Yep, still a bad blogger. Sorry about that.
I did manage to put together a guide page to my Western Civil War series. It seems that the Yahoo pay scale is by length, because the guide is the longest thing I've written for them, and they paid me $3 up front, rather than the usual $2. So that's something.
But not enough.
At this point, I've made around $26 writing for Yahoo, which has all been from upfront bonuses. I've achieved 850 or so clicks, so I may eventually make it to my first 1,000, at which point Yahoo will generously give me...another $1.50.
So yeah, the Yahoo thing isn't working out. But hey, I did complete the Western Civil War series, so that's something at least.
The big question is, of course, what next?
It might be time to start getting serious about writing a novel. Let's see if we can make that happen.
(Yeah, I know, doomed. But what do I have to lose at this point? And when will I have a better chance?)
Showing posts with label Civil War Battlefields. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil War Battlefields. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Working for Yahoo, Part XII
Wow, two weeks since I've blogged about my writing and a month since I've said anything over at After Hours. I'm a bad blogger.
To be fair, I've been busy, but over all, it's not been a great couple of weeks in the writing realm. I spent a week working on a project only to have the hard drive on my desktop die the final death and take a week's work with it. I've spent the last week and a half trying to recover from that, but it's slow and painful going.
Today's lesson? Backups!
In other news, the next two articles in my Civil War series are up, Chikamauga and Shiloh. You may recall that I had two articles rejected for re-editing. These were the ones. Back when I talked about it a couple of weeks ago, I said that I'd be a good little writer and do what I was told.
Yeah, well, screw that.
The complaint that got them kicked back to me was that they "needed sourcing." Even though those had been the fifth and sixth articles I'd submitted in the series and the first four had sailed through without a source to be seen....and that five more had been published after that hadn't needed it either, I resolved to "give the client what he wants." So I spent a bunch of time to add links to everything that could possibly be a source to the Chikamauga article and re-submitted it.
A week later it was rejected. You want to know why? "Too many long links."
I swallowed my curses, deleted all the sourcing I had done and then resubmitted it exactly as it had been the first time, along with the Shiloh article, which I'd never gotten around to fixing in the first place. And guess what happened?
(Well, since links to the published articles are in this very post, I suppose you don't really need to guess, do you?)
In short, the Yahoo editing process is terrible. The comments they make when they review your stuff are so ambiguous as to be worse than worthless, and when you try to follow them anyway, a different editor bashes you for the changes. There are apparently so many editors out there who don't communicate with one another that there's no fixed standard for submissions at all. Ergo, the only sane strategy is to write what you like and then keep submitting it until you get accepted. It's a cynical procedure, I grant you, but no less cynical than Yahoo itself setting up a no-win scenario for writers trying to do as they're asked to do, is it?
To be fair, I've been busy, but over all, it's not been a great couple of weeks in the writing realm. I spent a week working on a project only to have the hard drive on my desktop die the final death and take a week's work with it. I've spent the last week and a half trying to recover from that, but it's slow and painful going.
Today's lesson? Backups!
In other news, the next two articles in my Civil War series are up, Chikamauga and Shiloh. You may recall that I had two articles rejected for re-editing. These were the ones. Back when I talked about it a couple of weeks ago, I said that I'd be a good little writer and do what I was told.
Yeah, well, screw that.
The complaint that got them kicked back to me was that they "needed sourcing." Even though those had been the fifth and sixth articles I'd submitted in the series and the first four had sailed through without a source to be seen....and that five more had been published after that hadn't needed it either, I resolved to "give the client what he wants." So I spent a bunch of time to add links to everything that could possibly be a source to the Chikamauga article and re-submitted it.
A week later it was rejected. You want to know why? "Too many long links."
I swallowed my curses, deleted all the sourcing I had done and then resubmitted it exactly as it had been the first time, along with the Shiloh article, which I'd never gotten around to fixing in the first place. And guess what happened?
(Well, since links to the published articles are in this very post, I suppose you don't really need to guess, do you?)
