Monday, September 9, 2013

A Used Bookstore

One of the good things about opening a used bookstore with amazon.com is that you also get a storefront in the amazon marketplace.

We recently opened our used bookstore with amazon and use the fulfillment by amazon service.

This means that most of the books shown in our marketplace store are ready and waiting to be shipped directly from an amazon.com fulfillment center.

We also choose to ship some lower value items directly from our stock.

We have a policy of shipping new items to amazon.com for fulfillment several times per month and so stock at our fulfillment center is constantly varying as new stock arrives and older stock is sold.

At present we stock a range of fiction, some children's titles and also a range of non fiction and college level textbooks. For our latest selection see our storefront.

If you are a member of Amazon Prime, your books can be shipped from the fulfillment center using Free two day shipping.

If you are not a member of Amazon Prime, you can use the Amazon Supersaver shipping  service any item shipped from amazon from our store counts towards the $25 purchase level . You do not have to spend all $25 in our marketplace store, you may buy from anywhere on the amazon.com website and your purchase from us will be considered part of the eligible total.

From mid September 2013 books ordered through our amazon.com marketplace storefront will be available for shipping Internationally.

Take a look at our storefront.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Fulfilmment by Amazon As a Cash Stream

At the beginning of 2013 I signed with Amazon.com as a seller and opted to go with the Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) option.

What is FBA? Basically FBA allows you to send a shipment of stock to an Amazon storage facility where it is held for sale along with other products sold by Amazon.

The easiest items to begin selling are books and DVD's. You can start clearing your book shelves and maybe sell books from thrift stores or library book sales. When buying in books look for books in the best possible condition, marks, highlighting and tears mar the condition and hence the price of the book.

Popular novels are also of low value to you, customers can get those for little more than you may pay and with some of the costs you may only make a dollar or two on them.

There are some costs to set up the account, you may choose to sell less than 40 items per month where Amazon.com charge you a 99 cent fee on top of charges which you must take into account in pricing, this along with 15% selling fee upon the sale and a small storage charge which adds up to pennies per month.

The second service, a professional service gives you more options but costs you just under $40.00 per month, plus some other selling fees at a lower rate than with the individual seller plan above.

You send your stock to an Amazon.com fulfillment center in boxes. I opt to use the UPS shipment service provided by Amazon. Recently a box weighing thirty pounds was shipped across country for just $14. I just passed it on to a UPS collection center in town and the package was delivered in six days.

Once the parcel is received by Amazon, it takes between twenty-four and forty-eight hours for the items to list on the Amazon.com website.

Within minutes of an item appearing it can be sold and being prepared for shipment to the Amazon customer.

I sell several items per week, at the moment my best sellers have been college textbooks. Some purchased for as little as $1.00 have sold for over $30.00. Bear in mind Amazon charges take about $7.00 on average for those high seling price items. You can see a good profit.

Payment is passed to your bank account about fourteen days after the sale is complete for individual sellers and ten days for professional sellers accounts.

Why use FBA? I had some books offered as sale by merchant for several months on the Amazon.com website, they did not sell so as I knew I would be away from home for several weeks I moved them to an FBA shipment. I sold several of the very same books within one week by allowing Amazon to ship them.

FBA products are eligible for Amazon prime and supersaver shipping, this means that customers have less concern about when they will receive their items and are more willing to buy from an FBA seller than a fulfilled by merchant seller.

How do you compete with the 1 cent book seller? You don't  the book I sold for over $30, mentioned earlier was a prime example there were several copies of the very same book for sale at 1 cent. The customer still paid the money to me because all the 1 cent sellers were fulfilled by merchant and mine was the only copy available with free two day shipping and even eligible for supersaver shipping if the customer was not an Amazon Prime member.

So maybe this program is  worth considering if you are looking to cash in a side income or paying hobby.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Long Term Effect of the Loss of HubPages RSS Capsules.At the end of 2012 HubPages announced the removal of the RSS capsules from all of its writers pages.


At the time I was a little concerned that such a ove would see a decline in my blog traffic. At that time most of my blog traffic was coming from HubPages and amounted to several hundred views per month over the three blogs that I fed to my HubPages posts.

Now we are about six months after the removal of the RSS feeds and a clear conclusion can be made.

TRAFFIC HAS IMPROVED TO ALL OF MY BLOGS.

