InfoBarrel reject my first article
People have suggested I join Infobarrel so I did. I unpublished and deleted a hub here about La Guancha in Tenerife and thought I would use it as my first InfoBarrel article. The first problem I ran into was it said I was using a keyword too much. The keyword was roses and I was saying that there were red roses, yellow roses, pink roses, white roses and that I think of La Guancha as the "town of the roses." That annoyed me seeing as the word in question was being deliberately repeated to make a point in the paragraph in question and to change it would ruin the flow and style of my article.
I pressed on and submitted it only to find it had to go in a queue and be approved. After all that it has now been denied because InfoBarrel say it is published elsewhere. I checked and the title, and only the titleand a thumbnail, is published on Facebook where someone else had shared my link but if you click on it it shows that the article doesn't exist.
I go back to Infobarrel to tell them and consult their FAQ re what to do in such cases only to find that the info they give doesn't make sense because I cannot find options that are supposed to be showing in My Articles.
So far I am not impressed with the site at all! I wasted my time laying out an article there that had nothing wrong with it, was of a good length and had original photos!Email staff there directly and tell them exactly what you stated here about it.
Kevin is the fella that should get the message, and he will definitely reply to you in person - the site has some glitchy software sometimes, but you get direct responses from the (just two that I know of) staff when you email them.
I've had several problems there - and always got a very gracious and personable response - and a solution to whatever my problem was.You have to be a little patient with InfoBarrel. So far as I know - JUST TWO fellas run that whole website.
They have glitches from time to time...and because of the limited number of persons and hours...and the continually growing site...it can take a day or two for them to get back to you.
They won't mind if you email them several times.
InfoBarrel also has several persons that make a living ONLY writing there...you can even build an account...and SELL YOUR ACCOUNT to the highest bidder there.
It is sort of like Hubpages ...and also very different.
It is a really good site!That is a very good recommendation and maybe I have been hasty in my reaction there! I will see what they say and how I get on.
Hello Bard of Ely,
I had the same issue with IB when I wrote an article about the meaning of the Moon in the 12 houses of Astrology. They said I was using the keyword Moon too much. I had to use it, the article would have made no sense. I was cutting and pasting from Word, so just kept putting in new capsules, and finally I guess the word count got large enough so the ratio of "Moon" went down.
They also rejected another article I wrote, they said it sounded copied, and it was not. Both times I wrote back, and someone named Ryan got back to me. They got accepted, and the one they thought was copied, I didn't like anyway, I wanted to make some changes afterward. So he wrote me back about a week later to see if I was happy and made the changes, and it was approved. I think that all ends after you have your 10 articles. But it's not like HP, where you can go in and edit all the time, we get spoiled. It goes back in the queque and has to be approved again. But they don't have nasty forums, and people can't write a 10 line poem after you write a long piece you researched, and they don't allow people to write what essentially should go in their diary. Wizzley is about the same. At first your work will be in an orange font, you have to make it the way you want it. So it is harder to get started on both sites. I only have the obligatory 10 pieces on both, unsure whether to write on both or concentrate on one.Hello Bard of Ely,
I had the same issue with IB when I wrote an article about the meaning of the Moon in the 12 houses of Astrology. They said I was using the keyword Moon too much. I had to use it, the article would have made no sense. I was cutting and pasting from Word, so just kept putting in new capsules, and finally I guess the word count got large enough so the ratio of "Moon" went down.
They also rejected another article I wrote, they said it sounded copied, and it was not. Both times I wrote back, and someone named Ryan got back to me. They got accepted, and the one they thought was copied, I didn't like anyway, I wanted to make some changes afterward. So he wrote me back about a week later to see if I was happy and made the changes, and it was approved. I think that all ends after you have your 10 articles. But it's not like HP, where you can go in and edit all the time, we get spoiled. It goes back in the queque and has to be approved again. But they don't have nasty forums, and people can't write a 10 line poem after you write a long piece you researched, and they don't allow people to write what essentially should go in their diary. Wizzley is about the same. At first your work will be in an orange font, you have to make it the way you want it. So it is harder to get started on both sites. I only have the obligatory 10 pieces on both, unsure whether to write on both or concentrate on one.
