The hazards and difficulties of online experimentation

One of the problems with online writing is that one occasionally has to experiement. One encounters a gap on one of the online writing sites, and one wonders why it is there. Is it because no one else sees it? Or no one looks for the information that you think should be there? Or is it too much work? Or not enourgh demand? Has someone tried it already and told everyone else it is not worth doing?

Depending upon my mood, I may or may not indulge my curious nature and write something to fit the hole. Of course, with online writing your definition of success tends to be eyeballs on the page. Often one finds themselves experimenting and wondering how long is a proper amount of time before one calls the experiment an utter failure.

It is a difficult call to make. Google takes time to index things. And if the subject is something that is only occasionally of interest, an experiment today that looks like a total bust can have a hot spot a year or two (or ten) down the line. For instance, this year I got a lot of hits on a state of union commentary I wrote when Bush was in office.

I am quite sure that no one was actually looking for that one; I am positive that they were looking for information about the most recent one that Obama did---one that I did not watch because I got no return from the Bush state of union address. *sigh*

Of course, the reason for the extra hits was the fact that the site that I had it on was being managed by a different company and now had a much wider audience share. Which is another thing that makes experimenting and writing stuff that fits into missing gaps so d*** difficult to decide when it is a success or not.

At the moment, I am kicking around all these questions merely because I am experimenting with trying to figure out why such a hole exists on one of the online pageview sites. The set of articles I am writing are on a special type of astrology (the "born on this day" variety). Based on the first couple of days' results, I would have to consider the experiment a complete bust.

Now, I can't give up the experiment yet. One, I have been writing online long enourgh to know that it is a strange market. Two, I really need to have some stuff like this in my portifolio if I ever want to work with a business or publication that does this type of articles. I figured that I need a sample of thirty days to prove that I can do this type of work.

It would actually be easier to do this type of writing for someone other than a pageview site. After all, most publications who do the daily horoscope routine require a smaller number of words per day. I figure I am having to do four to six times the words that I would have to do for a regular client. Plus my initial math, and yes I had to do math to prepare for wiriting of the set, can be reused---I never have to do the math ever again.

Nevertheless, based on the short term, it feels like I am wasting my time. Only time and Google will tell if that is really true or not.

QoD Selling books about enlightenment

Anyone who sells books about being 'enlightened' should first try that themselves, preferably with some kind of flame thrower aimed at their heads.   
       ----David Shaw (someone on Facebook)

Thanks Jim Logan

Ok, I am going to say something polite about Helium---hey, it could happen!

In the recent discussion about the new publishing rights policy, Jim Logan realized that the only way to keep up on the posts was to answer each person's questions and concerns directly in their own post (by using the edit function). And I would like to thank him for that---it made finding the answer to my concern quick and easy. It also made it easier to find his responses to other people's questions (some of which I was interested in).

(My concerns were about piracy and teaser paragraphs.)

Thank you Jim Logan for your prompt attention to my concerns. Even when I am upset with Helium, you prove to be professional. Thanks.

Helium response to the last Google update

In the last Google update, the search engine perimeters were changed to punish duplicate content. It was meant to down-rank the pages which were just reprinting what other people wrote. Unfortunately, I immediately realized that it was going to penalize everyone (if your work is pirated, then it too is a duplicate---even if it was the original). I also realized that this was going to mean a big change in the online writing envirnoment.

And today, I saw my first indication that what that change in the online writing envirnoment was going to look exactly the way I thought it would.

Helium, as of  March 24th, is now going to take exclusive online rights for one year on all new articles submitted. As always when Helium does a change, there are mixed reactions.

In my case, the reaction was "Well, thanks to Helium making me spend any time I have to write [for them] in maintaining my rating star, and tying any incentive earnings to having a writing star which I do not have, so lots of rewrites [leapfrogs] would be needed...it was going to be a long time before I ever write a new article for the site, and now it is going to be even longer."

