Since I undertook the big WordCount redesign there’s been a big “Coming Soon” sign on the page marked Best of WordCount.

No more.

As of today, the Best of WordCount is home to 30+ of this blog’s most well-read posts conveniently sharing the same page. Call it the WordCount Collector’s Edition. Or my WordCount greatest hits -get it, hits?

Whatever you call it, take a look.

You’ll see posts on writing, running a freelance business, why writers should blog, social network tools for writers and how the Internet is changing the media industry and what that means for freelancers journalist entrepeneurs.

If there’s a subject you’ve been dying to see me cover here, please feel free to let me know.

Caution: change is coming.

It’s been almost two years since I launched WordCount: Freelancing in the Digital Age as a way to get back into the writing business after an extended break, get myself up to speed on changes in the media industry, and continue a passion for writing on a weekly or biweekly basis I’ve held since the time I worked as a newspaper tech columnist.

A lot’s happened in the past 20 months. The start of this blog coincided with the biggest upheaval the media businesses has seen in my lifetime (and I’m no spring chicken), thanks to the twin whammies of the Internet and the recession. Those changes have wreaked havoc on newspaper and magazine advertising and employment. More to the point of this blog, it’s pulled the rug out from under independent writers who aspire to work for them. Old markets are drying up, and new ones emerging.

As my favorite TV character says, change isn’t good or bad. It just is (thanks Don).

So just as freelancers have to change to keep up with the times, WordCount does too. In short order, expect to see a new look here as well as some revamped content and other additions.

What I won’t be changing is my exploration of what it means to be a journalist and independent writer today.

When I started out, I thought of blogging as a solitary experience. It isn’t. Good blogs are like good conversations – stimulating, provocative – and two-sided. That lesson hit home recently in the very lively debates that have happened here over content sites and the rates they pay.

Since I value the WordCount community – including everyone who visits here and leaves comments, as well as my freelance tribes and my blogathon buddies – I’d love to hear what topics you’d like to see covered in coming months. Let me know by taking a minute to fill out this quick poll. Your reward – a preview of the new WordCount logo.

I’m happy to announce WordCount: Freelancing in the Digital Age was included in Writing White Papers’ list of Top 10 Blogs for Writers for 2009-10.

In the fourth annual competition, 10 winners were chosen from 28 finalists and more than 300 nominated blogs. Writing White Papers’ Michael Stelzner picks winners based on several criteria, including the amount of community interaction, i.e., comments on blog posts. So thanks to anyone who’ve ever stopped in to read something and been inspired to leave a comment – it takes a village to raise a blog.

In case you’re new here, WordCount charts the evolution of the media business from print to online, and the changing role independent writers play in it.

I started WordCount in January 2008, so making it onto a list of blogs that have been around much longer is incredibly rewarding. Congratulations to the other winners, and to a fantastic collection of nominees. Here a peek at all 10 winners:

• Copyblogger
• Men With Pens
• Write to Done
• Editor Unleashed
• Freelance Writing Jobs
• Confident Writing
• Urban Muse
• WordCount
• The Adventurous Writer
• Fuel Your Writing

I’m happy to announce WordCount is a finalist in the Writing White Papers blog’s 2009 top 10 blogs for writers awards. This year, finalists were chosen from more than 300 nominations.

The contest, run by copywriting guru Michael Stelzner, picks winners based on quality, content and frequency of posts, reader involvement and Technorati ranking.

Winners will be announced soon. Meanwhile, here’s a list of all 28 finalists:

3000 Messages Blog
Collective Inkwell
Confident Writing
CopyBlogger
Editor Unleashed
Freelance Writing Jobs
Fuel Your Writing
Future Now
How Publishing Really Works
InkyGirl
Men WithPens
Nail Your Novel
Neo Blue Panther
Off the Page by Drew Myron
One Night Stanzas
Renegade Writer
Storyfix
The Adventurous Writer
The Aspiring Mangaka & Writers Blog
Urban Muse
WordCount
Write for Your Life
Write to Done
Writer’s Edge
Writer’s on the Rise
WriteSmart
Writing Pays

I’m teaching a class on journalism basics at Digital Journalism Camp here in Portland this Saturday, Aug. 1.

