I want to say this all started a few weeks ago when everyone decided to rally around a fellow Trionder in a boycott to show support for the cause. Which of course we did, because part of being part of the Triond community is building friendships. So for a week, we watched our feeble progress and thought about article ideas for the week to come. And this was no problem at all, for a strong sense of loyalty courses through the both of us.

Toward the end of what felt like an extremely long week, we were turned on to Bukisa. And I must admit, at the time it really did seem like the ticket. One of our articles got over 150 clicks in the first several hours. We were amazed. So we put up more and more articles and as we did this, we were never able to replicate the same success as that first article. And now we’ve created new problems for ourselves. Which leads me to my first point here:

Bukisa is NOT user friendly

That’s right. When I log on to Triond all I have to do is click on the Content button and I can easily see all of stats without ever having to click on the actual article if I don’t want to. And there it is, all in a glance. No fuss, no hassle. Then I log on to Bukisa, where it opens up to some generic page where I am forced to navigate through several pages just to get through to where our articles are. And then, to make matters worse I have to go through every single article individually to check the status of them. This does not make me happy.

Word count matters….but quality does not

Apparently Bukisa has some type of stipulation about word count, so several of our articles cannot even be published there. I read this unfortunate poem not long ago that someone felt the need to write about a flower. It was the same four lines over and over again. Agonizing, but for this obviously very simple person, the only way for them to inflict their creativity upon poor unsuspecting readers was through repetition. Thank you Bukisa, I have now wasted another minute or two of my life simply recanting the experience of reading that dreadful poem.

Back to the user friendly point…..

Every time I am so silly as to try to click on the “Need Help” or “More Information”, I am met with the same result…..the computer crashes. Every time.

Who’s actually reading the articles on Bukisa?

Each time we put an article on Bukisa we refresh the page a few seconds after it has been published and it immediately has three or four hits. So, is there really people sitting there just waiting for things to be published so they can read it first? I could be wrong, but that seems a bit preposterous. So is Bukisa giving us free clicks? And if so….why? It’s not like it makes that much of a difference.

I guess the bottom line is this; it’s time to evaluate why we’re all here. We got into Triond as the very first step into our freelance writing career. We knew then that this was not going to pay our rent, or fund our next car, or put our son through college. It was purely getting our feet wet and getting in the writing habit again. This month we have made more money on Triond than Bukisa, it can be measured in cents rather than dollars, but that’s beside the point I suppose. Triond has become our social network and we’re happy here, even if we’re not getting rich because of it. There are too many other things to be done these days without having to build a whole new social network on a poorly put together site that might make us another .13 cents this month. If it’s big money you’re looking for you won’t find it on Triond or Bukisa. There are special websites, which are highly professional and have special requirements for those of us who choose to make a living at this type of thing. Keep it in perspective that Triond and Bukisa are essentially about the community and networking, that’s about it.

So if you’re wondering if we might want to join you on Bukisa, please just simply wonder about it alone for awhile and spare us having to delete the email. We’ll see you all around here on Triond.

Pardon me? Where did they get this idea from.

Another complainer said that Triond really should pay their starving writers more that ‘slave wages’ (or words to that effect) for their articles.

These people have missed the point. Triond does not buy you articles. You are allowed to publish your work on the various sites that Triond has and they share the revenue that your work attracts with you.

So, if you write obscure stuff like ‘How To Breed Tibetan Horses’ (for example), you won’t get many reads unless your article is picked up by a site that caters for Tibetan horse breeders.

However, if you write on how to make money, start a business, fix your car, or get freebies you will attract more readers and more advertising. Unusual articles often attract a lot of interest too.

My own top earning article has had 156,890 reads during this year alone. The earnings from this are $376.20  (which I only publish to illustrate my point.)

Ten Surprising Uses For Aspirin

Compare this with this one which had 14,944 reads but only earned me  $5.92.  This is because it didn’t attract much advertising. This may have been the time of year, the subject matter, or even the website it was published on. Who knows?

10 Memorable Kisses Through History

Other subject matter that always seems to do well on Triond is stuff like the piece written by RJ Evans on the ‘Weee Man’. It’s quirky and different and obviously had a lot of readers although I cannot tell you how much it earned.

