Measuring Success: Google Analytics
Mar 9th
How do you know whether anybody is reading your blog? Why spend all the time and energy it takes to produce content if there are no readers? This question came up in an online writers’ group recently. You may be wondering that too, so, in this post, I’ll share the method I’m using now.
When I was using the free Wordpress blogs (www.wordpress.com), I had access to limited traffic statistics on the main dashboard. Now that I’m using self-hosted Wordpress (www.wordpress.org), I decided to check out Google Analytics. You can use your existing Google login information if you are already a Google user.
I set up my account on February 5, 2010. I can now see traffic trends from that date to the current date, or I can check traffic for a specific month, week, or day. Right now, I don’t have many e-mail subscribers. If I only used that number to measure my following, I might get discouraged in a hurry. However, when I post new material, I announce it on Twitter and Facebook. A few days later, I go to Google Analytics and examine the traffic. Most of the time, I get a bump in visitors during the 24-hour period following the Twitter/Facebook post.
Click this link to go to a screenshot of my dashboard showing traffic trends on my blog over about 6 weeks. I’m amazed at the total number of visits. Sure, some power bloggers probably have much more traffic, but I’m please with what I’ve seen so far. When the trend line goes down, I know it’s time to do more promotion.
I’m still trying to learn how to use the many tools available to me on Google Analytics. Of course, Google has a help section, but I’m using the following list of articles to help me understand it better.
Readers, if you use another traffic analysis tool, let me know by commenting on this post. If you are interested in writing a guest post for this blog, contact me at akinemily[a]gmail.com.
How-to articles online:
Eisenberg & Associates article dated Feb. 5, 2010
Beginner how-to article by Sami Carroll dated November 11, 2009 and follow-up article dated January 12, 2010
Hone Your Craft with Online Courses
Mar 1st
Have you wanted to attend a Christian writers’ conference but couldn’t afford the tuition and travel? Consider taking online classes. There are a number of options. Usually, the fees are reasonable, and there are no travel expenses to worry about. Your continuing education dollar goes entirely to honing your craft and getting to know other writers as you learn.
The Christian PEN: Freelance editor Kathy Ide organized The Christian Proofreaders and Editors Network as a Google group. She offers online courses for people wanting to become freelance editors. I joined the group about four years ago. The discussions on the group were helpful to me, but the online classes have helped me improve my writing and editing. Especially useful to me as a writer was my first class, “Proofreading and Editing for Clients.”
Contributing members of TCP pay lower course fees than non-members, but all the fees are quite reasonable. Kathy Ide does not teach all of the courses. Instructors must be contributing members and submit a course syllabus to Kathy for approval. She manages the enrollment details for all courses. The complete list of course offerings is here. The 2010 course schedule is here.
Write Integrity Editorial Services: Tracy Ruckman, freelance editor and photographer, is the proprietor of WEIS. She offers a broad range of online courses on writing craft. Most workshops are for fiction writers, but she offers some non-fiction, organization, and marketing topics, too. Ruckman’s courses are modeled after TCP’s. Tracy finds the instructors, schedules the classes, and handles enrollment. For details and 2010 schedule, see this page.
Writer’s Digest Online Workshops: These courses are more costly that TCP and WIES offerings, but they do carry the Writer’s Digest name. General information is here. Some courses are six weeks, while others go for as long as 14 weeks. See a detailed list of offerings here. WD also offers special events like the upcoming (March 11, 2010) webinar featuring literary agent Rachelle Gardner. Details here.
Disclaimer: I have not taken any of the WD workshops myself, but I have heard from friends that they were pleased with their experience.
Lessons from a Computer Crash
Feb 23rd
Earlier this month, while I was reworking my Web site and setting up this blog, my laptop computer experienced what my support person called a “hard crash.” I asked what that meant, and he said, “All of your data is lost. You must reformat your hard drive.” I followed instructions, but doing this on the phone was taking forever. And, because things weren’t working out like I thought they should, I took my computer to my local computer repair store. I’m back up and running now, but I’ve learned some things that I want to share with you in case you have a similar experience.
