWebinar (webinars for up to 1000 attendees).

Drupal BarCamp 2010. Listen to sessions in audio, including Josh Ward of Volacci on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

File-sharing sites (for sharing digital files too large to send as e-mail attachments, including digital interviews for transcribers)
• YouSendIt (for secure file transfer)
• Dropbox.com (site to store, sync, and, share files online)
• File Shaker
• File Dropper
We've been told about these sites, which are free up to a limit. We haven't personally tested them! You may also be able to use the FTP account that comes with your website host.

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Free encyclopedias

The latest entry in the world of free encyclopedias is Knol, a Google project designed, some speculate, to compete with Wikipedia (see Wikipedia's interesting entry on the subject) and Scholarpedia (like Wikipedia, but with articles subject to peer review), and Citizendium (like Wikipedia but more transparent as to authorship). Other sites Wikipedia compares to Knol include About.com, Squidoo, and Helium.com. Those interested in the subject of accuracy in online encyclopedias may find the entry of Criticism of Wikipedia of interest. Many of us find it useful for a quick take on a subject we know nothing about, though we wouldn't use it as a sole source of information.

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Freemium, a business model in which you give away a substantial amount of a core product for free in order to generate revenue by selling a select few premium products to a small percentage of the freebie audience. Businesses that have used this mode, as discussed in this free e-book include Skype (only 12% of users pay), Flat World Knowledge--see those and other case studies, including that of Paul Coelho, whose books became bestsellers after he made them available for free online.

FTC Tells Amateur Bloggers to Disclose Freebies or Be Fined (Ryan Singel, Wired, 10-5-09, pointing out some gaps and weaknesses in the rules) and here are the FTC Guidelines on the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising

Google Buzz. David Coursey, of PC World, outlines Five Reasons to Love Google Buzz, Five Reasons Not (Yahoo News, 2-11-10).3 Google Buzz Privacy Concerns. Andrew R. Hickey (ChannelWeb, 2-11-10). And Robert McMillan, of PCWorld, reports: Google Buzz Criticized for Disclosing Gmail Contacts (read the comments, too). Ian Paul, of PCWorld provides a guide to protecting yourself: Google Buzz: A Privacy Checklist(2-11-10). (Love the way PCWorld corrects their original article, showing where the erroneous sentence was deleted and the correction made.) Add Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With New Service by Miguel Helft (NY Times, 2-12-10).

Lula's Logic (Seth Godin on vegan ice cream store in East Village as example of why saying less may make marketing sense)

Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scobie and Shel Israel

**The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett, in which you learn that the income may be indirect, not direct

6 social media platforms at a glance Kent Lewis (iMedia connection)outlines differences in demographics, mindset, ideal fit for Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn,Blogs, Twitter, and YouTube. Who you'll reach, and how.

Smashing Magazine has excellent material on website design (including 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines, tutorials, navigation, typography and free fonts.

Websites: Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign (Cameron Moll, A List Apart--for people who make websites)

The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World, in both print and digital (for Kindle) editions. A guide to providing online content, with sections on making site accessible to all and search-engine optimized. Click here for supporting website, with entries on such online concerns as eye-tracking (where readers look first) and user-interface basics.

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RESOURCES FOR DOING BLOGS

RESOURCES FOR DOING PODCASTING • Podcasting Toolbox (Mashable's links to 70+ podcasting tools and resources) • Introduction to Podcasting (Learn Out Loud). What is podcasting? How do I listen to a podcast? • Apple's answers to FAQs on podcasting • How to Create Your Own Podcast - A Step-by-Step Tutorial (Corey Deitz, About.com) • Wikipedia's useful entry and links on podcasting • podCast411 (tutorials on podcasts and podcasting and links to more tutorials) • Audacity (the free cross-platform, open-source software for recording and editing audio) • GarageBand (Mac software used to create music or podcasts) • Libsyn (liberated syndication) -- one stop hosting solution for everything you need to start podcasting, get your podcast in iTunes, become an App. "Cheap, simple, reliable," says one writer (TL). "Begin building your audience immediately." • Podcasting Legal Guide (Creative Commons) • The B&H Equipment Guide to Telephone Interviews (Sam Mallery) • The B&H Handheld Digital Audio Recorders Buyer's Guide (Sam Mallery)

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RESOURCES FOR DOING EZINES

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ONLINE GAMES TO ENGAGE THE BRAIN

Brain Teasers. A series of games (birdwatching, memory match, monster garden, speed match, spatial speed match, color match, lost in migration and chalkboard)designed by lumosity to improve cognitive function by improving memory and attention.

Do you know your states? (an addictive geography game from Jim's pages, which contains a miscellany of goodies)

Hue Shift, a brain teaser from Kongregate, a Flash game site.

Selective attention test (on YouTube) and follow-up, The Monkey Business Illusion by Daniel Simons.

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