What Writers Must Know about Internet Commerce

Let's assume you're a writer and you want to make money by writing. In the olden days (last year, maybe) you would think up an article idea, hammer a few paragraphs out, and then check with some editors if they were interested in buying a finished product.

If you were lucky, you sold it. If you were not exactly unlucky, the editor rejected your idea but paid you to go out and write something else. And the most common response was a great big bunch of nothing. No response. No answer. No sale.

You have probably heard that a writer can make money on the Internet, but you're probably thinking, "How on earth is that possible?" After all, just about every job offer that comes to writers for Internet type stuff pays less than even a skinflint magazine editor would have paid ten years ago for the same material. The big difference is that the Internet publishers seeking writing support want their content virtually overnight and the old-fashioned editors did not mind giving you a few weeks.

There are two ways to make money on the Internet and they mirror the ways people make money in the brick-and-mortar business world. First, you can sell something. Whether it's ceiling fans or candles or airline tickets, you can make money if you have a product that you can trade to people for cash.

The other way you can make money online is by selling advertising. The best models for this include TV programs, magazines, and newspapers. Take a TV program; it's content that is offered for free to people who want to see it. A newspaper isn't exactly free, but it contains a lot of high-value content from around the world and it's offered at a very nominal fee (less than it costs to print it, I bet) to just about anyone who wants it. They'll even bring it to your house every morning! Who else will deliver for a product that does not even cost a dollar-for no extra shipping and handling fee?

Then there are magazines. They cost more but they're still a great buy considering the content you get, the articles, the pictures, and the sheer volume of printed pages.

So how do these enterprises make money? They do it by offering content that people want and then selling advertisement. TV shows make money because they sell some of their viewing time to advertisers who offer commercials. Newspapers and magazines do take in some subscription money, but the thing that keeps them in business is ad revenue.

And how do advertisers manage to survive? Smart businesses know the best opportunities for their particular type of advertisements. There's a whole science to that. If a well-placed smart commercial on a certain TV show increases sales, then everybody wins. The company earns money because the ad draws customers; the TV show earns money because it sells time (and eyeballs) to the advertiser.

You can build a website that features lots of top-quality content and then sell advertising on that site.

Now you can't just throw up any old site (and the operative word here is "throw up") and figure that advertising will work. You need a quality product. You also have to offer something of value.

That's where the good news comes in: you're a writer.

You can create your own online magazine of sorts. The goal is to attract people interested in the same subject to look at your site. There's a whole science to that, too. But if you do it right, people on your site may be interested in ads on related subjects.

The Internet is all about niches. Let's say you want to write about dogs. Bad idea. It's too broad for the Internet. With the Internet you have to think narrow. You could write about dog training. Or adopting poodles from the pound. Or photographing dogs.

The idea is that your highly targeted information will resonate with a particular subset of readers. With billions of Internet search a year, you don't need to have broad appeal to get a big audience.

Then you sell advertising. Now in the traditional business model, that meant pounding the pavement, talking to potential advertisers, and often working with them to get an ad finalized. Then you had to hound them for payment.

On the Internet, you can sign up with search providers to put ads on your site. These ads (offered by the big search engines) use electronic algorithms to automatically match ads by content to your site so that your dog training site won't offer ads for gastric bypass surgery. You don't sell a single ad: you merely clear some room for Google or Yahoo to put ads on your site. They match the ads to your content.

In the print world of our ancient ancestors, an advertiser paid if his ad ran, regardless of whether anyone responded. Internat ads work on a different model; they run for free and the advertiser pays only when somebody clicks on them. This is what is meant when they say advertisers pay for clicks.

The good news is that you can find qualified advertisers and start generating ad revenues from a website pretty quickly without ever having direct contact with your advertisers.

You can also get advertisers the old-fashioned way by selling space on your site to individual vendors. Those arrangements are worked out individually.

Savvy Internet entrepreneurs can make money either selling products (including electronic products like e-books or online courses and now even online audios) or selling advertising or a bit of both. There are strategies for what to use and how, but those are the basics.

So what exactly does this mean for us writers? Writers need to start thinking about what they write not just in terms of how to tell the story, but how to best position the content in the marketplace.

If you can set up a wholesale arrangement with local or even international vendors, you can sell products using a "shopping cart" type website, lots of photos, and some cool product descriptions.