Bard, I had a couple of articles denied on Infobarrel too. Don't let it put you off - instead, be grateful for the fact that a human being is checking your articles and pointing out problems with them. Maybe if someone had done that on HubPages, you'd be doing a lot better!
This illustrates what I said about your need to understand keywords. Not just ensuring you use a variety of relevant keywords in an article, but also how to use them. These days Google penalizes over-use as much as under-use. The key now is to identify what keywords will help your article to be found, but use them naturally, not excessively. I know in this case you used repetition for effect, but you can't afford to do that either.
I think it is worth pointing out that the article isn't duplicate and see what they say.Well that is saying that a good bit of writing isn't good because the same word has been used several times. I think that is crazy! Many times successful writers use the same word more than once in a short space of text for emphasis or even to make it funny. This is destroying creative writing and artistry. What you are suggesting is that I have to unlearn being a writer who writes artistically and learn to be a controlled writer, controlled by Google rules and policies of websites.
I think that's going overboard - but yes, you've got it in a nutshell. If you're not prepared to take Google's requirements into account when you're writing, you're never going to do well online. Creative artists have always had to "compromise" their creative work to please wealthy patrons or audiences, if they wanted to earn money - so it's nothing new.
I don't write consciously for Google. What I do is write my article, then while I'm editing it, I think about what keywords will attract Google and make sure I've included them two or three times each. If I'm worried about possible over-use, I'll run the article through a keyword density checker like this:
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/
and make sure I don't have any words that go over 4%.
If you were sitting comfortably in retirement, and income from your writing was a bonus, I'd say you could happily ignore commercial realities and write what you want. But that's not where you are, so maybe you need to rethink that attitude.Well don't you think that if you get into a habit of writing to please Google you could end up not writing to please offline publishers and spoiling your style?
Like I said, I don't write to please Google. I write naturally, then look over the article at the end and see if anything needs modifying to improve its chances of pleasing Google.
Even then, I don't think that means the final work is unsuitable for off-line publication - if it is, then you've done it wrong. Changes are usually minor - a few sentences inserted to accommodate other keywords, or a few words changed to add variety. The final result should not be any lower in quality, or sound unnatural.I don't see that as an issue. When I am writing for hubpages I am writing for hubpages. When I am writing my novels I am writing my novels. When I am writing an executive brief I am writing an executive brief. It is all separate.
In terms of Infobarrel, just my opinion but I don't see them as a serious option. You don't have direct access to functions like deleting your pages, they have few staff members and their traffic seems not great. Just my take on it.You're right, in a way, of course. SEO isn't a creative endeavor, it's a deliberate strategy employed to try to get more people to read your stuff. 'Writing to please Google' is really the wrong way to think of it, though - SEO and keyword use is about using Google to try to drive more traffic to your writing. It's really not that bad - though, of course, I'm speaking as someone who hasn't done all that much of it, either. I've really only recently started trying to figure it out.
Try this. Take something you've written over to the Google Keyword Tool, there, and tinker with it a bit.
I can tell you that it was probably the cache that got you. I have been a longtime IB member and know a little about the approval process.
BTW the IB admins always delete articles when requested. They don't always do it right away, as Kevin and Ryan are the only two staff members.I can't see how it can be the cache if Steve used the Google URL removal tool (which he says he did), because this removes the cached version too.
Hello-
I've not tried that site, so I cannot respond directly to the issues with them.
However, on the keyword issue, which "bad old Google" might regard as "keyword stuffing," you might do a simple re-wording of that sentence, along the lines of,
"I think of La Guancha as the 'town of the roses,' for roses are everywhere you look in abundant shades of yellow, red, pink, and white." (etc...)
Best wishes.I didn't have to do anything apart from complain because Ryan from the site approved my article exactly as I had written it! There was nothing wrong with it to begin with!
You know, I went on there to give it a try, and do the same as you - use a hub from here and delete it. I'm still waiting to see if it is approved - but one thing I didn't like was the lack of "spell check" it had. When I mistype something on here, the little squiggly line comes up. I didn't have that luxury on that one.
Another thing I came across - I had a hard time deleting my hub. I feel like I put so much effort into making it look just right and everything, I had a hard time getting rid of it! I like the way the set up is here, and I feel like you don't get he same thing on InfoBarrel, though it might be a little early in the day for me to judge.IB does have spell check. It's the little ABC icon.