Traffic began to rise for my blogs within a few weeks of the end of the RSS capsules. June then saw a quite steep decline in views across the board but in these last few days views are rising rapidly rising again. Views across the three major blogs are now running at two thousand per month and rising.

Whereas previously most of my views came from HubPages, today I can find only one or two views from that source per month, analytics show that most views are organic search  views coming from Google and Yahoo! 90% Google, My Life with Blindness blog has in some instances, depending on keyword search actually made it to number one spot on Google's search page. A fact that I am very proud of.

Such placement was never heard of for me before the end of the RSS feed capsules.

So what seemed to be a terrible disaster at first conception has, for me meant a great improvement in my blog readership.



Freelance Writer Coffee Mug
Freelance Writer Coffee Mug by vallain
Shop for Two image Mugs online at Zazzle.com

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

The Summer Quiet

Summer is a difficult time for online writers.

Not only do we suffer a seasonal bout of writer's block. It is also nice to get outside for a while and visit new and exciting places.

It is also the same with our readers. They are away from school or the office. Vacationing happily oblivious to our writings for two or three months of the year.

Having written for several years online I have seen this dip every summer. From the second week in May until the first week in September. It is a real phenomenon. Graph your recorded views for three or four years, more if you can and you will see it.

Humans can be very predictable in some things and the summer vacation from viewing our work online is one of those things that just happens.

But what about tablets and mobile views, you are probably asking. Yes you will still get those. But they too get set aside for a time. I don't know anyone who spends too much time surfing the internet on a tablet. Most of my friends just use a tablet or cell phone to get tips on places to eat when out and about. How do you and your friends use your tablets and cell phones?

All in all there are seasonal dips and this summer trough is as long as any.

The readers will come back though as sure as the swallow in the Spring.

Friday, June 7, 2013

eBay Sale

I have a beautiful deep pink baby dress manufactured for the Osh Kosh Begosh label for sale on eBay.

The dress will fit a baby girl up to six months old.

The dress is made of a mixed cotton velour material. Embroidered with a heart and looping line.


Osh Kosh Begosh
Baby Dress



The bidding is at $2.45 a bargain as this dress retails above $15 normally.

The auction for this Osh Kosh Begosh Dress  

Making Money Online

Making money online is quite easy really. You can post articles on HubPages, Squidoo or your blog and generate advertising revenue. You can become an affiliate marketer  for companies like Amazon, Go Daddy, Host Gator or Zazzle.com. You can design products and sell them to customers through zazzle.com and Cafepress. Or you can sell your items through Amazon , eBay and Bonanza or Etsy.

All these places allow you to sell words or goods. Making money online is pretty easy if you can turn a few ideas into cash. Sell old unwanted clothes and write a line or two of good coherent text. Money will come wandering to your door.

Wandering to your door? Well yes for a while cash does just seem to wander to your door. It comes a penny or a dollar at a time. For weeks, for months and often for years.

I have been online now for several years. I began on mailing lists back in the late 1990's. I began to create work as a hobby. This continued for several years, I only began to make real efforts in 2009 to make any real money. It wasn't until late in 2012 that my income at least matched that of my day job.

That online income has been up and down this year. The early months were tough. My online income fell drastically, the pennies wandered up to my door but the dollars walked right on by. As Zazzle income fell, Amazon and Yahoo! voices stepped up. Now Zazzle income is rising again and it looks like June 2013 could see online income could come to levels to match my day job income again.

Online income at this stage is far too fragile to risk giving up a day job, but so I double my monthly income some months. That;s a nice bonus.

Making some money online is so easy. I'd defy you not to be able to begin generating cash today if you use the right services. Generating consistant cash income is the hard part. I have not quite mastered that just yet. But I will. I will and I will share my findings with you.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

There is Something Magical About 10,000 Views

I have noticed over my time online, I have been around since the late 1990's. that there has been an almost constant divergence in results in search engines.

Get to the magical number, whether it be in a day or ten years and there is a definite boost in your viewing figures.

The magical number is ten thousand (10,000)  Below that magical figure every view is hard fought and views can be measured in dozens per month. Beyond that magical figure views come thick and fast measured in dozeens or hundreds per hour, if you are lucky minute.

