It's a Series of Children's Picture Books

In case you're wondering what my latest brainstorm innovation is. They're based upon the Suzy Lou stories I've been telling my kids at bedtime for years. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. There are like a hundred Suzy Lou Stories. Suzy Lou is a very... well I guess you'll have to wait and see.

I started with a list of 56 children's book publishers, then I narrowed it down to nine that I think should see the manuscript. Two of them will only deal with an agent. Some pay flat fees, some pay royalties only, and still others pay a combination of both. One doesn't accept simultaneous submissions. I need to brush up on how to send a manuscript- what my cover letter should look like... I know my market, I know my angle and I have some idea of how I want the illustrations but honestly, the character is so "easy to see" that I trust any good illustrator will give her a lovable face.

I need to see what the protocol is for finding an illustrator. Anyone know?

Negativity in Social Networking

I've been twittering, and I recently started to "follow" a gal with an awesome website. Most of the people I follow share resources and other pertinent information via twitter. It's been a lot of fun asking a question and getting instant responses from my mom-blogging colleagues. I expected, when I began to follow this girl, that she'd be "just another mom-blogging writer friend whom I could keep in touch with and share resources with." This has not been the case, however. I was tempted to simple stop following her but now I feel the need to explain the situation, in the hopes that one day she asks me about it. because- it's really for her own good.

Here goes:
Dear (name removed so I'm not being rude)
You are an interesting lady with a great website. I can no longer follow you, however, because everything you tweet is negative. It's getting annoying. No one likes sour grapes. You complain about everything. Since Twitter sometimes acts up, Here is a sampling of your last few tweets.

So after spending the entire day reading studies and reports about Internet addiction, I 've come to the conclusion we all have a problem.

Morning Tweets - Locking myself in my office and not focusing on anything but work. See you in a few hours when I let myself out.

Do you mean those "Wow. What a great blog. My blog is great too. Come see at http:imreallyaspammer.com" comments?

I don't want to sound ungrateful for my visitors but I wonder if people actually read what they right before they send

I don't mind that part. To expect me to make clients to jump through hoops because they don't want to ask for more details is ass.

I don't usually complain about my readers but this didn't do anything to buoy my mood at all.

Getting a little annoyed at some of the nitpicky visitiors to FWJ. I mean really, do they want me to apply for the gigs for them too.

10 Truly Ugly Homes

Wow. Just wow. Learning that made my mood go from having a great day to "I guess I suck."

so my laptop totally went black on me. Won't let me reboot. Life sucks.

15 Celebrities Who Sang...But Shouldn't Have

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but there are better ways to go about it. For example- if you're getting stupid questions from people try posting a FAQ or an auto-responder instead of complaining to the same tweets you're advertising to. I also found it ironic that you'd ask if people "actually read what they right" I'd be upset, too if my laptop died. Actually it is dead. And I am upset. But life doesn't suck because of it. And you don't suck either, but your attitude does. Challenge yourself, please to make a list of ten wonderful things about yourself. Here's one to get you started; "I, (insert name) have an awesome website that helps women make a living online and be with their children instead of leaving home each day." And while we're at it; "Life doesn't suck." I hope you can think of more. And for the record, I hate SPAM comments, too.

You have a large following, you have a responsibility to uplift and inspire people instead of constantly bringing them down.

Things to do today...

Check out this hilarious post from Christine Kane. I am an obsessive list maker, I've learned to keep weekly, not daily lists though. Floating a list item to another day just feels so darned naughty. I don't color code, but I do use a graphic organizing system. On a standard sheet of paper, I use each corner for a separate list. One corner might be the grocery list, another might be "stops i have to make while running around town" another corner might be "things to do while kids are occupied & don't need me" and another might be "people i need to contact" the center is usually reserved for housework, and that gets delegated to the kids anyways. I can't wait to read the rest- I do think my list might be on steroids. You don't even want to know what's on the back. Yeah- it's another list.

Review: PayMeToBlogAboutYou

This site is really hard to use. Their interface is really ridiculous. I've worked a few posts for them, but honestly, I just don't understand why each job shows up in ten places. And when the job is over, shouldn't it disappear or something? I don't know. I don't like this site. I'm thinking this might be the one where you actually write the blog post, THEN you bid to see if they'll pay you for it. What's up with that? And the minimum payout for PayPal is $10, then you have to request payment, they don't automatically pay you. The entire site is difficult to navigate. Maybe I was spoiled by PayPer Post or something. This site involves too much logging on to communicate with the sites you're writing for.

