WordCount Q&A: Helium.com CEO Mark Ranalli
Mark Ranalli makes no excuses for Helium.com. The website he helped start in 2006 isn’t the New York Times and never will be, and that’s OK with Ranalli, who describes the venture as a pro-am writing platform, where like cream, the best writing rises to the top and is compensated accordingly. One of a new [...]
WordCount Q&A: Steven Walling, wiki boy wonder
At 21, Steven Walling has accomplished what some writers twice his age are still trying to figure out: how to make a living as a digital freelancer. Despite his youth, Walling took a very old fashioned path to get where he is today. Fresh out of high school, he took whatever paid writing work he [...]
Can the techies save the news?
If you think reporters, editors, newspaper pundits, Sam Zell and the Sulzberger family are the only ones worried about the fate of the media business, you haven’t spent a Saturday morning with a room full of geeks. At last weekend’s BarCampPortland III meetup, the assembled developers, programmers and Web 2.0 entrepreneurs were just as concerned [...]
The well-dressed blog post
The well-dressed blog post begins with good writing. The best posts are heavy on context. But that’s just the beginning. To make sure they’ve got that pulled together look before you send them out the door, they should also have: A catchy title – A clever headline will capture more attention than a dull one. [...]
WordCount weekly online news recap for April 10
The week’s highlights from the freelance and digital news biz: It was a week for debating whether Google and the Internet have hurt or helped newspapers. Search engine guru and ex-newspaper reporter Danny Sullivan doesn’t understand newspapers’ anti-Google stance. But a poll of 43 mainstream media insiders conducted by The Atlantic and National Journal reveals [...]
My TwiTip guest post – when 1 Twitter account isn't enough
A while back, I conducted a poll to find out how many Twitter accounts freelance writers and other people who visit this blog use. As luck would have it, around the time I was getting ready to publish the results, I got the opportunity to write a guest post for TwiTip, a guide to all [...]
The use and abuse of Twitter to flog your blog
Twitter users fall into one of three categories: people who use it only to promote their blogs, people who sometimes use it to promote their blogs, and people who never had a blog or dumped theirs because all they want to do is hang out on Twitter. Which camp are you in? Plenty of Twitter [...]
Dear writer, please don't stop blogging
Dear Michelle, Yours is a wonderful site. I’d started a rather lame attempt at a blog for freelancers, but yours is so thorough and engaging that I’m taking mine down. Congratulations on a really first-rate blog. Dan Baum Dear Dan, Thank you. But please reconsider your decision to take down your blog. I looked and [...]
WordCount Q&A – One freelancer's DIY book publishing success
Corinne McKay is something of a miser, so when she decided to write a book, she studied all the options before picking the one she thought would make the most money. McKay, a freelance translator who lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband and 6-year-old daughter, ultimately opted to self publish. Not only that, she [...]
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WordPress bloggers can add ratings to posts, comments
By Michelle V. Rafter on August 12, 2009 | 1 Response
How do you rate? You can find out with a Ratings service WordPress.com recently rolled out for users of its free blogging platform. Why bloggers will like this: it’s a quick and easy way for readers to provide feedback on your posts – and what other people are saying about them – even if they [...]
Posted in Blogs, Polls, Technology, Web 2.0 | Tagged PollDaddy, rating blog posts, reader comments, WordPress | 1 Response