Content Writing Confessions

When I tell people that I am a freelance writer that looks I get are varied. Some people cannot believe that I actually make a living working for myself, and sharing my thoughts on different topics. Other people are curious and ask many questions about the process of it all.

Yet others cannot believe that online content writing is really considered work. Let me tell you writing is writing and as long as you are making money at it is considered work. I do not live in a mansion, and fax my house is a three-bedroom ranch style home. The money that I do make from my freelance writing does pay the bills on this house. I do not receive help for anybody as I do this on my own.

I began writing here of associated content writing articles for the web, 9 months later I moved to over to helium and began writing there. I have just had my second anniversary with associated content, and my helium anniversary was a few months ago. I've also written for a few other websites who pay me to a content. I do consider myself a professional freelance writer. I do make a living off this.

Back in November 2008, I had written an article that appeared in that month's issue of girlfriend-to-girlfriend. This article was about to single women's' guide to preparing her house for the winter. Primarily for the last nine years, I have been a single mom, except for a brief 18 months hiatus when I try to reconcile my marriage. Therefore, in that time I have done a lot of preparing my house for winter so that my heating bills could stay lower. I very much enjoyed writing that article, and to be paid for something that was not really considered content writing made me feel very good.

Back in April of this year, I had submitted a creative writing piece to unsent letters, which is a nice paying market. Specifically it is for those letters that you need to write for the emotional release, but never intended to send out to whomever you wrote the letter to. My letter has not been published as of yet however I do know that it will be published at some point in the future.

On March 4, 2009, I received an e-mail alerting me to the fact that I had sold my first article to an out-of-state newspaper. The Connecticut Post has agreed to publish one of my articles in their weekender issue of their newspaper. This one makes me feel that I have arrived and I am worthy of calling myself a professional writer.

Well I will continue to do the online content writing, because it is good money. I will be focusing more on the articles, which appear in print. I am also continuing to enter short story contest as well as to send my short stories about to be included in print as well as online collections. I am continuing to work on my work in progress and it coming along nicely but it is harder work than I had imagined.

Online content writing does pay and does pay well. As with anything in life, you get out of online content writing, which you put forth. Me I choose to write a lot, because I enjoy it and I love the comments that I got from people who enjoy what I write.

Associated Content Top 100 2009

When I first got official notice from Associated Content staff about my placement in the top 100, I was speechless and this does not happen very often. I am a very vocal person, but as I sat here stupidly pointing to the screen, unable to utter the words I was so proud of my accomplishment. Then I got excited and you could not shut me or my fingers up.

I called my kids, and I even called my parents and told them my news. Top 100 out of almost 200,000 writers from various locations around the world is something to be proud of and I was so proud of myself for this accomplishment.

I keep track of all my page views monthly so it was easy to separate articles that were written in 2008 and copy them to another excel sheet where I added them up. I am sure there are several higher but I got 1,010,677 views for those 567 articles. It paid off for me. SEO works but I do not use it for every article, but the page views soar when I use SEO and it's a popular topic.

1,010,677 page views is an awesome thing to see, and know that they are yours. Whoa. Knowing that 661,123 of those page views came from 48 articles just blows my mind that is the power of SEO and hot topics. As for the other 349,554 page views came from the other 519 article is sad.

Also thank you to my faithful readers who read everything I publish like you Charlie K and others. I would name you all, but I would forget someone's name and I wish to have no more hard feelings. Just know it is a collection of writers and readers from my fan base here.

A huge shot out to all those gaming fans who gave me over half a million-page views in just five and a half months lets do it again this year. I'll keep writing if you keep visiting.

I would like to say thank you  Amber, Alex, and Timothy (,y kids) for your encouragement to me to keep writing and giving me the time to do so. I love all of you.