Review: BloggingAds

I am simply not cool enough for this website. They require a minimum pagerank of 2/10 and I'm a big fat zero. The site looks nice, it looks like it's laid out well. They pay weekly and the do happen to have some nice articles about how to write a quality blog that you can access even if your blog is rejected or awaiting approval (The approval process can take 6 weeks.)

Review: Smorty

I haven't spent much time on the Smorty website. They have a unique program for exchanging reviews with other bloggers on the site. It's a great idea, but I caution you to make sure you're reviewing sites you'd normally discuss on your site. If you're a blogger who usually discusses types of turtles, turtle care and breeding, then don't review a blog about Jupiter. Even if Jupiter gets ten thousand hits a day. Stick with your kind. I haven't used that feature so I'm not sure how it works. I think the whole Smorty wite is a little difficult to navigate. Like anything, you just need to get used to it. It's hard to say if they only have a teeny amount of opportunities or if maybe only the ones I'm available for show on my screen maybe? In my experience, they pay quickly, like I'm thinking they pay as soon as it's reviewed and accepted. I'm not sure how long they require you to keep the link active- who knows? Comment if you know the answer, please.

Review: BuyBlogReviews.com

This site has grown a lot since I first joined. There are several opportunities listed. It takes a little longer to get work here than it does through PayPerPost. With BuyBlogReviews, you must bid on each job. It's not rocket Science, they tell you what the minimum bid is and you get to bid over that if you think you're worth it. Some of the foreign companies just don't know the value of the dollar. They want "English speaking bloggers only" to spend like 2 hours reviewing their website and write a 500 word review comparing and contrasting two products, listing their benefits and telling a personal story about their childhood, for two dollars. yeah, right. Some of the opportunities give you the impression they wouldn't recognize good English grammar if you stuck it up their nose. Too many of the opportunities there look similar, and don't give enough information in the headline. If you want to learn what the job is about, you need to open each one up. It's really a pain.

I happened to just bid on something, it's a site I would normally mention. If my page rank were higher I would have bid more than the minimum $5. There are a lot of social networking and moneymaking sites on their opportunity list, which leads me to believe I should get this blog on the approval list.

Review: PayPerPost

When I first started working online I made most of my money through PayPerPost. Websites (including blogs) are "graded" by Google on a scale of zero to ten. The higher your grade, or PageRank, the more companies want their name on your blog. However, if their company isn't one you'd normally be writing about (you frequently discuss turtles and their commonly used all have to do with Juipiter) it is perceived as making you less of a turtle authority, and your page rank goes down, making your blog worth less. A good friend of mine went from a pagerank of 3/10 down to a rank of zero almost s soon as she began using PayPerPost. Here's the kicker, there are so many zero pagerank bloggers on PayPerPost that in order to get any paid posts ($5 and up) you have to sit there almost all day long refreshing the opportunity page because as soon as it is posted there are ten thousand zero ranking vultures pecking at it. As your page rank increases there are less vultures and you can choose a little more which posts you want to write about. Which is smart, because if you're linking to a site that isn't relevant to your site it makes your rank go down. If you decide to blog for income be sure to resist the temptation to make a quick buck by posting irrelevant things. You'll regret it.

If you already regret it, you can recover. First, PayPerPost allows you to delete your paid posts after they're paid. Which is 30 days after you've posted it. You can look at your "My Posts" tab to see a list of your posts. If you click on the heading "days to be paid" it will put all the posts you've received payment for together, so you can go through your blog and get rid of them. If you happen to get rid of one before you're paid, PayPal will send you a note asking you to resubmit the post. If you're afraid of losing a post, you can turn them into drafts until you're more confident.

Google re-ranks everyone quarterly, so you'll be re-ranked every 3 months. You get "good points" for having higher-ranking relevant sites linking to yours. Google knows if your links are relevant because both sites tend to use the same keywords and phrases frequently. You get bad points for having a lot of outgoing irrelevant links, and random incoming links. Google also looks to see that a certain percentage of your blog is actual text and not a page full of links or advertisements.

Good Luck- I am blogging the various sites that pay bloggers today, so stay tuned for more...