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.