When Your Payday Arrives

I have been blogging for just over five years now and have written close to 9,000 articles over that time. Yes, that is a lot of writing, but many of those articles were of typical blog length, which means that they averaged about 400 words in length.

When I write off of the top of my head, these kinds of articles can be completed in about 15 minutes, sometimes less. Then again, if I want to make sure that my grammar, sentence structure and even my topic makes sense then it would benefit me (and you) if I spent some extra time crafting an interesting if not compelling piece.

Six Blogs

At this moment I maintain six blogs which means that I supply the majority of articles for each. Three are updated daily, Monday through Friday, while the remaining three are updated here and there. I write for pay on two of the blogs and make some income, not much, on the remaining four.

I maintain four blogs because they involve topics I am very familiar with and passionate about. If I had no interest in these genres–automotive, writing, and Christian/inspirational—it would not be possible to maintain such a pace. Yes, I derive income from other sources, but that is not what I plan on sharing with you today.

Instead, I want to mention a bit of encouraging news for those of you who blog but do not see many results, at least recognition from beyond your peers. Peer recognition is important—I am sustained by people who know me more than those who pass by, but it is rewarding when something you wrote gets attention far beyond your normal circle of influencers.

Toyota Recall

Yesterday, I wrote an article about Toyota’s recent misfortune and published that article to my flagship The Auto Writer blog. The topic is tops in the news, but I also wanted to include a “can’t miss” headline, therefore I titled the article, “While Toyota Flounders, GM Delivers A Fresh Kick.”

No, I am not going to rehash what I wrote (please visit the article and take note of the doctored picture), but I will share with you that it got more than the usual retweets and it was picked up by TheStreet.com where it was included with three other articles about Toyota’s massive recall and gas pedal problem.

The Street is Jim “Mad Money” Cramer’s site and, although I did not get a page one listing, an excerpt of my article and a link back to it is included.

Extra Work

So what helped this article get noticed? Several things, but the headline and picture certainly helped. I also spent about 2 ½ hours researching and writing the article which, although not particularly long, gets to the point in a morbidly humorous fashion.

Humor, by the way, seems to always play out well if handled properly. I am not fond of mocking people or putting others down, instead there is a way to take a tough or peculiar situation and turn it around. I like to believe that I succeeded on all points, thus the beneficial pick up by a top notch site.

Your Payday

I have had other articles get noticed, including several which also brought me work or opened me to other opportunities. But getting noticed by a highly visible website is also very rewarding, something you can achieve too by working hard for your own special payday.

Oh, This Will Take Some Time….

I mentioned last week that I would be back and, yes, I am here. But only for a few moments. I am up to my neck with deadlines this week and next, but I also have to tend to a few simmering fires involving one web site and one blog.

Work Aplenty

Don't cry; it will all work out.

The website issue has to wait because my efforts to move one blog from URL A to URL B is taking me days, not hours to complete. I have discovered that larger blogs with many posts, categories, photos, tags, and what not can be more difficult to move even if you manipulate the .htaccess or php.ini files to import a large WordPress xml file.

Yes, I turned off the plugins first but even then the shrunken file is still quirky. So what I did was to break 47 months of blogging into pieces, sending bits over here and there. Even then, I discovered that some of the coding contained in various posts was presenting a problem which served to remind me to “go light” on the scripting on the new site.

A few of you have wished me well in the transition with one remarking that this sort of move can “cause more problems than what it’s worth.”

I agree!

But sometimes there are good reasons to make a move including several that I am up against:

Old theme – WordPress offers thousands of free themes, but as you might guess many of these do not age particularly well over time unless the designer keeps up with them. Few do, but who can blame them?

I am considering buying my next bunch of themes and using them instead, especially if they are being supported. I do not mind paying for something that is being looked after; Open Source has its benefits but you cannot expect people to do everything for free.

Wacky plugins – Just like themes, plugins do not always make the transition from blog update to blog update. Even when a newer version is released, I have found that they do not always work as well as they once did.

I have had the occasional plugin mess up a blog, only being able to discover which one it was by deactivating all of them en masse and then activating them one by one.

Lousy URL – When I initially started blogging in 2004, I did not have nearly the understanding I have now regarding search engine optimization and related matters. The blog I am moving sits on a site it once shared with another blog. That other blog is the one you are reading now, itself moved here two years ago.

The other blog making the transition will have its own URL which has been around for some time and was pointing to the blog until I started to make the transition last week.

Such Madness!

Confused yet? Welcome to my delirium! At some point everything will work out. Once the blog has been moved, then I will refocus my attention on the website issue and then maybe, just maybe, I will replace a few blog themes elsewhere.