Generally speaking, I see myself as a freelance writer. This is what I do, and it is safe to say that I wouldn’t trade this job for any other. But with that being said, I have become addicted to blogging, internet marketing, and internet business as a whole over the past six months. Even though I have several projects in the pipeline right now, this blog is definitely one of the most promising.
There are several reasons that I am confident that ChrisBlogging will continue to move forward with success. First off, the blog is moving in the right direction, month in and month out. I may not be making huge amounts of money, but that is not my main concern at this time. Simply put, I want to continue to build quality content and traffic. In time, both of those will begin to help when it comes to monetization.
If ChrisBlogging is to succeed in the future, several changes need to be made. First and foremost, a unique design is necessary for a number of different reasons. Mainly, a unique design will set ChrisBlogging apart from the crowd, while also helping as far as branding is concerned. Additionally, more monetization methods will be opened up with a new design. I have been working with a designer for the past week, and am excited about making my new theme live sometime in the very near future. In fact, I am going to give a preview very soon so that advertisers and potential contributors can get on board.Â
Another important aspect of future success is the continuation of quality posts. While I have only gone without a post one day since starting this blog, I want to ramp up production very soon. With so much to say about freelance writing and blogging, two posts per day would be much more suitable. Of course, this will hopefully lead to more traffic.
All in all, as long as I continue to post quality articles and help readers, I will feel like this blog is a huge success. And I don’t plan on changing either of those things in the near future.
One of the biggest issues of a career in freelance writing is finding new jobs. Not only can this be difficult due to the competition, but many of the leads that are floating around are “dead.†What is a dead freelance writing lead, you may ask?
I categorize a dead lead as one that has been posted for several days, and really offers no hope of converting into a job. Even though you may still want to apply for a job a few days after going live, your chance of getting a response is quite low. The reason for this is that most freelance writing job posters get bombarded with emails within minutes of adding their job to a popular website such as Craigslist or Freelancewriting.com. In the past I have posted smaller jobs on these sites, and over the course of two to three days received more than 50 emails. As you can imagine, the pool for the hiring party to choose from is quite great. This is why I say that a lead is as good as dead after a couple days.
Unfortunately, there are some leads that start out dead because the person posting the job has no intention on hiring anybody. If you visit a bidding site such as GetAFreelancer, you will see this time and time again. One of the oldest tricks in the book is for somebody to ask for a sample on the topic that they are going to “hire†you to write about. This allows them to get samples from several writers, in many cases 10 or more, and then never hire anybody. In turn they can collect a large number of unique articles without having to pay for them. And since every freelance writer is trying to win the job, the quality of the samples are usually good. There is nothing wrong with sending a past sample, but writing one just to have a chance at a job is a bad idea. More times than not, those asking for these types of samples are trying to get articles for free.
There are a lot of dead freelance writing leads floating around the internet. But remember, this does not mean that all leads are a waste of time. As you become more comfortable as a freelance writer, you will be able to quickly determine which leads to follow up on and which leads to ignore.
Although I do not spend much time considering the PageRank of this blog, it has come to my attention that Google is in the middle of an update. Since this blog is new, it is still at PageRank 0 at this time. Is this going to change sometime in the near future?
By scouring the blogosphere for a few hours this morning, I came across several posts by bloggers who are using the iWebTool Google PageRank Prediction tool. From what I read, this tool is pretty accurate; being correct 9 out of 10 times for the most part.
Since it only takes a few seconds to use this tool, I gave it a whirl. It is showing ChrisBlogging as having a Current PageRank of 0. The predicted PageRank, whenever this happens to occur, is 4; which is quite good for a new blog. The accuracy is shown at 87.9%, and the backlinks number is showing 3,342.
If this tool ends up being accurate, I will be ecstatic. When it comes down to it, a PageRank of 4 is sure to increase search engine traffic, while also giving me more clout when moving forward with future advertising options.
Of course, despite what some webmasters say, tools such as this one have no way of being 100 percent accurate. After all, Google is not going to make it easy for anybody and everybody to accurately predict this type of information.
There is no way of knowing when Google will update the PageRank of this blog. All I do know is that the updates are taking place at this time. Even though I am not too concerned with PageRank, it would be nice to see an increase in time.
