Grammar Nazis: My Thoughts

A reviewer on one of the sites I submit writing to recently wrote something that kind of boggles my mind. This person noticed a punctuation error in the first sentence in a piece I had just posted and stated that they would normally stop reading at that point, dismissing the entire thing. They praised the rest of the article. I'm not saying grammar and punctuation are not important but to reject something on the first perceived technical error that has no bearing on the content for me is a little over the top. I thanked the reviewer and corrected the error, but I still can't quite get this out of my mind.

If you are a grammar nazi, I like to think of you as a useful friend. I'm a storyteller first and a writer second. I deal in ideas, motives, plots and sometimes grammar and punctuation take a backseat. I need you guys to help me deal with my obvious weaknesses as a writer. If I'm dismissed on the first minor error, we haven't done each other any good at all.

I'm going to take this a bit further. I've been a member of writing.com for quite a number of years now. I have friends there that can write grammatically flawless rough drafts punctuated to perfection. When it comes to writing fiction, though, many of them struggle to create living breathing characters. The writing is often dead and boring. My daughter who is also a member of that site has noticed the same thing. Between us, we have written over 1400 reviews on that site alone.

The point is that we need each other. We creative types need help from those know the nuts and bolts of the language. Please don't look on me as some kind of lesser species because I struggle to correctly use commas. Keep reading and maybe you can learn something.

Doing Work in the Background

My spare time is spent right now doing background work to make my freelance writing efforts succeed in the long term.

I am studying to become a better copywriter. Some of my efforts show definite improvement. In a little over two weeks I wrote two articles on Hubpages. Both of those articles have been written with improving visibility of my writing in mind. The first one surpassed my all time Hubpages article view count in just over two weeks without social media promotion or even back links from my blogs. I'm impressed with the results. I'm hoping the second one follows the same pattern although I have begun promoting it. Links for both these articles are at the bottom of this post. If the subject matter is of interest to my readers, by all means click through and have a look.

I am also building files to help me work faster and more efficiently. I am uploading links for title swipe files, article templates and more. One of my biggest short comings as a freelancer is that I take way too long to write an article. If I am going to earn decent income from this, I need to produce material at a faster rate. I can do it. I think I can earn a side income that will stabilize our family finances from my writing. This should give me enough financial wiggle room to get my woodturning rolling as well.

For my readers. You should begin hearing more from me over the next month and beyond.

                                                        

How to Become an Effective Paid Forum Content Writer

This article outlines my methodology for creating and making a side income as a forum content writer.

How to Get the Most Out of Self-study Courses

Basic overview of how to succeed with self-study programs. Written as a test of what I've learned so far and to see how much difference it makes in regards to view count.

Writing Reboot

A lot has changed over the last several months, especially in regards to my writing. New to me equipment and new priorities.

Biggest and most painful change was shelving Pico's Cycling for the foreseeable future. I have every intention of bringing it back when circumstances change and allow it. In the meantime I will continue learning things that will make it better and more successful when the time comes.

My focus right now is on three things. The first is learning to be a better writer with an eye to turning whatever skill and talent I might have into a useful income. I'm not aiming at wealth but to try to stabilize our financial ship. We're scraping by but there are storm clouds on the horizon that worry me. I'd like to have a little bit more control over it. I am studying online material to help me out there. I've signed up for several freelancing sites and have done quite a bit of testing to qualify for better potential assignments.

Second area of focus is improving and writing on my own blog sites, including my Hubpages account and WDC. I can apply lessons I've learned and see what happens when I promote them. I don't have to worry about the monthly magazine format or deadlines. I may write some cycling articles that would likely be saved for a future issue of Pico's Cycling but I can temporarily run them on a different platform. Overall the intention is to produce more work rather than less.

Last but no least is my novel writing endeavors. I have to complete novel rough drafts to work with. Part of my time will be spent revising and editing them. I'm hoping to have at least one ready for my publisher to consider before the end of the year. Not sure how fast I can get the work done but as far as I'm concerned it can't happen fast enough.

