How to Turn Your Life Into a Book

If you’ve ever entertained the idea of publishing a book and yet you haven’t done so yet, then you’re making excuses.

The good news? Those excuses are no longer valid, thanks to the rise of self-publishing and big players like Amazon who have made it possible for anyone to do this.

In the past, you would have had major obstacles keeping your book from being published. While authors were expected to have a finished manuscript when they contacted literary agents, their chances of getting published were still overwhelmingly slim.

That meant a lot of work and writing for….well, not much other than personal enrichment. And in case you didn’t already know, personal enrichment doesn’t make anyone a single dollar, sadly.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am certainly not trying to say that writing for the sake of writing is a useless thing to do. It definitely isn’t. It makes you a better writer. It creates something, even if no one picks it up or endorses it.

The Death of Bookstores

Luckily for all writers, no one needs to anymore. You don’t have to pine after that elusive validation that kept your books from appearing on shelves in your favorite bookstore.

In fact, when is the last time you were actually in a bookstore? Other than Barnes & Noble when you’re at the mall, I mean? How often do you find yourself visiting any bookstores these days?

I’m guessing the answer is less and less. Like it or not, the truth is that bookstores are dying in the same way newspapers seem to be. There isn’t much we can do about it either, unfortunately.

Seems like we see or hear about another one closing its doors for good every day anymore. Formats change, industries die, technology replaces old mediums.

Excuses for Not Writing a Book

So let’s run through a couple of the most common excuses people make for not writing a book.

I am not disciplined enough to write an entire book.
I am not creative enough to imagine a whole fictional story line or develop an intricate plot.
I don’t know what I would write a book about and I don’t have time anyway.

Any of these sound familiar? They sure do to me.

While I enjoyed reading fiction as a teenager, I don’t think I could ever write a full length fiction novel. It just doesn’t come naturally to me, at least.

But guess what? I’m kind of wrong about all that.

Having published two “memoirs” on Amazon, I might as well have published fiction already. My life is real to me, but how real is it to someone who has never met me or heard of me who buys and reads my books?

To readers, it might as well be a work of fiction. It very well could be to them, what is the difference? I am just a character in a story to them, and the events which took place for me have never been reality to those reading about them.

I want you to keep two very important things in mind as you continue reading this. The first is that you SHOULD NOT be intimidated by scary sounding phrases like “character development.”

Everyone in your life who you have known is a character you can add to a story. Not only is everyone you know a character, but you can change anything about them that you see fit when you put them into writing.

You can keep as much of the reality as you want and do whatever you want with the rest.

The second thing is that you have a story inside you to write, no matter who you are. And the easiest and oftentimes best way to find it is to start with your own experiences.

Which brings us to the next point…

How to Turn Your Life Into a Book

Okay, so perhaps the idea sounds cool but you’re wondering how exactly to go about this whole thing? Fortunately, there are several options available to you and they are all generally pretty easy to do, believe it or not.

If you were to ask me right now how to turn your life into a book, my first suggestion would be to keep a journal and write in it as often as you feel like.

Doesn’t have to be every day. In fact, it’s probably better if it’s not. A daily journal will likely get mundane and boring after so long. Both for you and anyone reading as well.

Instead, write on the days when you have something to say that is interesting and which is worth remembering.

The Easiest Way to Keep an Online Journal

Here is another cool thing. While the idea of committing to an occasional journal entry might seem overwhelming, what if all you had to do was reply to an email on the days that you felt like writing?

That’s all you have to do to keep a journal using a really cool site called OhLife. You register for an account and they send you an email every day at the same time (8 pm or so) asking you “how did your day go?”

All you have to do is reply to it and they add it as an entry to your journal. You can login to view or edit your entries at any time. They are neatly organized by month and year and you can export all of them with a single click whenever you wish.

I highly recommend checking it out or giving it a try. See the screenshot below to give you an idea of what you can expect.

The reasons why this is awesome are pretty obvious to me, but let’s go over them in case it isn’t totally clicking with you.

It eliminates the need for handwriting or keeping a physical journal
You never have to actually visit the site to add new journal entries
The convenience of writing your entries by responding to an email
You can easily ignore the emails on days you don’t want to write
Unlike a blog, it’s private and not publicly available for others to view

Convinced it rocks yet? Just think of how cool it will be when you have a year of memories ready to export and publish on Amazon and how much money it will probably make you.

Here is a little secret: while you might think your life is boring and no one will want to read about it, this simply isn’t true. People are fascinated by the lives of others, the paths they choose and the work they do.

It is interesting to others simply because it differs from their own life. You probably don’t even fully realize how unique your own experiences are and I assure you that there are people out there waiting to read your stories and share all the happiness, pain, heartache and wonderment of your life along with you.

The point is, your life is worth writing and there is an entire readership of people who are waiting to agree.

How to Start Making Money Online for Beginners

When I first set out to make money online back in 2010 or so, I had no clue where to start. I had zero experience and basically figured shit out as I went, hoping for the best.

