Textbroker

Update on Publishing my First E-Book: Tedious Work!

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On my previous post I mentioned writing my first e-book and giving up on Textbroker. Textbroker has since notified their writers that they are changing their terms of service. The one thing that stood out after I read this is that they set no time period for review of assignments. This means that there is no way to know when I might be reviewed and possibly moved up a star rating.

I have been on vacation this last week so I have not done much to get my e-book ready for publishing. The writing part is finished but the publishing part is not. Self publishers have to do all of the stuff that the editors and publishing houses normally do. Things like fonts, links, covers, legal disclaimers, indexes, advertising, and  proof reading, have to be done by the author or the author has to hire the work out.

I am writing this first book more for the experience and gaining knowledge on how to self publish than trying to get rich. At this time I have most of the above things done. Just fixing the fonts for consistency was a chore. I am now working on an index that automatically links the words to the place in the book that they are located. In future books I will do this as I write each chapter which will make things much easier. Learning to streamline this process is a main goal and will speed up publishing future books and e-books. Social media is also very important in promoting for self publishers. I have set up a Facebook page which is linked in the right hand column. I will have to explore more ways to promote my books.

Hiring an editor is an option for future books and highly recommended by many self published authors. I have more involved book ideas that this would be advantageous. Here are some tentative titles that I am considering and I would love to have any comments on which one you think I should start next.

In the health category:

“The Vitamin D Conspiracy”: Similar to my first e-book “Resvaratrol: Just the Facts”. This book talks about the history of vitamin D and how the US government bungled the recommendations for this essential nutrient, as well as the effects on my health and how vitamin D deficiency is being studied for many health problems.

“Bipolar Disorder: The Caregiver Experience”. This is a tentative title about my families dealings with bipolar disorder and how the medical profession failed us totally.

Family and genealogy category:

“The Autobiography of Emilie Jane Butterfield Loyson”. This is an unpublished autobiography of my great great grandmother that I discovered in a library. It was being edited by my great-grandfather who died before he completed it. She was famous in her time because she married a French Carmelite Monk. This is very topical today because of the Pope’s mention that discussion should be opened about the marriage of priests. I will edit this work or try to find a publisher.

“The Widow and the Monk”: This is the true love story of my great great grandparents Père Hyacinthe Loyson and Emilie Jane Butterfield. I have been researching this for more than seven years. This is a story of personal sacrifice for true love against all odds. Both of their biographies are more than 900 pages each and his is all in French. A real challenge but such a great love story.

Fiction:

“Our Crazy Downstairs Neighbor”  A story based on real events in my life but fictionalized. The basic plot is how a downstairs neighbor, who at first seems OK, turns out to be a destructive force in the main characters life.  Here is a video of the main inspiration for this book: 

Science Fiction:

“The Ants of the Galaxy”. The story of humans from an extraterrestrial point of view. How naive we are to assume that extraterrestrial’s would act with any similarity to us.

“Warped Into the Future”. The story of a test pilot who volunteers to test the first light speed space ship and upon his return finds a much changed world.

Personal journal category:

“Encounters with Greatness and not so Greatness”: My personal and professional encounters with famous people.  Stories that are inspirational, amusing, but not necessary all positive, about the famous people who I have met because of my music career or just by random encounters.

That’s all for now and I’ll post more ideas as they pop into my head. Please help me to decide.

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Week Three and Four and I have had Enough of Textbroker!

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I have lost my desire to write for Textbroker. After spending most of my free time writing for people I don’t know and for subjects that are not interesting to me, I have decided to take the plunge and start publishing my own writing. My earnings were increasing at Textbroker only because I got better at selecting the best assignments to take, but I was still making slave wages. The week of May 14, I made a whopping $19.79. The next week I did better, $30.07, mostly because I took an assignment of 1200 words. This turned to be very time-consuming because it required a lot of research. I spent my free time for a whole weekend finding facts about the latest smart phone cameras, zzz…

Another reason I am not happy with Textbroker is that they still have not reviewed my assignments so that I can advance from a three star to four star writer. I was under the impression that this would happen on a monthly basis but I was led astray. When no review happened after a month, I searched the forum and found out many other writers were complaining about the same thing. Some four star writers had a review, then were only given a three star rating. They then continued to write at the three star level but did not receive any further reviews. Some had been writing for six months and others had completed 600 or more assignments with no reviews.

I have a theory why this is. When the site does not have enough three star writers to quickly complete the jobs that are on that level they simply give some tough reviews of four star writers so they get reduced to a three star writer. That seems logical, but it is not fair. I have done a time study of my work and I am working for about $3.00 per hour! One cent a word seems OK but most of the assignments require some form of research or reading which takes time. Imagine a 400 word summary for an article that has 3000 words. It takes time to read the article then try to include the main points into a blog of 400 words, spell check, proof read, and submit the article on the site. This would take me at least an hour and a half to complete.

I can write 1000 words an hour fairly easily, but not complete a writing assignment of 1000 words in an hour. This is why I will be spending my time publishing my own material.

The Image below is the screenshot  of the cover design of my first e-book that I am currently working on. I made this myself using Word. Any help or suggestions will be appreciated. Hopefully my next post will be announcing the release of this e-book!

Captura de Ecrã (4)

#textbroker #writing #publishing #makingmoneyonline

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Week Two and Three Earnings Update

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I did not post last week due to time consideration. I am considering only posting every other week to help. I have been busy with family matters such as my son’s fifth birthday. He is a joy and we had a great family celebration. Textbroker has also kept me busy.