I don't delete.. I simply unpublish the hub, then request that Google drop the URL from search and cache.. has worked for me so far.
Dale, how do you do that? I have been using the Removal tool and before doing so have been unpublishing and deleting here. The problem I had getting accepted at InfoBarrel was never explained. Ryan from the site mailed me to say he had approved it which suggests there was nothing wrong to start with which is what I was maintaining!
I suspect that is what Dale means, and that he is using the Google URL removal tool as well because this is effectively requesting Google to remove the URL from search and cache. so long as the original article is unpublished this will work as Google can't 'see' it any more (it doesn't need to actually be deleted). This means that if in the future you wanted to republish it at the original location e.g. here, you could simply unpublish the article from where you had moved it to, and republish the article at the original source without the hassle of all the copying and pasting again.
Well, in that case you have just taught me something else, Cindy! I have been unpublishing, deleting and publishing again. It is quite a bit of work laying it all out again. It has been sad seeing all the comments go but I have got used to doing this.
I actually unpublish, copy the content over to the new site and save it unpublished, delete the original article and then use the Google URL removal tool for the original URL. As soon at it confirms the URL is removed I hit 'publish' on the new site. Technically I could simply unpublish the original and leave it here unpublished as Dale apparently does, but I hate clutter, so like to have a nice 'clean' account screen to look at rather than it being full of unpublished articles. Another thing to consider, is that whilst technically it isn't important, having unpublished hubs can drag down your average 'Hub Score' (not Author score), because over time their score seems to drop, and as they are part of your overall list of hubs your average score drops accordingly. This is only a problem if you actually care what your average hub score is of course, but if you do you might want to stick to deleting the originals.
I'll stick with what I am doing. I have got used to seeing them go. This year has been one for losing things: I have lost a toenail and teeth so losing comments on hubs is very unimportant by comparison! And as you know I may be about to lose a PC or a monitor too. I am dreading switching off and then finding I have no access tomorrow.
We'll keep our fingers and toes crossed then!
I'm like Dale - I unpublish, copy the content across and that's it. I don't delete, because the unpublished version here is a handy backup copy - and helps me keep a record of where I put it! I change the title to indicate where I moved it to, e.g. "Detox Diets moved to Zujava".
By the way, if you move Hubs to your blog, you can move the comments too. It's a bit of extra work, but I've done it for some of my Hubs that had a lot of good comments.Is there a nifty way of doing that, or is it a question of copypasta, copypasta?
copypasta I'm afraid.
What I do is log out of my blog, then copy and paste all the comments over. Then I log in, approve and paste in my replies where appropriate.
OMG... what was that mouse smiling for as it disappeared into the HP forums
I decided not to go with Infobarrel a few months ago, because it looked to me like their TOS gave them the right to hang onto, republish and use your work forever, even if you closed your account and decided to move your content elsewhere. Since many sites have a "no duplicate policy," that could effectively mean that anything you put on Infobarrel can never be deleted and posted somewhere else if you find the site's not working out for you.
I'm not 100% sure I interpreted their legalese correctly. But if I'm right, Bard, it may be for the best.
I don't write for Google, but I often (although not always) write for a web audience. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one!
There is another kind of traffic that doesn't involve search engines at all: social media traffic. Unfortunately that requires marketing and psychological savvy, as you must be able to write stuff that people love enough to keep coming back for more, and your writing has to be so good that they feel compelled to share it. Since there's an infinite amount of web content out there for people to browse, it takes real work and exceptional content to go the social media route. Personally, I find it more difficult than SEO.
Yet I think that talented writers like Bard might be able to leverage the social media angle and build up a following. Bard, could you stomach the Twitter or (I say, pinching my nose) the Facebook route to put yourself out there and build up a readership?You are right, Greekgeek - if you read their TOS it looks as though they won't delete your work. But in practice, they do. I guess you have to decide whether you trust them to continue to ignore their own TOS!
I already use twitter and Facebook a lot. In fact a lot of my traffic comes from those sites.
Hi Steve, I may be wrong here, but reading your original post it sounds as if you only unpublished your article here, and then immediately republished it on the other site. If this is the case you didn't give the article time to de-index with Google, so most likely it would show as duplicate content from Infobarrel's point of view (even though the original article is no longer published). If this is the case you should use the Google URL removal tool to completely de-index the article here before you republish it elsewhere. This speeds up the de-indexing process no end (I have a feeling I may have told you this before but could be mistaken). To de-index an unpublished article in about 24 hours use the URL removal tool here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools … mp;rlf=allCindy, I use the removal tool on all unpublished and deleted hubs and it is good enough for Wizzley. I failed at InfoBarrel cos someone at FB had shared a link to the hub in question and the title and a thumbnail image still show there. I can't remove them cos it's not my site. If you click on Read more it takes you to a page saying this article doesn't exist. I have told all this to InfoBarrel.
Can you ask the FB person to remove the link for you? I'm sure they wouldn't mind.
I couldn't see any option of doing so. I thought it was funny in a black humour way because people tell me that getting links shared by others is the way to go and now that someone has it is causing me a new problem!
Hi Steve,
That is really odd then, and I really can't see how a FB share of a link and a thumbnail can trigger anything, after all, people have thousands of backlinks across the Internet that they often don't even know exist, and these will at the very least include the link, even if they don't include an image.
Did someone tell you this was the problem?Yes, InfoBarrel said they had denied it because of this. I copied the title and searched and soon found it in FB as I said. This is what Infobarrel said: "Reason for denial:
Articles on InfoBarrel must be UNIQUE and may not currently be published elsewhere online, in whole or partially. All content must be the original intellectual property of the writer."
They went on to say "You can find your denied article on your My Content page under the Denied Articles tab." but that doesn't make sense either because there isn't such a section for me with anything in it.I am probably missing something here Steve so forgive me if I seem a little dense, but if all they said to you was what you have quoted above i.e.
"Reason for denial:
Articles on InfoBarrel must be UNIQUE and may not currently be published elsewhere online, in whole or partially. All content must be the original intellectual property of the writer."
That doesn't appear to mention the FB link share anywhere. Was there something extra they said that referred specifically to the FB link, or is this what you assumed they meant by the above statement they made?
It is of course possible someone has stolen your article at an earlier date and published all or part of it elsewhere. The best way to check for this is either by using Copyscape, or by taking random and unique pieces of text from the article and putting them into a Google search box and see if you get any results that will tell you where it has been copied, (don't rely just on the title to do this as they could have changed the title, use actual sets of sentences from the article, and try a few different ones).I assumed that if they were saying it was already published that I could find out where and so I searched and found it on FB as stated. This is the title: La Guancha is a town in the mountains of Tenerife
On that basis I am now certain that it cannot be the FB share that caused you the problem and it sounds more likely your article has been copied by someone elsewhere. A link and a thumbnail is not duplicate content as if it were everyone would find their articles flagged as duplicates because of the numerous people who would have used this option to share an article they liked, pinned it, etc. Backlinks are a common marketing tool, and this too would raise duplicate issues if you used them, or anyone else had recommended your article by linking to it on their website. It just doesn't add up that your article being shared on FB was the cause of your duplicate content flag. I would definitely look at Copyscape or Google search (using the method I described before) to try and find any stolen copies of your article.
But surely HP would have found it if it was copied? They are quick enough to tell me my work has been copied usually!
It depends when it was copied, it could have been copied just before you unpublished it here anyway. It is also possible HP didn't pick up on it immediately as they only run the 'copy' checker periodically because apparently it is very expensive for them to use it.
One other possibility is that if you wrote several similar articles about the same place you could have used certain phrases in each article without consciously realising you were doing it. If on top of this you referred to some aspects in similar ways they might see the article as a 'spun' version of the original and flag it on that basis. I doubt this is the case, but it is a slight possibilty.Well, yes, I do have another article on the place. I often do more than one but start from scratch.
The HP copy checker is very unreliable. If you run a check yourself, you'll find lots of Hubs copied that the checker hasn't found.
HP has always said that checking for copied Hubs is our own responsibility. Their copy checker is only run occasionally because it's very expensive to do (and I notice it's running less and less often these days).Well I have too much to do already without checking if my hubs are copied as well. That is my main moan about all of this that we are being expected to carry out a tremendous amount of work, tweaking things, updating things, changing things, moving things, etc and for little if any rewards. I seem to be spending more time than ever on all this and at the same time making less than I have ever done. There is something very wrong with all this and I find myself wondering whether I would be better off looking for work offline because I don't seem cut out for getting paid for it on!