To get ready, I’m asking writers going to the camp, as well as WordCount readers and my crews on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to help me decide what topics to cover in the presentation.

I talk up the benefits of crowdsourcing in other aspects of freelance work, so I figured this is a good opportunity to practice what I preach.

The class is geared to entry-level reporters, writers and bloggers who’d like to learn some tricks of the trade from a old fart veteran. The class could also be helpful to freelancers or citizen journalists who’ve come to writing or blogging from a different career and need a better mastery of the basics, including doing research, finding sources, making corrections and prepping for interviews.

If you’re coming to Digital Journalism Camp, or will be reading the live blogs or tweets from conference sessions, what should I cover? Use this poll to tell me what you’d like to see. Feel free to provide additional feedback using the comments section.

If you can’t make it to the conference and don’t follow the tweets, I’ll be sharing some of my tips and tricks here in coming weeks.

The house is a mess. The bills are overdue. I missed a deadline. I haven’t signed my son up for a single summer camp or planned the family’s summer vacation.

I’ve been too busy blogging. For the past month I’ve posted here every day. 31 days, 31 blog posts – a couple more actually because some days I wrote more than once.

Why spend so much time writing for free, something that I counsel other writers against?

Because for the second year in a row, I hosted a month-long blogathon for freelance writers. This year close to 45 showed up. Together we blogged through weekdays, weekends and a holiday. We held a guest post exchange and wrote on another writer’s blog for a day. We encouraged each other on Twitter. Tomorrow we’ll be back on Twitter for a blogathon wrap party. You can tune in too, just follow the hashtag #MayBlog2.

When I thought up doing a blogathon last year, I only had a few month of blogging under my belt. My posts were sporadic and I didn’t know much about traffic or SEO. The blogathon was a way to stick to a schedule, teach myself about blog promotion, and bring a few friends along for the ride.

This year my blogathon goals were different. Over the past 12 month, I’ve settled into a regular posting groove, learned about promoting my work, and seen traffic grow 10 fold. For me, this month was about tackling subjects I’d wanted to cover but hadn’t made time for, like putting together this list of top 25 digital media trendsetters. I also used it to build my “brand” to get recognized in the industry I blog about, and getting to know other writers and bloggers better, especially those that cover what I do.

By those measures, the month was a success. At the same time, and just like last year, the best part was having friends along for the ride.

For most, if not all the writers in this year’s blogathon, blogging is still a side project, an early morning or after hours gig we do in addition to our “real” writing, the magazine or Website assignments that pay the bills. But I predict that for more and more of us, blogging will be the assignment, whether it’s for a publisher we already write for, at HuffPost to drive traffic to our other work, ourselves to promote a book or project, a hyperlocal news site, or ghostblogging for a corporate client.

So there’s a solid business case to be made for a freelance writer spending time becoming a better blogger. In 2009, blogging is a skill every writer has to know.

What have you learned from the blogathon, or from your own blogging practice? Feel free to leave a comment. I’ll include some of the best along with other lessons learned from Monday’s blogathon wrap party in an upcoming post.

UPDATED ON MONDAY, MAY 4: I’ve added more participants and fixed a couple links, blog names and tag lines. – MVR

UPDATED ON SUNDAY, MAY 3: I added a number of additional participants and put my own name on the list, for those of you who’re copying this to your own blogs. – MVR

And they’re off.

For the next 31 days, a merry band of freelance writer are teaming up to take part in the second annual WordCount blogathon. We’ll be testing the limits of our blogging endurance to find out if we can successfully post every day in May.

How hard can it be, right? Well, pretty darn hard. Those of us who make our living writing have those pesky paid assignments to attend to in addition to hanging out on our much more fun blogs. And while some days ideas for blog posts are as bountiful as cherry blossoms in spring, other days the idea well is as barren as those same cherry boughs in winter. Then there are the weekends, when nobody in their right mind wants to be at a keyboard.

