For the past four weeks, I’ve been putting in overtime on a freelance editing job for a new client. We finally launched today which means I now can happily share the details.

I’m pleased to introduce you to Reinvent Yourself, a series on career reinvention that’s running on BlogHer, the women’s blog network.

Readers of this blog may be familiar with BlogHer; the company runs the advertisements that have appeared on WordCount for close to two years. In addition to running an ad network on approximately 2,500 blogs, BlogHer also operates a website where women – and men – share posts on every topic imaginable with about 35 million readers a month.

The Reinvent Yourself series will run inside BlogHer’s Career pages for several months, offering a new post every day for women returning to the workforce, switching careers or starting a small business. My kick-off post for the series is about my career reinvention role model – my mom.

I’m the editor of the series, which means I’m rounding up bloggers, editing and formatting posts, working with BlogHer’s editorial staff and helping promote it on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. It’s everything I love about working as an editor.

Working on the series is also pushing me to pick up some new skills. Chief among those is learning Drupal, a content management system that’s popular with some websites. So far, so good (hopefully my editors on this project would say the same!)

It’s also allowing me to use other skills I’ve picked up over the past few years, including:

1. Working with bloggers. Thanks to the blogathon, I have plenty of experience with this.
2. Coding stories to get them ready to appear online. Again, thanks to other clients, I have plenty of experience adding tags and other SEO bait to stories to make them appear higher in search-engine results.
3. Sourcing photos to go with blog posts. This sometimes aggravating job is not unlike finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. Somebody needs to create a stock photo library that has relevant, timely photos on subjects such as business and careers. What’s out there now is terrible, anything even slightly better would make a killing.

I didn’t need to wait until the New Year to resolve to try something new. As has been the case for the past couple years, opportunity came knocking about a month early.

I’d love you to check out the Reinvent Yourself series and let me know what you think.

And here’s to you trying something new in 2012!

BlogHer isn’t the only blog ad network out there, but it’s a popular one, especially among women who blog.

To date, being part of BlogHer hasn’t been been particularly lucrative for me. Last year, I made a whopping $100, barely enough to cover my website’s annual domain name and hosting fees. But ad revenue has picked up dramatically over the past two months and I’m on track to make more than double or even triple that in 2011 – though even that’s not as much as I could make writing a single 500-word magazine article. Some bloggers make more, some make less. It all boils down to how much traffic is coming into your site, and what the revenue sharing arrangement is with the ad network you sign up with.

If you’ve been thinking about joining an ad network and are considering applying to join BlogHer, here’s what to know:

1. Just because you want to join doesn’t mean you can. BlogHer’s publishing network – which is what they call the 2,500 or so blogs that carry their ads – is different from BlogHer.com, the company’s website, which the company says reaches 25 million women each month. BlogHer periodically accepts applications from bloggers interested in joining the ad network. Fill out BlogHer’s online application to put yourself in the running.

2. BlogHer ads get prime real estate on your blog. If and when BlogHer accepts you into their ad network, you can run their ads on your blog. However, you can’t just stick them any old place you’d like. When you join, you agree to adhere to a number of BlogHer policies and rules, one of them being that whatever BlogHer ad unit you choose to place on your blog will be located “above the fold,” in other words, high enough up on your blog’s front page that readers don’t have to scroll down to see it. There are other stipulations as well: that ads from other blog ad networks you belong to don’t get higher placement, that your blog hosting service allows advertising, that you’ll stick to their editorial guidelines regarding sponsored posts, etc.

3. You can opt out of ads that aren’t a good fit. One thing I like about BlogHer is the ability they give bloggers to opt out of running certain types of ads that might not be a good fit for their blog or that they find personally objectionable. For example, since I don’t run a parenting blog, I opt out of all ads for baby products. Vegetarian bloggers can opt out of ads showing meat or dairy products. Bloggers can also opt out of ads for political parties or religious groups.

