Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.
When I worked on commercial fishing boats, this is how the pay was structured: The captain received a salary, paid by the boat owner who also paid for a slip, repairs and upkeep. One of these particular boat owners also bought the catch at market price. The crew would do a “grub shopping” meaning we would buy all the food for the trip. Next, we bought our fuel, ice and bait. We didn’t take anything out of our pockets for that, but the actual costs were recorded. We only fronted our labor.
What labor it was! Some days were 20 hours long. None were under 16 hours. We did this for up to 10 days straight. Baiting, gaffing, butchering…on long liners. On lobster boats, it was all about hauling, baiting and stacking traps AKA pots, putting bands on the lobster claws, handling miles and miles of rope AKA line. All this makes writing seem like a cake walk! But producing content is still time and labor in its own right. I have had plenty of 16 hour days, on my ass, on my couch, laptop on my lap. This is known as “Dad making love to his computer all day” by the wife and kids. This is no where near as grueling and dangerous as fishing. No danger of getting tangled up in line and dragged over board and drowned. No danger of falling overboard and getting eaten alive by sharks…That makes drowning or hypothermia preferable. The only danger I am faced with is this laptop having an electrical malfunction and shocking my ding-dong.
But, let me reiterate: Writing is work and that labor has value. Like fishing, you don’t know the value of it until it is brought to the dock and weighed. After that, the captain and crew gets their “share of the catch” this is how that is divvied out: Value of catch: $20,000.00. -$500.00 grub, -$500.00 ice, -$1,000.00 fuel, -$2,000.00 bait = $20,000.00 - $4,000.00= $16,000.00. Boat (owner) gets 50%. Captain gets one share on top of his salary. Each deck hand gets one full share unless he is a newbie AKA green-horn, then he gets a fraction of a share. So, $16,000.00 -$ 8,000.00 (50% boat share) = $8,000.00 divided equally between the captain and two deck hands comes to $2,600.00 each.
For 8-10 days work, though less than $20.00 per working hour -not a bad paycheck…Even though you are risking your life to earn it, that kinda washes out by the fact that there is adventure and excitement and personal challenge in being 200 miles off shore in the wilderness of the ocean: wild dolphins swimming along side the boat tilting their bodies to get a good look right into your eyes, whales scaring the piss out of you when they jump up out of the water in front of you while you are on watch staring at it silently for hours, 360 degree sunsets, no ground light dimming the ultra-bright 360 degree star-scapes, while taking no comfort in the fact that even though you are 200 miles from shore, land is only a mile or two away -straight down!
My wife and I have had a running joke since I’ve been unemployed for the first time in many years, pursuing a new line of work as an online content producer. When I began this quest, I realized that pursuing a writing career isn’t about penning the next New York Times Best Seller…It can be spending a day; writing a product review, then composing a “brain teaser”, and later putting philosophical or religious thoughts in writing thus making a day’s pay. So I said to my wife, before I got accused of delusions of grandeur or thinking too big; accusations I’ve been guilty of in the past -even though on a couple of rare occasions I have “made it big”…”Writing isn’t a glamorous job”
I was serious, and that made it all the more funny -after 250 hours at it in my first month, earning a whopping $200.00, when she calmly replied, with a barely visible smirk on her face “no shit”
Now I have been at it for three months, and the hourly wage is getting no better. I’ve spent close to 1000 hours at it, half the time writing and the other half trying to figure out how to make a living wage from it. I finally think I’ve come up with some answers…
(1) Learn what SEO is, was, and what it is becoming. No one is an authority on this subject except those few who write and change the algorithyms that control the spiders, bots, and crawlers…And they keep this secret. I wouldn’t call myself an authority, but with the help of good friends, Sanya and Sunil Harika, coupled with that 500 plus hours of study I mentioned…I think the summary of what I have learned is worth a read:
http://factoidz.com/the-best-approach-to-seo/
http://factoidz.com/the-future-of-seo-and-how-it-will-affect-content-producers/
http://factoidz.com/seo-6-steps-to-improve-rankings/
http://factoidz.com/progressive-keyword-targeting-climbing-up-the-long-tail-of-search-rankings/
http://factoidz.com/seo-marketing-campaign-time-and-energy-investment/
http://factoidz.com/black-hat-vs-white-hat-seo-techniques/
http://factoidz.com/top-10-web-analytics-tools-for-measuring-your-websites-performance/
(2) Write. Write a lot. Write well. Write what you know, research thoroughly what you don’t.
(3) Submit it. Publish it. Promote it. ( Go to back to step one for promotion methods, and stay tuned for more factoidz from us on the subject)
We will be writing the next few factoidz on the subject of producing content. This will be much more of a “how to do it” than a “what to do.” The what to do -is up to you! So, get your creative juices flowing. Don’t think that you have to produce content that will appeal to millions of people. Sometimes, if you focus a good effort on the more “long tail” topics, you can enjoy much success and find and make friends with others with a deep interest in, say: “An ictheologist’s studies in the diverse mating habits of Piranah in the Amazon River”