Along the way, I learned a lot about the different methods of making money online that require no upfront investment. I’ve blogged about many of them to share my experiences with others, so this post is kind of a roundup of all the 100% newbie friendly methods I’ve personally tried in the past.

Paid Surveys

Take surveys online for stupidly small amounts of money, usually as low as fifty cents per survey and as high as somewhere around ten bucks, sometimes a bit more if you’re lucky.

Before you sign up and start taking surveys, you’ll need a free Paypal account and it needs to be verified.

You can sign up for your account today and you’ll need to link it with a bank account or credit card in order to verify it, which can take up to five days or so.

If you don’t have a bank account or credit card, just sign up for a free prepaid debit card instead and use it in place of a credit card in order to verify your Paypal account.

Mechanical Turk

If Amazon products have any value to you (which they probably do, considering they sell just about everything under the sun), then you can start earning some extra cash to shop on their website by completing mundane and repetative tasks over at Mechanical Turk.

Sign up as a worker. View the available HITS. Pick ones you can do and don’t hate too much. Submit them. Get paid tiny amounts of money per task. Watch it add up.

Use the money to shop on Amazon.com or let it accumulate until you have enough to withdraw the amount to your checking account, if you have one.

Getting Paid Faster

Oh by the way…if you get sick of waiting 3-5 business days for your Paypal money to show up in your prepaid card account, I highly suggest that you sign up for a free Paypal debit card.

It’s free and it will allow you to transfer funds from your Paypal account to a physical debit card instantly. No waiting.

Once you get the card in the mail, you can spend your money as soon as it shows up in Paypal and you click a couple buttons to transfer the funds.

Fiverr

After you’ve taken more surveys than a sane person can stand and saved up a good little chunk of change, it’s time to head on over to Fiverr to climb up the ladder by one step.

Think of something that you’re good at which doesn’t take up much of your time at all. Keep in mind you’ll be paid $3.92 by each customer who pays you to do this thing, so be sure to pick something that makes sense for this amount.

Deliver your orders for the gig on time and to the buyer’s satisfaction.

Consider creating another gig or two and start making more money from those additional gigs.

Work hard to get a good handful of positive feedbacks from your buyers and you’ll be promoted to a level 1 seller. Keep it up and they’ll promote you to a level 2 seller.

Get an outrageous level of good feedback and on time deliveries, and you might even become a top seller.

The point is, once you begin to move up in levels you are allowed to create extras for your gigs.

These are like upgrades for your main gig. They can be $5, $10 or even $20, depending on your level.

For example, if you are offering to make an eBook cover for one of your gigs, then a good idea for an extra would be to deliver the same eBook cover in a different file format, such as PSD.

Just keep delivering on time, keep the feedback positive and soon you’ll be making a nice little bit of extra cash via Fiverr orders.

Sell Your Shit

In the meantime, go through all your old shit and see if you’re holding onto any items that you may be willing to part ways with and list them on eBay to see what you can get for them.

And while we’re on the subject, list anything you own that you’re willing to trade for something more useful on Craigslist as well.

Freelancing Sites

Your work over at Fiverr should have helped you in figuring out what your talents are on the web, so now it’s time to take those skills to the next levels.

If you can write, you need to sign up for both oDesk and eLance right now. Seriously, go ahead. I’ll wait for you. This will all be here when you are done registering.

These freelancing sites will give you opportunities to earn much more than you are being paid on Fiverr or other micro gig sites.

Here is a quick rundown of how they work.

First, you look for projects listed on the site that match your skills. If you think you can get the job done in the requested amount of time, you place a bid on that project.

A bid is the amount of money you are willing to accept in order for completing this job for the client.

The lame part is that you will be one of many others bidding on the project, and the competition on these sites is very stiff.

Until you get some positive feedback in your profile from happy customers, bid on the lower end and once you can demand a higher rate of pay, you will find yourself in a much better position to scale up.

For Artistic Types

For those of you who don’t write, maybe you are creative but prefer to make things with your hands like arts and crafts…?

If that sounds like you, then I definitely see the opening of an Etsy shop in your near future.

If making handmade crafts like greeting cards, jewelry or even furniture is something you can do well, then you can start a profitable business online entirely through this badass marketplace.

Okay, so maybe you fit into yet another category of creative types. If you’re one of these people, you probably don’t make artsy crafts and writing isn’t your strongest area.

However, you can create some mean fucking shit in Microsoft Paint. Leave you alone with Photoshop for an hour and you can make jaws drop even further!

If graphic design is more your trade, then consider trying out the crowdsourcing site 99Designs, where you can create logos and other graphics for branding for a chance at winning the client’s money in a design contest.

Just don’t waste too much of your time on sites like these, as the odds of getting paid anything are stacked against you rather overwhelmingly, I’m afraid.

Crowdsourcing Sites

Now that we’ve covered all of those, I have a couple sites that have somehing to offer all creative types, but especially those who have a knack with branding and words.