The Wanderings of the Weee Man

The point here is that all articles that do well on Triond do so because their writers work hard to promote them. They add them to social networking sites, search engines, sent email to friends and read and comment on other people’s work. (If you don’t comment no one knows you have been there.) Most members will reciprocate.

If you want to earn more money promote yourself. Read the article by BCDoan on driving traffic to your articles.

How to Drive Traffic To Your Article

Put some work into getting long term traffic if you really want to do well. Getting in the top 10 Triond list is only a temporary thing. If you want long term traffic you need to work at it.

Guaranteed long Term Traffic For Your Article

Triond has lots of ideas and suggestion from different writers. Look at all the ideas and try them out. If you expect to make money fast on Triond, forget it, you won’t unless you have your own personal miracle. To make money you have to spend time, lots of time, marketing and networking.

Build up your links, your readers and your network. As soon as you stop doing this your reader numbers will fall.

In short, if you want more money for your work, then do more marketing.  There are no short cuts.

Networking your articles. And in this little skit, I will explain to you how this is done. We will start with what networking is, then more on to how to create the links, and finish with how to use the system responsibly.

We will start with the basics, and build our way up to the more advanced stuff as we go along.

What is Article Networking?

Put simply, its increasing traffic through your articles by placing links to your other works within them. It's as simple as that, but HOW you do it is where the lesson lies.

The power of this is obvious. You get more hits, as people who find one of your articles may well go right to other ones you have written.

How do I Make a Link in my Article?

Hyperlinks are text (or sometimes images) that have a link connected to them. Basically, when you click the text or the image, the URL connected to it loads. Creating these is very easy. First of all here's how to do it in MS word.

1. Highlight your text by clicking at the end of it and dragging it back to the start where you want your hyperlink. For example, I want it here.



2. Right click on the highlighted area, and click "hyperlink" in the drop down menu



3. In the new screen that pops up, enter the URL (for example www.evisisgreat.co.uk), and click okay.



4. Your hyperlink will be created, and your text will be formatted to a blue colour with an underline

To do it with a picture, simply right click the picture, click hyperlink and then figure it out for yourself. Note however, that for some reason many Triond articles do not allow hyperlinked pictures (they remove the hyperlink).

Next, how to do it in Triond's online editor.

1. Highlight your text as you would in MS word:



2. You'll see there's a little button just above the highlighted area (it looks like a chain, and it's next to the undo/redo buttons). Click it!



3. In the top line, enter your URL. Then you need to decide if you want the link to open a new window, or to open in the existing one. More often than not, you want the link to open a new window so as not to disturb your reader's reading! Click insert, and it's done!

Now, how about creating hyperlinks in other areas, such as forums and blogs? Most blogs will allow you to use BBCode tags. To create a URL hyperlink in these, use the following code:

[url=http://YOUR URL HERE /]THE TEXT YOU WANT YOUR READER TO SEE HERE[/url] .

Of course, all this hassle begs the question, why bother? The answer is simple. Because it looks a lot neater than pasting links everywhere, it doesn't break the flow of reading, and if people have an idea what the link is about before they click it, they will be more likely to follow it.

How do I Network my Articles Effectively?

First of all, you need to make sure that there is a reason to link to an article. Basically, make sure that what you are linking to is related, and pertinent. For example if I'm talking about music piracy, and I mention an obscure genre of music I have written an article on, then I put a link to that article just after mentioning the genre, so people can read about it if they want to.

Next is to link to sources. Show the reader your sources and they will take you more seriously. While this may not help with your hits directly, it will make you look a lot more credible as a writer, and people will be more likely to look at your other works.

If you have taken your own photos for the article, then provide thumbnails of them in your article, then links to them as well. This will encourage readers to visit your photographs too, increasing your hits. I did this quite well with my article, walking with the dead.

Finally, provide links at the end of your article to related material you have written. For example.

One last point is the idea of "mother articles", these are basically directories linking several related articles together. Say you have five articles about food in your country. You create a sixth article and provide links to all the other five in it, along with a short description of each article. Now, someone who finds that mother article and thinks it sounds interesting may well load all five "sub articles". You have now just had SIX hits from ONE person. Here is an example of a Mother article.