Views are of course the all important reason why we produce content for the net. We either need viewers to introduce to advertisers through pay per click or affiliate programs (This blog is supported from zazzle.com and amazon.com affiliate sales) or we have a pay per view plan in place like the Yahoo! Voices program or maybe you and I just love to be read. Then the view count feeds our need to be read widely. I will admit that the vanity side appeals to me more these days rather than the earnings in cold hard cash.

This blog now is moving into a new phase of its life, it is just a few hundred views short of the magical ten thousand views. It will get there in a few weeks. Then we'll see if the magic number theory holds out as much as it has with other sites that I have created  in the past.

Thanks for getting me to the next magic number.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Consider Local Travel Guides For Evergreen Content

As we approach June and the Summer vacation season consider your own local knowledge about places to visit and stay.

Most major cities in the world will have a travel guide written about them. If you read many travel guides you may, if you know a particular place very well wonder why they fail to mention that really great restaurant that you know or a fantastic beauty spot. Most travel guides write to a formula and change very slowly, it may actually have been several years since your favorite city was visited.

Post your opinions on sites such as Yahoo! Voices or HubPages and you will probably find a lot of interest in what you have to say.

Give details of places to visit, what to see and do and also post details of little known travel tips, if you know of a local discount card for travelers talk about that too.

Many travelers today are travelling without guides and so the more information you give them the better.

Another tip is that you may also offer to create a personal itinerary for a person, and charge a small fee. Note their interests and supply them with a suggestion list of places to see or eat. Check out sites like fiver.com to set up an account to receive orders.



Freelance Writer Coffee Mug
Freelance Writer Coffee Mug by vallain
Shop for Two image Mugs online at Zazzle.com

Friday, May 10, 2013

I Love Hubbing Shirt

As we move from Spring to Summer, I got to thinking of comfort and also a way for you to publicize your HubPages work.

What better way to stay cool, look great and also introduce yourself as a HubPages author.





 
I Love Hubbing

T-Shirt

By William Elliott


The shirt is customizable, you may change the style, color and size. It is also available in men's women's and childrens sizes.

Add your own Hub profile page URL so anyone can make a note and visit your main page. The possibilities are endless.

Buy it from my Zazzle Store today.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Never Lose Faith That You Will Succeed

When you first go online and either write an article, create an online store, or make a selling webpage you are often full of enthusiasm. In weeks you will be able to retire on the income, you can tell the boss in the job you hate where he or she can put that job.

Then what happens?

Not a lot really. Ten or a hundred people come to your work, maybe some will stay for more than a click through. Most will pass you by and you become disillusioned as to the benefits of having created anything.

You think of all the good things that job you hate gives you and you walk away from the internet.

In a few weeks your dreams are dust.

I have been in that position too. I had dreams, I lost those dreams and instead of going on to the next way out of a boring life of work, I held on. I am now in my seventh year of writing, blogging and owning a couple of retail stores online.

I now have residual income from articles, income from zazzle and cafepress stores am seeing returns from amazon affiliate and selling items on eBay and amazon too.

Do I still have a day job to pay the bills, yes. I like my day job because it helps me work at my other enterprises. Without my day job I know all my internet interests would become my day job and I don't want that.

I work at least forty hours per week at my internet enterprises. That is how it is but it is all fun. I work about the same hours at my day job too in paid and unpaid time, but again there is enough balance to keep that all fun.

Life should be fun and I have a lot of that in my life because I enjoy the  benefits of  a netincome  supported lifestyle.  It took me a few years to get to where I am so I will say.

You can do whatever you want if you don't give up after the initial enthusiasm has been blown away.

Keep the faith in yourself and you WILL succeed.


Thursday, March 28, 2013

Search Engine Optimization Explained" Optimize, if it can be searched it can be Optimized


Optimize is one of the best books that I have read recently on the subjects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Optimization (SMO) and integrating social media and all you efforts to bring potential customers to your webpages, online stores, and help you to generate cash from your online presence.



Optimize:
Lee Odden

 
Lee Odden has many years experience in online marketing and has worked extensively in Search Engine Optimization. He is also a successful blogger on the subject as well as a public speaker and advisor to several corporations on the subject of building consumer recognition of their brands through internet marketing.

In this book Odden, tells us that all we think we know about SEO from the past is gone. The old methods of keyword stuffing and writing for search engines is over. Apart from providing bad content where neither consumers nor those selling products really gained anything, the content of the past has now only created confusion and a mountain of poor quality ads and data which the consumer must now wade through to get to the really valuable material which carries the best value.

