Japan has a few more genres of writing than we have in North America. One of them is the Keitai novel, short novels written on cell phones and published online. Anyone can take part and publish short stories by texting from their cell phone. One of the sites that publishes this type of content is Maho i-Land, but unfortunately there is no English version of the site this concept.

The reward for the most read Keitai novel is a publishing contract that turns it into a real book. The L.A. times reported a story about a 15 year old girl, ‘Bunny’, who has not only gotten a publishing deal for their cell phone novel, but who has earned over $600.000 from it. The girl writes under a pseudonym, and has called her success ‘embarrassing’. It is interesting how this success is something Bunny doesn’t want to brag about, and instead keeps it as a close guarded secret.

My new adventure writing for the Examiner.com is on quite a positive road. I am contributing short articles (or posts, whichever you would like to call them) about topics that are interesting to me regarding the economy. Unlike some other examiners, I am adding a more personal spin to my column, and try to incorporate some humor and personal opinion as well. If people just want to read the news, then they are better off going to MarketWatch, or Bloomberg. I am not focusing on reporting straight up news-y facts, but instead take something from the news and comment on it.

In other words: I am having a lot of fun writing this column. Keeping this in mind, you will understand that my standards for a return on my investment are different from a column I am writing out of personal interest, and for my personal satisfaction, than I would from a more traditional freelancing opportunity. It is important for me to emphasize this, because if you are going to equate my excitement about the extra money coming in from this opportunity with my regular standards for regular writing work, then I would be placing myself in the category of writers who are willing to work for dollars per article. That is not the case. Nor would I ever encourage anyone to do that.

Having said that, I think the Examiner writing opportunity is paying off for me because it is a creative writing outlet that is keeping my fingers on the keyboard. The more you write, the better you eventually get. As I write more and flex those muscles, I am also getting a small, but slowly increasing, return on my time investment.

Yesterday, my page views were over 200, and the income I am getting from that one day is $2.11 (see below).

The other day I reported getting $1.09, after writing a short commentary on Windows 7, and how I doubt it will make any Mac users switch back to a Microsoft platform. After writing this, promptly 7 people commented, even though I only just started writing for the Examiner and am anything but established.

As I am writing this, my metrics for today (and I haven’t had my coffee yet, it’s not even 8:30am) are as follows:

Yes, this is NOT spectacular. But, I haven’t written a word on the Examiner yet today, and it is early in the morning. I’m in the Eastern time zone, so a big chunk of North America, where most of the traffic comes from, is still happily snoozing in their bed.

My income from the examiner for the current week, so far, starting on Sunday, is over $8:

I’m curious to see if today will surpass yesterday’s performance. If it grows at a steady pace, and keeps growing, the income from the Examiner actually has some potential for the future. And as I just take it as a creative outlet, there really isn’t any pressure…

If you’re a writer starting out, or a more established one looking for an additional outlet, and want to write for a good quality website, then I still recommend giving the Examiner a try.

We’ve all seen the good advice from top bloggers around the world: write interesting stuff. This is supposed to be the holy grail to Blogging success, and ultimately also to some form of reward from your blogging. Whether that reward is personal satisfaction, or an income.

I’ve been thinking about writing on some good content networks for some time now, as part of keeping up my regular writing-for-fun habits. I’ve blogged about these plans in the past few days. One place where I am experimenting with getting both some more articles published, and experimenting with the potential monetary return, is on my Examiner.com Economy column.

Yesterday, I came across an article idea I particularly liked, and which worked well for the Examiner. I wrote a very brief article about Windows 7, and how it is probably not going to turn Mac enthusiasts back to PCs, just as it has done very little for the Microsoft stock. What I had never expected was to get 7 comments on the article right away! My attempt at some humor, and a stab at Windows, left a few PC-enthusiasts upset enough to comment.

I’m never out to make people angry with my writing, quite the contrary, but this does show that creating a spark with readers can be a good thing. As with all other things in life, writing a slightly more spicy, or controverial, article can really elicit a reaction, which brings in more readers, and in this case, also more revenue. My humble income from yesterday’s writing efforts (I wrote another article aside from the Mac vs. PC one) are in the screen shot below. Yes, it is just a Dollar…for now… but like Russel Peters said (in a Chinese accent) in one of his comedy shows:

“…and then you have a dollar, and then you go to the dollar store and buy yourself something nice…”

The whole idea with publishing venues like the Examiner is that you get residual income. So although in one day 122 page views translated to about a dollar in revenue for me, the hope – and general assumption – is that over time these same articles will still get page views and continue to bring in some revenue. Although everyone wants to be paid a lot at once, there is no harm in creating some residual income streams. After all, those come in even when other freelance work is low, or other aspects of life take over temporarily.