SquadHelp and NamingForce are pretty similar for the most part, though there are some differences worth mentioning that I don’t have time in covering.

New products, companies or websites all need a name. The people behind them go to sites like these to tap into the collective creativity of the crowd, of which you are just one person.

You suggest names based on their product descriptions, business plans or domain specifications and if the contest holder likes one of your suggestions better than ALL the others submitted (not too likely), you may actually make some money.

Otherwise you make nothing at all, so don’t devote hours of your day to this.

My First Paid Gig Writing a College Essay

Okay, so this post might get me some pissed off responses but I’m fine with that. I’m pretty much used to those, so before you go wasting your breath I think it’s only fair that you are made aware of how unheard your voice will be and how little I care.

That being said, I was recently asked to help out a friend of a friend from out of state (who shall remain anonymous, of course) by writing a college essay for one of his journalism classes.

What was the catch? I was asked if I was willing to do this and how much I would charge at approximately 8:00 p.m. When was the paper due…? By midnight.

I agreed to do this and told him he could pay me based on the grade he gets, since that only seemed fair. I will update this post after the paper is graded, to share the results.

While I hadn’t actually thrown out any specific numbers to correspond with the different possibilities in terms of letter grades, I wasn’t going to accept any money if the paper received a D or F. In my opinion, that would be taking someone’s money for a job that you ultimately failed to complete. Not my style.

The Details and Assignment

But before we move on, let’s make a few things clear. Was writing a college essay something I’d been paid to do before this? No. Was it something I’d ever done AT ALL? Nope.

What was the minimum required length of the essay? Around 1,000 words. How long did it end up taking me to write the whole thing? About two hours, maybe just slightly less.

As for the topic of the essay? Well, like I said before, it was a journalism class. The assignment basically wanted an essay on any current event so long as the sources you used to support your opinion on the issue were not from mainstream news companies. Sounded easy enough to me.

Luckily, this person forwarded a couple of links to articles from approved sources for me to use and told me they didn’t have a preference for which side of the issue I chose to argue. I tend to find it much easier when I truly agree with something, so I wrote in support of that side.

The Writing Process

Never having written a college level essay before in my life, writing the first sentence was the most difficult part for me for some reason. I kept getting caught up on the wording and second guessing whether it was a strong enough opening or not.

Once I finally felt like I had a good first sentence, it became much easier from there. The process went something like this:

Make a strong opening statement in first sentence that implies which side of the issue I’m on (without actually saying it).
Skim first article and use key bits of information to introduce the current event and put it into context.
Throw in some opinion masquerading as objective statements which follow up the cited info from article.
Mention some other relevant comparisons and past events.
Skim second article and repeat steps 3 and 4 again.

Since this whole experience made me terribly curious to learn more about the various online services and even freelancers who get paid for writing college essays and custom term papers, I did a little research and found this fascinating article from The Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s a peek into the work schedule of a “shadow” scholar who does nothing but write custom papers for college students at all levels and makes a good amount of money in doing so.

I have to admit, I sort of admire this guy and his attitude towards the ethics of what he does for a living. In the article, he describes a writing process similar to the one I haphazardly threw together last minute when he says:

“First I lay out the sections of an assignment—introduction, problem statement, methodology, literature review, findings, conclusion—whatever the instructions call for. Then I start Googling.”

A bit more involved than what I did in two hours, but not too different fundamentally.

Term Papers and Essay Writing Services

I also discovered this interesting guide on buying term papers online, which reviews everything from free essay sites, to paid pre-written essays and finally the custom ordered services as well.

The author payed money to test out each one and then used three of his contacts as the judges who graded the purchased essay. Two of which teach at universities (one of which was the author’s father) and the third being his girlfriend who was a teaching assistant at a university.

The results from each site are both interesting and a bit unexpected, as are the grades assigned to them by the three judges. While I hardly think his test run when using the custom service was fair or really all that accurate, it’s still good for a laugh or two.

And in closing, I will say that I did ask him to add the references and bibliography and all that formatting-specific shit that I am only vaguely familiar with, at best. I also warned them to check for run-on sentences, since I’m notorious for those and advised him to chop lengthy sentences into two shorter ones wherever possible. And that was it, folks.

Update:

I have just been informed that my friend’s friend received a grade of B+ for the essay I wrote. Looks like we can consider this one a success, kids!

Free eBook Marketing Course for Kindle Authors

I am totally excited to invite you to my Kindle Authors membership site. Actually, there are two very sweet offers and I want to give you a heads up so you can get the most out of each one.

Email Course

First, you can find the main site here. I recommend first signing up for the email course, which was written by me for all Kindle authors who are interested in promoting, marketing and selling their eBooks.

The email course will help you with all of these things and more. It offers tips on many different forms of promotion, including radio and podcast interviews, social media, content marketing, publicity and more.

If you’re looking for ways to get the word out about your books, this was made especially for you.

