It is a pretty simple question: how long should your typical blog post be? Well, the answer relies on several factors, but the question itself is almost irrelevant—but many still ask it.

Before going any further, you must look to your audience. So, to keep things simple, let's say there are two types of people reading blogs: the impatient and the intricate. The former wants to get in and get out as quickly as possible. The latter wants the content to be full and informative. It is essentially a coin-flip.

So, which is it—long or short? Ironically, I feel that this is the wrong question to ask entirely. It is not a question of length, but, instead, a question of detail. The detail you put into an article should determine the length. Some bloggers, unfortunately, do not understand this.

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Looking for a job as a freelancer??

The industry is tough to get recognised and there are so many people out there offering writing services. You really need to get recognised and make an a good first impression .

I have been freelancing for just over a year now and am learning about the industry each day as I go along. I have recently landed myself a job writng finess articles for a site that have my name on !

I spent almost a year Ghost-writing. It has been a long road but I have some good tips to share about how to make your revenue and to secure that you continue to get jobs.

Don’t give up , try and try again

you will come across dry patches try and email the people that you have previously worked with and know your potential

Familiarise yourself with word press, most sites are using this to submit writers submissions

Register with as many freelancing sites as possible and bid on work avalible

Here are some helpful sites to get you get freelance work.

Make sure that you register for a pay pal account and submit half the work , recieve payment or a deposit and then submit the rest of the work. There are also con men in the industry, promising of high wages and then not paying you.

Avoid giving your bank details out, and dont recieve checks for payments.

Creating and editing documents has, understandably, been a fairly lonely task for bloggers. Fortunately, SubEthaEdit by The Coding Monkeys changes all that by giving users the power to collaborate instantaneously. Multiple people can create and edit content in real-time, and beyond being fun, it is extremely useful as well.

Recently, Macworld posted a video explaining the tools they use in their workflow, and the first tool they mentioned was SubEthaEdit. It came to my suprise to learn what was possible with SubEthaEdit—I already had the application installed, but I was unaware of the potential until after watching the video.

Only one thought came to mind—that's freaking awesome!

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We regularly and subconsciously develop daily routines when it comes to work. It doesn't matter if you are working as a blogger, tech support member, singer, or astronaut because we humans tend to settle into a routine no matter what we are doing in life. This way, things become easier to manage, and it also allows you to be more productive and at ease with your work. Everyone has their own way of doing things.

Some people have their routines planned out to the very minute, but I try to avoid this because it rarely ever works out as planned for me. I don't know how unique my writing schedule is compared to others, but I do most of my creative writing after midnight and editorial writing in the afternoon. The midnight writing sessions can sometimes keep me up until 6 AM or later, and, as a result, this means I have a somewhat awkward sleeping schedule. But hey, no one should complain as long as the job gets done. Whenever I manage to drag myself out of bed, this is how I get my work done.

News Feeds

The first thing I do when I wake up is open up NetNewsWire. At this point in time, I am usually in awe as the unread count skyrockets to insurmountable levels.

Within less time it took me to stumble towards my laptop, I am presented with hours of work, and, sometimes, it can be quite the eye opener.

I always give a sincere effort to check out every item, and those that I find interesting will be opened in the background for a thorough read later on. While going through each story, those that look interesting, but not required to read at the moment, will be flagged (or a starred if using GReader) so that the story in question will not be lost.

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[Flickr credit: matsuyuki.] Lorelle spells out, at Blog Herald, the three sources that your web traffic comes from: search engines, links, word of mouth. Which one are you writing for? She offers some of the most convincing reasoning for focusing on "word of mouth" - a powerful form of communication now and throughout history. Write for word of mouth traffic, she says, and traffic from other sources will follow.

Another facet of that question is, "Who are you writing for?" I'd like to pass on some advice about writing that I learned a long time ago, which I've just rediscovered scribbled in an old notebook of mine. If you want your writing to be impactful and/or meaningful, write for someone that cares about you and what you have to say.

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Have you ever wanted the mega-expensive Adobe suite but didn't want to shell out almost a grand for the whole badonkadonk?

Well, check out PaintStar which is totally free. I contacted the program's creator and learned it works not only on the older Windows versions but also on the infamous Vista.

Now that's a nice solution to keep a writer/designer's overhead down.

As writing reviews teaches you brevity, writing short fiction helps you to develop non-fiction narratives that, if applied properly, could make your blogging more entertaining and/or inspiring. Brian Clark's Copyblogger post, The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life, as an exampler. That post is inspirational, and has many elements of fictional storytelling woven into it - a process that can also be applied to structuring your blog posts for more impact.

What Short Fiction Is Not

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If you follow the legal issues that may have a great impact on your writing career, then you probably know about the history of the Orphan Works Bill which failed to pass last time but has again been introduced. This issue is important so I'm blogging here and on Sling Words about it.

The first alert was sounded by Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today

What is an Orphan Work?

An orphan work is one that is believed to be protected by copyright law but whose owner can't be located. Anyone who wants to reuse such a work can't find the owner to ask permission from or contract with in order to use the piece. Therefore, the piece lands in a legal limbo - no one can use it or reproduce it because they may be sued for copyright infringement.

Supporters of Orphan Works legislation say this isn't what the ideals of copyright law intended. So the Copyright Office wants to draft new rules to make these orphan works available for use so anyone who wants to use them won't incur any legal liability.

The problem is what if you are a copyright owner, alive and well, but for whatever reason can't be contacted as the legal holder of the rights to a work. Can it be declared an orphan and you forfeit your rights? This is just one of the issues that may have to be confronted along with other dangers the Copyright Office may unwittingly create for creative copyright holders.

