Tips and Tricks After 300 Pages on Wizzley

Since I first began writing online, veterans further down the road have been unanimous in saying the same thing - it takes time before you see a return on your hard work.

Some of those projections make depressing reading.  No-one makes anything in their first year.  It can take two years for cents to turn into dollars.  It can take four or five years before you're making anything like a living wage.

Of course, there will always be the lucky ones, who fall upon the right topics at the right time, or who bang out the 'sales' articles for a quicker return.  Yet the latter risk losing the long term rewards, as items fall out of fashion before maturity is reached.

From this melee of dire warnings and advice, it was Jerrico Usher's voice which rang most clearly for me.  "You're not writing for today," he told me.  "You're writing for this time next year, or the year after." 

You couldn't get much clearer than that!  By keeping his words in mind, you are looking forward to a time when your work will have settled into the search engines, and gained enough readers to have sprouted organic back links.  Moreover, it's a great check to ensure that your article is evergreen.  There's many years' earning potential in those.

On a psychological level, not expecting any return for a year or two will also stop you feeling despondent, when the riches haven't rolled in immediately. If they do, then that's a bonus worth cheering.

Incidentally, this whole thing about having patience is true.  I've been amazed just recently how many of my articles have suddenly come to life - in terms of readership and traffic - after months of sitting there doing nothing much.  It's like the internet only just found out about them.

It's been the million dollar question since I first arrived.  Forget about stats and party games, are you making any money? 

The bottom line has to be the concern of even the most passionate writer.  We might love to get our words out to a waiting cyber-crowd, but we also need to put bread on our tables. 

For those just starting out, it looks like easy money, right up until the moment when it patently isn't.

A single article, or a handful of articles, thrown out to the masses has as much chance of funding your retirement, as your teenage kids have of recording the world's best selling record.  It could happen.  Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Justin Bieber seem to do alright.

But the reality is that it takes time to see some return on your online writing.  It can take months. It's the hugest test of faith ever to keep on churning out the articles, and hoping that it'll all be worth it; and one day earn hard cash.

Moreover, this is fertile ground for paranoia.  What if it's only the site's owners and a few favorite writers who make the money?  What if you're simply the industry's equivalent to cannon fodder or slave labor?  Doing the work and then being thrown on the scrap heap, before gaining your reward.

I had the faith and I lived through the paranoia.  The money is now trickling in.  Note the trickle.  It's gone from months of zeros, through to cents.  Then the single digit dollars began to appear.  A couple of months later - BAM!

Seemingly overnight, old articles suddenly started making money.  It's not mega amounts, but it's in the low double figures and it's steady.  I won't be buying a tropical island any time soon, but it's all enough to prove to me that the old wisdom was correct. 

Write often, write well, don't give up and it will come.  Just like everyone said all along.

One of the wonderful things about Wizzley is the massive choice of sub-categories in which to write. 

As the website is barely over a year old, there is the opportunity to be here at ground level. Today's Wizzley's authors are the ones with free rein in filling them all. Imagine how that will look, once the rush begins in earnest (as it already has).

However, lonely Wizzles in a category aren't going to do much for your bounce rate.  I've already advocated writing at least two, but now I've worked out how to do even better.

All articles posted here retain their same URL wherever they are located.  You can constantly move them from category to category, until you find the perfect fit. Plus that huge choice of categories means that you have plenty of places to park them.

My tip is to find yourself a center of operations, then blossom out from it.  It's like letting a mighty tree cast out a seed for a sapling.

There will be a general, catch all category, which allows you to corral appropriate Wizzles until you have a fair number.  Ten is good for Twitterfeed.  But amongst their number, you could add two or three which narrow down the field.  They will mature nicely amongst those generally related articles.

But they will also form the basis of the colonization of another sub-category later.  Once moved, they will take with them all of the readers attracted by the article's maturity in search engines.  That's a much better foundation than a lone, newly written Wizzle in a pioneer's category.

There may have been some puzzled faces when I placed a Wizzle about women in the American Civil War into the Victorian Era category.  It's not that it doesn't fit, but US History may be a much better fit for the topic.

I agree, and one day The Women Who Fought in the American Civil War will indeed be moved over there. But today is not that day. 

The reason is that I already have plenty of established articles in the Victorian Era category.  They are gaining maturity and helping me develop my authority as a history writer. By being grouped together, readers attracted by one article may easily find the others too.

Meanwhile, I have nothing else in US History.  My lone article about it is more likely to be read in the lesser category, than in the perfect fit.  Over the weeks, I'll gradually add to them, until such time as I can move them over en masse.  By then, they'll have achieved their own maturity and will transfer that into their new and better location.

This can also work in reverse, as I recently discovered. 

This Halloween, I wrote many, many articles about the different costumes available for your spooky events.  At the same time, I was so interested in Bigfoot, that I'd filled that category here on Wizzley almost single-handedly. 

The two naturally merged into Halloween costumes for both Yeti and Sasquatch. They were placed into the Halloween costumes for adults section.

Still there was some crossover.  In writing the Yeti outfit article, I realized that the Bigfoot category did not include one about this legendary creature.  So I wrote it.  Linked up with the Yeti costume article, in the high visibility sub-category of Halloween in October, it did very well.

But then the holiday was over and hits began to fall off.  I judged it time to take 'Halloween' out of the title, and move both the Yeti and Sasquatch costume Wizzles over into the Bigfoot area.  The result astounded me.

Alone of all my Halloween costume Wizzles, these two not only didn't lose internet traffic after the big day, but gained more readers!  Moreover, every one of my Bigfoot and Sasquatch articles registered the same boost.

That's what I call a successful reverse seeding!

Every guide you will ever read about making your living by writing online will state the same thing. It's not easy money. You will have to work hard to carve your niche in the market.

I've done this myself. How often have I written, in these tips and tricks, that you should write often and write well?  It's still great advice, but it can go too far.

There is a thin line between pushing yourself with motivational techniques, and setting yourself up for failure.

People are always telling me that they admire my stamina on Wizzley. They wonder how I can create so many freshly written articles, so consistently and in so short a time.

The answer is that I'm approaching it as a gamer. I level up with these articles. I hit my targets and run to the next.  But first I have to create the levels to achieve.  Nintendo never did pair up with Wizzley to do it for me.

So here are the motivational targets, which just stacked up and up:

• Every fifty articles, I stop and take stock.  You are reading the results of that one right now.
• Every sixth article conforms to the relevant aspect of the Triple Goddess.
• I've set myself a challenge of having written 366 articles on Wizzley by December 16th 2012, exactly a year after I arrived here.
• In order to maximize 'sales' articles, I'm following the advice of most of Wizzley, when they point out that holidays and festivals are huge selling times.  Hence the dozens of Wizzles for Halloween and Christmas, and yet another for Bonfire Night.  Such things have deadlines, and I'm horribly aware that those are months in advance.
• I've joined a Pinterest paranormal group, which has created a huge amount of exposure for my ghost stories.  So much pressure there to keep on producing them.
• On the subject of promotions, there is the Twitterfeed technique, which does fulfill its promise of increased internet traffic. But optimization involves at least ten articles in each sub-category.
• The massive milestone of 300 articles required something special, so I planned it in advance. A lot of research and work went into my gift to myself and Wizzley.  As a historian, I really wish that it had existed from the moment I walked into this community.  Writing About History on Wizzley exists now.
• Also as a historian, I have the entire of time and space to plunder for articles, at least where the human story is concerned. Which means that I'm constantly looking ahead for major historical anniversaries, then writing about them in advance of the commemorations.
• Posting two articles in a row triggers the competitive spirit that has me wanting to beat Jerrico Usher at Wizzley battleships. 
• The look of my profile is a concern. I try not to have too many 'sales' or 'information' articles in the same rows.  Mix and matching for the win!
• And I'm also keenly aware that Wizzley has a competition running right now, which I haven't contributed even one article towards.

Add all of these things together and the questions need to be asked - What ails thee?  Whom does it serve?

Because way beyond targets now, it's a big ball of pressure, which needs to be pricked.  I've got to the point of writing what I 'should' instead of what I want to.  Such an approach is fatal, when you're already under stress.  Plus a little silly too.  I had an article planned in my head, which would have gone out a week ago, had I not been sticking so strictly to my schedule.  Another Wizzley author wrote about it yesterday, gazumping me to the post.

When motivational techniques and a gamer's approach become a heavy weight of 'must' and 'duty', then they are no longer doing their jobs.

The trick is to strike a balance.  Write often, write well indeed, but not to the point of burn out and tears.  It's a trick that I'm still in the process of learning.

Every Wizzley author checks their statistics.  Even if we weren't after the confidence boost of knowing that there are actually readers, we'd be looking for clues as to what we should be writing about.

I've kept the stamina levels going, on a daily basis, by checking out those ordered by seven days; and picking a number.

Originally it was ten, then fifty.  Now it's 100.  I count the number of articles that have attracted over 100 readers in one week.  Then I rejoice and pat myself on the back, if they amount to more than ever before.

Currently my record is twenty articles with over 100 readers in a week.  I don't beat myself up if that falls below, but I congratulate myself heartily if it goes above.  A new entry for the Wizzley hiscores.

That huge Reddit spike is still making things difficult to see, so let me show you that in close up.

I'm also indebted to Lobobrandon for showing me HOW to zoom in on certain periods in your stats.  You click on one date, hold your mouse's left-click down, then move to a later date.  The whole chart zooms in!

That takes us from the day after the Reddit spike and, as you can see, things are bubbling along quite nicely.

In my earliest weeks of writing online, I was told that consistently attracting 1000 unique readers a day means that you've made it.  I've since been told that this was just a throw-away remark and shouldn't be heeded too closely.  But it stuck in my mind.

This period, I came so close!  Five or six days in a row would be over the 1000 mark.  Then I'd have a 'mere' 952 readers to break the run.  I've yet to get there for a whole week, but it's close.  So close.

Right now, I'm averaging between 800 and 1100 readers a day, which sounds wonderful to me.

It's all still moving on up!  Wizzley is good for internet traffic and it's getting bigger all the time.

If you're not already here, then I most definitely do recommend the place.  You can sign up for Wizzley here.