Member’s Area

Second, be sure to sign up for the private members area by registering an account here. Membership is free, but if you choose the premium option you will get access to my Kindle Publishing Guide, which is also jam packed with useful information for all writers in any stage of the publishing process.

Inside the members area, you will find tons of helpful resources to help you stay organized and efficient with your eBook marketing and promotional efforts. Not only did I create all of these myself, I have used them all to sell more of my own books.

Oh yeah, one more thing…if you have any questions or need help with anything along the way, just reply to any of the emails from the course and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Premium members get first priority for email responses and extra coaching and/or help.

Don’t Be Afraid to Become Who You Were Meant to Be

I’ve faced a lot of criticism in my life so far. Probably more than most people who live in my part of the world. Since as far back as I can remember, my family has basically disagreed with everything I think, say and choose to do. When I was younger, this was very frustrating.

Perhaps it had something to do with the generation gap between myself and the grandparents who raised me. Whatever the reason, I have had to live with disapproval from my entire family since I was young enough that it still made me feel pretty bad.

Drawing From Personal Experiences

If you face any kind of adversity in life from those close to you, I can’t blame you for being scared. But you shouldn’t let it stop you.

I remember in the seventh grade, we were matched up with another student and our assignment was to pick an issue to debate, whether political or social. I ended up with another girl in the class named Bianca and our issue was abortion. We were on totally opposite sides of the matter as well, I might add.

While she argued that it was morally wrong and should be illegal, I stood my ground and believed it was a woman’s body so it was still her own choice what she did with it. I know where this position originated in myself too, which was equally as important.

For as long as I could remember, I had always thought that my mother should not have had children if she was just going to abandon them and didn’t really want to bother with them. People are a big deal. They matter. It seemed to me that you should not just go around carelessly breeding when you had no intention of being a responsible parent.

In my mind at that time (and still now, to an extent) abortion seemed like the more humane thing to do than bringing someone into the world who was unwanted. Why doom someone to live their life knowing that those responsible for them had no desire to know them or care for them?

You Will Know It When You Feel It

Backing up even further, I also have a very vivid memory of watching a soap opera with my live-in nanny at around the age of seven or so. I remember that one of the female characters was pregnant and she was injured somehow, I don’t remember the details.

At some point, there was a scene where one of the male characters either had to save the life of this unborn baby by doing something, or he had to instead save the life of one of the other adult female characters in the show. I remember asking Melanie (my nanny) about it and she asked me something that really made me think, even at such a young age.

She asked, “Who do you think he should save?”

And I answered with the name of the adult female, then followed it up with something about how the other lady could always get pregnant again and have another baby, but they couldn’t replace the other character. She already had a name and they knew who she was. That seemed more important to me.

It still does.

You Don’t Always Grow Out Of It

I think I had a misconception that perhaps my family would better understand me as an adult. That’s hardly been the case, however. My grandparents in particular disapprove of my choice to work as an escort.

While I don’t need them to agree with how I choose to live my life, I feel like they are missing out in many ways by judging and discouraging me. Sometimes, you have to let go of people who are supposed to be important and close to you because quite frankly, they give you no other choice.

Yes, it’s kind of sad. Yes, it’s also unfortunate.

But there is something worse that it can turn out to be if you let it.

It might be the reason you never become who you were meant to be. Personally, I have learned to thrive off of the disapproval of others, rather than let it slow me down. The more they shake their heads at me, the stronger I stand my ground. It’s become easier over the years, but it takes practice.

The Courage to Stand Alone

And I mean all alone. If you were in a room full of people who would think badly of you if you told them who you were and what you did, would you have the courage to stand up and tell them? Could you handle standing there completely alone like some sponge for their negative reactions?

No one likes to be the only one in a group of people that doesn’t fit in at all. But it’s an important skill to have and you need to be able to do it when necessary. It’s not easy. It’s pretty fucking difficult. You need to have the balls to do this. Without it, you’ll never get very far.

Most people would like to think that if a group of people was picking on someone and had singled them out, they would intervene to help the victim…right? But ask yourself honestly if you would have the courage required to do something like that?

Remember that it would be you and the victim up against a large group of people who want to attack you, either verbally or physically. You’d be scared. But you’d know it was the right thing to do.

Just like you need to stand up for what is right to help others, you need to do it to help yourself.

Split Personalities Are Not The Way To Go

While some people seem to have no problem living double lives, it’s not really something I can make myself do. When I first set out to market myself online as a freelance writer, I faced a unique challenge.

I could write well, but obviously my clients came from several different industries and so they required writing that catered to an equally as wide range of topics, most of which I knew little or nothing about.

Okay, so what’s the big deal? Nothing, I guess. I just did the necessary research or they gave me something similar to what they were looking for to model the writing after, which worked well enough.

Doesn’t this work just fine? Sure. But it’s not how you take things to the next level. It’s not how you infuse your writing with passion and true firsthand experience.

As it turns out, there is something to be said for specializing. Not only can you demand higher rates for your work, but you become an authority in whatever niche it is you know most intimately.

