A Mountain of Content (Moved With an Eye Dropper)

As folks who've been around this blog for a while know, I tend to keep a lot of plates spinning at any given time. I also run the gaming blog Improved Initiative, for example, in addition to blogging for clients, writing books like the sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife and the short story collection The Rejects that came out earlier this year. However, I've also been expanding my Vocal archive of articles for some time now... and I've got an update on what I've come to call The Great Reshuffling.

It's finally done. And for this week's Craft of Writing post, I wanted to talk about this back-breaking project that's taken me nearly a year to finally complete.

And let me tell you... it was a PROJECT!

What Was The Great Reshuffling?

For those who don't know, I had a pretty hefty article archive over on InfoBarrel for a while. It was never a big earner, but I got a check every month or so for my earnings. However, over the past several years the site just drew less and less traffic, which meant my work over there got fewer and fewer views. There weren't any other websites like it that I knew of (that is to say, sites where you could write whatever you wanted and earn money based on your traffic) so I just sort of let it die and tried to focus on other stuff.

Then I discovered Vocal.

And the numbers started jumping.

I've talked about this site before in both Want To Make Some Money Writing? Check Out Vocal! and then the updated post Looking To Make Some Money Writing? Check Out Vocal+ that I wrote when they launched their new Vocal+ membership program. The short version is that for every 1k reads your work receives (that's 1k reads total, not on a per-article basis), you receive a fee. With the normal, free site it's $3, and with the Vocal+ program it's $6. I'd been on Vocal for a year and some change, and I'd written a lot of articles for it, but I was having a hard time justifying the cost to pay for the Vocal+ members program.

And that was when I remembered I had a huge archive of stuff (some of which was pretty popular when I first wrote it) that I could just move to a new home. As such, I figured it was time to take my own advice from back in Recycling is Key To Being a Successful Author. So after emailing Vocal and InfoBarrel alike to make sure no terms of service were being violated, and that no one was going to raise a fuss, I started going through my old content, updating stuff that needed updated, and pushing it over to my Vocal archive.

And now, a little over a year later, roughly 100 of the best articles from that old archive have found their new home.

What Sort of Stuff Got Added To My Vocal Archive?

One of the biggest items that got moved over was what I dubbed my character conversion series. For readers who aren't regulars over on Improved Initiative, these were guides I wrote for tabletop gamers who wanted to recreate particular characters in their games. So whether you wanted to play a version of Tyrion Lannister, Guts from the anime Berserk, or to capture the essence of historical figures like Andrew Jackson or Harriet Tubman, these guides were a great starting point for Pathfinder players.

There's more on the list. A LOT more.

There are 68 guides in this series over at the Character Conversions contents list at time of writing, and roughly 50 of them were moved over from my InfoBarrel archive to Vocal. And they all got updates and facelifts along the way to include new content that hadn't been written at the time I first wrote them.

But what about the other half of the content? Well, it runs the gamut. However, some of the more popular articles that have now found a new home include:

- 5 True Facts About Dolph Lundgren
- Home Remedies For Your Cat's Urinary Tract Infection
- How To Kick in a Door
- The Vikings, Not Columbus, Were The First Europeans in The Americas
- What Was The Satanic Panic? The Forgotten Witch Hunt of The 1980s

And that's just a sample!

My current Vocal archive is just under 170 articles, and I've got a list of stuff I'm planning on adding to it now that the old content is buffed, catalogued, and ready for perusal. So if you're spending some more time in quarantine and you need some stuff to read, why not stop on in and see what I've got to offer? Between the new stuff that's going up all the time, and the old stuff you may have missed, there's quite a trove!

So go check out my Vocal archive today! And if you've got suggestions for more topics you'd like to see me cover, leave a comment below.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

For Better Results, Always Include Links To Your Archives

It takes a colossal amount of time, effort, energy, and luck to get someone hooked on a piece of content you made. Whether it was a blog entry, a gaming guide, a short story, a video, a novel, whatever you made, people don't seem to appreciate the sheer amount of Predator-like hunting savvy you need to have in order to sink that hook.

But sinking that hook is only the first step. Once you have someone's attention, you need to reel them in so they'll check out more of the stuff you made.

That was a tasty worm... got any more?

That's why anytime you create something, you should be sure to tell your audience exactly where they can get more of your stuff. And, in this digital age, that means you need to always include, at the very least, a link to your archive.

More By This Author...

Do you remember, in the time before smartphones and common-place Internet, when there would be a "More By This Author" page in the front of practically every book you picked up? It didn't matter if it was a hard-boiled crime series, romance novels, Westerns, or young adult books, if that author had other books on the market there was a list that told you their titles all the way in the front. And if the book was a second or third printing, and that author had released other stuff in the interim? You bet that list was updated.

Huh... seems like each of the ducklings got a spin-off book. Put a pin in that, mom.

