Category Archives for Marketing & Publishing
Get Right With Your Deities and Analytics in 2021
Do you know what vanity metrics and analytics are?
Have you ever opened up a tracking program (like Google Analytics or Fathom or Clicky) and stared at all the data – unsure what is the most important?
If your answer is anything even vaguely related to “Hell to the frickin’ yes!”, then you are not alone.
These days, you can find metrics and statistics to validate or invalidate anything.
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How to Score a Piece With a Website That’s Out of Your League
If you’ll pardon the cliche, an influential man once said: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
While I presume Wayne Gretzky had little to no experience with freelance writing, his historic quote applies perfectly to this article. How does a writer go about landing a guest post on a site with a high domain authority—that is, a website Google deems hyper-relevant for its subject area or industry, thus ranks high for related search terms? Well, if your philosophy is that there’s no point in even trying, it’s simply never going to happen.
Thanks, Mr. Gretzky.
Intimidation factor aside, these sites often don’t have an open call for submissions. Their editorial standards are very high, and finding a relevant topic that they haven’t covered already isn’t easy. These are only some of the challenges you’ll face when trying to get your work out there.
Still, guest posting on high-authority sites has enormous benefits. You gain authority by proxy and position yourself as an expert. And it can bring additional traffic to your website, both directly from clicks to your site and via the boost in Google rankings you get from getting backlinks.
Here are the most effective strategies you can apply to get your writing published on high-quality blogs.
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The 5 Biggest Mistakes I’ve Made While Pitching
When I began writing freelance, I’d already been writing for my blog for a few years. I knew there would be a learning curve because writing for yourself is completely different from writing for another publication.
To prepare myself, I participated in a few workshops and was mostly interested in the lessons about the best ways to pitch, since I’d never done it before. After gaining as much insight as I thought was necessary, I set out on my endeavor as a freelance writer.
I quickly realized trial and error were better teachers than any class.
There were so many things I learned from actively pitching. In this post, I’ll share with you the five major mistakes I made, and how the experience helped me hone my skills. If you want to perfect your own pitching strategy, feel free to use my tips as a “cheat code” so you don’t make the same mistakes I did!
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Traditional vs Self Publishing: Pros and Cons
You finished writing a book. Awesome! You then went through the editing process and now you’re exploring your publishing options. At this point, you may be asking yourself, “Should I choose traditional or self publishing?”
Just to make sure we are all on the same page, let’s quickly define both publishing methods.
Traditional publishing refers to having your book published through a company (a publishing house) that deals with all aspects of the process, from preparing the book for publication to dealing with marketing and promotion.
On the other hand, self publishing is when you, the author, arrange everything, from formatting to marketing. You might still hire a freelancer—for instance, to design a cover—but you basically control the entire process.
Now, many people might think that the question “traditional or self publishing?” is not a true dilemma, for two reasons: Firstly, these people assume everyone should opt for traditional publishing because it’s just “better,” in some undefined way; secondly, because they assume that since publishing houses are so picky about accepting manuscripts, you’d be mad not to publish your book traditionally, if you have the chance.
However, it’s not quite that simple—few things in life are!
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