Speaking of intimate niches, mine has turned out to be pretty easy to guess. Since most of my experience comes from working as an escort, I have a unique perspective on adult topics of all kinds.

For the longest time, I was pretty much convinced that since it doesn’t totally fit into any existing niches (like porn, for example) that are 100% legal, I was probably out of luck when it came to finding writing opportunities where this knowledge would be useful.

So what did I do? I tried to create two separate identities. One as a writer. The other as an escort.

Big mistake. Not the right way to become who you were meant to be.

Keep Looking Until You Find It

As it turns out, there are opportunities to use both my writing skills and escorting experience all in one place. A while back, I started writing regularly for dating.com about many different topics related to escorting. Not only did I approach them with confidence, but I knew I had the right knowledge and the right words to write for their site.

I actually discovered it by pure accident, in fact. Like it was just meant to be.

Now I’m getting offers to write for other sites in the same niche. Ones I didn’t even know about. Maybe there are more out there than I had previously thought. At the end of the day, my advice is to keep looking until you find the right opportunities for the person you really are.

Not who you are trying to be. Not who others want you to be.

Instead of all that bull shit, become who you were meant to be. Be fearless. Don’t wait around for things to work out, find a way to make them work on your own terms.

First Day Writing for BoostCTR

So I recently found out about a site called BoostCTR.com, which basically acts as a crowdsourcing platform to match up copywriters with companies who are using paid search advertising to promote their business. Basically, writers take an admission test and if they are accepted, they can then browse ad contests and submit short PPC text ads which they will be paid for in the event that the contest holder approves it.

This is kind of cool because obviously PPC ads are short as hell. But every word counts, and it’s sometimes quite challenging to cram a meaningful message into as little as two lines each as few as 35 characters. That’s like…less than 1/2 a tweet, for fuck’s sake.

As you can probably imagine, using keywords is a requirement for most PPC ads. They are obviously trying to catch the attention of search users who enter specific terms and are looking for the products and services offered by the companies advertising. Makes enough sense.

Your job as a writer for BoostCTR is to optimize these tiny little text ads and to deliver on the promise of actually, well, boosting their click-through rates.

The admissions test freaked me out considerably, because it basically shows you two versions of an ad for the same company and asks you which one you believe was the winner of the two. It then asks you to explain your selections and mentions something about how your reasoning matters as much to them as whether you picked the winning ad or not.

Not sure why that freaked me out so much, but I made sure to take my time with the test and I provided really thorough answers for each ad comparison. I skipped a few and came back to them, and reviewed all my answers a second time before finally submitting it. That was on February 21st.

So today, I see an email from them in my inbox. Here’s what it said:

After this email showed up, I received a couple more which had links to setup my writer account. After logging in and checking out the current contests, I have already submitted two ads which are still currently pending.

I am excited to start writing for BoostCTR because it is very much a crowdsourcing platform in much the same way as SquadHelp or Interact Media. I am looking forward to sharing more results as I become more familiar with how it all works.

Has anyone else written for BoostCTR?

How to Make Serious Money on Fiverr

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I am a big fan of Fiverr. Mostly because I saw the massive potential in the concept even in its earliest days. I knew it was going to be huge and it has since exploded into a highly profitable venture for thousands of sellers.

But it’s no big secret that being a seller on Fiverr is…less than appealing, in a sense. I have heard so many people say that Fiverr isn’t worth your time at all unless you can find a gig that takes up zero time and can be automated as much as possible.

The Problem With Fiverr Gigs

One example of a gig that might meet that criteria is selling an eBook or some sort of pre-written content or other digital product that has already been created. Okay, sure. That’s fine. It takes almost no time and if you can get enough people to bite, then you could feasibly make a good chunk of change.

But using the eBook gig as an example, you run into a few problems.

First of all, if it’s an eBook you wrote yourself then you are probably way better off selling it somewhere other than Fiverr, since you are forced to sell it at only five bucks to start out. If it’s something you didn’t write, you have to have rights to sell it and if you actually do then chances are, so do tons of other people. Some of which may also be on Fiverr.

And keep in mind that Fiverr takes their $1.00 out of every gig you sell. Then Paypal takes their very small share too. This leaves the seller with a measly $3.92 per gig sold. Pretty lame, right?

Yes, I would say so. But I’m going to tell you what the real secret to making a shitload of money on Fiverr is. If you want a hint, it’s not automation or finding some shortcut.

How to Make Serious Money

The way to make serious money on Fiverr is to work your ass off until you get promoted to a Level 1. Then work even more until you’re at a level 2.

Why is this the secret sauce? Because once you are a level 1 or 2 seller, you can upsell your buyers on all your gigs.

There are some really lame examples of this and there are also some brilliant sellers who are really approaching this the right way and making bank.

So first of all, how do you get promoted to level 1? If I remember right, you just have to get positive feedback from like 10 buyers and you have to deliver your gigs on time as promised, consistently. It’s not asking much.