The Internet is a wonderful place to get more knowledge (or doubt… don’t Google your symptoms when you’re sick!), and it has provided a large number of people with more or less stable incomes. Unlike any other venture, making money online can be done with a very minimal investment, and the payoff is potentially very high. Although a “sky is the limit” attitude is good when getting into any type of business or job, you need to still be realistic. Not every online entrepreneur, or writer using the Internet to their advantage, is the next John Chow, who says he makes over $40.000 a month from his blog.

For the rest of us, simply getting started with some blog networks or content networks can seem really appealing. The question is, can you really make money with them?

I’m going to find out!

Much like John Chow has documented his success with his blog, his way isn’t the only way to make a healthy (albeit not as much as John’s pay cheq $$ue) income from the Internet. I’ve been told perseverance and professionalism are the two main requirements for the gig, so it shouldn’t be impossible to generate some sort of result.

Here’s how I’ll do it

After some research, it turns out there are a few main promising online publishing houses that are both attainable goals for intermediate writers, and promise a decent return on your time investment:

1. Suite101.com
2. Examiner.com
3. Trendhunter.com

If you have clicked on any of the links, you will have noticed that I’ve already started contributing to each one of these networks. I’m going to say I’ll count whatever potential success I might have from this point onwards, considering I have not contributed significantly to either one of these websites. Others who have gone before me have written about their success, and another person writing for both Suite101 and the Examiner has reported being quite happy with the results writing for suite101 and the Examiner.

My lofty writing goals

Considering the content produced for any of the sites I mentioned above remains my own property, and I can receive residual payback from articles that stay online for as long as the websites exist and receive revenue themselves, I am hoping to start building up a significant body of work on each one of them.

For the Examiner, remaining a writer in good standing requires you to write at least 3-4 articles per week. However, they are fairly lax on article length, and do not require a higher word count like suite101 does. The only downside of the Examiner compared to suite101 is that you are stuck with one topic. I’ve found, from my limited experience with TrendHunter.com and Suite101.com, that I enjoy being flexible and writing for several different categories. The Examiner takes advantage of a particular expertise you have, and in my case I was taken on to write about the economy. Albeit a good topic with endless streams of material, it can be creatively a little limiting as well, and that’s where my challenge will be.

However, we’ll see where this takes me, and I plan to keep reporting back what the payoff from my writing adventures are from these websites. I’m seeing this as something I can do for fun in my spare time, between freelancing gigs. It’s also a great creative outlet for articles that are too short for print, but are still interesting and fun to research and write about but do not fit within the scope of this blog.

If you would like to try this out with me, let me know how it goes! Anyone interested in applying to write for the Examiner.com, and if you found out about them through me, then please use my referral number in your application: 5918

A couple of days ago I joined TrendHunter.com! I’ve started submitting some fun or funny things I’ve observed around me, and it is looking like a great outlet to write about anything and everything that interests me, even when it doesn’t really fit into the scope of this blog, or any of the other blogs and magazines I am writing for.

There are hundreds of cool things added to Trend Hunter every day, but if you want to follow my trends, you can see them piled up easily in my Trend Hunter portfolio.

Google has partnered with NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), to support the “National Day on Writing”. This will be held on October 20th, when the gallery of submitted work will be revealed to everyone who would like to read it.

Writing by anyone, from people from all walks of life, as welcome for this project. One of the galleries showcasing all the writing work will be provided by Google Docs, and you can submit your writing to be part of the Google Docs Gallery. In the mean time, anyone can submit their writing to NCTE. The Google Docs theme is “The Internet and its impact on our lives.” You can contribute to the Google Docs gallery, or to one of the very many other galleries that are part of this project.

The purpose of the Day on Writing is to highlight the variety of writing people are engaging in today, and according to the NCTE website, it will help teachers help others write better. It also provides them with a body of research to see whether our writing is getting better, or if our art is slumping to new lows.

I’m not sure yet if I will be submitting something to one of the Galleries, but if I am, I will definitely post it here. What do you think… should I submit a piece of my writing to honor the Day on Writing?

When researching an article, or a possible article idea, how far will you go for research?

I marvel at journalists who are courageous enough to throw themselves into areas of war and conflict. However, it is not just the war correspondents who are brave… albeit less life threatening, it does take a certain amount of courage to sprawl yourself naked onto a table and be enjoyed as a human platter, like this ‘sushi model‘.

For me, being a writer allows me to crawl into a different skin once in a while, and escape from my own identity. Perhaps we write to have an excuse for a thrilling adventure, or we feel the need to chronicle these escapades… who knows. Either way, some of the best stories require the most interesting research. Getting up close and personal is generally a must for a good article, and this makes me wonder: how far are you willing to go for a story idea?

Yesterday I remembered how I used to bring my books to the dinner table and continue reading while eating at the same time. As I looked back at my childhood, I pitied my mother who was forced to eat in silence because I was unable to put down my books. So much for quality time, eh?

