Writers Beware!

Writers beware of the new Internet scam directed to writers, editors and bloggers. You will receive an invitation to write an article, create a blog post or edit a piece of work - usually in reference to a 'good work' to  tug at your heart strings. You will be given the details of the work, and told when it's to be delivered. You'll also be asked how much you'll charge, and whatever price you quote won't seem to be a problem.

After all this has been established, you'll be asked for your address and phone number (which you'll refuse to give, obviously). Plans will be made to send payment to you, but at the last minute, you'll be told that the money has to be sent by cheque because the person doesn't or couldn't open a paypal account. You'll then be forced to grudgingly give your postal address because you've started the work, and want to be paid for your time.

Up to here: this happened to me. I had a gut feeling it was a scam and even asked my husband what I should do about it. 

Blogger Great New Features

Have you seen Blogger's great new features yet? I think Blogger has made great advancements because these new features are extremely important blogging tools, which have been sorely missed by Blogger users. In my last new features update I showed how Blogger had introduced 'Stats' something which bloggers welcomed with open arms, especially the fact that it allowed you to see where your traffic was coming from and what your popular keywords are. Blogger's great new features this time are bang on! Let's have a look:

Warning: please do not skim this post. There are so many important details you MUST do with your Blogger blog now.

Write Your Own Guide Book

Can you write a guide book? Well, if you can, there's a good chance you could be published. Cicerone are looking for guidebooks about popular and not-so-popular places. This is what they've said on their prospective author page:
Additional reading: how to write an article online

Write your own guide book

We are always looking to develop new guides to the best walking, trekking, mountaineering and cycling regions of the world, and to keep our existing guides up to date.

There are three questions to think through if you are contemplating writing a guide.

How I Lowered My Bounce Rate

This article will show you what 'bounce rate' is and the 3 things I did to lower my bounce rate in a three month period. I'm continually going through my old articles to fix them so that I can take my bounce rate down even further (see the copy of my Analytics proof at the end of this post). For those who need more explanation, you can easily check your bounce rate by going to your Google Analytics account and looking on your dashboard. The higher your bounce rate, the worse it is for your Google rating. You work hard to get traffic to your blog, only to find that they leave as quickly as they came. You want to fix this now.

 How I lowered my bounce rate

Common Spelling Mistakes On Your Blog

We all make common grammar and spelling mistakes on our blog. Even the best of us forget how to spell words or how to make a subject agree with a verb sometimes. People who's mother tongue is English have difficulty spelling the following words - let alone those who're struggling to write English as their second language. This is not surprising though, because for every spelling or grammar rule in English, there are several exceptions.
The Internet is a hugely competitive place. We have to try hard to get those eyes on what we're saying, not on our mistakes. Here are a few common spelling mistakes I've seen on the Internet and some brilliant ways to help you remember not to make them.