If you can get work writing off-line, it always pays better than writing online. If you're lucky enough to have that option (most people who write online don't), that's where your energies should be directed.
When you're an online writer, you must be far more than a writer. You must be editor, publisher, marketing director, copyright manager. If you look at people who are successful at making a living online, it's 10% writing and 90% administration, marketing, copyright protection etc etc.
That has always been the case - I remember Misha explaining it to me, way back when he was so successful on HubPages. However, when HubPages was at its peak, it was possible to make a bit of income without all the extra work - it didn't even really matter that much if your Hubs were stolen, because your version of the article would still rank higher. I was oblivious to how many of my Hubs had been plagiarised for a long time: it was only after Panda, when we were all trying to find reasons for the loss of traffic, that I discovered just how bad it was.Yes, it is really bad and I don't find it inspires me much. I mean HP used to be a source of inspiration because I was proud of my work here and was making at least enough to pay some bills each month but now it just seems to be a lt of daily work that isn't writing as such and for no guarantee of anything! At the same time I am well aware that the people running these sites are making money out of our work.
Cindy, don't you think this is a lot of work none of us should be doing and very unfair on the writers? I do ,and have relied on HP to tell me when my work is copied. Even then I can't always get the hubs taken down elsewhere. I did go through a taking action phase not so long ago though and even had some guy moaning on his blog that I had had the nerve to ask him to stop sharing my article about s Spanish singer. It was me in the wrong for telling him to remove my work he had stolen! It seems whatever you do there are problems and some people like the one I just mentioned really annoy me!
I totally agree that we shouldn't have to do this 'police work' ourselves, but HP stubbornly refuse to help us on this in spite of many complaints by writers, simply repeating the same old Mantra about how it is our work and therefore our responsibility to protect it from theft.
You refer to this other guy sharing your work, was he sharing the entire article, or was he sharing a a few sentences of it along with a link back to your original article? The former would be very annoying and definitely needed taking down, but the latter is great, because it's a true organic backlink that can bring other people back to your site to read your stuff and therefore help you earn money.
I really wouldn't bother approaching the site directly to get them to take down copied work (unless it is a content farm type site), I would go straight to Google and file a DMCA (if they are using Adsense Ads) or at least get the copied version removed from search results if they aren't using Adsense Ads. Both of these actions can be achieved by completing a simple form on the Google site. (Links below)
http://support.google.com/bin/request.p … ;dmca=text
http://support.google.com/bin/static.py … page=ts.cs
The Copyscape link which you will find worth bookmarking is:
http://www.copyscape.com/Yes, he took my article and copy and pasted it but did give a link to where it was from. HP still weren't happy with that.
I had some woman coped my text and put it with a photo of a flower at Flickr. I commented there asking for it to be removed and gave her a week to do so before I filed a complaint. The annoying thing there was she had stolen all my traffic for the hub!In that case he was bang out of order and naturally a link back to your article is not much consolation, plus HP would not be happy with that as you discovered. He could have at least compromised and reduced the copied content to a few sentences of text from the article followed by a link back to your original. As for the woman, this is also bad, but I suspect even if she hadn't removed it, a direct complaint to Flickr would have resulted in them removing it for you. All in all the Google method using the links I provided is the quickest and most effective way of getting copied content removed in my experience.
I find that even when you have got them taken down the warning copyright symbol is still displayed by HP on your account page. Sometimes I forget which ones I have already dealt with.
I don't know if it works for the 'c' symbol, but you could try running the 'Check for Violations' scan at the bottom of your account page. Theoretically it should remove any resolved violation notifications from your account list, although I can't say for sure it will for the 'c' symbol. Otherwise do what I did previously and email the HP team directly using team@hubpages.com and tell them the copy has been taken down and ask them to remove the 'c' symbol for you and republish the hub. Usually they republish it with a black banner at the top (only visible to you) saying it has been granted an exemption to the duplicate content penalty and has been cleared for publication. Don't know if you can see it clearly, but it looks something like this:
It doesn't work for hubs with the copyright symbol warnings. I have tried before. Yes, maybe I'll go through again and send some mails to team HP! I get so fed up of all this though. As I have so often said it all used to be so much simpler and we got decent results!