4. Ad rates vary, therefore so will revenue from BlogHer ads on your blog. Like many other ad networks, BlogHer charges advertisers on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis. Those rates range anywhere from nothing for public service announcements to upwards of $9 or $10. BlogHer takes a cut of all ads and the balance goes to the blogger as a commission. How much money you make depends on how many of your readers look at a page on your blog featuring a specific ad and how many of them click on the ad. One ad on my blog had 14,000 impressions, i.e., 14,000 separate views, but received zero revenue because it was a public service announcement. On the other hand, another ad only had 1,200 page views but I made $5.30 because the CPM was $7.50.

5. You only get a check after reaching a certain level of ad income. BlogHer pays bloggers 45 days after the close of the month, but only if their share of ad revenue for that period is $25 or more. If it’s not, the company hold funds until the accrued value reaches that amount. Bloggers get paid by check or in their PayPal account. Bloggers can use an online revenue report tools to see the ad activity on their blog and what their commission they’ve earned to date for any specified time period.

6. Ads aren’t the only way you can make money. Once you become part of BlogHer’s ad network, you’re offered other money-making opportunities. The company periodically offers bloggers the chance to earn $20, $50 or $100 by reviewing a book or other product, or to enter sweepstakes drawings to win similar amounts or more. If the company’s editorial staff makes you a featured blogger for the week or decides to run one of your posts on their front page – which you give them permission to do when you join the network – it could increase traffic to your site, which in turn can increase your ad revenue. If they choose to syndicate one of your posts, which means it runs in full on BlogHer, it’s an extra $50 in your pocket.

7. It’s easy to keep track of what’s going on. The BlogHer team produces a weekly e-newsletter with updates on the network, ad campaigns and more.

8. BlogHer gives bloggers in and out of its ad network opportunities to get together in person. BlogHer’s annual conference got so popular, the company’s created a series of spin offs on specialty topics such as food, crafts and business and technology. Speaking of the annual conference, the 2011 powwow takes place Aug. 5-6 in San Diego; see details on the BlogHer ’11 conference page.

Read more on BlogHer and blog ad networks:

Lisa Stone on BlogHer: The women’s blog network comes into its own (WordCount) – My recap of Stone’s talk at the 2009 Online News Association conference.

AdNetwork’s List of Networks (AdNetwork.net) – This list of 458 online advertising networks includes networks that run ads on major websites, social networks, mobile phones and podcasts, as well as blogs. You’ll have to search the list to find the blog networks, but they’re there. Many of them only rep big-name websites or blogs, or work only in Africa, Asia, Europe or other parts of the world. A number cater to specific blog niches, such as men 18 to 35, sports, entertainment/gaming, etc.  Plan on spending a good chunk of time combing through the list for matches.

List of online ad networks (eprofits) – A short list of ad networks, including CPM-based and affiliate programs.

If you’re on BlogHer or another blog ad network, what’s your experience been?

The post is Insider Interview Tips from Top Writers.

BlogHer is an online community for and about women and women’s issues. The company runs a separate ad network on approximately 2,500 blogs, including this one. I’ve been on BlogHer’s ad network since March 2010. But until today, BlogHer hasn’t ever seen fit to share my blog posts in such a prominent way.

I’m not a fan of something-for-nothing deals, so even though I agreed to share my content with BlogHer without asking for additional compensation, I’m definitely getting something out of the deal – page views. If people come here, read my posts and then click through on the BlogHer ads, that’s money in my pocket. Not a lot, but money just the same.

Here’s the BlogHer front page. My story is also on the front page of the site’s Careers section.

But it’s one thing to resolve to start blogging, and another to decide what to blog about.

Many writers hit on a blog topic right away. Some have had an idea rolling around in their heads for a while. Others have a book in the works – or at least a book proposal – and have heard the drill about a blog being a good platform for book promotion.

But what if none of those scenarios describes you. How should you decide what to blog about? Here are a few ideas:

Write about what you know. Think of the areas you specialize in as a writer. Is there one nook or cranny of your work you’d like to explore further? If you blog on the same topic you write about, the leftover bits and pieces of research you’re done for stories can serve as starting points for blog posts, a nifty time saver.

Write about what you want to know better. Some writers use a blog to research areas they want to learn about to better develop pitches for magazine,  newspaper or website stories. I did this myself when I came back to freelancing two years ago after a long hiatus and needed to get up to speed on what had been happening in the tech and media business while I was away. After researching topics like podcasting and content aggregators for blog posts, I successfully pitched stories on the subjects to publications I’d started writing for.

Write about a popular topic. Some writers use blogs as revenue-generators rather than just for marketing or research. If you’re counting on income from advertising networks such as Google AdSense or BlogHer, or from selling e-books, online courses or other products and services you want to maximize the traffic coming to your blog. The best way to do that is to pick a topic with broad appeal to draw in as many people as possible. The more people who visit, the higher your page views and the more you’ll make from ad networks, or the greater the likelihood you’ll sell products.

Consider how much you like a topic. Good bloggers post on a regular basis – daily, weekly, multiple times a day – as a way to keep readers coming back for more. To post consistently you need a topic you’re passionate about v. a topic you feel like you’ve already done to death in your other writing. There’ll be days you won’t want to post and if you’re already in a love-hate relationship with your subject matter, it’ll make it that much harder to muster up the energy to blog.

Find a niche that’s not too crowded. You don’t want to be the 20th or 200th blogger writing about parenting toddlers, backyard gardening or U.S. politics. If you are, it’ll that much harder  to come up with interesting new takes on the subject, and to get your posts to show up high in search engine rankings. On the other hand…

Find a niche with a few well-known blogs. ….You don’t want to be the only person on earth blogging on about high school wrestling in Arizona or outsourcing for small businesses. It’s nice to have a couple other blogs related to whatever it is you’re blogging about so you can form a loose affiliation of bloggers who can function as each others’ cheerleaders, guest posters and sounding boards. If a couple of these are also high profile blogs run by magazines or newspapers  all the better for you – they could notice you and link to your blog, which will increase traffic. Or you could become a frequent commenter and end up being invited to write guest posts.

Avoid the ‘random musings’ blog. It’s OK to use a blog as a journal or diary, something you do more for yourself than the general public. But if you’re blogging and you want the world to know – and come visit – it helps to let people know what to expect. That means avoiding what I call the “random musings” blog, where one day you write about your struggle with writer’s block, the next your vacation to Whistler, and the next a great recipe you discovered for skirt steak. One successful writer/blogger solved this problem by splitting the different subjects he was interested in writing about into their own blogs. Now his main website links out to each blog, so if readers want to track his cooking blog, they can subscribe only to that one, and readers following his other blogs can do likewise.

If you’re a writer who blogs how did you decide on a topic to blog about?

If you’re looking at this on a reader, you won’t be able to tell.

But if you’re reading this on my blog, it should be obvious something’s changed.

As of today, I’ve joined the BlogHer ad network. You can tell by the ad in the far right-hand column. In the future you may see a second small BlogHer ad here as well.

After two-plus years of blogging purely to keep up with the times and share a career’s worth of accumulated wisdom about writing, journalism and freelancing, I was ready to explore turning my little enterprise from a nonprofit to a money-making venture – to develop an alternative revenue stream as they say.

When it comes to ad networks, bloggers have a lot of options.

BlogHer wasn’t an obvious choice for me. Although I’m a mom and a blogger, I’m not a mommy blogger, a fact that kept me from investigating BlogHer and similar networks for some time.

But when I did, I found a lot of compelling reasons to join. The BlogHer network has 2,500 bloggers, not a huge number, which gives WordCount a chance to stand out. There aren’t a lot of other BlogHer blogs covering freelancing or the media business, another opportunity for me to shine. BlogHer has grown beyond its initial mommy blogger roots: the company recently announced an initiative with The White House Project to get more women to run for office in 2010.  With more than 20 million unique visitors a month, it’s getting noticed: BusinessWeek included the Belmont, California company in its February 2010 list of America’s Most Promising Startups. Writing in Forbes, in November 2009, CBS anchor Katie Couric included BlogHer cofounders Lisa Stone, Jory Des Jardins and Elisa Camahort Page in a list of the most powerful people in new media.

I also picked BlogHer because it maintains a newspaper-type editorial code when it comes to bloggers accepting free gifts and junkets. At a time when many bloggers think it’s OK to take free stuff and write positive things about the companies that gave it to them – with or without acknowledging the relationship – I appreciate that BlogHer holds contributors to a higher standard. You can read the entire editorial policy here.

