Category: Business of Writing

How’s your blog doing? Top 5 things to measure and why

Business of Writing

by Robin Houghton, @RobinHoughton

Are you a blogger who likes to stay on top of blog statistics? Do you regularly check Blogging-for-Writers_US_smwhich sites are sending you traffic, or which posts are the most popular? Do the stats affect the decisions you make about your blog?

For professional bloggers, monitoring the numbers is crucial – they need to know what’s working in order to do more of the same, and not waste time on blog posts and blog content that isn’t ultimately earning them money.

However, not everyone takes a systematic approach to measuring their blog’s performance.  Most of us get excited to see visitor numbers rise, or a particular post get a lot of comments. Positive statistics can be encouraging. But monitoring the stats can easily become either addictive (checking too often and stressing about it) or overwhelming (what to do with all these numbers, and what do they mean?)Continue reading

Surprises and Updates

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Last week I opened up a crime novel translated into English from Norwegian and saw the logos in th20141209_175410e picture to the right. It startled me because I’d never seen a sponsorship before (even one like this, which is sort of indirect).  I wasn’t sure what to make of it.  Have y’all seen this type of thing before?  It distracted me, but I don’t know if it distracted me only because I’m a writer and noticed it.  And I wondered…what if writers were being offered corporate underwriting or sponsorship directly?  Would it have an effect on your content?  Is this something we might be hearing more about?Continue reading

The Ultimate in Networking

Business of Writing, Motivation and the Writing Life, Tools for Writers

by Alex J. Cavanaugh, @AlexJCavanaugh  Insecure_Cover

While writing itself is usually a solitary venture, everything else we need to accomplish as authors is not. We need input from critique partners, advice on publishing, assistance with marketing, and encouragement. To accomplish that, we need to network with others.

There are many great ways to connect and find other writers: blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Sometimes we’re lucky and we find a group of writers. One that is active and networking with one another. Perhaps it’s a growing group that’s spreading to other platforms. That’s a big plus, as with a large group, we can make a lot of quality connections.

When I first began writing, it was just me. I wasn’t online and I wasn’t involved in any writing groups. It wasn’t until I signed my first contract and was forced to venture online that I realized what I was missing. Those connections are so important!

I’m fortunate to be involved in what I believe is the ultimate networking group – the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. Connecting writers through several platforms and with a hashtag of #IWSG on Twitter, it’s swelled to over two thousand members in just three years. And we have four ways for writers and authors to connect:Continue reading

Going from ‘Pantster’ to Outliner

Business of Writing

by Elizabeth Craig, @elizabethscraigWriter Unboxed 2

I loved the organic, ‘pantster’ approach to writing.   I followed the genre-determined general structure  (meet victim, meet suspects, question suspects…) and then happily made up each story as I went along.

This worked really well until I started writing three books a year…a book each for several different series.  Then, apparently, I was juggling too many balls at once and I had to give myself more of a plan to follow.

I’ve got a post up on Writer Unboxed, which is a great resource for writers if you’re not familiar with it.  My post covers how and why I changed to outlines and what I learned from the experience, analyzing my results.  Hope you’ll pop over.

The Kindle Scout Program

Business of Writing

by Alan Orloff, @alanorloffGuinea_Pig_eating_apple

Thank you, Elizabeth, for hosting me on your fabulous blog!

A few years ago, we had a guinea pig for a couple of weeks. It (I never checked if it was a boy or girl) used to make an odd squeaking noise, and I couldn’t tell if it was excited or stressed. These days, I know exactly how it felt.

That’s because my suspense novel, RUNNING FROM THE PAST, is among the first wave of books in Amazon’s brand spanking new experiment, the Kindle Scout program. Yes, I’m one of their guinea pigs.

Here’s how it works:
Continue reading

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