When someone steals your work, the best thing (as Misty says) is to check to see if they have Adsense on their blog, then report them to Adsense. Don't muck about sending emails to the site owner, unless you get a feeling they've done it innocently and you want to give them a chance.
If they don't have Adsense, report it to Google but I've found that to be less successful. In that case, I send an email to the site owner but I make it an official-sounding DMCA notice.
Once you log in to InfoBarrel, you can find the "denied articles" by selecting "Account," then "Content," then "Denied Articles."
InfoBarrel is a great site. But there is a learning curve there -- especially with the stricter standards.Thanks for this info! Someone from InfoBarrel has just asked me for the link from there.
If that's the only problem, then it's easily fixable. Change the title, and change the first line or two (whatever is showing on Facebook). Then nothing is duplicated and Infobarrel can't have any complaints.
De-indexing effectively removes the cache, which is one of the reasons it is so important to de-index articles before republishing elsewhere.
I tried infobarrel as well but my it ended up as a bad experience. They seem to be so picky about keyword use and will deny a submission even if your article flows perfectly. Good luck on your future endeavors.
Dailytop, as I said, they are picky about keyword use for a reason - because so is Google these days. They're just trying to ensure your article makes money for you and them.
- Will Apseposted 12 years ago
0Infobarrel has been trending down steeply for over a year according to Alexa. If they are still stuck in the stone age of counting keywords as their quality control, it is not surprising.
Certainly, they don't look a good bet: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/infobarrel.com
Set that graph to a max timescale and it is depressing.
Frankly, Bard, you might as well put the pages on Wizzley. You won't make much money but at least the pages exist in the way that you want them to exist. And you are helping to get the site going (hopefully).
My one other piece of advice is don't take any advice in these forums too seriously.Will, I get advice in other places too and over the past few months have been getting loads. It can get all very confusing and people give opposing information. One will say do this and another will say don't do that! I am a writer. I know very little about all the ins and outs of Internet marketing and sadly whatever I do I don't see much change in my stats, traffic or income, though I have been on the front page at Wizzley which was nice, and I do find it easy to use unlike Squidoo with its interruptions and WIPs and Infobarrel which I have failed at so far!
Maybe, just try red, yellow, pink, and white roses. It is just as effective and smoother.
For a few bucks a month you can go thru go-daddy hostgator,or any other web company and set up you own professional blog. This will give you total control and you will reap all the rewards without sharing your profits with a parent company.
After all this fuss Infobarrel have now approved my article and there was nothing wrong with it to start with!
If you made your own website, then you wouldn't need anyone's approval!
I have websites using webs.com and find them very hard to work with. I also have a Bard of Ely site but someone else created it and I have to ask her to change things which is far from ideal. I had a personal site back in the UK eight years ago but I lost that when I moved here because the site was hosted by ntl. What I discovered with that site was it didn't matter how good what I posted on there was if it didn't get the traffic. I used to be able to count on getting good traffic here but not any more.
Bard, I'm disappointed you don't mention your blogger blog - which is the one out of them all, which I'd say you had a chance with.
http://bardofelysays.blogspot.com.au/It isn't getting much traffic. That is my main problem - lack of traffic anywhere!
I know, and it's for the reasons I stated in that earlier post. Writing online means you must be prepared to:
- edit your work to enhance its visibility in the search engines
- actively protect your copyright so copied articles don't steal your traffic
- promote your work on social networks and on forums etc
All those things take time - more time than the actual writing. Not to mention the amount of time needed to learn how to do all of those things effectively in the first place (which means doing research instead of just picking up odd bits of advice on these forums). If you're not able to put time and energy into those activities then it's unlikely your online work is ever going to do much better than it's doing now.
I'm getting the message that you don't have the time to devote to those things - so I would strongly suggest that if you have the choice, you should switch your attention to offline writing. Move your idled Hubs by all means, but it should be a low priority as it's not likely to be a real money-making activity.Well, I seem to be doing an awful lot of messing about that produces little income whereas if I get proper jobs I can get decent money eg I had 120 euros for doing some proof-reading recently and 100GBP for an article in Kindred Spirit. While I am doing all this online activity with revenue sharing websites I am not looking for proper work and end up basically earning a very disappointing couple of dollars a day here which is crazy!