The reason these pages exist is that publishers know something very important about consumers... you can't depend on them to meet you halfway. If someone reads a book, they might very well enjoy the experience. They may even tell themselves that they'll look for more of those books at some point. But unless they loved that book, they aren't going to remember the name of the author or the series. And in the time before the Internet, they couldn't just ask Google to find the relevant information for them. If the local librarian or bookstore staff didn't know the book, series, or author the reader was talking about, then they were out of luck.

Worse, as any marketing professional will tell you, the more frustrated someone gets in the search of a product, the more likely they are to just walk away instead of making a purchase.

As such, the burden is on you to make your stuff as easy to find as possible. If you create videos, always put a link to your channel in the description, and in the end credits. You can find examples of this over at Dungeon Keeper Radio, if you're a fan of fantasy and gaming. If you write books, include a page of author works (and make sure those previous works are linked in ebook files, so readers can just tap their finger, and be off to the checkout). And if you write a blog, you need to be sure you give your readers all the information they need so they can find more of your work.

Take a look at the top of the page. Both halves of my archive are easy to see. Additionally, I have a link to my Vocal archive, since people who enjoy my work here might be curious enough to see what I write over there. There's also a link to my Amazon author page, for those who want to check out more of my work. And, if you dig back through my previous entries, you'll see that every post ends with a list of links for folks who want to connect with me, follow my work, and see all my updates as they happen.

Because sometimes you just need to offer the fish a hook. If they're interested, they'll chomp down on it themselves without a second thought.

That's all for my Business of Writing post this week. Hopefully it helped some folks who forget to mention they've got a whole mountain of other stuff their readers could come and check out. To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. And to support my work you can either Buy Me A Ko-Fi as a one-time tip, or go to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. Every little bit helps, and there's free books in it for you!

Don't Create Content Faster Than Your Readers Can Consume It

Most of the time on The Literary Mercenary, I'm focused on authors. Those strange, mostly lone creatures who spend somewhere between several months and several years telling a story with their fingers, who then publish that story in order to tell it to the world at large. However, those of us who aren't blessed with a huge fan base and massive royalty checks likely supplement books with other forms of creativity. I, for instance, am a freelance RPG designer, I write articles on InfoBarrel, and I run two regular blogs in addition to a lot of other freelance work.

What I'm saying is that I create a lot of content. Which is why I'd like to pass on this simple lesson; try to balance the ratio of stuff you make, to the amount of promotion you can do for it.

If A Tree Falls In A Forest...

Well, fall might be the wrong word...

If you write something, you need to get the word out about it if you expect to put eyes on your work. We all know the way this game is played. You write something, you edit it, and then once you have it published, you promote it. You blast the links on social media, get your network to help boost the signal, and then you hope for the ripples you created to grow.

Now, the advantage of writing a book is that you can spread your promotion out. You can do giveaways, interviews, get reviews from bloggers, do signings, etc. In fact, you can promote a single book for months before the train starts running out of steam. The reason for that is because, generally, you release new books with a lot of time between them. Even truly prolific authors will only come out with a few books a year, without the help of ghostwriters. This is an advantage for you, as well as your readers, because they can only consume so much content so quickly.

With other mediums, though, it's easy to do too much. Fellow bloggers, I'm looking at you.

Finding A Balance

Now, writing a blog, or working with user-created content sites that pay you based on views, are good ways to develop a following, in addition to creating revenue streams. And, generally speaking, if you have a big archive of work, then you'll get more income. Which is why it makes sense to try and create as much content as possible, as quickly as possible.

Number of posts, times average views per post, divided by some root...

While it's true that you will get more views when you have a big archive of content, it's important to remember that you are going to get the biggest number of hits on an individual post or article during the debut period (sometimes you'll see peaks and valleys with popular pieces, but for every one of those you write, you'll have a hundred others who are slow and steady). Just like with a book, you will see the most action when it's shiny, new, and getting all your promotional efforts. However, unlike a book, you can feasibly write several blog entries, or articles, per day.

You shouldn't, though, for the simple reason that you'll quickly overwhelm your ability to promote.

I'll put some of this in perspective. On average, I write three blog entries a week (one here, and two on my sister blog Improved Initiative), and two to three InfoBarrel articles a month. That's between twelve and fifteen pieces of content, give or take. That doesn't sound like much, but it's important to remember that if you over-promote on social media, then you lose followers. On forum sites, it gets you barred. So you need to look at how much content you can realistically produce, and how much of it you can promote, and where. If your work starts falling through the cracks, chances are it's time to take your foot off the gas.

You can create additional content that you aren't actively promoting. It's even possible that, through luck and circumstance, content that you don't promote will catch someone's eye, and become a viral sensation. But that isn't as likely to happen as it is with content that you broadcast to your readers and followers.

In order to keep them happy, and make sure they spread the word about what you're doing, you need to ask yourself how much your readers can digest. Don't try to make them bite off more than they can chew.

As always, thanks for stopping in to check out this week's addition to the Business of Writing section. If you'd like to help support me and my work, then why not drop by The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron today? As little as $1 a month can make a big difference, and help me keep producing the content you want to see. Lastly, if you haven't done so yet, why not follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter?