Freebies
Free Stuff for Writers
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Don’t you get excited when you find good stuff for free? Makes you want to tell somebody, doesn’t it? Well, I found all these things recently, and I want to share them with you.
Handout on social media marketing: Offered by Terry Whalin here.
E-book on blogging from Bob Baker and BookBaby.com: Blogging 101: a guide to promoting your writing in the blogosphere, download here.
Free handout from my article writing workshop: Print Resources for Writers, download here.
Susan Driscoll’s Get Published: Ask a question and get free e-book.
Free digital photos: See Terms page for conditions of use. (Includes required attribution for photographer), Freeditialphotos.net.
Free e-book on self-publishing: “Hidden Hazards” offered by Believer’s Press.
Free handout: “Inner Guts: How an extreme makeover of our hearts enlivens, deepens, and betters our prose” by Mary DeMuth here.
If you know of other free resources for writers, please comment on this post and share the link.
Book Review Blogging: The Good, the Bad, and the Uncertain
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How can a book review blog help you promote your writing? Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? When I started my book review blog in June of 2007, I didn’t plan to use it for anything other than sharing my thoughts about the books I was reading. But, now I’m getting free books to review and the traffic from the book review blog has helped increase the traffic to my website. (more…)
Book Giveaway Winners
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Time to announce the winners of the drawings for the book, The Time of Your Life: How to Accomplish All That God Wants You to Do.
Winner Number One is Sue Tornai, a regular subscriber to Blog4writers. Visit her site, www.suetornai.com. Also take a look at her blog: www.missue.blogspot.com.
The second winner is a regular subscriber whose e-mail address begins with ditelbat. I’ve received no response to e-mails asking for name and mailing address. Will you please e-mail me at akinemily@gmail.com and give me your mailing address so that I can mail your book?”
I’ll be doing book giveaways about once a month for the rest of this year. Subscribe to Blog4writers so that you will be eligible for future drawings. Go to http://emilyakin.com/blog/, and enter your e-mail in the Subscribe box and follow the directions. If you need help, don’t hesitate to e-mail me for help: akinemily@gmail.com.
Get Organized: Records
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Once your work space is set up, you need to organize subject matter, submission tracking, finances, and communications. For topics covered in previous blog posts, I provide a link to those posts in the text below.
Subject matter/content: If you write in more than one genre, make files for each genre in the beginning. As your collection grows, you will need to make sub-categories. For example, master category might be Nonfiction with subcategories Devotionals, Articles, or Book Ideas.
Other filing system ideas can be found here and here.
Submission Tracking: This is possibly the most critical organizing task for a writer, especially if you send simultaneous submissions. It’s also necessary for managing reprints. My previous post describes several methods, including a free Excel file I created for this purpose. See the full post here.
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Need Free Photos?
0Have you noticed that many bloggers are now adding photos to their posts? Would you like to have some photos to jazz up your e-book? I want to keep up with the latest trends, so I’ve looked for free photos for my last few posts.
I googled for “free photos,” but I kept getting sites that offer a lot of royalty-free photos but very few absolutely-free, no-strings-attached photos. I put a query on my writers group asking people where they get their free photos. In the process, I’ve come up with some tips that might save you time when you need free graphics. (more…)
Measuring Success: Google Analytics
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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. (more…)
Free “Ask Sally Stuart” Teleseminar
0In 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…)
Do You Have Backup?
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Policemen have them. So do quarterbacks, astronauts, and lead actors. OK, so a writer’s need for backup is not as serious as for policemen and astronauts. But, writers do need to protect their life’s work from a computer crash, lightning strike, or just plain “operator failure.”
Accept the fact that you should backup early and often no matter whether your project is large or small. There are a number of backup options. I’ll share methods I have used and then pass along some suggestions that have come to me from others. (more…)
Free Web Sites: One Last Word
0I had intended to move on to other topics for this post, but I put a request for information about WordPress on one of my online groups. I got a response that I want to share with you. Although the article was posted last year, the information is still good.
Monday, 29 September 2008
Creating a Free Site with WordPress
0I searched the Web for step-by-step instructions on how to set up a free site with WordPress.com, but I found nothing. I first became aware that this was possible when I ran across Brandy Brow’s site at www.brandybrow.com.
Notice the address bar when you arrive on her site (http://brandybrow.wordpress.com/).
She has purchased her own domain name and re-directed it to the free WordPress site, thereby saving hosting fees. Most people coming to her site using brandybrow.com would not even notice the different URL.
I needed to do a free site for my music club, so I created this one using Brandy’s approach: www.philharmonicmusicguild.info. Check the URL in the address bar when you arrive there: http://pmgmartin.wordpress.com/. Note that you can’t always get the URL you want when you’re dealing with free services.
I’ve created a new page for the directions on how to do this. Go to Free Site with WordPress following this link. Good luck!
