AndAnotherThing has been writing and publishing articles with Triond since 2006 and was one of the writers chosen to test out Triond’s Google integration.  Even with teething issues the writer’s earnings for November 2009 have been seen to double.  So much so that she is now recommending the site to other writers and interested friends and family.

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The Many Faces of Triond | Triond’s Online Magazines

Triond’s main advantage over other article publishing sites is the online magazines it has created (now well established and with thousands of readers each month) where it publishes its articles.  These include Bizcovering (business related articles), Authspot (Creative Writing) Beyond Jane ( Beauty, Fashion, Family, Lifestyle, Relationships and Fashion) and more.  Articles submitted are published in the most relevant of Triond’s online magazines.

Triond’s Superior Publishing Tools

Triond also offers its writer/publishers superior publishing tools.  For example, they offer writers a tool to add images which illustrate their articles.  Triond continues to pay its writers on going residual income according to the number of page views an article achieves.  With the addition of Google AdSense it looks like Triond is well positioned for a happy and prosperous New Year 2010!  To join Triond CLICK HERE Triond Membership is free of charge (find out more below).

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Triond is Free to Join 

To join Triond and start publishing articles (they must be original and not published anywhere else when they are submitted), Click Here

PLEASE NOTE: You must have a registered Google AdSense Account to join Triond’s AdSense Revenue Sharing Scheme.  Apply to Google.com to set up your own AdSense account.  Conditions apply.

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Timothy Dumont Jr. published with Triond some fine horror short stories and flash fiction, but his greatest achievement until today is the paranormal horror story he is publishing currently on his blog Unusual Circumstance. The author, as a real “composer of content”, tells his online story in blog posts, in a documentary style that reminds us of The Blair Witch Project, merging facts and fiction into “faction”, blurring the edges of reality and the paranormal, using only words and illustrations, pictures, fake newspaper articles – but all in a very clever way.

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His main character is Benjamin, a paranormal investigator, who is attempting to debunk or prove the existence of all sorts of paranormal phenomena. In his first post Benjamin tells us that he had to start this blog because people needed to know what he had seen in an old abandoned house in the forest.

There are rumours about a woman who was once living there with her two year old daughter; when the mother died of measles, the baby was left alone to starve.

Apparently some kids had broken into the house… and suddenly collapsed, or were attacked by the image of a young lady.

Later, the bodies of the kids were found. They died of measles…

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Benjamin packed his camera, tape recorder and EMF detector (to perceive electromagnetic fields generated by supernatural entities) and started his investigation in the creepy abandoned house, where all things were covered with cobwebs and dust… Laying on the top shelf of a small cabinet was a small leather bound book with crumpled edges…

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Want to read more? Then you definitely have to follow the Blog Unusual Circumstance. The story starts here.

The Blog Murder & Mystery Games, dedicated to Murder & Mystery games, Fiction & Non Fiction, True Crime, Interactive and Online Storytelling is following Unusual Circumstance already!

You might be interested too in the SuperNatural ParaNormalities Blog and in the GhostWritings Blog.

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Marking is a laborious chore teachers often complain about so the process of automating it probably sounds quite appealing. Usually automated programs are used to check for plagiarism and marking multiple choice exams.

When it comes to emotion in writing, the computer just can’t deal with it. The program flagged Churchill’s speech as repetitive and incorrect wording. Even Ernest Hemingway’s work was flagged as a lack of vocabulary and writing style. Great writers being failed by a computer program.

The software was designed in the US but similar attempts have been made in the UK. Trials there have been localized to exam samples, not great writers.

Automated marking is very limited to multiple choice or short answer questions. Computers do not get bored; they have no problem comparing one answer to the real answer hundreds of times over. They won’t tire and they won’t make mistakes.

Computers marking exam papers would also mean students can get their results faster and universities have more time to select their applicants before term starts. The opportunity is also there for online exams although the question of cheating would be overcome first.