Sure, one can submit an article to a ebook and/or print publication...oh wait, most of them have a web process. And there lays the rub. Welcome to the new ugly online writing envirnoment.

Thanks to Google, everyone is going to move towards requiring that all content submitted is exclusive. Soon, we will never be able to reprint any piece of work. Everything that we publish will have to be original content.

But we still going to be penaltized for writing duplicate material because of people who copy other people's material. The front page (the latest seven entries) of one of my other blogs is being posted elsewhere on the web...and I have not been able to do a damn thing about it.

And other thing, I like to occasionally use a paragraph from an article to advertise it...opps, I guess I can't do that anymore either. Welcome to the wasteland...hope that you didn't plan on doing this type of writing for a living.

QoD Elbert Hubbard on self-promotion

Everyone should advertise while they are alive. The man who does not advertise is a dead one, whether he knows it or not. Life is too short for you to hide yourself away mantled in your own modesty.
   ---Elbert Hubbard

Helium is upgrading to four point oh no

Warning: the following is a rant!

Just tried to check my rating stars over on Helium, something that I do everyday. And couldn't.

Helium is upgrading to their 4.0 version (as they are calling it).

I managed to see some of the changes before the site went back into upgrade limbo (5:30 to 6:30 EST)---hmmm, counting on my fingers that announcement does not seem to match the current time.

One of the changes is that they moved the stats for the rating stars. Basically, they have hid it at the bottom of a page (I was in the process of looking for it when the limbo came back). The official answer is that no one wants to be greeted by their low rating numbers first thing on arrival.

Hey, that is the only reason I log into Helium is to check my rating stats. And I won't do that even if I wasn't earning something from a couple of articles to justify the time spent rating every month.

Yes, I will admit that I have more or less quit writing for Helium. I just don't have the time to continously leapfrog articles that are drowning in the ratings because I wrote a general article and everyone else is shouting about the injustices of the world. It is sad to say, but political and religious rants outperform reasoned and neutral articles in the rating process.

One of the biggest changes is that they are going to start adding the date that the articles were created and last updated. On one hand, it is very much needed---I have complained about the lack of dates on articles before (is this recent? or something written three years ago?). On the other hand, I wonder how old (as in written and not updated recently) articles are going to be affected earnings wise.

Unfortunately, I can imagine people just leapfrogging articles (without actually changing a single word or punctuation mark) merely to get a more recent update date listed. I have a feeling that some of my articles have tanked simply because other people continously leapfrog their articles until they found the right set of raters and the article goes higher in the ratings. Let's just give them one more reason to hit leapfrog without making any actual changes, shall we?!

Yes, it is a form of paranoia that I suffer from.

Helium also has introduced a "Needs Improvement" page---a page that shows you the fifteen articles that your rating is the lowest on. For me, this is an useless improvement. All fifteen that are showed are articles that I will never actually leapfrog.

There is a reason I don't leapfrog certain articles and never will. Either they are in the "got a whole penny from the article in its entire existence" or the article is very, very outdated. For instance, "Predicting the outcome of the war in Iraq" is something terribly outdated. And I am not going to leapfrog any of the poetry or fiction I published there---it is not worth my time and energy to do so.

In fact, with the style of writing I do, I am better off spending the same amount of time that it would take to rewrite an article and leapfroging it to write completely brand new article and publish it somewhere else. Sad, but true. While there are good things to be said about this new upgrade (I like the tweet button on every page), the biggest changes are just going to annoy me.

Heaven forbid that my top two earners quit making money on Helium---because I am so out of there when that day comes. Or at least, I will be if I am having one of "those days."

If you want to actually read something that I wrote on Helium, here is a link to an article about Why Count and Length are Important for Helium Articles. Provided of course, that the site is not currently in update limbo.

Quote of the day: Writing and the Sports illustrated Swimsuit issue

A writing assignment for the swimsuit issue is a dream come true for the Sports Illustrated staffer. He grabs an exotic dateline and the guarantee that no one will read anything he comes up with.
---Bryan Curtis