I explained in my last post about my writing journey. I am continuing writing for Textbroker but I would like to find another site that pays better. Last week I made a whopping $17.93. This was up from the week before of $17.51. I wrote more articles than the week before but a couple of them did not go through before the pay date. This week was better $23.71 due to the hold overs from the week before. This is common and I have two jobs that I completed from the week before that are waiting to be paid next week.

I am completing the jobs faster now and I hope with equal quality. The editorial team reviews and rates all completed jobs but there is a month delay. None of my latest jobs have been rated yet but should be starting sometime this week. They rate five assignments at a time and base the average of these five to qualify for a promotion to the next level. I am hoping that they will move me from a three star writer to a four star. My rating last August was 17 out of 20 not enough to move up (two four star and three three star ratings). I have 16 texts waiting to be rated. If they do increase my rating, this means a 40% increase in pay and the ability to join writing teams that pay even more. The four star writing assignments are also more plentiful.

My last post I forgot to mention my other muse that is earning some money. I have been posting videos to YouTube that are monetized by Google AdSense. The theme of my posts is “Life in Portugal”. This is the play list:

These videos are from my smartphone so some are a bit rough. At first I had no idea how to edit them but now I am learning. I am using Windows Movie Maker which is quite simple to use but very basic. I have another editor that came with a USB analog to digital video converter but it is much more difficult to use. I have been transferring videos from my camcorder and they look great. The biggest part are from our second honeymoon to Tahiti in 2008. I will have to edit these videos and start another playlist with a title like “Tahitian Paradise Dream Vacation”.  This will probably be more popular than my first list.

The reason that I didn’t mention this is that I have not reached the payment threshold of $100 yet. This doesn’t seem like a big figure but at the rate of pay, it is. My first 1000 views have racked up an incredible $3.75. This has accumulated since January, but now I am receiving more traffic so I hope the next thousand comes quicker. Of course if I keeping adding videos the views will increase. At this time I average about 300 per month. If this rate were to stay the same this is not very profitable. If I receive $3.75 per 1000 views I will need about 27,000 views to reach $100. At 300 views per month that comes out to 90 months or 7 1/2 years before I get to collect!

Some people are getting large amounts of money with YouTube but it is a more than full time job to do this. I barely have time to write a few hours a day. My son loves YouTube and I spy on what he is watching and the views that are registered for the videos he likes. Some videos receive millions of views like the balloon popping dogs, and destroying washing machine videos, that he loves. Our dogs run and hide every time a balloon pops so that is out of the question, and our washing machine cost too much money to destroy! Maybe our Tahiti videos will go viral!

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My First Weekly Update

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I have written for a number of sites in the past, and some have gone by the wayside like Yahoo contributor Network (YCN). I discovered this site in January of 2014 after searching for ways to make money online. I decided to give it a try to see how it worked out. They had a school with three levels and you would receive a badge when each level was passed. I completed the first two levels and then wrote my first article. It was sent back for some minor revisions and then accepted. I then finished the third level while writing more articles. After I wrote 26 more articles Yahoo decided the site was not profitable enough and closed it down.

That was a big disappointment for me and thousands of other writers. They kept the forum open on the site for some time after they stopped accepting articles in July. One of my fellow writers suggested writing for a new site called Bubblews. I signed up and learned the ropes quickly. It was different from YCN in that there was no editorial review for the posts and the minimum post was only 400 characters.  Pay was based on views, likes, and comments, for each post.

I did OK for a few months and made the minimum payout of $50 at the end of August. Some writers were having difficulties with the pay system which was a warning sign. I did not receive my first e-check for more than a month after I requested my first payout. I had submitted three more redemption claims over the next two months but received nothing. In December I stopped writing on Bubblews and shortly thereafter they notified the writers that past due redemptions were not going to be paid.

When YCN shut down many writers had the idea to publish their articles with similar themes in e-book format like the Kindle. While writing on Bubblews I started researching this and decided my articles on Resveratrol would make a nice e-book. I began compiling and adding to my articles. My e-book is about finished and I am a bit afraid to pull the trigger. I only need to design a cover and have a final edit and it is ready. Other than that I took a break after Bubblews.

After YCN crashed I also started writing on Textbroker. This site pays for writing assignments from clients such as blog posts and web site content. The have different level of writing based on price and quality between two and five stars. After I submitted my writing sample I was accepted as a three star writer. They are very picky with punctuation and helped me to improve my writing in this area. I wrote ten assignments in August and earned around $50. My last few assignments were rated four stars but I was getting bored with this type of writing. Bubblews was much more fun because I could write whatever I wanted to so, I continued writing there until the bubble popped.

Since I was so discouraged I didn’t write much for the next few months, but did find another site similar to Bubblews called Persona Paper. It seems reputable but the earnings are very slim. I have posted only an introductory post and a post on how sites like Bubblews are in trouble; Why Micro-Blogging Sites Don’t Make Financial Sense . I have earned 100 coins for my two posts. At their current pay rate that come out to 15 cents!

In the past two weeks I started writing for Textbroker again. They pay every Thursday, and for writing four articles I made $17.51, which I received promptly the next day via PayPal. The work can be boring but occasionally I find and interesting assignment. I am hoping my current assignments will be rated higher and I will be promoted to a four star writer. This means more money and a better selection of assignments.

I want to get my book out ASAP but my time is limited which is a subject for another post. I will give an earnings update without all of the background next week after my Textbroker earnings for this week are received. Thanks for reading this long post and please leave a comment to help me get inspired! If you want to receive my next post directly to your e-mail please click the follow button at the top of the page.

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