I have some new hardware at my fingertips. My kids have passed down a more powerful laptop into my care. Francine also gifted me a keyboard for my tablet. This entry is written entirely on that sitting at Mc Donald's while I'm stuck waiting for the twins to finish work. When I finish I will email it to myself so I can put it on my blog when I get home. Putting it directly on the blog is still beyond my skill set. I like to check it over and add at least one picture and for now that only works on my laptop

Advancing Pico's Cycling to a New Level

Been putting consistent effort into building this website into something more. I've actually been surprised at how much the readership has increased this month. Out of the first six months of the year we've broken our page view record four times. The final count isn't in yet for this month but we will almost without a doubt top 2000 page views for the first time in our history. We are already in record territory with six days to go.

One of the driving forces is adding links to all our old stories and articles at the bottom of the page. Most days I ad links to one article and then re-promote it in a few appropriate places on Facebook and also on Twitter. I do this for the balance of the month after promoting the month's latest issue. The result has been that I have steady traffic during the part of the month where it used to always fall off significantly. The whole campaign will take me about four months to complete.

One other thing that I have done that will slowly bear fruit in the future, is adding this site to a number of blog directories. I'm not sure how much effect that will have but I'm hopeful. Another was to do some much needed housekeeping on my Twitter account. Over the last few months I've been busy deleting deadwood. People who I was following who had no interest in following me back and had no other reason for me to continue following. That allowed me to go back and follow everyone who was following me but the Twitter cap was preventing me from following back. That work was all completed today. Twitter can be a powerful tool and I'm now in a position to take better advantage of it.

This month also marks the beginning of a campaign to get direct paying advertising on the website. I took a great deal of time analysing the data I get from my Adsense account. I'm not unhappy with them and don't plan to abandon the program. I just believe that by cutting out the middleman and getting ad content more directly related to what Pico's Cycling is all about that would interest my readership, we would get an income that would give us the ability to invest in our writers. Quality content from a greater variety of sources would immediately up our game. Not having to write the bulk of the content myself would allow me to spend more time on making improvements.

With the Adsense and Google Blogger data, I set about finding out what our ad space was worth. Once I understood what I could fairly charge advertisers, I studied ad placement and standard ad sizes. From that I determined a price list for our available ad space. If all our ad space sold out each month, we would be bringing in $28 per month from advertising. Which pleases me immensely because I am aiming at consistently bring in $25 per month and at that point paying five dollars per article or story with pictures. I don't expect that to happen overnight. A smaller income would provide funds for business cards and stuff like that to further promote the site. Better yet, as our readership grows so does the value of our ad space. I firmly believe that the goals I have for this site are reasonable and doable. I'm excited.

June has shaped up to be a terrific month for the webzine. The future looks bright. I'm curious as to how far this momentum will take us.

Additional Links (Please click either the photo of the title for access)

Attention Advertisers

This is a new page added to Pico'c Cycling to help advertisers. It gives basic information about our readership, what we offer and how to proceed if they want to advertise with us.

Pico's Cycling - Tales of the Road

Published for more than a year and a half now. If you're into cycling as transportation, commuting or touring, come and check us out for stories, tips and inspiration.

Whew! We're Mobile Friendly

Google and I have a love/hate relationship. Not long ago a warning came up on my Adsense dashboard advising me that mobile friendliness would be made a factor in our Google ranking. Arrgh! Like I would view that as good news.

I used to do customer service for a major cell phone company in a call centre. This has caused me to have a severe aversion to cell phones and smart phones. I have witnessed first hand the financial damage one can do to oneself with one of those. Way back when I owned a cell phone and it was not a good experience. Finally I love cycling and someone illegally operating one of those @#&% things could end my life. Not good news at all.

I check the dashboard regularly hoping that someone will go on a buying spree that benefits me. Every time I go in though I see that message and the button with a link where I can have my site tested. I was afraid to check. There are only so many hours in a day and my online writing time has limits. What kind of convoluted techno hoops do I have to go through to make my sites "mobile friendly". I don't have time to redo everything and that of course is my fear.

About an hour ago I decided to bite the bullet. I clicked the button, entered the URL to Pico's Cycling - Tales of the Road averted my eyes for a few moments, grimaced and then looked. It came back with "Awesome, this page is mobile friendly." I guess everything is just peachy. I didn't have to do anything.

Go ahead click the button!

More From Pico (All photos and titles in this section are clickable links)

Pico's Cycling - Tales of the Road

Free online monthly cycling magazine. Read in more than forty countries every single issue. Come have a look for tips, stories and inspiration.