Draft Letter To Congress

Read more at Jonathan's blog to gain an in-depth understanding of the issue. If you agree with his points, copy the Plagiarism Today Draft Letter, make it your own if you are so inclined, and send it to your Representatives and Senators.

You're saying, "my blog isn't about reviews." Even still, writing reviews helps you to learn constructive criticism - assuming that you aren't out to be purely critical. Writing short reviews help you to be more succinct. And it's not all that hard if you practice.

Over the years, I've written many hundreds of reviews, which I believe has helped me be less verbose. (Don't mistake my long, more detailed posts for verbosity.) To do the same, ask yourself, "could the same thing be said in fewer words?

Here's one process towards brevity:

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If you thought white papers to promote your business were out and blogging in, join the club. But apparently there's life in them yet. Brian Clark at Copyblogger talks about how white papers earn author Mike Stelzner $300K/year. There's an affiliate link in that post to a free video where Stelzner discusses how he got into this writing niche. There are also additional free videos and other materials via subscription, some of which Brian is part of.

The video focuses on writing white papers for your business, but Stelzner earns his six-figure income from the fees he charges for writing white papers. So there are two ways that white papers can be beneficial to you, depending on whether you're a business owner or freelance writer.

While writing white papers may not be for everyone, if you think you have the stamina to write a well-structured, expert document that's longer than a blog post, you should look into this opportunity.

Outlining an article is one of the most productive things you can do to improve your workflow while blogging. Creating the outline for this article required only about two minutes to complete, and it will have saved me at least 15 minutes worth of editing time in the end on a typical article like this.

Ironically enough, it was only yesterday when I tried to write a short article without creating my usual outline. I spent around 30 minutes trying to reorder the content correctly as I didn't want to start over. In the process, I nearly decided to scratch the whole article, but I have heavily revised it since then and will post it soon. This is why it is important to create an outline for all your articles.

My Outline Process

I have never before attempted to define my outlining process for writing, but I will do so as I best can right now. I have broken it down into four steps, and it is fairly simple—nothing too mind blowing here. Still, some people fail to do anything like this, and it is a shame that the short time planning out an article is skipped, but then more time is required to get the finished product.

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You've probably heard of method acting, where an actor goes out and researches a role by interviewing people, learning as much as they can about certain types of people or a certain lifestyle, and spending time in real life acting as the character they're studying. Sometimes they go incognito in a little town, sometimes not. This is arguable, but I believe that the best actors all follow one "method" or another, and that there could be an application to blogging. The gist of using "method" is to get deeply involved in something so that you can understand it from other viewpoints and be convincing in your interpretation - an approach that's possibly applicable to blogging. [Updated: There's more than one type of "method" acting, and they don't all necesarily use this approach.]

In addition to actors, there are writers/novelists who apply a method writing style to research their books. I've done it for a lot of my "speculative" short fiction, but not originally on purpose. I mean, does anyone intentionally use "method" for mad partying and drunken stupors? (Other than, say, Hunter S. Thompson, R.I.P.?) If so, there are probably a lot of Hollywood celebrities doing method research right now, judging from all the DUI arrests for the past 2-3 years. (Although I have my own conspiracy theories about why that's happening.)

What's Method Blogging?

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I have a theory that bloggers are more opinionated than the average person. Think this might be true?

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Most freelance writers write for clients, and the writing is usually some form of business writing. However, I know that many of you professional writers also dabble in fiction, usually short stories and essays, even if you've not published in that arena. Maybe you haven't even submitted before.

Here are a couple of freelance fiction writing opportunities for you if you'd like to try to broaden your horizons, if only to take a break from business writing.

These two listings are from Cindi Myers Weekly Newsletter. Usually, she reports on book markets, but sometimes she throws in other listings. If you'd like to subscribe to Cindi's newsletter: send a blank email with subscribe in the subject box (of course remove the spaces) to:

CynthiaSterling-subscribe @ yahoogroups.com

Market Listing #1
On the Bright Side is a new monthly webzine interested in humorous essays and short stories. Editors Gregg Winkler and Susan Taylor are open to all genres, from science fiction to romance, as long as you can make them
laugh.50-2000 words. Payment is 3 to 5 cents a word. Submission guidelines are available.

Market Listing #2
Horror Garage is an ezine that pays $30 for short, dark fiction. Read the profile of the magazine by D.L. Snell.

Reeves Rules
Always add to your skills. Remember the lessons of Who Moved My Cheese?

A frightening NY Times article [free reg. possibly req'd] talks about the health problems of some well known bloggers. Actually, I'm shocked to find that two bloggers in the VoIP technology niche passed away recently - Russell Shaw in mid-March and Marc Orchant in December. RIP Russell and Marc. Om Malik, whom many of you might know more readily, apparently beat a heart attack in December. I'm surprised that I didn't know any of this, though I have not kept up with my tech blog reading this year. These are/were hard-working bloggers. The question is, have we become work slaves to the blogosphere, endangering our health?

The truth is that working at home can be a liability, especially if you already have compromised health. Even if you are healthy now, working at home can trigger a number of health issues. It's far too easy to get caught up in your blogging or other web working and forget about exercise. When you have a regular day job, you have reasons to walk around during the day: meetings, lunch, walking to/from the parking lot (or transit), etc. That's generally not the case when you're working from home. But these three bloggers were probably on the road a fair bit as well, so it's not just about working from home.

The NY Times article suggests that the need to be competitive keeps bloggers working into the wee hours. That might be, especially for the big bloggers like Om Malik and Michael Arrington (who is apparently risking his health as well), but I believe there are other problems, especially for less well-known bloggers who have to work harder to make a living. Some thoughts:

1. The blogosphere is young.

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