Lee Odden's main principle is that any item that can be searched can and must be optimized not for the search engines but for the Consumer.

If you take anything away from this book it is to change almost everything you think you know about SEO and begin to optimize all your web based endeavors from now on.

He includes tips on using video on sites such as Youtube and also sites such as Twitter and Facebook. He does not use vague claims but highlights his conclusions with case studies from the real world, corporations such as Ford Motor Company and small businesses figure throughout the book.

When you create any content on the web, never forget the purpose nor the audience and that no matter how small you are you are a business in the market of providing information and looking for a returm on your efforts.

Optimize: : How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO Social Media and Content Marketing,

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Should You Consider a Blog?

In the Questions and Answers section on HubPages and also on several forums, the questions of creating your own blog is an evergreen topic.

For my two pennies worth there are a few good reasons to have a blog as opposed to writing for HubPages.

1. You have full Editorial Control: If you are writing on your own blog you are not tied to the limitations of HubPages. You can post what you want, within reasonable boundaries, most hosting services have rules on what canbe posted on sites but they are very unlikely to pull your content because you have been idle for a few weeks.

2. Hosted Blogs are very inexpensive these days. A blog on Go Daddy or Host Gator can be had for about $6 per month.

3. You can monetize your own blog and NOT share your income with HubPages. When you publish on HubPages all ad revenue and revenue created by people viewing your work is shared with HubPages. Also items sold on your Amazon and eBay links are shared with HubPages. Fine you are happy sharing your revenue for free hosting, but revenue sharing is not really free, and if you are not a member of Google AdSense scheme you are giving your revenue to HubPages for free.

Having your own blog may not give you access to Google AdSense, but there are other cash per click options out there who might be more suitable fir your content.

4. You are responsible for your own reputation. As HubPages becomes seen as a place for poor content and marketers and spam your reputation becomes tarnished. With your own blog, you are the controller of your own public persona. You can keep your own reputation squeeky clean, and wholesome.

Ask yourself if you may reach a wider audience and make more money, being your own independent blogger.

It does take some time, two or three years to start to build a strong blog, so its not for everyone, with perseverance though blogging can be much more satisfying, publishing for yourself rather than for another organization like HubPages.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Google Panda and its Repurcussions: Two Years On

I recently came across this article by Matt McGee on the Search Engine Land website.

The article reflects on the Google Panda Algorithm release in early 2011 and examines how it affected rankings, and quality on websites such as HubPages.

I think the article will be an interesting view into the relationship between Google and HubPages.

To read the linked article click  HERE to go to Search Engine Land This is the third of three articles by Matt McGee, if you want to read the first two articles there are links on the Search Engine Land page.

I hope that you will find the article as interesting as I did.

Did Panda affect you badly?
 
Have you recovered from Panda yet?

Please feel free to leave comments and answers in the comments section below.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Many of Your Visitors are Blind to Your Advertisements

A recent report commissioned by the internet advertising specialist  Infolinks found that very few visitors to internet websites actually see your adverttising links.

As Sherlock Holmes once said to Dr. Watson, " You see but you don't observe."

Like Watson and unlike Sherlock Holmes your readers see your page but do not observe all the material on your page.  86% of people observed in the study were unable to recall advertising links even moments after they had seen a website.

What is most concerning for us who rely on advertising revenue for income is that many of those who took part in the study did not even see advertising which was directly aimed at them.

If you expand the findings this means only 14 out of 100 visitors to your site will even notice your advertisements and of these only 3 out of 100 visitors might see an advertisement and think it is relevant to their needs and possibly click through.

Infolinks are continuing the study throughout this year.

You can read a more detailed account of the report at  adotas Internet Marketing News

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Search Engine Optimization Keep Up To Date With Techniques

Probably the most important method of driving traffic to your web pages, websites and hubs is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) .

Search Engine Optimization is not a static thing. It is a constant battle between the Search Engine designers such as Google, Bing and Yahoo! and us those who post items and articles on the web.

Like in nature it is the survival of the fittest. They adapt their search engines to make it harder for us to gain a place on the top most pages of their search results. Those who care about driving traffic to their sites adapt and recreate their websites to maintain market share.

Those who ignore SEO, merely sit back and DIE.   Their websites doomed to disappear into the lost vast blackness of cyberspace only to occassionally reappear when a miraculous glitch throws them onto the unsuspecting websurfers screen.