But we’re determined to persevere. As professional blogger have noted, the more you post, the better you get at it – and if you’re doing it right – the more traffic you’ll attract to your blog.

So here’s to blogging, here’s to May and here’s to us.

Speaking of us, here’s a list of writer-bloggers in this year’s blogathon, with links to their respective online homes:

• Vera Marie Badertscher – A Travelers Library – Books and movies that influence travel.
• Tim Beyers – The Social Writer – Motley Fool tech contributor and co-host of Twitter’s #editorchat.
• Heather Boerner – Serenity for the Self Employed – Advice for the self-employed among us.
• Jane Boursaw – Film Gecko – May Movie Madness and other film-related stuff.
• Melanie Bonsall – Expert Editing – The online home of this editor, proofreader and writer.
• Danielle Buffardi – Horrible Sanity – Random thoughts of a mother and freelance writer.
• Sona Charaipotra – Sona Charaipotra – for entertainmnet topics, and Ishq in a Backpack on travel and food.
• Rosie Colombraro – Trust the Universe – There is always a Plan B.
• Sue Dickman – A Life Divided – Food, gardening, travel, books and more.
• Jackie Dishner – BIKE with Jackie – Improving your life with the B.I.K.E. spiritual navigation tool.
• Ron S. Doyle – Ron S. Doyle – The literary equivalent of fruit salad and Cyclorati – Exercising my cyclophilia.
• Kelly Estes – Big Government in Your Wallet – A political blog.
• Jennifer L.W. Fink – Blogging ‘Bout Boys – With 4 boys between 11 & 3, this writer knows her subject.
• Sydne George - I’ll Have What She’s Cooking – Good eats.
• Debra Gordon – Wine on Tuesdays
• Nancy Hall – Floating Ink – How to fit making art into your every day life.
• KT Hinderer – Write Beyond the Cubicle – Musings of a full-time freelance writer and editor.
• Heather Holliday – Zazou Marketing – Putting your best words forward.
• Elizabeth Humphrey – TheWriteElizabeth – Introducing creativity into daily life.
• Leah Ingram – Suddenly Frugal – Tips for frugal living.
• JoAnn Jagroop – This Dame Cooks – Recipes from Alaska to the South Pacific.
• Sara Lancaster – No. 2 Pen Blog – Blog of this Denver, freelance Web & marketing writer.
• Doug Lance – Freelance Fiction – “I get paid to tell sweet, sweet lies.”
• Jared Lopatin – Sign in Ink – Everyday life as motivated by astrological happenings.
• Jenn Maciejewski – Cities on the Cheap – Freebies and deals in multiple cities across the U.S.
• Eric Mack – Wrecking Ball Report, MountainDaddy and SaveThatReceipt.
• Lisa Mann – Sonoma on the Cheap – One of the Cities on the Cheap blogs, this one for Sonoma, Calif.
• Joy Manning – What I Weigh Today – A food writer reflects on weight and body image issues.
• Teresa Mears – Miami on the Cheap – A Cities on the Cheap blog for Miami.
• Amy Rauch Neilson – It’s in the Genes – Thoughts of a breast cancer survivor.
• Jennifer Netherby – Jennifer Netherby – Musings of a freelance writer.
• Sarah E. Ludwig – Parenting by Trial and Error – Learning, growing, staying flexible.
• Michelle V. Rafter – WordCount: Freelancing in the Digital Age – Plugging into the online news biz.
• Kate Reilly – Polka Dot Suitcase – Finding fun in everyday life.
• Meredith Resnick – Inner Writing Journey – Authors & professional creatives in quirky dialogue on how they write and why it works.
• Melissa Sais – Digital Mom – Raising kids in a digital world.
• Brette Sember – Martha and Me – One Martha Stewart makeover a day.
• Kathy Summers – EcoPregnancy & Baby and Health Writing Hints.
• Jodi Torpey – Western Gardeners – Your online guide to gardening in the West.
• Sarah Webb – Webb of Science – Where science meets life.
• Jennifer Willis – The Green Soul Guide – Where sustainability and spirituality meet.

UPDATE: As of May 4, I’m no longer adding bloggers to the blogathon. But feel free to blog along side us on an unofficial basis, the more the merrier.

It’s not too late to join the fun. If you’d like to add yourself, leave a comment on this post or email me at michellerafter (at) comcast.net.

News you can use from the online news business:

Seal Beach Daily – Take two former reporters, add Web design and blogging skills and you’ve got the Seal Beach Daily, a virtual daily newspapers covering the neighborhoods in and around Seal Beach, a beach town that straddles the border of Orange and Los Angeles counties. The site is one of the latest examples of community microblogging – a new fangled word for the old fashioned community journalism you used to find in the metro section of daily newspapers or the neighborhood papers you could pick up in the grocery store or gym. The Seal Beach Daily is the work of author and former newspaper reporter and editor Donna Wares and partner Kate Cohen a long-time graphic designer and Web maven. Wares and Cohen are also the brains behind CaliforniaAuthors.com, “News and notes from America’s biggest book market.”

The power of blogging with a long term view – Blogging is not a get rich quick proposition. It’s a long, slow slog. At least that’s Duncan Riley’s take on the revenue-generating prospects of blogging, in a guest post he wrote on ProBlogger.com. Riley, founder and editor of The Inquisitr, basically a news & culture Website, writes:

Take it as a given up front that you will not get rich overnight from blogging. But how long does it take? I’ve always subscribed to the view that any blog needs a good 6-9 months to establish itself based on my experience in previous blogs and blog networks. The Inquisitr ended up being true to form, and it was our 7 month that things really took off in terms of traffic and actually making a profit. Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo and the founder of the Weblogs Inc blog network though thinks its longer, and commented recently that he puts the number at 2 years. The semantics may be a case of how “established” you would term a blog to be. I’m not about to spend Christmas on the Caymans from The Inquisitr, but in 2 years time…well, you never know that.

My own experience with this blog bears this out. Daily traffic to this blog doubled when I hit the 9 month mark in September and has doubled again since then. What’s most interesting to me, though, is how many posts visitors to WordCount read – on any given day it’s between 35 to 45. That means approximately 20 percent of the content on the site is being looked at every day. Some of my most popular posts are months old – definitely a long-tail phenomenon.

Thanks to the nominations submitted by all you faithful readers, WordCount has been tapped as a finalist for Writing White Papers’ 3rd annual top writing blogs contest. Yahoo!

The contest, created by Michael Stelzner, proprietor of the Writing White Papers blog, received 300 nominations, which he narrowed down to 37. According to Stelzner, he’ll choose the top 10 based on quality and frequency of posts, reader involvement and Technorati ranking. Winners will be announced soon.

In addition to WordCount, congratulations to the following freelance friends whose blogs were also nominated:

• Susan Johnston, The Urban Muse
• Beth Morrissey, Hell or High Water Writer
• Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell, The Renegade Writer

Time for a shameless request.

Michael Stelzner’s Writing White Papers blog is running its third annual contest to choose the top 10 blogs for writers.

So I’ll just come right out and say it: vote for me!

It’s been nine months since I started WordCount to blog about freelance writing in the 21st century – what it takes to be a successful freelance writer and how the switch to digital media is changing the way we work and the tools we use to do our work.

In that time, I’ve written about everything from search engine optimization to new media classes for freelancers to my own list of best blogs for writers. In May I hosted a blogathon that attracted more than two dozen other freelancers. I’ve seen one of my posts included in a book, The New Writer’s Handbook 2008.

During the year, dozens of you have told me privately or left comments about how much you’ve learned from what you’ve read here. So if you like WordCount, please consider nominating this blog for Writing White Paper’s top writing blogs award.

To nominate WordCount, leave a comment here. Voting closes Sept. 12.

Thank you!