Be critical and objective about your own writing - don't be afraid to 'dump' a bad article

One of the hardest lessons for a writer (myself included) is decided whether something should be rewritten or simply abandoned. Recently I created an eBook on Amazon and posted it for free for a day! One reader gave me a 3* rating and then left a detailed comment about the story.

At this point I had three options:

• I could leave the story as-is and hope that other’s wouldn’t read the comment
• I could delete the story and let it be.
• I could re-write the story taking into account the feedback from the customer.

In the end I re-wrote the story. The feedback was objective and did say that my story had potential. What it taught me was that sometimes you need to step back from your writing and take a very critical look at it.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Would you enjoy the article / ebook?
• Is it well written?
• Does it ‘make’ sense?

You have to be honest with yourself and trust in your own ability to be objective – this is very difficult to do!

As I continue to build my online brand I am going back to all my old articles (and stories) and deciding whether it’s worth saving them or abandoning them! It’ll take time but the effort will be worth it in the end!

Hubpages Apprenticeship Program

Breaking News: Hubpages introduces The HubPages Apprenticeship Program.

A few weeks ago I created a forum asking for a mentor program to be setup on Hubpages that would help new and existing users of Hubpages find feedback and tips from established mentors. Little did I know that Hubpages had already been working on a plan and had a program in beta mode.

This week Hubpages announced the new program. The Hubpages Apprenticeship Program is a six month program that aims to create 'stars' who will be able to earn a decent income on the web. The program is open to all members of Hubpages and while initially is restricted to 30 members a month, it is hoped that the program will be expanded over time to allow multiple new groups to be trained.

The benefits of an Apprenticeship Program are many:

• Each hub (up to a maximum of 24 a month) will earn a Hubpages Bonus - this is in the range of $6. So any successful participant who manages to write 24 hubs a month will see a monthly income of at least $144 plus any additional revenue they will earn from the standard Hubpages Program.
• Each apprentice will learn all the key elements of being a successful writer on the web - this includes writing lessons, multimedia lessons, SEO and Marketing lessons, social media lessons and much more.
• The ability to network with peers and mentors will not only help a writer improve, it will also create a decent working atmosphere on Hubpages that can only benefit the site as a whole.
• Graduates will become mentors and in a 'pay-it-forward' way the whole site will benefit - the number of quality articles will increase and the online reputation of the member as well as Hubpages will agree.

This is a bold move by Hubpages and one that if done correctly will benefit the whole Hunpages community. Hubpages are making an investment in their members and while there will be some who will not be on board with this process and see sinister motives behind it, the majority will see this as Hubpages taking time to actually reward and improve their community.

Demand for the program is going to be very high and there are going to be many disappointed writers along the way! I hope to be one of the lucky few, but as with anything not everyone can be chosen. Even if I am not accepted intially, I take the view that the benefit for me as a writer as I watch some of the appretices and see the improved quality of Hubpages in general is good for now, and at some point I will be accepted into the program!

To learn more about this innovative program click here.

The importance of setting goals as a writer

Every year at work we go through a process of setting goals. Some are intangible while most are measurable. Twice a year we evaluate how well we are doing against these goals and amend them as appropriate.

As a writer I also go through a similar process; it's important to set realistic goals at the beginning of the year, and perhaps some areas of focus so that I can concentrate on the process of writing without floundering. In past years where I haven't set goals I've found that half way through the year I've lost sight of what I am trying to achieve and this tends to make me lose my focus as we approach the lucrative holiday period.

This year I decided to create some goals that are sensible, achievable but more importantly help me focus and drive me to improve my writing and add consistency to my methodology.

This is a very important process for me especially with the seemingly daily changes with the Google algorithm. The key points I am focusing on is deliverables. I am looking at improving my quality in several ways; I am looking to diversify to protect me from dying markets and looking for way to better network myself to achieve higher success/

To read more about the process and what I consider as I prepare my personal writing goals, please check out my latest Hubpages article here..

Additional tips for making the most out of Hubpages Answers.

The one thing I have noticed as I create Questions on Hubpages is that sometimes my Hubs that are in the same niche tend to get a few more visits than usual.

So why would my Hubs see increased traffic?

If someone searches for a question on Google they are usually looking for an answer (DOH!)  - when you create a question on Hubpages, not only does it list Related Questions, but it also list Related Hubs. Therefore, try and write questions that will list your own personal hubs as Related Hubs - if the answers to your question do not provide sufficient information then it is likely that the reader will click on the Hub.

How to make the most out of Hubpages Questions

Hubpages now allows you to switch all your questions to your subdomain and therefore earn revenue from any traffic that the questions gain. However, there are some things you should consider before switching, and once you switch you should maintain your questions.

• If you already have a quality sub domain, you want to ensure that suddenly having a lot of poor quality questions linking to your domain doesn't reduce your overall quality - so if you have a lot of questions that are not up to your usual standard then you might consider setting up a separate Hubpage account solely for questions.
• Once you switch your questions you should maintain them - go through your questions and remove the poor questions, the questions that have low traffic or questions that are already listed on the web a thousand times.
• Do your research - don't just go and ask the first question that comes to your head. Do your normal keyword reasearch and then check out your question on the search engines - if there are already 50 great answers, then it's unlikely that your question will rank highly.
• Write your questions in a 'searchable' way - think of how you would search for the answer and emulate that in your questions.
• Maintain answers - with the update to Hubpages you can now remove answers - so if there is an inane or offensive answer remove it!

If you are not a member of Hubpages, click here to join - not only can you earn by asking questions, but you can also create stand alone articles that will also earn a residual income.

Download a free e-book template for Word 2007 and Word 2010

I have hosted my Word ebook template on filedropper. Please feel free to download this simple e-book template for free. Why did a create a free ebook template for Word 2007? Quite simply, it's one of the easier wordprocessors to work with, and also most wordprocessors will load the template. It is important that you save the file as a *.doc format, and do not update it to a docx document, as Amazon has trouble converting .docx documents to the mobi format.

Click the link below to download the free ebook template:

http://www.filedropper.com/freeebooktemplate_1

If you like it, leave me a note - or if you really like it feel free to make a donation via Paypal to simoncook@comcast.net so I can create more free e-book templates for Microsoft Word.

eBook templates and publishing for free

As I scoured the web looking for a Word template that would allow me to create eBooks quickly and that would have no problem being converted into the Kindle format, I was amazed at the cost of these templates. Some are being sold for $80, while there are a few that can be found for $30.

Being a cheap skate, I decided I'd simply do some research and make my own eBook template for Word. I was surprised how easy it was. I've just uploaded a new book using this method and will be re-publishing my old e-books using this method.

Please take time to visit my article explaining how to create an e-book template for word and how to publish the e-book on Amazon: How to publish an eBook for free.