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

Un-dated article on Mahalo

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.

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.

Lesson #2: Backup. Backup. Backup. I had backed up my document files to Mozy.com (free account), so I recovered them easily. However, to avoid having to pay for the storage, I had not backed up my photos. Some of the lost photos were on my old computer, but any photos that I had saved since I got my current machine (June, 2008) were lost. I will be able to recover some that I had uploaded to online photo services, but I probably will never know how many were lost. See my previous post about backup methods if you’re thinking about re-evaluating yours.

Lesson #3: I was totally adrift without my computer. I couldn’t check e-mail without asking to use someone else’s computer. I could work on documents in my old computer, but it did not have anti-virus software, so I couldn’t be online with it. It was three days from the time of the crash until I got my computer back with windows reinstalled. Then, I had to reinstall all my programs, re-activate anti-virus software, and try to figure out what exactly I had lost. And, I’m still encountering things I have to fix or reinstall.

It’s taken almost a month to find and re-install everything I had on my computer. In the process, I have discovered some new ways to do things. I will be sharing that with you in future posts. If you aren’t a subscriber, I invite you to subscribe by e-mail using the Subscribe box in the sidebar at www.emilyakin.com.

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.

The book truly includes everything you need to know to get started as a freelance Christian writer today. There’s even a chapter entitled “Social Networking and Online Promotion.” It’s an oversize soft-cover book that feels much like a textbook, but it’s reasonably priced at $21.95 plus shipping.

Experienced, published writers will find tips for them, too. Donna points out that the book helps advanced writers in such things as other ways to make money as a writer, income taxes, collaborating, devotional booklet guidelines, Word shortcuts, and various fields of writing, as well as editing hints.

See Donna’s Web site for a summary of the book or to purchase.

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.

Making the decision was a slow process, since I am not a technical genius. I looked at Godaddy, EZ Christian Hosting, Hostgator, SquareSpace, and Webs.com. All offer free trials, and I did experiment with all of them. I won’t get into all the pros and cons of the different companies. I’ll just tell you what I decided.

Since I wanted to have a hosted Wordpress site to house all my blogs, I ruled out all of the sitebuilders. However, I seriously considered Squarespace because the look and function of their designs is very much like Wordpress. When I checked into pricing, though, I decided against Squarespace.  I found that, if I wanted to have my own domain name (which I already have and want to continue to use), I would have to go with the Pro plan at $14 a month rather than the $8-a-month basic plan. See pricing here.

I chose to go with Hostgator with Wordpress, and here is the result: www.emilyakin.com. Hosting cost is about half what it would have been with Squarespace, and the Wordpress theme was free on Wordpress.org.

I’m not done yet, but I will be transferring some of this free blog’s content to my new site. If you are a subscriber, I may be able to change the feed and save you the trouble of re-subscribing. More on that later. Meanwhile, feel free to comment on my new site here on this post.

I missed the live event, but I listened to the whole recorded session this morning. Sally answered basic questions like, “Why should you get a new guide each year?” She gave hints on how to get started in the Christian market as well as tips on how to lay the marketing groundwork for your nonfiction book. She spent a few minutes on the children’s market. After a brief discussion on agents, Sally dove into questions about self-publishing. She briefly touched on social marketing for fiction and nonfiction writers.

After 25 years of producing the market guide, Sally knows a thing or two about what you need to do to get published. Primarily, she said, good writing will sell. Work to improve your craft, know your audience, and strive to become “the best writer you can be.”

I learned so much, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. It was like being in a conference workshop with Sally Stuart. The teleseminar took place yesterday (January 20, 2010). If you missed it, you can still listen to the whole thing by going to www.asksallystuart.com. Then, fill in your first name and e-mail address and click “Here’s my question, Sally.” You will receive an e-mail with a link to a Web location where you can download the entire teleseminar.

I encourage you to do the download now. It’s free! It takes about an hour to listen to the whole thing. Once you’ve got it on your computer, you can listen to it any time.