Lesson #1: If support tells you that you have to re-format your hard drive, get another opinion first. The local repair guy said that, if I had not wiped the drive clean, it might have been possible to recover my data before reinstalling Windows XP. Just because the person on the phone works for the computer manufacturer doesn’t mean he or she is always right. I wish I had sought a second opinion. More >
Book Review: A Step in the Write Direction
Feb 20th
Do you wish you could find one resource that would walk you through the process of getting your writing published? Well, Donna Clark Goodrich has done every beginning writer a favor by filling that need. The subtitle of the book is “The Complete How-to Book for Christian Writers.”
Oh, there are other “how-to-get-published” books for the Christian market out there. It’s just that most of them are out of date. Donna includes an FAQ section in the introductory section of the book. For each question, she lists the page number where the answer is found. There are a number of appendices that include how-to information on everything from Word shortcuts to how to form a writers’ group. More >
New Blog: Looking for a Name
Feb 10th
Welcome. This is the first post on my newly organized blog. I don’t have a proper name for it yet, but it’s coming soon.
What’s New
My new site and blog development has taken longer than I expected due to several things, including a computer crash. I’ve reconstructed my Web site using Wordpress so that I can maintain one blog rather than several. This blog page will combine the subject matter of my two Wordpress.com blogs, Wired to Write and Marketing for Christian Writers. All content from those blogs has been imported into this one. At the last minute, I decided also to bring the content of my book reviews on books about writing into this blog, too. To get future updates, you’ll need to subscribe here by entering your e-mail address in the box in the right sidebar. If you subscribed to Wired or Marketing blogs, there will be one more post on each blog to announce the move. After that, I won’t be posting on them anymore.
If I can figure out how to add another blog page to my site, I will bring my devotional journal blog over, too. I’ll continue to maintain my book review blog (personal reading) on Blogger because I have a unique following for that. Also, that’s where I post my reviews for the Thomas Nelson book review blogger program. See BookSneeze.com for details on that.
Working on New Look
Jan 27th
The New Year is the time to make changes, right? Well, I decided I wanted to drastically change my Web site. I had been using Microsoft’s Front Page 2000 to design the site, but I was not very skillful with it. In order to make my site look up-to-date, I either needed to learn more about the software or buy another. So—I decided to check out hosting companies that offered sitebuilder software along with their hosting plans. More >
Free "Ask Sally Stuart" Teleseminar
Jan 21st
In my last post, Start the New Year with Sally Stuart, I hope I convinced readers that Christian writers must own a copy of the latest edition of Sally Stuart’s Christian Writers’ Market Guide. Near the end of the post, I provided a link to the “Ask Sally Stuart” teleseminar hosted by Terry Whalin of Intermedia Publishing. More >
Starting the New Year with Sally Stuart
Jan 7th
Just this week, I received my copy of the 25th anniversary edition of Sally Stuart’s Christian Writer’s Market Guide, compiled and edited by Sally Stuart. What a great way to start the New Year and to jump-start my planning for my writing this year. I haven’t subscribed for the entire 25 years, but, since I received my very first copy, I realized that this is a must-have resource for Christian writers. More >
Online Bible Resources
Jan 4th
I’m running behind schedule with my blog posts, but maybe I can get back in routine now that the holidays are behind me.
Part of observing the passing of the old year is looking back, sometimes with nostalgia and sometimes with thanksgiving. This year, as I made my writing plans, I looked back to how we used to get our writing done—with a typewriter, paper, and an eraser. A writer had to be truly dedicated to persist with those tools. Today, my job as a writer is so much easier with the technology available to me.
It’s hard to say which of the computer-based tools are the most useful, but for Christian writers, I have to say having numerous online Bible versions has to be near the top of the list. For my writing, I’ve tried to find one online source that offers all popular translations. I submit regularly to publishers who use the New International Version (NIV) or the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). In addition, I like to use The Message on my devotional blog. More >
Elements of Style: Strunk & White
Jan 1st
This little book has been recommended to me by numerous writers and editors since I began writing for publication in 1999. Since it has been around for a long time, there are several editions, my copy being the Third Edition. The 50th anniversary edition was published in 2008 and is available at retailers.
In the beginning, the book was developed by William Strunk, Jr., as a teaching aid in college classes at Cornell University. E. B. White was a student of Strunk, and, in 1957, he was asked to revise the book for publication after Strunk’s death. More >