At one point, I got promoted to level 1 but then I got busy with other stuff and didn’t really have time to explore it. However, I recently went to the site to browse around a bit and saw two striking examples that I really wanted to share with you today because I think they will help inspire you.

Adding Extras to Your Gigs

The first one is a seller who offers an illustration gig in which she’ll draw a head shot of you as a caricature. See the screenshot below for more details.

Yes, she’s a top rated seller. That’s hard to achieve. But by no means impossible. Just keep at it and you can get there too. Now check out the description for her gig below.

Pay close attention to what she says here. Notice that she makes her $5 gig seem worthless in comparison to her upsells for this offer.

She makes it clear that the $5 headshot is for personal use only and she retains full copyright to use them for promotional purposes. She even includes her signature on the artwork, unless you pay extra to have it removed. This almost forces you to go for the upsells.

She also offers you the full copyrights if you pay an extra $100. This is very effective because it’s still much less than you will probably pay elsewhere for something similar.

Promoting Affiliate Programs

The second is a seller who offers to setup and design a very basic website for you with a small catch – you must sign up for web hosting through their affiliate link to “offset their time,” as the seller puts it in the gig description.

I’m not even sure if this is allowed on Fiverr, but considering that they have been promoted and are in the levels system then I imagine they either don’t know or don’t care. Either way, this is incredibly smart. They have tons of good feedback and this is a great way to start making affiliate commissions cheaply and easily. See the screenshot below of their gig.

The reason this works is simple. People that need a website will automatically have an equal need for hosting of that site. So this makes perfect sense for them and web hosting is priced low, which makes this the perfect type of affiliate offer to promote with a complementary service like web design.

Assuming you’re using some sort of theme or template based system for setting up the sites, this becomes a very quick and easy task for anyone who knows how to do this.

In Conclusion

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Fiverr can bring in some serious money if you stay with it for a while. That DOES mean slaving away in the beginning…but it appears to pay off once you are promoted and assuming you have just an ounce of creativity.

9 Creative Writing Communities for Writers and Authors

Although I don’t consider myself much of a fiction writer these days, I still have a deep appreciation for creative writing when done right.

It’s no secret that fiction authors are certainly getting the biggest checks from Amazon each month, that’s for sure. Everything from Fifty Shades of Grey to author success stories like J.A. Konrath and Amanda Hocking, it’s become clear that Kindle owners are on the market for entertaining fiction more than anything else.

Obviously this also means you will have tons of competition if you choose to publish a fiction novel in Amazon’s Kindle store. But at the end of the day, I suppose, it all sort of balances out.

How to Write Better Fiction

Creative writing is, in many way, much scarier than writing non-fiction stuff or even narrative style works. Fiction writing is a craft and it can go dreadfully wrong if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, as I’m sure you’ve discovered about half way through reading a book that you finally gave up on finishing.

The good news is that it’s all subjective. Some people will love whatever you end up publishing, others will hate on it. As a friend of mine pointed out to me recently, it’s not about how talented you are or how great your art is. It’s about how many people think it’s worth buying. Kind of true, in a sense.

So today I wanted to compile a short list of creative writing communities from around the web that seem to offer helpful resources for improving your skills with the pen. I have tried these out and have varying levels of experience with each, so I hope to give you a snapshot of what to expect.

Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

This is a fairly simple site that offers a great outlet for busy people to fit some fiction writing into their days. Most of us have fifteen minutes to spare, right? Ditch the reality show you are glued to and try this instead.

They provide a weekly writing prompt if you are having an inspiration drought as well. You can also read other people’s writing as well.

Scribe Slice

Another even simpler creative writing community that has everything from poetry to short stories and beyond. Super simple interface for quick posting and easy browsing. For the fiction writing minimalists out there, this one is for you.

Stories Space

I haven’t used this one too much yet, but it appears to be similar to ScribeSlice and describes itself as a place where writers can post their stories, comment on other stories and publish your own fiction. They also have a forum and chat and you must be at least sixteen years old to join.

Once Written

This is a neat site for any writer or author to check out. They apparently do book reviews which they refer to as “recommendations” since they go on to explain that they do not review books they don’t care for, nor do they guarantee that they will finish reading yours if you submit yours for review, which you can do here.

They also feature author interviews, writing contests, book giveaways, paid promotional services for authors and offer tons of free and premium resources for aspiring writers as well.

The Next Big Writer

This site requires a small monthly membership fee to post your writing and they guarantee feedback for paid members. Reading and reviewing is free, of course.

Some interesting and potentially cool sounding benefits of being a paid user include: opportunities to compete for publishing contracts, a ranking to compare your work with other writers on the site, and a fan system.

The monthly subscription is $7.95 or you can save a couple bucks each month by opting for the yearly subscription which will set you back $49.95. I would recommend this site for the serious fiction writers out there who are really interested in getting feedback and critiques for their work. Otherwise, the investment isn’t going to be worth it in my opinion.

Write for 10

This works great for both a community and a daily writing exercise, which I’m sure we all could use. As you probably already figured out, the concept is basic and involves writing about anything under the sun (or above it) for at least ten minutes.

This is kind of neat because you can go back and get an idea of what you were doing a week or a year ago when you put paper to pen for ten. It gradually creates a sort of brief timeline of your life if you keep at it long enough.

100 Words

In the same vein, 100 Words is a site devoted to writing exactly that many words each day. No more, no less. It can be about whatever you want, but the word count is strictly enforced by a word counter that won’t let you go over.

The about page refers to the project as a “social tasking” site, whatever the hell that means. I read the entire page and I’m still not totally sure.

It helps you track your progress with a little monthly calendar that shows which days you’ve made an entry for and how close you are to meeting your word count goal for the month.

Scribophile

This creative writing community is kind of cool looking, and offers both a free and premium membership. They appear to use some sort of points system for users which allows them to perform certain actions, such as entering contests or posting their work.

In fact, their free membership is pretty limited to be honest. It looks like the paid version is probably worth the money for passionate fiction writers though, as they seem to offer plenty of goodies. The monthly subscription costs $9 and the yearly will set you back $65.

Figment

I haven’t had a chance to play around with Figment as much as I’d like yet, but so far I like it a lot. I’m probably more excited about this one than most of the others in this list, to be honest.

It seems to have pretty much all the bells and whistles that Scribophile offers, but for free. For starters, you can browse other user stories, post your own, do story swaps with other writers, get access to tons of creative writing prompts, enter writing contests, post in the forum, join groups and much more.

It also seems to be considerably more social media friendly than the other sites mentioned here. You can sign up with your Twitter or Facebook account and it’s easy to connect both profiles to get the full social experience out of the whole thing.

Authors and Social Media

A quick and very cool little story to end this with. As a teenager, I was a huge fan of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. I was recently taking a trip down memory lane and since I follow her on Facebook, I happened to see one of her posts recently and so I figured what the hell and posted a message to her wall, figuring she probably wouldn’t even end up reading it.

Not because I think she doesn’t read stuff fans send her, but because she has so many damn fans and so many people post to her wall that I figured it would get lost in the mix. A few moments later, she replied to it. I was pretty shocked. See below for a screenshot of the little exchange.

As you can see, people, she even thanked me for what I said. It’s the little things that count. If Anne Rice responds, none of us have an excuse. Of course, it could be her publicist. But something tells me it was her.

Free Reputation Management PLR

authorship photo — Click here to download full-sized infographic

This reputation management PLR report offers valuable information to your prospects on how to start monitoring their corporate reputations online through social media and other free tools.

This report is idea for lead generation and is completely re-brandable. The document was created using OpenOffice, so I recommend using that to edit and add your company name and website before exporting to PDF.

In addition to the report, I have also added four follow up emails for your autoresponder series. Each of these delivers valuable resources to your leads without any hard selling at all.

You are of course free to make any changes to them that you’d like. I encourage you to add your branding to the emails and personalize them for your list.

P.S. If you like this reputation management PLR, please feel free to share this link with your friends!

My Top 3 Pieces of Writing Advice

Having just recently released a prequel to my 2010 debut memoir in Amazon’s Kindle Store, I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on the writing process and my own style and techniques, which I will warn you are very unconventional.

Over the years, I’ve been given so many different pieces of writing advice going back as far as grade school. Admittedly, reaching the age of twenty-five hardly qualifies me as being seasoned or experienced, especially as a writer.

However, I have managed to make myself write a fair amount over the past seven years or so and at this point in time, I have made several of my own discoveries and managed to arrive at a few of my own conclusions about all the writing advice I’ve received so far.

So today, I’m setting out to share my list of the top three pieces of writing advice I have to offer anyone who writes anything at all. Please keep in mind that these are highly personal tidbits of my own and they are not going to work for everyone out there.

They won’t make sense for everyone and you won’t agree with all of them, or perhaps any of them. None of that matters, so don’t forget that. Trying to correct me here is impossible, as this is all very subjective stuff we’re discussing.

Stories Are Told, Not Shown

I started to keep a journal in 2005, when I was just barely eighteen years old. It was just a personal project and I wasn’t at all disciplined about it. I only wrote when I wanted to, which was oftentimes very infrequently. I kept telling myself it was okay if I didn’t write in it every day, or even every week. Something is better than nothing.

Fast forward five years, and I’m not really adding to he journal anymore. It’s basically gone into a dormant state, left untouched since it was first written.

Then something very unexpected happened that changed my life in many ways. I received an email from a man. He lived in the same state as I do and he claimed to be a published non-fiction author who I’d never heard of.

I looked his name up online and found out that he was legit. But why was he reaching out to contact me?

Well back when I was keeping the journal, I would post the occasional entries on my old blog that no longer exists today. He had stumbled upon the writing I posted there, and he believed I had a collective story that was worth publishing.

He even went as far as offering to help me lead the project and find a publisher for a small percentage of whatever deal we could land.

My first reaction was disbelief. Was this guy crazy? Could he even read?

Several emails later, he did admit to me that the writing needed what he called “a lot of work,” in terms of editing. That was absolutely true, especially if we hoped to find a publisher who might be interested in my story.

But that’s not what ended up happening. I did take his advice and send out a shitload of query letters to various agencies, only to get two requests for a sample and a long list of rejections.

Then, he told me about another possibility. He told me I could self-publish the book on Amazon to sell it for the Kindle device. I knew nothing about this or how it worked. He went on to point me in the right direction of some basic information and I was honestly intrigued.

Personally, I prefer to have full control over my writing and the content. I doubt I’m the type of person who would have taken it well if a publisher or editor wanted to make changes I didn’t agree with. So this Kindle stuff was sounding like a much better idea.

During one of my phone conversations with this author (he wishes to remain anonymous due to the subject matter of my writing) he offered me some writing advice that I have since come to disagree with, as a matter of personal preference.

He recommended that I buy a copy of this book, which he said contained a piece of writing advice that I needed to use in my own writing: “Show, don’t tell.“

Of course at first I figured I had better listen to this guy, as he probably knew much better than I did and had far more experience when it came to writing. I’m certainly not going to say that there is no value in this piece of advice, as I’m sure it has its place and is a rule worth following in many cases.

However, the way I have come to see things…they don’t call it storytelling for no reason. Stories are told, they are not shown.

I realized that my absolute favorite writing was written in a way that told me stuff, rather than trying to show it to me. I realize that there is a marked difference between the use of this in fiction and non-fiction. Maybe my preference is the result of favoring non-fiction and narrative style writing to fantasy or fiction novels.

Here is a great example of writing that I think is fucking awesome. This is one of my all time favorite blog posts from anywhere on the internet, and you’ll see it tells a very entertaining story without showing much (aside from the grotesque image, which you should be warned is NSFW).

There Are Absolutely No Fucking Rules

Lots of writers out there will strongly disagree with me for saying this, but I firmly stand my ground on this one.

What do I mean by this? Don’t there have to be at least some basic rules of writing to end up with something worth reading? In my own experience, no. Not really.

If you can put words together in a sequence that can at least be understood on some level by those who read them, then you can write. Very little else matters.

In my opinion, editing extremists and grammar gurus are way off base. Sure, editing does matter for some stuff like printed magazines or whatever the hell. But the level to which it is stressed to writers is a by-product of the snobbish attitude of many big name publishers.

For example, take this poem by e.e. cummings which is shown on the right.

As you can see, the man refuses to capitalize his I’s, adds dashes where they don’t really belong, uses periods at the ends of some lines but not others, for some inexplicable reason adds spaces on either side of his ellipses, uses commas erratically and perhaps too much and pretty much does whatever the fuck he wants to do here.

Some people are definitely going to argue that this is poetry and therefore, some special set of rules applies. Please! If Mr. Cummings can write poetry however the hell he wants with no regard whatsoever for well established rules of writing, then guess what?

You can write whatever you write however you want to write it. Period.

There is no wrong way to write whatever you’re setting out to write. If anyone tells you there is, don’t listen. Block them out. It’s good to listen to suggestions from others, but never listen when people start trying to tell you the “right” way to write. There simply isn’t one.

Your Writing Has an Audience, No Matter What

I don’t care what anyone says. The subjectivity of certain types of writing, such as poetry, illustrate this point quite well. What one reader sees as beautiful art, another discards and treats like pure garbage.

If I sent you on a mission to find a single author or writer who has no fans at all, you’d be hard pressed to find one. If you don’t believe me, go look for one. Can you find just one writer who no one has ever praised at least once somewhere?

My guess is probably not. The explanation is simple. Regardless of what you write or how you choose to write it, you DO have an audience and they WILL both read and appreciate your work. No exceptions.

If you go hunting for the writer with no fans, you’ll find that even those who were considered the greatest craftsmen of the pen in their time are both loved and hated, often close to equally.

This is getting long, so let’s wrap this up shall we?

My Proof

I have proof that all of this advice can be true for some people. I have proof that they are true with my own writing. I know that the first item is true because I’m all about telling a story, and rarely do I “show” my readers anything…other than how to TELL a story, which is usually my own story.

I know the second item is true because of a couple horrifying facts that will probably make you faint. First, I have never even gone back to read my own journal in its entirety since I first wrote it. I didn’t have anyone else proofread or edit it either. I published it almost completely as-is.

That’s right – just the way it was written originally. And yes, it IS somewhat of a mess because of that, which I’m perfectly fine with. All I did before publishing it on Amazon was run a simple spell checker.

And finally, I know the third item is true because since I published my “book” or “journal,” or whatever you want to call it, I have been contacted more times than I can count by a reader who found some meaning in those unedited pages and felt compelled to reach out either on Facebook, through email or some other platform.

Some of these people are now close friends of mine, in fact. They have shared their feedback and showed their support for my work, just the way it was written. So go write, people.

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