In short, the Yahoo editing process is terrible. The comments they make when they review your stuff are so ambiguous as to be worse than worthless, and when you try to follow them anyway, a different editor bashes you for the changes. There are apparently so many editors out there who don't communicate with one another that there's no fixed standard for submissions at all. Ergo, the only sane strategy is to write what you like and then keep submitting it until you get accepted. It's a cynical procedure, I grant you, but no less cynical than Yahoo itself setting up a no-win scenario for writers trying to do as they're asked to do, is it?
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Working for Yahoo, Part XI
So, I got my first couple of rejections from Yahoo. To be precise, they turned down two of my Civil War articles saying that I need to cite my sources. Which is odd, because they didn't ask for that on the first four articles in the series...and they didn't ask for that in four more they published in the same series that had been submitted after the two that got refused!
Puzzling, to say the least.
I can only hypothesize that Yahoo has a ton of different editors, and that the two articles that I submitted on the 20th that got rejected went to one who's more of a stickler for the rules than the one who got the four I submitted on the 23rd.
Nevertheless, one of the rules for being a good writer is "Give the client what they want." So, tempting as it might be to revise one and re-submit the other unamended to see what happens, I shall swallow both pride and curiosity both and do as I am bid. That's the job.
In other news, as I mentioned, I have a bunch of new articles up. Starting off with four new Civil War articles here:
Tupelo
Stones River
Kennesaw Mountain
Brice's Crossroads
What's interesting about these is that they're the first battlefields in the series, well except for Fort Donelson which was the last stop on my trip last March, that I haven't actually visited. I'm basically just summarizing what I know about the battles, backed up by Shelby Foote and Wikipedia, and pulling relevant travel details from National Parks sites.
Why yes, I do feel like a contributing member of society, why do you ask?
The thing of it is, most people interested in going to these battlefields are almost certainly ending up somewhere else other than Yahoo for that information. But if Yahoo is willing to pay me to mold that content into a few hundred words on their site, who am I to argue? I'm not copy and pasting, and you'd have to go to two separate sites to get both the history of the battle and the travel information, so the pages I'm writing are more efficient, if nothing else.
Finally, I also have a review up of Murder for Two, a cute hour and a half long musical about a murder with fifteen characters and only two cast members.
Yes, I actually went and saw it, just over a week ago, in fact.
You can give it a glance here.
Puzzling, to say the least.
I can only hypothesize that Yahoo has a ton of different editors, and that the two articles that I submitted on the 20th that got rejected went to one who's more of a stickler for the rules than the one who got the four I submitted on the 23rd.
Nevertheless, one of the rules for being a good writer is "Give the client what they want." So, tempting as it might be to revise one and re-submit the other unamended to see what happens, I shall swallow both pride and curiosity both and do as I am bid. That's the job.
In other news, as I mentioned, I have a bunch of new articles up. Starting off with four new Civil War articles here:
Tupelo
Stones River
Kennesaw Mountain
Brice's Crossroads
What's interesting about these is that they're the first battlefields in the series, well except for Fort Donelson which was the last stop on my trip last March, that I haven't actually visited. I'm basically just summarizing what I know about the battles, backed up by Shelby Foote and Wikipedia, and pulling relevant travel details from National Parks sites.
Why yes, I do feel like a contributing member of society, why do you ask?
The thing of it is, most people interested in going to these battlefields are almost certainly ending up somewhere else other than Yahoo for that information. But if Yahoo is willing to pay me to mold that content into a few hundred words on their site, who am I to argue? I'm not copy and pasting, and you'd have to go to two separate sites to get both the history of the battle and the travel information, so the pages I'm writing are more efficient, if nothing else.
Finally, I also have a review up of Murder for Two, a cute hour and a half long musical about a murder with fifteen characters and only two cast members.
Yes, I actually went and saw it, just over a week ago, in fact.
You can give it a glance here.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Working for Yahoo, Part X
So a couple of days ago, I had two more articles posted by Yahoo. They were more of my Civil War series, talking about the Battle of Pea Ridge, and the Siege of Vicksburg. The thing of it is, they actually got posted on Saturday the 21st, while I didn't Tweet or Facebook about them until Monday the 23rd. In the interim, I let them both go unannounced over the weekend to see what happens. Also, I figured I'd get a bigger bump by mentioning them on a Monday, instead of a Saturday.