The Final Step: Wide-Range Networking

Wide range networking is how you can get a reader from an article about one subject, to a totally different one. Wide range networking can be summed up like this:

1. You create a link in your article to a related article of a similar topic
2. The article linked to, has a link in it directing the reader to another similar topic
3. Repeat step 2

Here is an example. This article, on Great Geek Anthems, contains a link to an article in which I talk about music piracy. Then that one has a link to an article on software piracy. There is no way I could have reasonably shoe horned the article on software piracy into the article on Great Geek Anthems.

However, thanks to networking, I have now gained two hits from anyone who was interested in reading about music piracy. And given that the link was related to the topic, it's a good chance they'll click. And if they're interested in piracy (which again, is likely), I may well gain yet another hit from them!

Very soon, you can have your reader looking at articles of a completely different type. Imagine a chain linking all your articles. If you have links in every article, and they can be tracked through in such a way that the reader doesn't need to visit the same article twice, then, in theory:

You could have one person viewing every single one of your articles.

Of course, this depends on them not loosing interest and clicking every link. Like many theoretical possibilities, it is unlikely to happen. However this does not change the fact that using networking and wide range networking, you can increase your hit rate considerably.

A Final Example and Closing Advice

I'm sure by now you've realized the fact I have used article networking extensively in this piece. Let's examine how effective it can be shall we? If we say that you clicked the example of the "mother article", then I have now gained two hits from you (one for this article, one for the mother article). Assuming you follow one or two of the links in the mother article to see how it's done, I now have four from you. Whereas before I may have only gained one unique view from you, I have now gained four, effectively quadrupling my hit rate.

My final piece of advice is to remember that networking, like everything on triond (or the writing industry on the whole really), will probably not make you a big earner over night. Networking will increase your hit rate, but you must still produce lots of content, and produce quality content. No amount of networking can make up for effort. The golden rule for effective networking is to make the reader want to click the link. Give them a reason to read the next article.

All in all, the advice is simple: Write!

And now for one last example.

If you enjoyed the advice presented in this article, then these may appeal to you:

• Advice on how to write for profit
• Advice on writing in general
• Getting friends on Triond

The most successful writers and bloggers on the Internet all understand the importance of marketing, especially online marketing, because it is the most important subject that can generate the largest audience of active readers on the Internet. Writers desiring to earn an income must be willing to learn everything that they can about the subject of online and offline marketing and marketing techniques, so that they can drive the traffic to their articles or blogs that are published on the net.

The following websites and articles were written with new writers in mind, because these are the ones who will benefit the most. Stop asking questions and start learning the marketing techniques that can potentially make you a successful Internet content writer in the future.

Marketing For Beginners Series for Writers

1. Choosing Your Online Publisher

   A helpful guide to help you choose an online publisher that is right for you and that will attract the type of readers that would most likely reader what you write.

2. Choosing Your Author's/Pen Name

   The name that a writer choose to write using can make or break an author's chances to become a popular Internet writer, so this useful guide will point you into the right direction.

3. How to Setup a Winning Bio Page

   The majority of online publishers allow their writers to setup a brief bio page, so that they can introduce themselves to their audience and fans. What most writers fail to understand is that their bio page is also an excellent marketing tool that can earn them new readers and in many cases the writers do not have a clue how to setup a winning bio page to achieve the greatest marketing results. This guide will help you setup your bio page right the first time.

4. Choosing Your Audience

   There is nothing more important than knowing you audience and understanding who you are writing for. This marketing guide teaches writers what to look for and how to locate the audience that you need to make an income when writing.

5. Writing Targeted Article Titles

   Once a writer has a working understanding about who their audience is, then it is time to learn how to write targeted article titles that make money.

6. Writing in Volumes

   Internet content writers usually make money every time someone stops and reads their article or blog, but to make excellent residual royalties in the future, writing in volumes is a marketing technique to really consider.

7. Networking Basics

   Learn the basics of networking on the Internet using this brief, but helpful marketing guide.

8. Social Bookmarking Basics

   Learn the basics to using social bookmarking websites, so to reach a broader audience and to potentially drive more unique visitors to your blog or article.

