a productive pen

I just came across this blog and I had to share it quickly. The freelance tipster is a fabulous blog with lots of useful content for the freelancer. I got a good giggle when I discovered that I am indeed suffering from FAFSAD disease.

When I first heard about The Lazy Way to success, I knew that this was something that I had to check out. I’m all about keeping it simple, and keeping my nose as far away from the proverbial grindstone as I can get it.

The Lazy Way to Success:How to Do Nothing and Accomplish Everything, is a fabulous ebook full of the simple wisdom of Fred Gratzon, who espouses a thoughtful form of laziness–more of a child-like, fun approach to life. He speaks about the inverse relationship between hard work and labor to making money, and even goes as far to say that hard work actually scares money away.

On his blog, Gratzon says, “Hard work is passé. The paradigm-shifting concept is “Smart Laziness” – where success comes through cleverly avoiding work but still getting the job done. In this oasis, we celebrate those magical ways where doing less accomplishes more”

This book is full of delightful illustrations, and I guarantee that you will come away transformed in your thinking about your approach to work. This book is a gift to the world. If more people read this and put these principles into practice, it would cause a radical shift to our world as we know it. Read it and be blessed.
The author, Fred Gratzon is a successful business man who also teaches meditation.

Inspired by a post at Liz’s blog, I decided to do what I can to encourage other bloggers to do something to change the world.  

As writers and bloggers we know both the value and worth of our words. We write because. . .Continued

When I started this blog my purpose was to create a way to showcase my writing for prospective clients. Eventually, my plan is to be able to generate all of the revenue that I need to provide for myself and my family through my own business rather than getting another 9 to 5, butt stuck in an office chair, trading my time for money J-O-B. However, my ultimate goal is to develop multiple streams of passive income that don’t require me to trade my time for dollars.

I want to be able to travel, work on my creative pursuits, work on my fiction writing and enjoy my children before they are grown and gone.

In my quest for ways to develop some passive income streams I have become fans of bloggers such as Steve Pavlina and Sterling and Jay over at the Internet Business Mastery podcast. Each of these experts have found ways to generate passive income through their businesses, and I plan to learn all that I can from them and follow their lead.

Since I left my job on the first of this year, I’ve been largely chilling at home. I have been using this free time to do some sewing and some knitting. I’ve been catching up on my reading and I’ve also been doing some writing in between sending out resumes and going on interviews. These precious days have allowed me the opportunity to do some things that are enjoyable to me, and I feel terrible that soon I’ll be back behind a desk trapped in yet another cubicle until I can hatch my perfect escape plan.

I believe that God created us to enjoy our lives. I don’t think that he is pleased by the fact that we spend so much of the time that He has blessed us with performing drudgery and making other people wealthy at the expense of our time. The majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and up to their ears in consumer debt. I don’t want to go down that road, and I don’t want my children to be trained to go down that road either, and I don’t want to have to wait until I’m 65 to enjoy my life. 

So, I’m starting with this blog. I plan to develop a few more because I love writing, and I love the way that you can connect with people through blogging. I plan to see if it’s really possible to earn enough income to live on through blogging, but in the meantime, I will work on my freelance writing gigs and keep my ear to the ground and my fingers on the keyboard.

30 Minute Article Writing System: How to Write Articles the
Easy Way, by Melanie Mendelson
E-Book: 29 pages

Do you need more targeted traffic for your web site? Who doesn’t, right? Well, it’s a proven fact that writing articles and submitting them to content directories is a great way to generate targeted traffic to your web
site and get free publicity for you as the author. Some people dread the prospect of sitting down and writing anything. If you are one of those people, then this e-book is just what you need to give you a jump-start to getting your
articles completed quickly and published online.

In the 30 Minute Article Writing System, Mendelson provides a step-by-step system that literally walks you through the writing process in structured steps regardless of the topic.

This system is not limited to article writing. You can apply the 30 Minute Article Writing System to writing letters, reports, summaries, reviews, essays and any other writing format for business or personal use.

