As of Janus (Public Domain)
Triond
Triond put up ten of my articles in January, for which I thank them. My earnings from Triond articles have dropped, but I expected they would. There’s a considerable decrease in casual Internet use and blog reading after the Christmas holidays. People have to get back to work. Moreover, I believe past management mistakes and editorial misjudgments at Triond decreased their status with search engines. Advertisers are sure to ask for discounts in 2012.
At the end of last year, I sent out a Happy New Year message to my Triond friends to see who was still active on the site (and who reads their Triond messages). A surprising number of my friends and readers did not return the message. Some have left the site, and some are too busy writing to read the material of someone else. I pruned the list of some folks who have disappeared and taken their content down and of others who submit more than five articles a day. The quality of the work of the latter group is horrible. It’s mostly stuff run through machine translation or article spinning software. Next I identified some other writers who might read and comment on my work in the future and made friends with them. I look forward to writing more for Triond websites.
Even a casual examination of article earnings and unique views on Triond shows that some types of writing don’t find an audience there. For example, my articles on Fidel Castro and Cuba garnered a total of 30 views last year. I would have done better had I written those articles on a t-shirt with a marker. I don’t write those articles to make money, but to take part in a conversation. I wrote three pieces on Cuba for ExpertsColumn this month and none for Triond. I hope a few more people read them there. My reviews of short films are another example. No one else reviews short films on Triond, and I can see why. Triond readers don’t read reviews of short films. I don’t know where to put future short film reviews.
ExpertsColumn
I put up three articles about Cuba on ExpertsColumn this month. I haven’t had any feedback, but I can embed these articles other places, and I plan to do exactly that, starting with this blog.
Picatopica
Posting articles often on this blog increases the number of views. This blog isn’t monetized, but I can re-post my articles on Gather.com for a few “points.” When I google marqjonz, the screenname I use for my writing, Google displays the pictures on Picatopica quite prominently. I plan to post more photos.
Amazon.com
Reviews on Amazon.com are uncompensated. Nevertheless, my Amazon postings show up higher on Google’s list than my other writings, so Amazon reviews are a good value as a promotion. I only posted one in January, a review of Grillet’s “Babbage and the Buskers,” but I plan to write more reviews for Amazon.com next month.
Goal
For January 2012 I’ve achieved my writing goal of putting 10,000 words of original content up online. This piece pushes me over the top: 10,355 words.