They cannot however, understand the subtleties and complexities of the English language. Just like your spell checker isn’t always right, the program has limitations. Computers don’t really ‘read’ they just compare what’s in front of them, to the rules they’ve been given. I can see them reaching this point in the future but we’re not quite yet.

It’s weird to think of a computer marking great works of literature but it makes sense. If you want to test the understanding of emotion in the English language, Churchill is the way to go.

For now the work of Hemingway and Churchill can be critiqued by high school students in English class and exam results marked by grumbling teachers.

I’m not talking about manufacturing shoes or footballs; I’m talking about publishers hiring free-lancers to produce content for them at a fraction of the profit they make from Associated Content.

The first rule of Associated Content’s Submission Guideline states ‘All content must be created by you. No exceptions.’ by outsourcing to a freelancer you may own the rights to the content, but by submitting it to Associated Content you are essentially breaking this rule.

The internet marketer can feed specific keywords to the freelancer and pay less than a dollar for 400 words or more. Worse than that, they can take successful articles from Associated Content and other sites and have them rewritten. Some will take it even further, and not pay the freelancer after receiving the articles.

The freelancer writer likely does not know about Associated Content. That’s how I started. I was looking for freelance work on and was offered $5 for 5 400 word articles. The marketer made more than this but at least I got an initial payment, which I can’t do otherwise considering I’m outside the US.

If the freelancer, as I did, pastes a line or two of their articles into Google the results will lead them to their article on Associated Content and they can make a lot more money from their work…

The problem is this can be hard to spot, the only real way Associated Content could do anything about it would be to pose as a freelancer looking for work and ban the account which submitted those articles. That would be a pretty big time investment.

In the end, the marketer exploits the freelancer more than Associated Content. They get paid, Associated Content gets its content and in the end, the outsourced freelancer doesn’t know they missed out on anything.

Incidentally, if you’re looking for quick money from writing but you can’t get an instant payment from Associated Content you can be outsourced like this although you will be paid significantly less.

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The author can purchase copies of the book at any time for $8.50, a reduced price from the usual 10 to 13 dollars. Books are available for purchase on Amazon and at KidPub Press. The books cost less on KidPub and the kids get a higher percentage of the money they earn. Go here to learn more: http://www.kidpub.com/ and get the free publishing package that explains the process in detail.

Maybe you could use some doubt in your writing.  Let me explain.

While I was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Pittsburgh from 2004 to 2006, we graduate students had to take a course on argumentative writing.  Then we would teach argumentative writing to our undergraduate students.

The idea behind argumentative writing was that an article was a discussion between the writer and the reader.  Of course the writer would start off with a position, supply proof why the position was the correct one and then in the conclusion reaffirm the correctness of that position.

Hopefully, the reader would agree; but the university felt that for the reader to truly be convinced of the writer’s position the writer had to at least admit that there were other positions that might be correct, too.  The writer had to entertain some doubt.  Doubt actually made the writer’s argument more not less convincing.  A little bit of doubt made the writer’s position seem more reasonable.

You’ve read articles where the writer came off as a know-it all.  That can be very irritating.  The writer may win the discussion but lose the reader.

So, you may want to try some argumentative writing in your next online article.  Nothing is certain; but it just might help.

These articles are also, in most cases, harmless. But not in all cases. Some people, in their hurry to pick up a hundred or two cheap views, will spread misinformation. This is potentially harmful, especially to newcomers looking for genuine advice on how to succeed here.

So let’s take this opportunity to dispel the rumors and lay out the cold hard facts. For starters, I may not qualify as an expert, but I have had nearly 100 articles to date on the hot content top 10 list. I have studied Triond, and while I am in all likelihood not the top earner, I am one of them. I have studied in great depth the workings of promotion. So it is fair to say I at least have a more than passing knowledge on the subject.

We will start by dispelling a few of the rumors and misconceptions.

The Hot Content list is not a golden Ticket to thousands of views

It isn’t even a ticket to hundreds of views. If you appear there regularly, you’re talking dozens to a couple of hundred, depending on subject matter. If your article is only there briefly, you probably won’t even see dozens.