It is therefore very important for you to stay up to date with the latest ideas on improving your SEO.

We have compiled a list of some of the very best Search Engine Optimization solutions available at this time.

These books are available from Bretsuki's Search Engine Optimization Store at Amazon

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Effect of the Loss of the HubPages RSS Feed

It is just about a month now since HubPages removed the RSS feed capsules from the sites web pages.

There is some loss of traffic to my blogs from that source. I had expected that my blogs would suffer a loss of views with the removal of the feeds to particular hubs.

Before the removal some of my blogs were receiving 70% of views from HubPages via the feeds. Now HubPages shows up as a source site in about 5% of statistical reports. So I am getting less traffic directed from there, but the real surprise from my point of view is that views have only declined by about 10% from  on some blogs 30 views per day to just 27.

The majority of traffic is now coming from Google and other search engines and more of myviews  are from non-US sources. The trend to increasing views outside the US is very strong and remains positive even after one month.

Having considered the removal of RSS Feed capsules in the light of these figures, I am changing my feelings towards HubPages.

It seems that they wanted to remove the capsules not in order to clean up the site, it seems to me that their idea was to hold readers on the site.

While my viewing figures on HubPages are rapidly declining, my blog figures are climbing.

So from here on in. I will remain as a blogger looking to control my own destiny rather than feed HubPages with posts  to promote their site over my own.

So Thank you HubPages for removing the RSS capsules. You have made my life much easier.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Logitech 525 HD Webcam



As a blind writer, I often have difficulty with typing. If I don't want to continually check my work on Dragon Naturally Speaking, which though it works fine most of the time it can throw a fit now and again.

I decided to install a nice little webcam on my desktop computer. It is a small Logitech 525 HD Webcam.

It is inexpensive and the video output is very good as you can see from the above video.

The softweare that comes with the Logitech has a variety of add-ons such as allowing you to become a baby again, a little like the happy cute E*Trade baby or if you are really adventurous you can become an alien or dinosaur. The software also comes with one click posting abilities for Youtube and also you can use the webcam for a variety of online conferencing portals including Skype.

The built in microphone is just ok, I had to use my Logitech headset with microphone to get a better sound quality.

But for under $60 for the webcam it is well worth a shot, considering I can now talk as well as type.

You can get the Logitech webcam from my Amazon Store through te link in the right sidebar

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Where are Your Views From?

At the turn of the year, a little more than a month ago, I was getting pretty steady views of about thirty views per day over some of my blogs.

My HubPages blog and My Life with Blindness Blogs were at the high thirties level.

Suddenly with both blogs this month I have seen massive rises in views. Some days seeing up to three hundred views per day.

What at one time looked like quite respectable views on my analytics pages now look like the deepest portions of the Grand Canyon. The largest peaks like the towering Himalayas.

The sources of these spikes really surprised me, they weren't in the United States or even the Americas. The largest spikes come from Russia, then India and running a close third Germany.

I had had several hundred views from Russia and Germany over the years, so those spikes moved the middle order of my view regions a little. Russia secured a firm second place in both blogs recorded views.

The really big mover was India. India was definitely in the lowest tier of view rankings, we are talking, not even listing as a placed my blogs were viewed with any regularity over the past five years, maybe three or four views recorded.

In one night (Pacific night time) I had four hundred views from India. Yes you read that right 400 views, from one country alone you still add the ten or twenty views from a variety of othe nations.

That particularly large spike was enough to throw India into the high middle order of viewing regions we are talking now of India as my seventh most viewed nation, from nowhere I have gained a large and important audience.

Now India still produces the same number of views per day that the Rest of the World used to give me in any one particular day. 20-25 views.

The moral of this tale, er blog, is always be aware of where your audience is from.

Living in the United States, as I do, many hubbers see the U.S. as their audience.  While the U.S. has been a strong source of views in the past for me. January 2013 has shown that the internet is a global platform in a very positive way.

So be aware of your audience and keep checking your analytics to see just who is reading your work.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Best Income Sites.

I have fingers in many pies. I write several blogs, have some online stores at places like Amazon, Zazzle, eBay and Etsy. I am even looking at another online store site Bonanza. Then my online writing sites come into play. Yahoo! Voices, HubPages, Squidoo and List My 5.