Applying this system will help you to save both time and effort and increase your productivity because the author also reveals creative ways to come up with ideas for more articles.

After you have completed your article, there is information about using search engine optimization (SEO) and selecting relevant keywords (as well as where to place them in the article), it goes into optimizing the title of your article, and formatting your resource box with HTML. Honestly, I found this to be a useful section of the book, and I use these SEO tips constantly.

Finally, there is a bonus section that contains links to useful web sites where you can get your article published online.

If you want to convert your knowledge and ideas into timely, informative articles there is always a demand for fresh content online. The 30 Minute Article Writing System guides you through the process of generating ideas, writing the article, optimizing it for the search engines and then getting the article published.

affiliate link:
Click here to Find out more about 30 Minute Article Writing

I read this article about Five Ways to Increase Your Web Site Traffic in Dan Case’s Writing for Dollars newsletter. When I was finished I read the resource box at the bottom of the article and found that it was written by a 19-year-old college student, Jessica Burkhart. I visited her blog, and discovered that she’s been freelancing since she was 15 years old, and consequently she has had 55 articles published in 15 national magazines. All I can say is, “Go on, girl!” She has totally inspired me to kick my writing up another notch.

In my search for places to take a writing course, I found mediabistro.com. All I can say is where have I been that I have not found this site before? The front page has a media news feed, there is a section with online courses, job listings, and a freelance marketplace where you can list your portfolio and get work. There is also a forum where you can interact with other members. I think I’ll be hanging out here a lot. There is both a free and a paid option on this site, and apparently, they share tickets to media events with members.

The other day whilst I was blog hopping I happened across Deborah Ng’s Freelance Writing Jobs blog. Today is apparently Pay it Forward Tuesday, so I’m following her lead.

Vanessa Byers Unplugged is a hilarious romp of a blog. Pay this fierce, poet activist a visit and make her day.

My next pick is Griffin’s Mo Bettah Marketing (dontcha just love that title?). His blog’s aim is to encourage you to touch the sky of possibilities. Since I’m all about speading the love and encouragement I wanted to send him some linkage as well.

In en effort to find some freelance writing gigs, I signed up at Hot Gigs, another web site for online freelance professional services. There is both a free and a paid subscription to get access to paying freelance work online. Now in addition to other sites like elance.com, and guru.com, hotgigs.com provides yet another venue for freelancers to land gigs.
I found it easy to get set up. You simply upload your resume and create a profile of your skills and experience level, and then match your profile to available gigs. You can research rates, search for available gigs and even take advantage of the social networking aspect of the site, which allows freelancers to develop connections.
I’m going to give it a try and see what shakes out. Watch this space for more information on my results later.

Lately I’ve been trying to find ways of getting some exposure for my writing outside of my blog, which is so new it’s not even indexed yet. I read this post on Sharon’s blog about hubpages, so I went over and checked it out. I wrote up a few hubs, which have gotten some good feedback and I’m receiving some good exposure for my writing. I’ve not seen any real boost in my Google Adsense revenue so far, but I’m just getting started.

Here are my first hubs:

How to Get Started Knitting Socks
Banish Writer’s Block Now
Knitting for Your Ears: Knitting Podcasts
Top 10 best love poems

If you are looking for another venue to gain some exposure for your writing, you might want to try hubpages.

Real estate investing is a topic that has intrigued me for many years. Every month when I write my rent check, and the check for my storage unit that I have because my tiny apartment is not big enough to store all of our belongings, I sigh and lament that I do not own a home. This year, I have decided that it’s time to get serious and stop flushing prospective equity down the loo each month.

A few months back I stumbled across the My Wealth Matters podcast , which is how I found my awesome personal finance coach, Jennifer. Well, today I was perusing their recently spiffed-up web site and found a listing for a tele-seminar on real estate investing that’s coming up on Tuesday, January 30^th at 8pm EST. I have signed up to see if I can get some ideas and inspiration for jumpstarting my real estate investing portfolio. So, look out, Donald. While you are distracted with you war with Rosie, I’m going to learn what it takes to catch up to you!