The Hot Content list increases your rate of pay

Again, total crap.

There is an algorithm that determines what reaches the list.

This is actually true. And therein lies the ’secret’ to the list. Which brings us to…

How you actually get there.

According to Triond, the algorithm is a combination of Views, likes, comments, and age of the article. All of the research I have done backs this up completely. So the answer here is that anyone who states that they have figured out the answer is one of three things… misled, wrong, or making it up as they go along. Here, however, are some observations I have made.

Views are the most important number. I have a series of sports articles I do weekly that nearly always lands at the top spot, and stays for a few days. It receives huge numbers of views, far into the thousands. It has hit #1 without a single like or view. On the flip side, I had an article called ‘Triond Roll Call’ which received 80 something comments, and only made an appearance at #9 for a few hours.

There is blind luck involved. I have had articles make it with just a few dozen views. This is, often times, because nothing of consequence happened to publish that day. Some days a 30 view, 5 comment piece may land you at #5; others, a 200 view 10 comment piece might not make it at all.

If your article does well, it will probably make it. If your article does views in the hundreds on the first day, it will probably make it. The age of the article matters quite a bit. I have seen a few make it days after publishing, but only a few. And I have never had one get there more than 48 hours after publishing. If it’s not there after 2 days, it probably won’t be.

The bottom line is this; there is simply no concrete formula, because some aspect of it is arbitrary on Triond’s part. Here’s my advice… work on your product. Work on promoting. If you do the work, the rest will take care of itself. Stop worrying about a riddle for which there really is no definitive answer, and learn to sell your articles. Do that, and I promise… the Hot List will take care of itself.

The first thing you are going to need is an avenue for being paid for your writing. I use Google Adsense and PayPal. I have found that most sites will pay into one of these systems and if they don’t the usual preference is to pay by cheque. So before you start, or straight away if you have already started writing, get yourself a Google Adsense account and a PayPal account that will transfer funds to your chosen bank account. Readers – if you have another system to recommend please add it in the comments below.

Pay by cheque is my least preferred option as I am continually moving around the world and keeping my address updated is another aspect I need to build into my system, so that each time I move I update all sites with my new address. To be able to do this I keep an Excel spreadsheet on my computer.  In the spreadsheet I have listed all sites I use and the information I need for those sites which is: my user name, password, payment method from this site, the date I last updated the payment method details, the amount of the last payment, the progressive total of payments from that website and the total progressive payments from all websites. I also have a comments section where I can make additional notes to follow up on if there is an issue or problem. Because I also sell art and designs on the internet I keep track of these sites and all activity on them as well.

Once a month, on the last Thursday of each month, I check all activity on my income sources and match that activity with bank statements to see if the money has arrived in the appropriate accounts.

The other part of my office system is to keep track of submitted articles. I use another spreadsheet for tracking articles. Once the article is written I enter the title into the spreadsheet; I note which site it has been submitted to for first publication (some sites will only accept first publication) and I also indicate if the article has been submitted to multiple sites for publication (some content is very useable and can be submitted on several sites). If the article is written for a competition there is a column that indicates it is a competition article, when the deadline is and when the winners are announced. A separate column indicates prizes won and links back to the spreadsheet on income so that income from competitions is added in to the total income.

Another spreadsheet keeps track of work that has been done on demand, or on contract. This spreadsheet keeps track of deadlines, payments and content for work I have negotiated as pay by the word, pay by the page, copywriting, etc. It also links back to the income spreadsheet and places total payments of contracted work into the total payment section.

All the activity in the office system takes me about 10 minutes a month once the system is set up plus the time it takes to enter each article as I submit them. The only additional time required is the time to join up for more sites or tender for more contracts, and therefore record all the details into the spreadsheet each time I do that. Personally I am happy to maintain a relationship with a few sites. I find it easier to manage.

TRIOND has the best website for easy reference to all business aspects because it provides you with information about who is looking at your articles, when and how many from each source. It gives a running tally of income being earned and has recently added the capacity to generate extra income through the addition of Google ads on articles. TRIOND also provides you with a central place to seek information about all activity generated around every article you submit. It would be great if all the writing sites could follow this model of reporting – it is so clear and provides a lot of very useful information.