The top earners of all my sites are the online stores.

eBay is at the top, Zazzle.com Cafepress.com then Amazon and Etsy. Bear in mind I have had an Etsy store for only two weeks, so its a baby yet.

eBay of course is not really a residual income source as along with Etsy I have to find or make goods to sell and actively ship them.

Among writing sites my ranking is:

Yahoo! Voices is a far away leader its CPM model and purchase of my articles produces more cash than any other.  Follow this with List My 5, it has a CPC model but pays quite well there were only two months last year (2012)  April and July that I earned no money from my short lists. HubPages is a pretty poor third and Squidoo I have given up on that for any income.

Cash from blogs?

No I mainly use my blogs to direct people to my cash paying sites and don't use AdSense on my blogs at all.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Has HubPages Begun to look Tired?

For a few weeks now I have been going to HubPages just that little less often.

There was a time when I would spend several hours on HubPages, writing hubs, answering questions and working hard.

Recently however it seems that HubPages has lost a little of its glitter.

They are scrapping capsules that I have used for years.

They are putting links on my hubs to articles that are poorly written and have no real link to my subject.

It seems that  HubPages has somehow lost its way.

Questions now just revolve around one subject.  I just logged in and found 18 questions on the hot questions page posted by one person. The questions also involved requests for peoples opinions on certain occupations in Seattle.  Of course these may be genuine questions, I am tempted to think that someone is spamming the questions and answers board with hot keywords so as to grab advertising revenue from Google.

Come on people, this is an abuse of the system. It is dragging down the value of HubPages and we all suffer.

Of late I have seen a little recovery of my view rates on HubPages, but the views on my blogs are through the roof.

OK I accept that we are also at the end of football season here in the U.S. and I do expect a drop in views on big game days, but to have view counters move at a snails pace on HubPages on non game days as my view counters click as regularly as my old grandads clock on non game day blog pages. Well something is rotten in the state of HubPages.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

We'll See a Fall in views on Sunday January 20 and February 3, 2013

I will now predict a fall in views for most Hubbers on Sunday January 20 and February 3, 2013.

Most of you who live in the U.S. will know and expect the same. These are the dates of the NFL Conference Championships and Superbowl Sunday.

For those of you who live outside the US, you will possibly not know the gravity of these two solemn occassions.

This coming Sunday January 20, sees the two Football Conferences seasons  come to an end.

The AFC Championship will be between San Francisco 49ers at  Atlanta Falcons and the NFC Conference Championship will be Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots.

Each of the games could last up to four hours on television, each game only lasts 60 minutes itself but fifteen minuts of "game time" may be twenty or thirty minutes of real time, add in all the advertisements and commentary. The games are not played simultaneously, so Americans can see both games in full, basically taking up to eight hours of Sunday out of many peoples computer time.

For this reason the United States can be said to close down for the duration of the games.

The winners of this next Sundays two games will then go on to the Superbowl in New Orleans on February 3, 2013.

The Superbowl is the World Championship of American Football, and Superbowl Sunday is a very big deal which almost every American sees as a right to party.

So for those of you beyond the shores of the US mark these dates well. The fall of views on these two days is not due to Google changing an algorithm, HubPages are not skimming off viewers just to take your count down, the sky is not falling and no end of the world scenario is being played out.

Americans are just partying and enjoying a great game of football.

We'll be back at our computers on Monday as usual.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Creating Posts for HubPages and other online Writing Sites

Do you sit down and just create a post from thin air or do you do in depth research before posting.

Some people are able to sit down and compose a post seemingly from thin air. They go with the flow of their writing and with very little editing things may just turn out right. Others study a subject, find links, resources and compose their hubs and articles to a detailed plan.

Which method do I use?

Both.

For a personal hub or article I often just sit down and write. These articles would be say my life with my dogs or a personal experience from being blind.

Posts such as book reviews do require some planning and  resource gathering. The most important information gathering task of course with a book review is to READ the book. I have seen some reviews where it seems the reviewer has read other reviews and rehashed other peoples work. Not a good experience for a reader. Other areas which I have researched have been articles where I have needed to report on medical matters, signs and symptoms of a problem etc.

My advice is to take account of your articles purpose. To inform on a serious matter? Then research and information is the key.  Report on personal experience or to entertain then you may be able to create a hub or article with very little research, flying by the seat of your pants.

Which ever method you choose find what works best for you and stick to it. If you are enjoying how you write then your readers will enjoy reading your work.