9. Co-op Marketing Techniques

   Learn what Co-op marketing is and how you can use it to your advantage in regards to your future marketing plans.

10. Using Existing Offline Networks

    Learn how to identify your existing offline (real world) marketing networks and learn how to use them to generate a bigger potential audience of readers.

Marketing Basics for the Established Writer

1. What Every Internet Content Writer Should Know

   This article is an excellent one to learn more advanced marketing techniques to apply to a writer's daily marketing schedule.

2. 10 Important Things That Every Triond Writer Should Do to Improve Your Earnings

   This is an excellent marketing article for writers who have elected to write for the online publisher “Triond”.

3. 10 Easy Steps to Build a Successful Internet Marketing Social Network

   Learn what you need to know about social networks and how to setup your own social network circle, so that your marketing campaigns can meet or exceed your marketing ambitions.

4. Understanding Social Bookmarking Services So You Too Can Build a Successful Internet Marketing Network

   This marketing guide teaches writers the important things about using social bookmarking services, so that they can build a successful Internet marketing network.

5. 10 Useful Websites to Increase the Popularity of Your Blog

   This article will guide interested bloggers and writers to free Internet services and programs that can be used to increase the amount of traffic that their blog currently receives.

6. Writer's Spelling Resources

   This is an outstanding guide for writers wanting to learn new words.

Online Publisher Guides

1. 10 Killer Internet Companies That Want To Pay You to Write

   Use this comprehensive online publisher guide to locate an online publisher that is right for your style of writing.

2. 10 Real Internet Companies Where the Words You Write Will Pay You

   This is another comprehensive online publisher guide that contains ten different online publisher-writing opportunities complete with details.

3. Get Paid to Write 10 Profitable Writing Opportunities for the Serious Writer

   As if a writer needs more writing options to choose from, then comes yet another ten potentially profitable writing opportunities to use when selecting an online publisher to write for. This article contains a brief description of the details for each of the writing opportunities.

4. 10 Marvelous Magazine Article Writing Opportunities

   This writer's guide presents ten magazine writing opportunities for the serious professional writer and these writing opportunities are not designed for every writer either. Only the best-of-the-best writers will succeed in this highly competitive writing field, so be prepare for heaps of rejection letters.

What does any of this have to do with Improving my Earnings? Everything.

If you are one of those writers that charges full steam ahead despite what obstacles stand in your way. Without stopping. Without worries, then you are the type of writer that will go far and nowhere fast.

If you are one of those writers that slow to examine the obstacle in your path, but do not take the extra time to formulate a solution to move it out of your way, then you will be consistently stumbling over the obstacle the longer that you leave it in your way.

If you are one of the few writers that stops fully to examine the obstacle that is blocking the path, and then develops an understanding of what caused that obstacle to originally come to block your path, and then formulates a carefully thought out plan to remove the obstacle, then you are the type of writer that will become a successful content writer.

Becoming successful at writing or anything for that matter doesn't usually come by pure chance. It requires a lot of hardwork and patience, but most importantly, it requires an understanding of marketing, branding, and tweaking this and adjusting that, so that you can achieve any goal that you put your mind to accomplishing.

Now, let's get started with the lesson.

The following are 10 Important Things That Every Triond Writer Should Do To Improve Your Earnings:

1. Write your Triond Author Bio that is located in your account tab that is found in your Triond dashboard. Do not rush through these process, because if your Bio looks sloppy and poorly written, then your potential readers may be left with the impression that the rest of your writings will be much of the same, and then decide to leave without reading any further. Let your readers know a little about yourself, but do not reveal too much about yourself, leave that mystery to be revealed within the pages of that which you choose to write about within the pages of your writings. This way it gives those potential readers something to look forward to and they will be likely to read some of your published work.
   
2. Published a couple of articles, poems or stories before you start making any friends. Start sharing your writings with the rest of the world and Triond community, so to show the type of writer that you are.
   
3. Understand the difference between being a friend and being a fan, while at the same time trying to earn an income and building a solid reputation for your writings is extremely important. If you are a new writer to the Triond family and you start trying to make friends right away before publishing any of your own work, then this is what I consider to be a fan and usually I will not add you as a mutual friend. If you on the other hand have published some of your own writings or photos for that matter to Triond, and then you add me as your friend I will make you my mutual friend, because then I will also have a reason to be your fan, too.
   