There were times she told me to put the book down and just eat. But often she would let me do as I pleased and as a result I ranked up an impressive list of read books. Then I went to university and topped reading literate altogether. My bachelors degree was in Biotechnology and Economics, so when I actually got around to reading my textbooks, and I was done, there was little time and energy left for one of my passions: literature.

Then technology started to catch up and I subscribed to audible. Always on the look out for more ways to get some reading done, I found DailyLit. This website sends you a short installment of a book by email or RSS feed either daily, every weekday, or three times a week. If you are already spending too much time on your computer, here is another reason to stick to your screen even more. However, it is an incredible way of getting some ‘forced’ reading into your day. The installments are relatively short, so they don’t take much longer to read than an email. The real reason I think it though is the ability to read it one a mobile device, such as a BlackBerry or iPhone. Now we’re talking literature on the go! It’s like the Fast-Food of Literature!

Although, if I’m at home, I still prefer curling up with a good book on the couch, in bed, or in a bubble bath. Reading is a treat for me, and although I don’t read at the dinner table anymore, I can still shut out the world for hours at a time with a good paperback.

One more reason to get you reading: DailyLit has a number of free books? Mostly the classics of course, but worth checking out. I just signed up to receive “Die Leiden des jungen Werther” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Which book are you currently reading?

This morning I stumbled across the Ad Generator. A nice little tool developed as part of an MFA thesis by Alexis Lloyd.

The Ad generator basically randomly pairs words from big advertising campaigns with images from Flickr. Even though the phrases are cut up and randomized, I am sure you will recognize a few famous campaigns among them.

I loved this tool because it

• It is a creative way to procrastinate
• It’s a nice way of taking a break from writing and getting some different stimulation
• Believe it or not, I find it actually inspiring.

Here are my absolute favorite randomly generated ads by the Ad Generator.

Writing is a business, and increased productivity is as imperative to a writer as it is to any other professional. Aside from writing faster, there are other ways you can pump up your output, and keep more free time to yourself (or just take on additional projects).

1. Mobile Writing Tools

Depending on your lifestyle, you might get some good use out of writing tools you can take on the road with you. This can be simple, such as a (paper) notebook, BlackBerry, or a ‘hipster PDA keychain‘ (pictured above).

The benefits of a tool like a BlackBerry is the fact that you can check your Google Reader on it and use it to keep on top of the latest news and articles. Of course that’s aside from the benefit of being able to write down notes and even edit articles on the road.

2. Increase focus, improve your writing

I came across a neat little program called JDarkRoom. It helps for people who are easily distracted and do better when they just type without having to deal with any pop-ups or email notifications. JDarkRoom makes your screen completely black, and allows you to focus just on your writing without the temptation of checking your email obsessively.

3. Simple Accounting Tools

I recently signed up for BillingBoss, which is a fantastic tool if you routinely send out invoices. You can keep track of your income, outstanding invoices and paid invoices.

You also need to keep track of your spending. Writing related courses, office supplies, or even literature are tax deductible. Instead of dealing with an avalanche of receipts at the end of the year, just open up a separate bank account, and get a separate credit card, for your business expenses. Have financial institutions actually do some work for you by doing your bookkeeping for free. As long as you separate your finances completely, you’ll have painless tax filing, and you will know how much you are actually making.

Seems easy enough right? Well, I had not actually fully mastered this skill yet. It is my new year’s resolution though, so today I went out and opened a new account. For six years I successfully managed my business without strictly separate accounts, but tax time was never a happy time when it comes to making sense of my deductions (I did always obsessively keep track of earnings, so that’s never a problem).

4. Stay posted on Writing Markets

There are tens of thousands of writing markets you can sell your work to around the world. Knowing where to submit your articles, or other writing, if a first step to your next paycheck. Although the Writer’s Market is a fantastic resource (and the online version takes up no real shelf space), there are great free resources that supplement a Writer’s Market subscription as well. One of these is Funds for Writers

What is your favorite writing tool? There are endless things that can be put to good use by writers, and this overview is just a bare-bones beginning to the tools any writer cannot do without, but which has really fueled your productivity?

Happy new year! And happy writing in 2009! I’m setting some lofty new years resolutions for this upcoming year of writing, and I’m sure some of you are too. To help out with this, I tried introduced you to writing really fast yesterday, but today I stumbled across an interesting website with yet another strategy to get your writing. It’s called “1ne, 2wo, 5ver” and describes a strategy that helps you get started on writing. It starts with one word. Basically it sounds like it could be just any word, and is meant just to get you started onto the second word, and then onwards to the next X words.

Why I like it

I always have a lot of trouble getting started with writing. Being the perfectionist I am, I do not always follow the rules of writing fast, but use the excuse that I just don’t have the right wording to not write at all (on my own projects, of course). As a consequence, the book I’ve started has spurts of movement forward whenever I come across some good writing strategies that completely discredit my procrastination strategies.

