Day 1.2: Publicity, Publicity, Publicity!

If you're going to make money by writing online, you're going to have to do more than just write. I know that. Every time I've tried "just writing" in the past, my blogs have flopped to the point where I might as well have kept them in private journals. So... how do you get the word out?

1.Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one important way to let people find you online. I first learned about it when I worked as a writer and editor at Comicbooked.com--the best entertainment news site ever. The biggest thing to remember is to take advantage of keywords and tags. The more of those you have, the better chances there are of people stumbling onto your site. How do you choose a keyword? Examples for this post would include "search engine optimization," "keywords," and "comicbooked.com."

2. Another way is to take advantage of social media. Don't overdo this one--I've lost friends by advertising my writing too much. Use Twitter, Facebook, and Google + to get the word out about what you're doing, and your own personal friends and family will be much more interested and likely to tell others. Not interested in social media? Open accounts anyway. All you have to do is send out the link every so often with a friendly note about how awesome it is. Now, as I said, it's easy to overdo this one, and people don't like when you spam them, even if it's something really amazing. Keep your tweets and statuses personal and witty, if possible, and try to balance your business notes with your personal notes. But do stay active, and do promote your own work.

I have a confession to make here. So far for this blog I haven't done anything more than a simple Facebook post. No social publicity, no nothing. That might be part laziness on my part, but largely it's out of my personal desire to keep something as experimental as this blog to myself until I have an idea how it will work out.

3. And now for the hard part, the real labor: put your posts in directories. Ok, so what's so hard about that? Aren't there ways to submit to a bunch of search engines and directories at the same time? Of course there are... if you have money. If not, tough luck. Digging around, I have found some good search engine submitters, but directories? Not a one. At least not so far. I'll keep you posted if I find anything worthwhile.

Publicity is vital to monetized blogging, and it's work. For me, more work even than the blogging itself. But with eight views to this blog so far today since my last check, I know I must be doing something right.