Tips for writers and musing about writing and life in general

It occurs to me that I may never have mentioned The Keyword Academy to my faithful followers here as a terrific site to learn about making money by writing website and blog content. (You’ll find the same link in that last sentence that you’ll find at the top of the right-hand column [sidebar] of each page on my site here.)

The Keyword Academy is run by a couple of guys named Courtney and Mark — members simply call them “Court and Mark,” so I really don’t know their full names or much about them. Okay, I seem to recall Court’s full name is Courtney Tuttle. Mark, I’m not sure. (Sorry, Mark.) The emphasis on the site actually isn’t on the mechanics or “how-tos” of writing.

The site is all about learning how to use your writing to build quality, content-rich websites that will draw lots of free “traffic” (i.e., Internet surfers/buyers). You, in turn, are taught some ways to “monetize” that traffic, i.e., get those surfers/buyers to take action at your website that will earn you money.

I highly recommend The Keyword Academy — which, by the way, is a monthly paid membership site. It’ll cost you $1.00 U.S. to give the place a complete 30-day trial, and after that you’ll be billed $33.00 a month. If you’ve ever joined an online membership site, I’ll bet you paid twice that much in most cases — and I’ll guarantee you never got your money’s worth.

But the good stuff at Keyword Academy includes this:

1. Something around a dozen step-by-step how-to videos you can watch and re-watch that walk you through specific “formulas” to find keywords to write about that will draw people to your website. These “Core” videos will help you step-by-step set up a website, configure it to run with WordPress (the software I use here), and how to get it “found” by Google and other major Internet search engines.

2. Monthly “webinars” which you can attend for free as part of your membership. These webinars deal with questions the members have about implementing the whole Keyword Academy process. The webinars range from general “Q&A” sessions once a month to a specific topic webinar once a month. And the webinars are made available as downloads you can keep on your computer afterward to play and replay as either audio or video files.

3. A terrifically helpful member’s forum. This is one of only three online forums I visit regularly. There are people who are just starting out at online writing, there are people who are making $100-$5,000+ per month who post regularly, sharing ideas and answering questions.

4. Terrific, innovative online tools for members’ use. This month they launched a service called “The Niche Refinary” to quickly and easily help members implement many of their methods for finding keywords that work for building websites. If you don’t understand their methods, it would make little sense to elaborate. But trust me on this one, it is an incredible tool for people wanting to write content and build websites/blogs that make money online.

Go give The Keyword Academy a try for yourself. It’ll only cost you a buck for the first 30 days. After you sign up, go directly to the “Member’s Area” tab, click on the button for “Core Videos” and get started. Then take time to look around the Forum. There’s a ton of resources on this site and you won’t regret spending the buck to look at it all. You can easily go through all the videos in your 30-day, $1.00 trial period. But I’m guessing, if you’re serious about writing online, that you’ll stay on for the long run.

If you want to find lots of online writing opportunities, I recommend you look for sites that publish lots of “how-to” articles, then contact them and ask whether they accept freelance submissions. With a bit of searching, you can even find a couple of websites that offer steady work for people who like to write “how-to” articles and are good at it.

My question for you would be — how do you write “how-to” articles that are interesting and effective?

I would suspect the number one skill needed to write good “how-tos” would be the ability to think logically through a task step-by-step from start to finish. And thinking about this, I recalled an idea my son had as a child. He decided, without asking us or even telling us (“us” being his mother and me) his plans, to put a small pond in our backyard.

But he obviously hadn’t thought it through step-by-step from start to finish. His plan went something like this:

1. Dig a hole the size of the pond he wanted to build.
2. Fill the hole with water.

Of course, a serious backyard pond involves much, much more, from some sort of lining or material to fill the hole in the ground before adding water, to installing pond pumps to circulate and clean the water, and many other factors.

Unfortunately for him and fortunately for us, he dug only a small hole before hitting some serious jumbles of good old Missouri Ozarks rocks and abandoned the project.

So how do you write “how-to” articles? Leave a comment and let us know your take on the matter.

I wrote a recent article here about insurance, especially health insurance for freelancers, and even invited comments from anyone who’s found a good, reasonably cheap resource for such insurance.

We’ve recently, in my household, begun looking at the many ins and outs and options of Medicare. Yes, the years are rushing by and my wife, not ME, is approaching Medicare age in the next six months or so. What we’ve learned already is this: It’s much easier to find simple, cheap life insurance rates than to find anything resembling easy, SIMPLE answers to health insurance for Medicare clients.

I always had this vague idea that Medicare would resolve all our problems regarding health insurance, health care, etc. Somehow during all the recent furor over health care reform, I and I’m sure many others had the idea that Medicare was sort of a “home free” solution to the whole mess.

Boy, was I wrong. As best we can tell, Medicare — just basic, no-frills Medicare — is roughly equivalent to the most mediocre high-deductible 80/20 health insurance plan offered by private companies. The secret to good Medicare coverage, as far as well can tell, is in the Medicare “advantage” or “supplemental” policies you combine Medicare with. And that’s where all the choices get incredibly confusing.

Anyway, just a note for any of you who haven’t looked into it, be warned that Medicare is neither a great panacea, nor easy to wade through. Start sorting through your options early if you can.