Intriguing Results of Online Searches

Especially in regards to WordPress.com blog posts.

Photo: http://blackwoodand.com/digital-marketing

When I was setting up my blog, it asked me if I wanted my blog to be found via online searches. Of course! I was blogging to share with the world!

It’s hard to actually tell how many of my page views come in from online search engines. Well, that’s not quite correct. I get the number, but I rarely get to see HOW they’re finding my blog. The analytics software that the free version of WordPress.com uses isn’t great.

In 2015, I had 43 page views attributed to search engines (out of over 2,500 total views), including Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, and live.com. Out of those 43, it recorded these search terms:

Open Submission — Pitch Your Guest Post Ideas

I haven’t been around the blogging world long, but I’ve been around long enough to see that guest posts are quite a thing.

From what I’ve noticed and what I’ve read about them, they have a few pros and cons:

Pros:

• Fresh content
• Different voices
• Less posts for me to make
• More exposure when the poster shares their post on my blog to their followers

Cons:

• The time you spend not writing posts, you spend editing the guest’s post.
• Sometimes you have to be mean and reject peoples’ posts.

Well, at this point in time, I have a hard time coming up with cons.

I, for one, think (as of right now of course) that allowing guest posts is a great idea. We’re a community here, and I want to be able to let other people share their posts on my blog, and vice versa. That way we can find new bloggers to follow, with a beaming recommendation from someone we already do follow.

I think there are a lot of opportunities to be had by allowing for people to guest post.

Everyone is always looking for a way to get their name out there. My blog is not huge by any means, but I’m hoping it works its way up. Someone with a smaller blog can guest post here and get more exposure for themselves. On the flip side, someone with a huge following can guest post here and I can get more exposure when they share the link with their followers.

Look, I think we all get the picture here –

I am opening submissions for guest posts.

Making it Big as an Author

At work today, my coworker made a jab about my lack of progress on any of my writing lately. Part of me needs to be jabbed on occasion.

Not with anything sharp or pointy though. Not the literal jabbing. Please.

We got to talking about how hard it was to really “make it big” as an author these days. The market is saturated with books, and unless you can land publication with a huge publishing house, the odds are definitely stacked against you.

(For the record, I am NOT bashing self-publishing by any means. So please don’t take it that way.) 

It is definitely possible to make it big in self-publishing. It’s just really, really hard. You have to do everything for yourself.

But for many, it’s our only option when it becomes obvious that the big publishing houses aren’t willing to take many chances on new authors.

The chances that your debut novel will make it big time are slim to none.

Monday Musings #8

On #Hashtags:

Let’s talk about hashtags today.

A necessary evil for writers trying to market their work, or for bloggers trying to direct traffic to their site.

I’m old enough that I remember the days when this -> # was a number sign, or a pound sign — nothing else.

More Awards!

So over the past 10 days, I’ve been nominated for 2 awards! I am going to take one post, smash them together, and express my gratitude to my fellow blogger friends who nominated me for these awards.

Snow Weekend

Today I got a snow day from work! Yay!

This is not a surprise. I work at a college where most of the students are commuting from as far as 2 hours away, so closing when we need to is no surprise.

Between Friday and Saturday, they’re predicting 18-24 inches of snow. Now, to some of you crazy northerners, that may not sound like a ridiculous amount of snow. However, I live in the south. I am in the 6 bottles section in the map below (though right on the cusp of 12 bottles, so…). And yes, when I’m not drinking coffee, I am definitely a wine-o. (A cheap wine-o though. Like no more than $15 a bottle.)

My fingers are crossed that I also get Monday off, but I won’t be getting my hopes up on that one. It just depends on how well the city/county does with getting it cleared out. (For what it’s worth, in the past, they’ve been pretty terrible about it.)

I’ve made myself a game plan, and it involves a mixture of catching up on my DVR shows, drinking coffee, drinking wine (I have 3 bottles, not 6. But I’m also not trying to get drunk like that one Saturday…..), playing in the snow, making a snow margarita, begging my dog to please go pee outside, and more than all of that combined, WRITING.

Because what better motivation than the beautiful, serene tranquility of a snow day. Not to mention, the view from my patio is AH-MAZING with the mountains in the background. I’ll share some pictures later! 🙂

So, short post today. Will update a little later with word counts, wine glass counts, and pictures of the snow. Gah. I LOVE snow days!

Happy writing!

A Writer’s Writing Tools

Everybody has their favorite method of writing. Some have a couple. Your preference is not the same as everyone else’s, and that’s okay! We all have our method of doing things. Do what works for you!

There’s desktop computers; laptops; iPads; smartphones; pen and paper; hammer, chisel, and stone. (Did I miss yours? Comment below!)

I think every option has its pros and cons. Let me highlight a few below.

Monday Musings #7

On Distractions (hey! a butterfly!):

I sat down to write my Monday Musings post tonight (it’s 9pm on Sunday as I write), wrote a whole post, and then decided I didn’t want that to be my Monday Musings. So I finished that post, scheduled it, and then grabbed my iPad and pulled up Netflix. I told myself, eh. I wrote a blog post. I’ll write MM tomorrow. 

And I probably would, but I prefer to schedule my posts early in the morning. When people flip through their readers or emails in the morning, I want my post to be sitting there waiting for them. If I wrote it on Monday, I would be lucky to have it posted by lunchtime. Because my Monday morning schedule is wake up at 9:00(ish), do yoga, eat breakfast, drink coffee, go to work. I try not to write blog posts at work, especially now that we’re finally busy again.

So, before I started finally watching Person of Interest season 4, I locked my iPad and picked my laptop back up. I was going to write this post.

“Write Drunk, Edit Sober”

Ernest Hemingway said it best.

Is this sound advice? Probably not. But I guess that’s technically a personal preference. But what I discovered last night while reading through some old iPhone notes is that I should probably not write drunk, ever.

Let me explain why with a poem.

WIP Wednesday: Where I Belong #1

So the first evening of NaNoWriMo this past year, I started to write Where I Belong from scratch, but realized I was too invested in the story, so I chucked that idea out the window and pantsed a new novel (read about that decision here).

I finally reopened the draft of Where I Belong that I started, and have decided to share the first chapter with you all, uncut and unedited.

It’s a little long, so I posted it on my Wattpad account. But upon realizing that you must have an account to view, I also decided to publish my G-docs document. The formatting is wonky on G-docs to me, but maybe that’s just my large computer screen making me feel that way.

Here’s a taste, and if you want to continue reading, follow one of the links at the bottom. If you have Wattpad (or want to create an account), select Wattpad. If not, select Google Docs. 🙂