The Fabulist Flash

Issue 59

Pumpkin Patch Mousepad

In This Issue:

1. This Week
2. Feature Article
3. Feature Article
4. A Writer Tidbit
5. About The Fabulist Flash

1. This Week

Welcome to Issue 59 of The Fabulist Flash.

One great part of living in a tourist town is occasionally playing tour guide for visiting friends. It was wonderful spending time with old friends, visiting tourist locations, and eating wonderful meals at new restaurants, such a treat.

It reminded me that we need to take time out from our writing lives and enjoy our surroundings. Breaks don't need to be in the form of long vacations. Just an afternoon spent visiting a museum or an evening out on the town at a new restaurant hold restorative powers. Plus, these experiences add article possibilities and antidotes for speaking and writing projects. Have you been taking time to enjoy the fall colors?

Publicity campaigns and promotional plans are ramping up for the November release of 50 Fabulous Gay-Friendly Places to Live. I mailed a free reprint article to 200 college newspapers and I've been working on letters to the mayors of all the cities included in my book. I've also written a holiday press release and passed it on to my publicist.

I love all those little give-away promotional items and I've been exploring the thousands of possibilities. I've heard horror stories of boxes of promotional pieces going to waste. With color printers and easy to use software, it's possible and easy to produce and print promotional pieces from your computer, but keep in mind: quality counts.

I'd talked with some author friends who make their own bookmarks. I found a bookmark template and designed some I could print from my computer. As I was hand cutting the bookmarks I wasn't happy. They didn't look professional enough. I've never been great at cutting straight lines; just ask my second grade teacher, Mrs. Jane. Out of frustration, I found a company online and placed and order. It was a thrill when the box of perfectly cut, glossy bookmarks arrived this week. Having quality promotional pieces makes me feel good and hopefully will make my future book buyers happy, too.

This week's issue has two feature articles. 7 Publishing Secrets for a New Online Writer by Christopher Kyalo and Protect your Computer and Internet Privacyby Alex Marias. Remember, The Fabulist Flash is a paying market and I'm still looking for goal setting articles for the December issues. For submission information visit the Writer Guidelines.

Until next week,

Gregory
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Gregory A. Kompes is a writer, photographer, professional speaker and author of 50 Fabulous Gay-Friendly Places to Live. Learn more about Gregory and his work at www.kompes.com

2. Feature Article

7 Publishing Secrets For A New Online Writer
by Christopher Kyalo

You’re a new online writer keen on publishing your work online in some web site or something and you are wondering where to get started. You are also probably looking for some valuable tips to quickly help you start earning some income from your online writing as soon as possible.

Here are 7 of what I consider to be the most valuable secrets in online writing today.

1. Initially it is not the rate you’re being paid but volume of work that you’re publishing that matters

The biggest mistake most new online writers make is to look at the rates being offered first. This is a big mistake because of several reasons. One of them being that the rules are totally different online. In the offline-publishing world, writers have to put in some legwork doing some research, but they usually earn a hefty amount for their work. Rates ranging from $300 for a short piece to $3,000 for writing an assigned article for a leading monthly publication.

In the online world, all the research is done online. The territory favors writers who can write quickly but well. Top rates will hardly exceed $40 but the more common rates are $20 and below per article for experienced well know online writers and $3 to $10 for most new online writers.

As a new writer, the thing to look for is as many assignments as you can get to gain both experience and contacts.

I personally started off writing short articles for $2.50. But I got to a point where I was making thousands of dollars doing those articles. But the most valuable experience I got from writing those $2.50 articles was that I gained valuable experience in writing keyword-rich articles and it also opened the door for other better-paying writing assignments.

Initially just go for volumes rather than look at the paltry rate being offered for the work.

2. The best sites for a beginner to seek publishing work from

The site that I found most useful in landing writing assignments was by far www.freelancewriting.com especially the section for low-paying assignments. The interesting thing about this site is that you can also advertise your writing services for free.

There is no doubt in my mind that this site enjoys a very high volume of traffic of writers and also prospective clients looking for writers.

3. Write and publish every day

Online writing favors writers who love to write. Most people do not know that a modern day freelancer usually spends very little time doing the actual writing. Most of their time is spent sending out queries searching markets and doing many little tasks that are related to looking for the writing jobs and assignments. And even when they do get the assignment up to half the time will be spent on research. So they end up spending very little of their time doing the actual writing. With online writing the Internet makes the marketing side and research a lot easier. The result is that writers can spend much more time doing what they should be really good at – writing. Even when you don’t have actual assignments make a habit out of writing several articles every day. Later in this article you will see a number of useful things that you can do with those articles.

This is the only way to sharpen your writing skills and to also improve on your speed which is critical to successful online writing.

4. Market every day

Every day spend a little time exploring new markets sending off an email or two to web sites you think you can contribute your writing to. Market every day, even as you write every day.