InfoBarrel looks a good site but it hasn't got me off to a good start finding that there was nothing wrong with what I submitted in the first place! Ryan from the site approved it. That reminds me of this place where perfectly good work gets idled!That's what I'm trying to tell you.
I was under the impression you didn't have many options to earn income, which is why I've been trying to help you make the best of your online work. However, if you have the connections to get "proper jobs", then there's no question what you should be doing - forget the rev-sharing stuff and concentrate on getting those "proper jobs".
By all means, move a Hub or two every day to some of the other sites, because they may bring in a few pennies here and there, and every little helps. But that's about the level of effort you should be putting in.
Advertise. You can advertise your blog in magazines like the enquirer,the sun, and so on this will expose your blog to millions of people, believe or not offline advertising is cheaper than online advertising and it brings in traffic by the boatloads, try it and see what happens.
I have no intention of paying to advertise and have no money to do so even if I was willing!
I like you. Therefore...
Next time you get an adwords coupon code, keep it. Use it. Set price at one cent. You will get execution. Seriously. Probably because ad is thrown out into never-never-ad-land. Whatever. It works. Traffic will be directed to you. If worthy, it gets social media'd. If not, who care's?Where would I get an adwords coupon code from? Do they come in mailouts? I had one from them a week or so back and threw it out thinking it was Google trying to get me to pay them?
I had the same reaction at first, then I saw a post by Sunforged and realized what it was all about.
The frustrating thing is, there's no way to get a voucher, other than to wait for them to send you one (in an email). It may be months before they send you another one.
What they do is offer you a certain amount of free advertising - it may be $5, $25 or even $100. You'll have to give them your credit card number to get started, and you're going to have to navigate the maze of how to set up your ads. Once you've got that done, you have to watch your account like a hawk, so you can stop the ads before you've used up your voucher, because it doesn't warn you - it just starts charging your credit card.
The thing is, though, that there's no point using advertising like that for Hubs or articles - it's another reason why it's so much easier to promote a stand-alone blog, or an ebook.I sincerely believe that Steve (Bard) will not be someone who has a credit card Marisa, so this would probably not have been a viable avenue for him anyway.
I was thinking the same thing as I wrote the post!
Then I think I was right to ignore it because I have been caught with getting money charged to my account before by other firms when I haven't cancelled on time so now I don't give them access. It is very easy to lose track because time flies and I am always very busy and I would hate to think I was paying Google.
O.K. It will cost you around two hundred to three hundred bucks to advertise in the sun,the globe,and the examiner. These mags will expose your blog to over twenty million readers worldwide.Think about the possibilities! Once you place and ad in one lets say the SUN your ad goes in all three they are owned by the same company. How many people out of twenty million will see your blog? How many will like what they see and come back? How many will tell others? Sometimes you have to dive in the water with the sharks if you want to eat.
I have seen how badly advertising can do in the past so am very wary about paying for it! Many people pay for ads in papers and are throwing their money away? I don't have $200-300. It is all I can do to pay my rent and bills!
Years back now, and still to some degree, I have been hoping to find my way into the regular earners, but then just as my money was starting to increase here Google messed it all up for me and it has been downhill ever since. My options off these sites are not good but I do find jobs from time to time that pay amazingly well in comparison with the pittance I get here and from other websites.
That's right, and that's why it's so important to give those outside jobs priority when they arise. And ask yourself whether you might be better off using your time to actively chase those opportunities, instead of faffing about moving articles around.
Are there magazines you could approach?Yes, there are plenty of magazines out there but getting them to accept a proposal is not so easy, however, if successful you can count on getting decent payments. I have had payments of 250 GBP for single articles in the past.
Blogging is great and it is fun, I do it because I like it but I have real projects that I do. Think about all the time you put into writing just for pennies. You could right a book and sell it on amazon.
I have two books on Amazon already, one by a proper book publisher (O-Books) and available as a paperback and the other as an Amazon Kindle book.
