I wrote yesterday about how the new Google algorithm might do harm to the online writing community. Today I can see the result in my Yahoo! Contributor Network and the numbers aren't pretty. My views have dropped to about 1/4 of what they were prior to the change. That is the bad news. The good news is that I didn't rely on Yahoo! Contributor Network nearly as much as Helium.
Helium has been my mainstay since I started writing online. I love the community there. That isn't to say that there is anything wrong with the people at AC (Yahoo). I just prefer Helium much more. The other good news is that it does not seem to have affect my Helium earnings in the slightest. I am still making approximately the same as I was before. There were two days there were down by a lot of money, but that could have been a coincidence since that seems to have ironed itself out.
Working at home will still be possible. Living off Helium will probably not provide the bulk of my income in the future though. I appreciate all the help from friends who led me to other sites when Helium changes took affect. Don't get me wrong, Helium is still and always will be my home sweet home of writing sites. It has provided me opportunities that I never dreamed possible. They took a not so good writer and made her better. They consistently expected more of the writers and therefore helped those who had little to no experience flourish in ways that the writer would never have imagined.
Someone asked me on one of my articles in AC (Yahoo) what education I have. The truth is, I just have a high school education. Does that make me a bad writer? No, it certainly doesn't. What it does mean is that I have to work harder to figure things out. I have to research more than just the subject. I have to research the best ways to right it. Sometimes I am off target and therefore become the target of those who did go to college after high school. I don't fit their standards and they expect perfection from me. This has also been a challenge for me. If I want to write better, I can. I know this because I consistently think my writing is getting better but then someone finds flaws with the way I do business and it makes me stop to think.
As for those who like to kick people, whether they are down or not, you have no place in my world. I can take a good piece of advice. I cannot take the downright rude behavior and nasty comments meant to do nothing but demean me or other writers. These are the type of people who think that a writer doesn't care about the craft because they didn't write the way they do. I have news for you all. Those of us who are not formally educated probably care more about it than you will ever know. That is why we stick it out. Because we care about it. (yes, I know that isn't a proper sentence). That is the beauty of a blog.
In any case, I have been battered by some of those people and to you I really have nothing further to say. Your misery with others is a reflection of the misery you must feel for yourself. I enjoy writing and will continue to do so. When I don't live up to your standards, it still won't matter in the end. I have learned a lot over the course of the work from home adventure called online writing. I like writing online content and feel that I can concentrate more now than ever before on writing to subjects that I enjoy rather than relying on topics that I couldn't give a rats butt less about. I had to write those things previously in order to get to that point though.
When I first started writing for Helium, I wrote to the creative writing channel and channels that were of very little consequence to anything anyone was looking up on the internet. That strayed when I had to write for a living. The best news of all of this is that I can go back to writing the things I want to write because I can write to other forums, make more money by selling the content outright and calling it a day. If I make more money in the process at my home site, that is all the better, but they will be subjects closer to my heart. And to all the naysayers in the Helium community and elsewhere, all I have to say to you is that had it not been for Helium, I could have never risen as high as I have and I don't intend to stop here. So, yes, I defend Helium, its staff and the loyal writers there because I have never been disappointed in the outcome.
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Your blog and your post will inspire many at-home writers--myself included! We are so blessed to be able to learn as we work, especially as part of the Helium community. As a fellow freelance writer, I look forward to visiting your blog often.
ReplyDeleteJudy,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the kind comments. I just visited your blog. Very nice!! I will be back to it as well. I don't know what I would do without the great community of online writers. I don't think I would have made it through the first week without the support that I have recieved from everyone!!