4. Read everything that Triond has provided for its writers to learn from. Triond provides all new and current writers tools, so that they can learn the basics of self-promoting or otherwise known as marketing in layman's terms. Furthermore, there is a Triond School available for free to all Triond members, so that they will learn how the different social bookmarking networks work and other valuable information that is designed to get new and current writer started on the right foot.
   
5. Take time and make realistic writing goals and income goals that you can achieve within your own ability to learn what you need to learn and do what you need to do to see your goal through to completion. Making too lofty writing goals and income goals will only set you up for future disappointment, especially if something that you could not foresee happens where you cannot carryout your plans to achieve your goals that you set.
   
6. Decide what type of writer that you want to be and what type of writer that you already know that you are, and then choose to be just one of them and no, you cannot be both.

   If you are choosing to be the type of writer that writes poetry, stories from the heart or personal stories, then you should also be aware that this choice is much harder to earn a decent income from. The reason why, is because usually these types of writings contain fewer high paying keywords that are used by advertisers to determine the rate of payout that they are willing to pay to the publisher, which the publisher shares with their writers according to the number of views that an article receives in any given timeframe that the publisher sets.

   If you are choosing to write for an income, then writing about just anything is out the window. To be successful and begin building a steady income that will continue to grow over time, then you will need to start writing for the market. Writing about subjects that everyone is talking about or about subjects that will be talked about in the days, weeks or months to come. Yes, not every article will be successful even if you are a popular writer. It is the nature of the business and is something that you must get use to or quit writing, because obviously Internet content writing isn't your area of expertise.

   Just as important as earning an income is to a serious Internet content writer, it is equally important to build a solid reputation for yourself and your writings. If you are a writer that enjoys writing about the things that you like and enjoy or if you are a writer that writes for the market, so to earn a living income, then it becomes important to write and publish something new every few days. This way you will potentially have readers who choose to subscribe to your RSS Feed and when these readers choose to do this, then they want to be informed when you publish something new. This is what businesses would call repeat business and that is good.

7. When submitting your writings to Triond to be published, then you must know that using MS Word and saving your writings in the word document format is what I use and is an acceptable format for publishing. Triond does accept other document formats, but you will need to take the time and read through all the information that Triond provides to its members, so to learn exactly what these other document formats are for yourself.
   
8. Learn a little bit about SEO and Keywords, so that you are able to write an article that will return a better income (per view) in the longrun. Both of these subjects are very important areas to study, especially if you want to make your living writing. There is a lot of information about these subjects on the Internet and there are several Triond writers who have written excellent articles about SEO techniques and understanding the importance of keywording your articles. Take you time and learn this at your own pace.
   
9. Avoid becoming one of those writers that believe that you are in competition with every other writer out there on the Internet, because you are not. Even if you believe that you were the first to write about a particular subject chances are someone else have already published something about the subject before you even had the opportunity to record your thoughts on paper. It's OK, to have more than one or several other writers writing about the same thing, because every writer will uniquely write an original piece of work, thus giving the readers more choice to read possibly challenging points of view.
   
10. Triond writers it's up to you to market and promote your own writings on and off of the Internet. There are many different marketing techniques that work, but some require much patience and time to start paying off and other marketing techniques will payoff very quickly, however it usually will only last a matter of a few hours to a few days, and then the view will begin to slow down to a trickle.

    Joining social bookmarking networks such as: StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Faves and others like these, will give your articles the chance to be quickly noticed by potentially millions of other members belonging to the same social bookmarking networks that your articles were submitted to. However, you will still need to make friends at these networks to be able to build an effective marketing network, so to achieve your projected writing and income goals that you have planned for in advance.

    If you are a student in a college or school, then use this opportunity to tell your friends and other students about your published writing, and then give them the website address where your articles and/or writings are located. Be sure that you take the time to write down the address yourself, and then give it to your friends, because this way you are sure that the address was written down correctly and this extra little effort may have convinced that person to drop by and read some of your writings, you never know.