Angst

Angst

Market Research

Market Research

Market Research — like, instead of bulk mailing me?

<edward@guestpostingagency.com> wrote:
Hello there,
Hope you are fine and doing well.
I want to make a long-haul business association with you.
I will give you elegantly composed and one of a kind articles identified with your site.
I will give you 2 to 3 articles each month. The links would be the do-follow and relevant to your website. No gambling or adult.
And tell me the price of per post on your site.

So I’m thinking, since I do all my own stunts? What that means, I am responsible for all the content on my sites, and I write all my own material. Turns out, that’s not all too common.

Weird, huh?

Websites with “significant” traffic, or targeted demographics, those places are often farmed, like ghost writers, stolen intellectual property, not that I’m above outright theft, but anything I have to sign my name to has to be mine, and given my propensity for a lack of rhythm and horrible grammar, I don’t have to worry about that. Or long, run-on sentences.

Or too short fragments.

My present-day understanding, search engine, especially the behemoth Google, look for well-written copy with a limited number of keywords, and then, simple, outbound links.

Market Research

Market Research — like, instead of bulk mailing me?

I guess the biggest problem, and sure, we can all use a little extra income now, but the biggest challenge? Those “link farmers,” or paid-placement articles? So far, they haven’t paid well enough to cover the cost installing, and also possibly ruining, my implicit trust with my readers.

The last time I entertained the notion, the link-farmer, paid-placement representative offered $20 per article placed, and I countered with my standard asking rate, $1,000.

Seems to put them off a bit, and means I’m serious. Everyone has a price, and for a month?

Market Research

Before contacting me about any of my sites, be nice if there was just a little bit of market research. All they seem to look at are my outbound links, and ask if I want an article. If I write all my own material, then maybe that isn’t the question to ask.

Think I’ve received a dozen like this, since then. Averages maybe one every other day, and those are just the ones not caught in the spam filter.

Want me to link to your article? Standard advertising rates apply, pursuant to the fine print.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe

Mistletoe

Lansdale

Lansdale

Think I met Joe R Lansdale once, in Austin, at a book signing-like afternoon event. It was a little bookstore that no longer exists, specializing in SF/F. Think he was just making an appearance, at a nascent phase of his career.

He. Is. Great.

Defies taxonomy, other than “Deep East Texas,” and with that? See what they say.

I was, personally affected by two of his early novels. I don’t recall the content, just random imagery, and then? How I felt when I read the books. The Drive-In.

I was at the university, at the time, reading “great literature,” and on break, I remember finding the novel in a bookstore, and the feeling I got from reading the pair.

Incredulity. Excitement. Sheer joy, and a certain mastery of the absurd?

I’m almost afraid to reread them, for fear I would lose that sense of awe and wonder those novels inspired in me.

#Mojo

The Deserter

The Deserter

The Deserter – Nelson DeMille & Alex Demille

There’s a kind of pacing, traumatic injury, dismemberment, and death all leavened with humor. Maybe dark, sardonic, ice cold humor, but a certain way of placing each plot element next to each other. Some authors are more practiced and skilled than authors.

Wait. Early in the book, does this echo the movie version, Apocalypse Now? Too soon to say.

The Deserter

The Deserter – Nelson DeMille & Alex Demille

The Deserter: A Novel

More Book 7

More Book 7

“56. Consider yourself dead, and the life you have lived till now gone; now count the rest of your days as a reprieve from death, and live according to Nature.”

  • Excerpt From Marcus Aurelius

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.” (56)

(Of note? One copy suggests I’ve used this before. Couldn’t find it, so here it is, maybe again. Maybe not.)

Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius (Loeb Classical Library)

Delphi Complete Works of Marcus Aurelius – Marcus Aurelius

Meditations – Marcus Aurelius & Gregory Hays

Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)

As always a free version is hosted on astrofish.net right here.

#meditation
#HashTagsSuck