TRIOND will only accept articles for first publication and has a stable of e-magazines in which your articles are published. They include Quazen, Authspot, Healthmad, Trifter, Socyberty, Sportales, Notecook, Gomestic, Bizcovering, Telewatcher, Webupon, Computersight, Writinghood, Cinemaroll, Bookstove, Musicouch and PurpleSlinky (just add .com to any one of these names).  This stable of magazines is pretty comprehensive and TRIOND ensures search engine optimization for articles published in their magazines. If you only use one site this is probably the one to go for. As a beginner it is one that provides the most straightforward way of getting started.

If you combine my suggested office management system on your own computer with the system offered by TRIOND on their server you have established a good business base for tracking your success at writing for the internet.

Good Luck now!

• It is a secret so this is just between me and you. You put one excellent article on the ‘Hot Content’ (purely based on likes and comments – views don’t mean diddly squat to Triond). Anything about 10-15 comments and likes should bump you up to the ‘Hot Content’. That is the only hard bit in the process but it isn’t impossible. Once one of your articles is on the ‘Hot Content’, keep writing articles on the next few consecutive days and that should put you on the ‘Hot Content’ for the next few days.

• For example, on Saturday, if you write an article and it reaches the ‘Hot Content’ on Sunday purely based on comments and likes, write ONE single article on Sunday and it should be published on Monday and reach the ‘Hot Content’ on Monday. Write another SINGLE article on Monday and it should be published by Tuesday and should reach the ‘Hot Content’ on Tuesday. Keep repeating this for as long as you can and as long as Triond keeps an article of yours on the ‘Hot Content’.  Any more than one article per day doesn’t really work, I find – remember, you don’t want to spam the ‘Hot Content’.Once your article reaches the top 3 positions in the ‘Hot Content’, you should find that the article stays up there for longer and for days, if you are lucky, without any effort.
• I can’t guarantee the success but it has paid off for me. Please note though, being on the ‘Hot Content’ is like a temporary spotlight so don’t expect it to pay off in the long run. Also, don’t expect it to work for AuthSpot or Picable. I’ve yet to see an article/photo that makes it to the ‘Hot Content’, which may I take the opportunity to say, is REALLY sad.

So, see if that works for you.  If it does, then I may have discovered the real secret behind the ‘Hot Content’ list. If it doesn’t work, then I guess I’m just one of those many people still looking for the impossible.

Simple, break it down. One thousand articles is approximately three articles per day every day for a year. You take a few days off here and there for good behavior, you know the routine. That’s it. Three articles a day. Don’t think of it as 1000, think of it as three each day. “But,” you say, “you’ve never written even one.” It could be a problem but doesn’t have to be. Follow these six steps and 1000 online articles in one year (or 3 per day) is a breeze.

1. Pick out your three general topics for the day (preferably you have planned out these in advance but not always). What will you write about? What interests you? What looks interesting on the web? Type out those three topics.
2. Hone in on one of the topics and then start typing. But, but, but… Just start typing. Type type type. This is the method by which much of the content you read online is created.
3. Use tips, top five or ten items, or bullets to illustrate your general themes. You don’t have to go into great detail but the bullets breaks up the writing considerably.
4. After you’ve written first drafts of all three articles, put it away for some time. It may a few minutes or a few days. Take a break. Grab some coffee. Play with your kids.
5. Edit all three articles. Read them out loud right before you submit them. Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense. For your first few, have someone else read them to make sure they are clear.
6. Submit the articles. It’s often difficult to submit your writing because you’re afraid of what the editors will think or what the readers will think (and of course afraid of what your “inner muse” will think – very common writer fear). Just hit “submit.”

I know it seems simplistic. But after you do this day after day after day you will get good at it. But don’t discouraged if it seems difficult at first. It is! But, the reward of seeing your articles on the internet is well worth the difficulty. Keep at it. You will get better and faster.