The writer competition was only the first stage.

Mark Joyner has now released a paper called the Rise of the Author in which he outlines how the face of publishing is changing dramatically. And why there is no better window of opportunity for authors to become bestsellers right now.

With his background in Internet marketing it is naturally using the Internet to achieve that, but the goal is for authors to publish their books with a traditional publisher and push them up through a concerted marketing effort (not any tricks or buying books themselves).

Naturally Mark does not reveal the full extend of what is necessary for this marketing effort (that is what he wants to sell at the end of this week).

The Rise of the Author is quite long with lots of history and examples of why he thinks the way he thinks. For people like me who are more into action, the summary at the end of the document probably suffices.

Just in case you are wondering what benefit a freelancer would gain from having a bestseller:

1. First and foremost the new status of being a recognized expert
2. More client requests so that you can choose who to work with
3. Income
4. The joy of accomplishment
5. Any more…?

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Alexander and Marshall

I came home late last night and did not get to bed until 11pm. At midnight, our 6 month old daughter woke up and I with her. Could not get back to sleep until 3 hours later. Why?

Because I kept thinking about this competition. I am not sure it is suitable for everyone to jumpstart your writing career.

But what was so intriguing to me, was the task: A story about your most life changing moment in life. I thought of my own birth, then the birth of our daughter, meeting my wife, making love to the first woman.

And somehow I realized that all these changes were not single moments in time, but rather developments over a few months. But then I remembered one moment.

So here is my entry to the bestselling author competition:

I just took action, wrote my thoughts down, taped it and uploaded it. If you decide to enter, too, please share the link to your video in a comment. I’d love to see it.

You can also see some other entries that have been posted in the comments on the simpleology blog.

Alexander

Who has not dreamed of being a bestselling author? It somehow seems to tie back to this instinct of leaving a legacy, of leaving something behind that we will be remembered for.

Or maybe even having something now that we are recognized for.

I have to admit that I would love to see myself as a bestselling author. But I am also a numbers person. There are 950,000 books published each year. That is what Wikipedia has to offer on the subject. So being number one is almost like winning the lotto.

Except, that there is a way to influence the outcome, rather than just relying on luck, according to Mark Joyner. He has achieved bestseller status 3 times already. He says that there is an exact blueprint that will lead to anyone to be the next bestselling author.

How does this relate to a freelance writing career? Well, if you’ve got bestseller status on your profile, it should help with convincing clients to pay what you are worth.

This site used to be a website. I was pretty happy with it, until I started interacting with other writers online (mainly bloggers).

They were frustrated with our site. Here is the greatest criticism. So I made the decision to move over from an ordinary site to a blog.

I am not talking about starting a new blog. No, this is the content of the old site with the links of the old site. We just moved it over to a different platform for better future performance.

Today I checked the old sitemap to make sure that we had all the right links in place. There are a few missing, but overall, we’ve done pretty well.

Index

Index.html is one of these links that was essential on the old site. Now it has change to index.php.

So what to do? I just decided to title this post Index. That way, I am hoping that we have index.html available again.

Virtual moving

So if you ever need any support in moving a site from one platform to another, let me know and I’ll help out.

Alexander

I have just initiated the transfer of the freelance writing career site from an ordinary html based site to a wordpress blog site.

If all goes well, all the pages will still exist and all the links should still work. But you never know…

So if you read this, post a short comment that you are reading it. And I’ll shout a big hooray.

Alexander

PS: And then I’ll tell you a bit more about why we decided to do this.

Georganna at Writer’s Edge just posted some suggestions on how to overcome writers block. She got them from a film I have not seen yet, but it might be good to watch it.

View her post here:
www.writers-edge.info

It also got me thinking about something I use:
Do something else.

When I am stuck in one area of my work, I leave it be and do something else.

Now there is a negative side to this, sometimes the something else is not really productive (and then I feel bad and am even more blocked).

But when there are multiple projects where I can do some useful work, it is a great way to free any block.

And another realisation I had is that the time of day is absolutely essential. I am a morning person and I get far more done in the morning than any other time of day.