This is one of them… it basically comes down to the advice I always give:

Just sit down and write….

Many people, writers and professionals, spend the better time of their day writing. The sheer amount of information produced (and possibly discarded) on a daily basis is enough to make you depressed, if you stop writing for a second to think about it.

In addition to all the wild writing going on, we all have our other daily commitments: shopping for groceries, cooking healthy meals, family, and maybe friends too if you don’t want to become a complete hermit.

So any trick to speed up the writing process would be a good one, right? Writing faster means you finish that novel faster, you get your work done before 5 p.m. or you get to simply become more accomplished. Either way, writing faster can benefit anyone who ever picks up a pen or touches a keyboard.

How I learned to write fast

I was forced to type very fast when helping my mother through her divorce. Aside from the fact we were on other sides of the world, and writing hundreds of emails a month, I helped her draft all court related materials. Often, due to health reasons, she would dictate what she wanted to say to me, and I would type it out almost as fast as she would speak. Only sometimes I’d ask her to repeat or slow down. So how did I do it?

• I would often write notes in bullet point form and work them out later
• I would “Throw up on the screen”, as suggested by Alisa at ProBlogger.
• I write fast, and rewrite later. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about the right words, now I insert a note-to-self and get back to it later. Often, when rereading my work, the word will come to be automatically.
• If all fails, just free write for a few minutes to get more ideas going.

As Alisa mentioned in her article as well, it helps to know what you want to say. Clearly you can only write fast if you are not doing any research for ideas at the same time.

Tips for Bloggers and Freelance Writers

The biggest time drain on any writer, whether you are a blogger thinking up 7 articles a week, or a freelancer who needs to make ends meet, is researching topics. Sometimes good ideas strike at the worst possible times, and it is important to write down those ideas in one place (and one place only). Keep a dedicated small notebook in your purse or pocket for article ideas, and whenever you have one on the subway or in line for coffee you can write it down. Whenever you’re sitting at your desk ready to write an article for your blog, or a query to a magazine, take out your notebook and start writing… really fast.

Thanks to Stumble, I just stumbled upon a really neat site. Beware procrastinators though, this website is sure to keep you busy for as long as you want to be!

Here’s the quote that popped up on my screen when I stumbled it:

“Right now I believe that people are too wrapped up in loving others when what they really need is to love themselves a little…”

I second that thought…

Today BloggingTips.com published a great guide to commonly used abbreviations in the English language. Funny enough, they are all actually derived from Latin. Having studied Latin for five years, it was nice to read some of these expressions again. Particularly the ones I don’t use, or don’t use very often.

Maybe it’s time for me to revisit some Latin texts again, just for fun. In the mean time, for anyone who is interested in the correct uses of “i.e.” and “e.g.”, I highly recommend this list.

Here are some writing leads posted across the web within the past twenty four hours! I’ll try to post only those writing jobs that seem as legit as possible, but always perform your own due diligence before taking a freelance writing job.

The diverse range of writing jobs below include jobs for freelance script writers, freelance bloggers, a staff job at classmates.com and work for a marketing writer.

Freelance Blogging Jobs:

• Digital Home Tech Blogger
• Blogger @ Charity Mile (flat fee per post, payment amount not mentioned)

Freelance writing/editing job leads

• Marketing Writer [work from home - $15-18/Hour]
• Song/Jingle writer [Noe Valley - negotiable pay]
• Senior writer/editor @ classmates.com [Renton, WA - competitive salary]
• Mockumentary writer needed (Los Angeles, CA)
• San Francisco Writer / Interviewer [San Fransisco - $75 + expenses]
• Marketing Writer [Home based - per hour/per project compensation]
• Production Journalist: Writer/Producer (Venice, CA)
• Writer (Wyoming – $25-28/hour)
• SEO writer

Good luck everyone!

Welcome to my new website! Although I have been a freelance writer for the past five years, I recently decided to do a professional overhaul and relocate my website to www.wildtyping.com.

A little about myself: I have a degree in Biotechnology, Chemistry and Economics and am currently pursuing a Masters degree in Behavior Genetics. Concurrently, I am a freelance writer and my articles have been featured in publications such as FOX News, ADVANCE Magazine, Coffee House Digest, City Living, Families.com, Techiediva.com, and many more.

In addition, I have worked in advertising and direct mail. I have crafted ads, sales letters, brochures and a variety of other materials for my clients, both large and small.

You never stop learning and updating skills, and when companies decide it is time for their employees (or entire marketing department) to work on their writing I am often brought in to provide training sessions. These can span a few hours, to a few days.

Although this website serves as a professional portfolio, I will be posting short blog articles on writing, business and advertising as well.

Enjoy!