Wattpad, what’s that?

Picture by Shannon Hauser

I’ve been hearing a lot about Wattpad these days. Maybe it’s just because the latest blog I’ve followed has been posting about it, which has sparked my interest and got me looking deeper. Whatever the reason, it has been on my mind recently, and from what I gather, it is a social network for readers and writers. It seems you can read free stories that people have posted or you can post stories yourself and get feedback on them. This can be done one chapter at a time or as a complete story. It also seems you can get picked up by publishers if you have a large enough interest in your writing and at the very least you can build a following – as a writer this interests me. It could be a good tool to get feedback, gain new readers and build a bigger following on my Author platform. So I’d like to know if anyone that follows my blog has had any success with Wattpad that they would like to share? I’d be very interested in hearing all about it if you have. If you have a success story you’d like to share, please comment on this post with the details.

How well are you doing with your blog?

Image by Marco Bellucci

Do you know how well your blog is doing? I hope so, because I am going to ask for your knowledge here. I was having a discussion recently with some of my author friends and we got onto the topic of my blog. I wasn’t sure how many of them read my posts, but as it turns out, there are a few that do. And it was nice to know. There was a bit of interest in how many comments I receive, how often I post and also the fact that I keep my post short and relevant. I hadn’t really thought about it that much, but being asked to reflect on this, I found that I don’t actually receive many comments. I do have a schedule though, I try to post twice a week on a consistent basis. Once on a Wednesday and once on a Saturday, though I find that the Saturday blog sometimes creeps into Sunday.

I was also asked if I have a lot of followers. The truth is I’m not sure. My blog has been running for little over a year and I have 196 followers to date. I’m not sure if that is good or bad and I don’t know if that is considered a lot of followers or not. So that’s where you come in. I’d like to know what is considered the norm. What is good and what indicates a blog needs some work. I’d like to get your thoughts and experience on this, so please let me know how your doing.

Maybe I know something you don’t know?

Picture by Greg Westfall

I have been studying a lot to become a ‘quality’ writer, not at Uni or from taking courses, but through books and online info, podcasts and writings that cover all sorts of topics from developing characters to formatting e-books and building a platform. On my learning journey I have discovered many things and one that comes up again and again is that us bloggers should build a mailing list. I’ve been putting this off for some time now, thinking I will do that when I’m ready to publish my novel.

The mailing list topic came up again recently on a podcast I was listening to, so I thought maybe I should get it going sooner rather than later. Much to my surprise, while I was familiarizing myself with the new features on Wordpress, I discovered that it allows you to add a contact form to a blog page that will do this. You may in fact have noticed that I have set one up, and so far it seems to work a treat.

I thought I would share this info in case some of you have been looking at doing this yourselves and are not aware of this feature on WordPress. You’ll find my mailing list at the top right of my blog if you wish to check out how it looks. The plan is to use the mailing list to send free short stories, a newsletter or info about any new releases I have. I’d like to do this on a monthly basis at most, but more likely bi-monthly or quarterly. So if you wish to sign up, feel free to fill out the form and I promise not to spam you.

If you have tried this already and have anything to add, I’d be interested to hear from you.

Not sure how to build your blog? Maybe this will help.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A short time ago I decided to tinker with setting up an author platform. I have been messing around with my blog site for a few weeks now, trying to get to grips with WordPress and its features, design a page, come up with some articles, etc… I have been pleasantly surprised to have gained a few followers already. So I started to think – you know what? I can do this. But if I actually knew what I was doing I might do it a whole heap easier and maybe even better.

It is fortunate for me that one of my followers, Joe Warnimont, has a blog on building blogs. While I have no affiliation to Joe or his blog, I am not one to hog good information, so I am sharing this in the interest of helping others to succeed.  I hope you find it as useful as I did.

http://www.writewithwarnimont.com/

http://joewarnimont.org/rise-of-the-writer-book/

Useful Info?

“Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”.

After taking some time out to read, I got back onto the search for information, trying to find out about author platforms, self publishing, editing and all the things that encompass being an author. I spent time trawling the net, finding little snippets here and there, then one day a fellow writer recommended an author and her website to me. The author in question was Joanna Penn and her blog site is http://www.thecreativepenn.com/

I have no affiliation with Joanna Penn and have no personal interest in promoting her site. I am however sharing this information for the benefit of those that find themselves in the same situation as I did, searching for helpful information. Joanna’s site has been a great help to me and with the allure of a free e-book, I have done the only thing any self-respecting author/writer on the hunt for information would do. I signed up! A confirmation e-mail later and I received my copy of the e-book, and what a great deal. The book is full of information and helpful links that cover off on a large variety of things – things I wanted to know about. And what’s more, it is still available. I would suggest that if anyone out there is interested in learning more about being a writer, go and check out Joanna’s Website.