If you have the expertise (or can get it) and can write about how to beat a speeding ticket, land a job working on a cruise ship, or sell your home without a real estate agent, you can write electronic content (e-book, e-course, other materials that are delivered online including audios and videos) and sell that.

First, of course, you have to understand how these kinds of enterprises actually function. Even some off-the-wall business angles are good to study, because the same principles always apply. You target a specific niche market, develop content to attract visitors, and then sell either advertising, products, or both.

Jo Ann LeQuang writes for a living. If you would like to write for a living or write for a better living, find out more of what she has to say at http://www.workingonlinewriter.com .

How to Observe Wildlife without Leaving Home

While lumbering herds of elephants and stalking Bengal tigers capture the imagination of most animal lovers, we often neglect the nature closest to us. Sometimes we need a reminder that we are part of a habitat, and that the miracle of life exists under our very noses. Educator and naturalist Carolyn Duckworth has said, If you want to understand and become connected to your environment, keeping a field journal is one of the fastest ways to accomplish this goal.

Studies have found that children today consider nature to be somewhere elseon TV, videos, in the National Geographic only. But in reality, a genuine connection to wildlife around the globe is only an extension of a connection to the earth right where you stand. Good naturalists dont gain their knowledge from formal schooling, they get it in the field, by direct observation. And this observation can start right in your backyard or at the park down the street.

This article will offer pointers for keeping a nature journal. It draws heavily on the program laid out in the book Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth.

The tools needed to start nature journaling are simple and inexpensive. One needs a notebook and something to write with. Experimentation will reveal your personal preferences for lined or clear paper, binding type, size, and lead or ink. As you gain experience you may add a small set of watercolor paints or colored pencils. If you use pencils you may need a sharpener, or you can use mechanical pencils, which yield more technical-looking drawings. You may also use a collecting bag for objects that you want to draw and study indoors. (Although you should collect only fallen objects, where permission is given).

There are no hard and fast rules for nature journaling, although entering observations using a heading is good practice. For your heading you may include your name, the date and time (it doesnt have to be an accurate clock time), the place, weather conditions, your first impressions, wind direction (use a compass for this), and cloud patterns and cloud cover.

To get started you may find this sequence of observations helpful, as it gets you in the habit of observing all around you:

Start by looking at the ground. Get a close up view of individual objects. Try to draw one or more in your journal, labeling each item. Take no more than five minutes per object, and give size measurements (you dont need a ruler, just estimate.) For further learning, try writing at least one question about each object.

Now stand up and draw what comes into view at eye level. Label the object and describe what its doing, or what it is part of.

Look up from where you are standing. Record what you see above, and how it makes you feel.

Nature journals are not just for artists. Dont worry if your renderings look like scribbles. The point is that you are connecting to your environment.

Some questions you may use to direct your journaling, and deepen your connection to the life around you are:

What are the trees in my neighborhood? When do they bloom? What do their fruits and seeds look like? What insects use the trees? When do they shed their leaves? How do their seeds get to new sites to grow?

What birds live in my neighborhood? What is their activity at various times of the day? How do different species of birds interact with each other?

What kinds of insects gather around the light at my doorway each night throughout the year?

When and where do mushroom species appear in my neighborhood?

Using questions like these you may find yourself discovering both the landscape you live on, and the landscape that lives in you. Those who keep a journal know that journaling is a form of journeying, and a well-kept journal can become a treasured record of where we have been, what we have seen, and what we have felt as weve interacted with the world.

You dont have to visit the glaciers of Alaska, or Indias jungles, or the savannahs in Africa to connect to Mother Earth, although who of us wouldnt jump at the chance? Start by putting roots down right where you stand.

It seems only natural that we should value most what we are in contact with everydayyet the reverse is often true. We appear to place a higher value on rare animals and plants and spectacular views and far-flung places. Of course both are important because they fulfill different needs. But the every day places desperately need our attentionpartly because they are changing so fast, and not always for the better, and also because tremendous benefit is to be gained from a personal involvement with your own locality.
~The Parish Maps Project, London, England, 1987

Emma Snow has always adored wild animals. Emma provides content for Wildlife Animals http://www.wildlife-animals.com and Riding Stable http://www.riding-stable.com.