I know others who are night owls. I think it is best to follow the body and work whenever it is ready to function well.

Thanks for this stimulating post Georganna.

I noticed yesterday that we only had one Craigslist feed (the New York one) integrated into the Freelance Writing Jobs Feed.

If you have used Craigslist before, you know that you always have to select a city before you can see the ads that have been posted.

Well, in total there are 445 cities (or countries) that posts freelance writing jobs. Many of them can be done from anywhere.

They are now all included in our single feed. And if you subscribe via email, you will not miss a single job opportunity coming your way.

Thanks to the great feedback I received via email and at Absolute Write, we have improved the Freelance Writing Jobs Feed.

Every jobs now shows whether it comes from a bidding site (BID), from a site where you have to be a member (MEMBER) to see all the job details, or whether you can apply for free (FREE).

Additionally, the title shows the name of the site the jobs comes from. That way you know whether you are a member or are registered to bid at that site already.

Any other feedback would be great, and we’ll keep improving the service, so you can get the best jobs.

See freelance writing jobs now - click here.

I had my doubts about writers’ inability to overcome writers block before I actually started writing for a living. I thought it was for weak people, and wouldn’t apply to me since I was a fountain of creative ideas.

Boy was I wrong! In this article I am going to talk about writer’s block, when and why it seems to hit me, and some ways in which I attempt to overcome it.

It’s an area that I have really been struggling with lately, so any suggestions from other people would definitely be helpful!

Use proper grammar!

Before I proceed to the “meat” of this article I would like to get something quite clear. I am aware that “overcome writers block” is grammatically incorrect and that there are two different spellings in the body of this article.

The reason is that apparently it is spelled without an apostrophe as an important keyword, which goes to show a couple things. The first is that there are a lot of writers out there in the aspiring category, and the second is that I am a prostitute when it comes to grammatical values.

On to writer’s block

My standards aside, the incorrect grammar is a pretty good thing to start out with when it comes to writer’s block and writing for the Internet, because more often than not it is certain keywords or phrases that get my brain locked up for days and lately even weeks.

Some of the keywords I am required to use just don’t fit together on their own, let alone in a sentence (overcome writers block is not too bad at all). My English teachers would be ripping their hair out if they knew this was how I was using the things they taught me.

Outside Distractions

Another thing that I have found to be a big cause of writer’s block for what I do is outside distractions.

In analyzing my current dilemma, I am fairly aware that part of the problem is a possible responsibility overload. The long period of writer’s block that I am facing now comes on the heels of several major changes in my life; as of September, I had a new baby boy (and he is a MAJOR engager and very distracting).

My daughter started school with the additional responsibilities and stresses that brings, and I started to work with the youth group at my church. All this in addition to my other son, my wife, playing guitar at church four of every six Sundays and other life happenings!

So how do I kick it?

Unfortunately this answer is not so clear. For the most part, I have had to force myself to sit and stare at the computer until I get something produced, but it tends to take a lot out of me.

With the approach of the New Year, I have decided to try and combine all the problems and cover them in one or several resolutions.

1. I have to renew my commitment to my clients, two of whom have been quite patient with me.
2. Next I have to figure out which areas of my life I need to tone down in order to make room for the money (and no, it won’t be the kids!).

Will these strategies help to overcome writers block for me in the New Year? Well only time will tell and I will try and get back to you with the results in a few months. In the meantime, any help is greatly appreciated!

We have added some more sites to the feed, there are a total of 25 sites that contribute to this service.

The only two sites that we want to include but cannot are elance.com and guru.com. The former has an RSS feed without proper dates (it looks like all their posts have been made in the year 1900, so they never pop up in the latest 24 hour posts - but they have promised to fix it).

The latter just does not have any RSS feed on their site, but they have promised that they are working on it.

So we’ll see. I guess 158 jobs that have been posted in the last 24 hours is quite a chunk to work through anyway.

So best of luck with finding fantastic jobs. And we am looking forward to your feedback.