@ Steve, is your ebook in the KDP Select program, because many people report greater success there? Apparently (according to Amazon) sales can be as much as 77% higher, but you do have to unpublish any digital versions of the book you have for sale elsewhere, e.g. Smashwords, Barnes and Noble etc. If you opt to give it away for 'free' for a couple of weeks or more it can also help in the long run because you are more likely to get reviews, recommendations, shares etc, and when it is back to having a 'price' again you will therefore make more sales. Worth thinking about, and definitely check out the info on the KDP select program on Amazon. I intend to use this when my ebook is ready to publish.
No, Cindy, it isn't! I am sick of giving things and work away for free so usually ignore anything I see asking me to! It seems to me that a lot of organisations and businesses expect people to want to work for nothing!
I have, however, added my book to the KDP Selection though now, so thanks for the idea!
Trouble is Bard, no of us can actually help you. We can only tell what worked for us and what didn't work for us, or pass on advice we ourselves have been given. Sounds like you are very tired and frustrated and have got yourself into a negative place where you are rejecting all the suggestions being offered here.
Why don't you choose one or two from one of the experienced hubbers that you know and trust, and run with it for a while? Keep at it and see what happens?
If you are into the Law of Attraction, you will never get to where you want to be by getting frustrated and dwelling on what you haven't got.
And unfortunately, if its the Google game that you want to play, you are going to have to stick to their rules to succeed. I don't want to write like that either, so have turned my attention to other projects. But its your choice.
As you are so knowledgable about plants, Tenerife history and culture etc, coulld you run talks or workshops for tourists and expats? Hook up with the local tourist organisations, womens groups, expat groups etc. You could have your books for sale and cards giving your HP profile for them to read your articles? Become a local celeb?I am tired and frustrated, yes, but have done and am doing lots of thing suggested: I have moved over 90 hubs to Wizzley, I have made a start at InfoBarrel, I have monetised all my articles at Wizzley, I have just taken Cindy's suggestion and added my Kindle book to KDP Select. I don't believe in the Law of Attraction so can hardly work with it though I have written about it here before - I have an idled hub on the subject to move - and more recently at Wizzley having found out where it all started which is in the Bible. Jesus was recommending it in so many words in one of the Gospels.
I have given two well-attended talks at the English Library here and yesterday gave a guided walk in some parkland for library members. These events produce some money but I need a lot more and far more regularly. I am a local celebrity but a very poor one! Most of my problems are due to lack of money and have been for a very long time. They went away when I had a proper job in a school in 2009 and regular payments in my bank account. I didn't have to worry about paying the rent or phone bill then and felt a lot happier in myself. Sadly I lost that job because the woman I was replacing came back from maternity leave.Bard,are you also using viglink with your wizzley articles. On one of my pages there I'm earning quite well from viglink.
I signed up for it but don't know how to use it.
I didn't at first but it's actually straight forward. Say you're promoting a book from amazon, but have decided that you want to add more selection, or a book that the viewers in Britian could buy. You simply go to the other website, Amazon Uk or ebay or whatever, find the additional books that you want to promote, copy and paste the url and add it to your article as an intext link.
They have affiliations with 30,000 merchants- and there's a look up tool where you can check to see if they are affiliated with a particular merchant. If not, you can email them ans ask them to approach the merchant. So far, I've just used viglink for ebay, but I'm being paid per click, not per sale. Yesterday I had 7 clicks!
Humagia has written a Wizzle about configuring your viglink account and make sure all the settings are correct. I found that really helpful.Thanks for the info! I have mainly been posting Amazon ads and some Zazzle ones because I thought they were more visual. I will have to look into this more.
You can use both, Bard. You can still use the Amazon capsules for the visual aesthetics, but add intext links to other products and merchants, too.
If your monitor packs up altogether, can you not hook your PC up to your TV?I don't have a TV. I will have to buy a new monitor!
It's a shame you live thousands of miles away, I have a perfectly good modern TV that you could have had and it'd be ideal. I was going to suggest ebay for a second hand one, but by the time postage is paid.
Right now I am just trying to keep my PC working and monitor so I can get online and work. My monitor seems to be packing up!
Thank you for the kind offer if the situation was different on this! I will just have to see how things go but if I disappear for a while you will know why!
No problem, I hope you get your monitor sorted out.
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