5. Write Publish and distribute free articles

One of the most effective ways of attracting clients to give you freelance online writing assignments is by writing and publishing you articles in high traffic article directories and other sites that will publish your article free.

There is nothing more powerful to convince a prospective client that you can write than actual samples of your writing. Clients get very impressed when you give them links to your writing work already published online somewhere.

6. Use Adsense to Publish and start making money immediately from your writing

When you’ve written a dozen articles or so, launch a blog and publish them there. From now on make sure that you refer people to your blog in every article you publish at other web sites and article directories. Refer them there for more information and for more similar articles by you. This will drive very targeted traffic just the sort that will easily click on your Google AdSense ads posted at your blog.

You will gave to apply to Google Adsense and your blog will have to be approved by them. It may be a good idea to visit www.google.com/adsense to see what they are usually looking for before you making your formal application to be considered.

The wonderful thing about Adsense is that you start earning money from articles that you have written but not sold to any client. And you write an article once and continue to earn from it for years.

7. Publishing your work at this site has numerous advantages

Then you can take advantage of a new breed of emerging web sites for content that display and sell your writing for you for a commission and then leave you with even more time to write.

About the Author
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Christopher Kyalo is a successful online writer and entrepreneur. Read the rest of this article at his blog. Use the following link: http://100grandonlinewriters.blogspot.com/2005/10/7-publishing-secrets-for-new-o\nline.html. Also visit his other blog http://webcontentprovider.blogspot.com. He can be reached at strongwallafrica at yahoo.com

3. Feature Article

Protect your Computer and Internet Privacy
by Alex Marias

Every time you open a browser to view a web page, order something online, or read your email in a web based viewer that information is stored on your computer for later use. Whether you are viewing the weather online, reading sports, catching up on the latest world news or viewing something a little more private, all that information is stored in your computer. Windows operating systems store all this material in what are called Temporary Internet Files or cache. Web pages may store bits of information about who you are when you visit web sites in files called cookies on your computer. Your web browser will store a list of web sites you've visited and places you've gone in a history file in your computer. Even if you are not online, programs will store histories of the files you've opened, played, or viewed.

Generally there might not be any reason to worry about all these files in your computer, but what if you sell your computer and all that information is left for someone else to see. Maybe friends and relatives visit and use your computer and you dont want everyone to know what files you are running on your computer. Then you are going to want to know how to delete these files.

Even if you are not worried about privacy on your computer, you may be surprised to realize how much hard drive space all this information takes up. If you are running out of drive space, you may want to delete these files.

How can I delete these files?

For Internet Explorer 5 and above, you can follow these directions to clear out temporary files and delete cookies.

1) Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools

2) Click on Internet Options

3) On the General Tab, in the middle of the screen, click on Delete Files

4) You may also want to check the box "Delete all offline content"

5) Click on OK and wait for the hourglass icon to stop after it deletes the temporary internet files

6) You can now click on Delete Cookies and click OK to delete cookies that websites have placed on your hard drive.

To clear the Internet History in IE:

1) Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools

2) Click on Internet Options

3) On the General Tab, in the middle of the screen,click on Clear History

4) Click OK

To clean up other temporary files on your computer in Windows 98 or higher:

1) Click Start, Programs (or All Programs), Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup

2) Choose the correct drive usually C:\

3) Check the boxes in the list and delete the files

This deleting method is only good if you want to free space, because normal file deletion only removes a file's directory entry, and leaves the data contained in the file on your hard drive, which can be easily recovered by any average computer user using a undelete utility. If you delete cookies or if you delete history using conventional methods anyone can recover them! Even after a hard drive format, files can be recovered using expensive hardware and software which use forensic latency track analysis algorithms.

There are several good utilities such as

http://www.amicutilities.com/privacy-guard/

http://www.amicutilities.com/privacy-guard/?v=deletecookies

http://www.amicutilities.com/privacy-guard/?v=deletehistory

About the Author
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Alexandru Marias is an IT student mentaining software sites such as: http://www.downloadsplaza.com, http://www.fungamesplaza.com and http://www.bluedownloads.com.

4. A Writer Tidbit

Want to learn how to add humor to your writing and speaking? John Kinde offers an ezine that can help: Humor Power Tips.

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5. About The Fabulist Flash

ISSN: 1554-0804

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Interested in being a guest columnist? Published Guest Columnists receive $25 for their 500-600 word article, plus a byline credit. Visit The Fabulist Flash Writer Guidelines for more information.

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Contact The Fabulist Flash:

Online
www.FabulistFlash.com

Email
Editor@FabulistFlash.com

Snail Mail
Gregory A. Kompes, editor
The Fabulist Flash
PO Box 570368
Las Vegas, NV 89157

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Make plans now to attend the 2006 Las Vegas Writer's Conference March 30-April 2, 2006, in Las Vegas, Nevada.