And a funny thing happened. The Pea Ridge article did nothing at all. Indeed, it only got 6 hits in total on Monday when it got a little publicity from me, and nothing since. The Vicksburg piece, on the other hand, has been averaging 9 hits a day, with or without my pumping it up. Vicksburg, of course, was a crucial battle in the Civil War, and is much more likely to be known by people than the relatively small battle that was Pea Ridge, so those numbers make a certain amount of sense.
So, once I saw how those numbers were going, I did the obvious. I wrote up a similar article on Gettysburg, as a start to be "Travelleing the EASTERN Battlefields" series. If a moderately well known battle can draw in much better hits/day than anything else I've done, how about the most famous battle of the war?
I also finished off the Western Battlefields set, so I've got nine Civil War articles in the queue awaiting approval. A couple of those, like Chikamauga and Shiloh are of big and reasonably well known battles. Others, like Stones River and Brice's Crossroads, not so much. But I am very interested to know how well they'll all do, and whether the success of Vicksburg is an aberration, or if the bigger battles lead to more hits.
And, just to keep things fresh, I've also got a review of a little play I saw on Friday and some commentary about last night's Bulls game. This last one could go either way. Its a time sensetive piece, in that it won't make any sense if it goes up after the Bulls play Game 5 on Thursday. But if they do accept it quickly, it may be able to get me a ton of hits quickly.
We'll see.
And a funny thing happened. The Pea Ridge article did nothing at all. Indeed, it only got 6 hits in total on Monday when it got a little publicity from me, and nothing since. The Vicksburg piece, on the other hand, has been averaging 9 hits a day, with or without my pumping it up. Vicksburg, of course, was a crucial battle in the Civil War, and is much more likely to be known by people than the relatively small battle that was Pea Ridge, so those numbers make a certain amount of sense.
So, once I saw how those numbers were going, I did the obvious. I wrote up a similar article on Gettysburg, as a start to be "Travelleing the EASTERN Battlefields" series. If a moderately well known battle can draw in much better hits/day than anything else I've done, how about the most famous battle of the war?
I also finished off the Western Battlefields set, so I've got nine Civil War articles in the queue awaiting approval. A couple of those, like Chikamauga and Shiloh are of big and reasonably well known battles. Others, like Stones River and Brice's Crossroads, not so much. But I am very interested to know how well they'll all do, and whether the success of Vicksburg is an aberration, or if the bigger battles lead to more hits.
And, just to keep things fresh, I've also got a review of a little play I saw on Friday and some commentary about last night's Bulls game. This last one could go either way. Its a time sensetive piece, in that it won't make any sense if it goes up after the Bulls play Game 5 on Thursday. But if they do accept it quickly, it may be able to get me a ton of hits quickly.
We'll see.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Working for Yahoo, Part VI
Well, I've got some money back now. Granted, its only $2, but it is money. So I guess I'm officially a professional writer, if only by the narrowest of margins.
That $2 comes from the Up Front fee for my Civil War Battlefield article about Wilson's Creek. That was part of a trip I took back in March to a number of battlefields. Since the first one paid out, I guess I'll do the rest soon.
I also accepted, wrote, and got published on the same day an Assignment from Yahoo about my Summer Reading List. Its not bad, if perhaps a bit obvious in a couple of cases. I did think it was interesting how quickly they got it and published it, especially since I've got a couple more articles in the queue that are still awaiting approval.
Something that is annoying to me is that they suggest putting up a Contributor Photo. Which is fine, but every time I try, it bounces and I'm stuck with the default blank slate. Its getting on my nerves, and I don't know what I need to do to make it work.
That $2 comes from the Up Front fee for my Civil War Battlefield article about Wilson's Creek. That was part of a trip I took back in March to a number of battlefields. Since the first one paid out, I guess I'll do the rest soon.
I also accepted, wrote, and got published on the same day an Assignment from Yahoo about my Summer Reading List. Its not bad, if perhaps a bit obvious in a couple of cases. I did think it was interesting how quickly they got it and published it, especially since I've got a couple more articles in the queue that are still awaiting approval.
Something that is annoying to me is that they suggest putting up a Contributor Photo. Which is fine, but every time I try, it bounces and I'm stuck with the default blank slate. Its getting on my nerves, and I don't know what I need to do to make it work.
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