Some say that Sally’s guide is not necessary now that so many publishers offer their guidelines on the Web. However, it’s often hard to find the guidelines or even a publisher’s site unless you have the details offered in Sally’s guide listings. Sometimes the publication title will show up in a search, but you have to hunt around for guidelines. Also, Sally gives information that you’ll never find in guidelines. For example, in the magazine listings, you’ll find details like what percentage of their articles are written by freelance writers and what percentage is written by in-house writers. If the percentage of freelance is, say, 10%, then you might not want to waste your time submitting to that publication. Conversely, if the percentage is 90%, then your chances of success would be much greater.

I’ve also heard writers say that the Stuart guide is outdated because it needs to be online. Recent editions have included a CD with the entire guide in Word format. It’s not as efficient as a database, but you can do searches on the CD. The CD also includes 70 pages of resources that are not included in the printed guide at all. Stuart has changed publishers this year, and she states that the new publisher intends to have an online version in the future.

And—writers new to publishing want to buy or borrow an older version to introduce themselves to the Christian market. Especially for the beginner, the market guide is a critical tool. It costs less than $30, about the same price as a year’s subscription to many magazines, so save yourself a lot of time by using the newest guide. At a conference session, Sally was asked if an older version was suitable for beginners. She stated that, if there were not so many changes each year, she would not bother to put out a new guide each year. So, don’t waste your time trying to update and use old information when Sally has already done it. Stuart posts regular updates to the printed guide in Christian Communicator and on her blog at http://www.stuartmarket.blogspot.com/.

See sample of the guide, including table of contents, introduction and how-to info at Google Books.

Don’t spin your wheels in 2010 trying to succeed in the Christian market without Sally Stuart’s guide. Order your copy direct from Sally on her Web site. You may find the book in your local bookstore, and you can also order from Amazon or ChristianBook.com.

See also:

See Lettie Kirkpatrick Burress’ review of the 2009 edition on my book review blog. Lettie teaches beginner classes in how to write for publication in the Christian market.

5 Minutes for Books

Teleseminar featuring Sally Stuart at http://www.asksallystuart.com/.

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.

All sites below offer numerous translations as well as search by keyword or by Bible passage. Let’s take a look at the details.

Blue Letter Bible

• No NRSV or The Message,
• Several commentaries including John Calvin, Martin Luther, Matthew Henry, and Charles Spurgeon,
• Study tools page features charts, outlines, encyclopedias, and dictionaries.
• Images link takes you to several maps.

Bible Gateway

• In addition to search, there’s a topical index,
• Features a number of English translations, including The Message,
• Does not have NRSV,
• Allows you to put the verse of the day on your site,
• Commentary and dictionaries available under Additional Resources.

Bible Study Tools

• Has more English translations than the others, including NRSV, NIV, and The Message,
• Parallel Bible lets you compare two versions on one search,
• Numerous resources including commentaries, dictionaries, encyclopedia, and interlinear Bible.

It can be overwhelming when you try to absorb what’s offered on these sites, so I suggest choosing one and exploring it before going to another. I like Bible Gateway, but, since it doesn’t have the NRSV, I often go to Bible Study Tools instead. Most of the time I don’t need all the stuff that’s on BST, but it does come in handy when research is needed.

I invite readers to comment on these Bible study sites and to offer suggestions on other resources not mentioned here.

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.

Strunk’s motto was, “Omit needless words.” A timeless truth. Why muddy the waters with words you don’t need? Express your thoughts as succinctly as possible to keep your reader’s attention.

Elementary rules of usage are covered in Part I, followed by Elementary Principles of Composition (Part II). Matters of form, commonly misused words, and a section entitled “An Approach to Style” complete the book.

As mentioned earlier, this book has been recommended in numerous writers’ workshops I have attended. However, I’ve discovered that Elements of Style does not enjoy universal endorsement. See a collection of articles criticizing this venerable reference on the New York Times site. Don’t stop there, though. Read the comments on that article. I think, to say the least, the value of  Strunk & White for writers is up for debate.

I suggest that you buy or borrow a copy and read it for yourself. To have lasted to long and to be recommended by so many people, there must be something of value between the covers! See 50th anniversary edition on Amazon.com.