Have I sold out? You could say that. Am I OK with it? It took me a while, but yes, I am. Do I expect to make lots of money? Not at first. I see it as the latest step on my journey as an journalist entrepreneur.

The most well known of these blog ad networks is Google AdSense. But there are others. One of those is BlogHer, the network of blogs for women that’s now 2,500 bloggers strong.

Four-year-old BlogHer has become so successful it now competes with some of the largest women’s magazine publishers for Fortune 500 advertising dollars and will “quite likely” be profitable for the first time in 2010, according to BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone. She talked about the business and the opportunities it presents for freelancers who blog at the recent Online News Association annual conference.

If you’ve considered running ads on your blog, here are some things to know about working with BlogHer. One important thing to note: as of early November, BlogHer was not accepting applications for new bloggers. But you can put your name on a waiting list.

BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone (Photo: BlogHer)

Expect editorial guidelines. Before bloggers can join BlogHer they have to sign editorial guidelines prohibiting them running things like hate speech or allowing similar nasty comments from readers. To drive home the importance of this, contributors have to print out, sign and fax in this agreement. “I’ve learned that if you make it unsafe for (people) to say ‘I support McCain and here’s why,’ for example, you’ll never be able to grow the community the way we want to,” Stone said in her ONA address. These days, spam has overtaken hate speech as the biggest thorn in Stone’s side, including bloggers trying to embed commercial messages into their posts. “We have a very adept ‘Mark as Spam’ function,” Stone said. “We ignore spambots and go after people who are abusing our community practices agreement.”

They use editors. BlogHer has 7 to 10 headline editors on staff, each policing 200 to 300 blogs to make sure they don’t violate terms of the network’s community practices agreement.

They share ad revenue. Most individual bloggers get a cut of ad revenue. For every $1 in advertising on BlogHer, the company takes 10 percent off the top and splits the rest 50-50. Ad rates are based on CPMs, “So if they have 10,000 viewers and we have a $10/CPM, she’ll get $4.50 if she has a typical arrangement with us,” Stone said. The company doesn’t cut a check until a blog has accumulated $25 in ad revenue. BlogHer also has special arrangements with 79 contributors who are paid $50 a post, Stone said.

It’s OK to be small but it pays to be big. Traffic on some BlogHer blogs is quite small and Stone is OK with that. “We’ve always said we don’t care about quantity, we care about quality,” she said. “But some people go supernova. We have bloggers on the network who are earning five-figure incomes and are living off of that.”

‘Fish where your fish are.’ While Stone encourages bloggers to use SEO, social network and other tactics to improve site traffic, she believes building a blog following involves more than that. “The goal is to fall in love with a subject area, write expert content about it and go discuss it with other people. Fish where your fish are. If you’re blogging on health care or taking fantastic pictures of your children or pioneer women joining a network like ours is a great option” because it puts you in touch with blogs on similar topics that you can build alliances with. Building alliances with newspapers, magazines or other publications in your area is another. “Coalition building is everything in this space,” she said. “The bottom line is if you build it they will not necessarily come. It takes a village to building a blog following.”

Readers come before content. Stone, who has a journalism background, says she started out thinking content came before audience. But her BlogHer experience has taught her to think the other way around. The network started out with 34 parenting blogs, grew to 180 and mushroomed from there. Based on what readers asked for, Stone and her two co-founders eventually moved into different subjects, then added conferences, a news service, publishing network and other services – all because that’s what readers said they wanted. “We had guidelines first, then wrapped the business model around it later,” Stone said.

Changes are coming. Stone’s convinced initiatives the network undertook to cover last year’s presidential campaign and health care reform are the wave of the future. “We think women in our network care as much as the future of journalism as they do about Manolo Blahniks,” she said. “Our goal is to listen as hard as we can to where they want to go with the tools we have. We lead by listening. That’s the way we’ve been able to success so far.” Expect to see more changes in the not-too-distant future, as BlogHer moves into other forms of media, including books, radio and video, she said.