We’re back and as you may have guessed (If you need a recap, click here), I was buried in work by Tuesday and didn’t manage to update until today. I grossly miscalculated on my ability to be an article factory like the old days; I didn’t put into consideration what might happen during my transition from being a total lazy ass to an industrious chinchilla. Imagine it: somebody who’s been lying around the house for a year suddenly gets taken to a labor concentration camp. Wait, that’s a bad image.
Anyway, here’s what went down for days Two, Three, Four, and Five of project codenamed, World Domination Campaigns. [Note: this is only my codename for it, The Overlord prefers to use more subtle keywords. That way, she can spring said campaigns to unsuspecting victi... er, people.]
Yuppie Journal: Day Two
The Overlord started making a to-do list before starting work, and creating this list took longer than intended. Of course, to-do lists are important since they remind you of what you need to do and prevent you from going off on tangents. The tech website was indexed on Tuesday (which was pretty fast considering Google’s unpredictable whims) and the Overlord tweaked some minor stuff on the website since one plug-in wasn’t working as intended. She went on to add some words to an article I wrote since it fell just a little short of the minimum number of words required by the backlink building service the Overlord uses. She also “spun” an article to be used to build backlinks, submitted it to the system and got it queued.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a brief explanation of why you need backlinks. “To dominate” (yes, that’s exactly the word we’d use) a certain keyword on search engines means for a certain keyword, your website will pop up on the top ten of search results. That’s ultimately the goal of people looking to make it big on the internet. To rank way up on first page and on top ten, you’ll need backlinks to your website. Think about it this way, backlinks are like internet votes – the more you have, the more the search engines consider you to be an expert on that particular keyword or subject and so they put you in a place right on top so people can see your website. Has your brain exploded yet?
According to The Overlord, we can share what backlink service we use (it’s free and you get one way backlinks), though that’s a story for another time. Maybe we’ll throw in an Internet Marketing 101 article too, for good measure.
The Overlord also created a hub down at HubPages for our article posting purposes and in hindsight, this may not have been necessary. All of these tasks were capped off with keyword research for another one of our health related campaigns.
What was I doing during this time? I was reading up on the health-related topics I’d need to cover and ended up just writing one miserable article. I also made a Word template for my articles, indicating the campaign, the keywords I used and the where the article is supposed to end up in. Yes, I felt completely useless during that time and I realized that I don’t only need a schedule: I’ll need a routine as well. Here’s the difference, a schedule is something you formulate yourself or somebody else gives you, while a routine develops once your internal programming gets used to the schedule and you get to work your habits into the schedule.
Yuppie Journal: Day Three
The Overlord continued the backlinking campaign for the tech site and saw some results in a couple of backlinks. She went on to research keywords for yet-another-health-niche and as a result, my Google Docs shared folder started to fill at an alarming rate. She submitted a how-to article (pending approval) on website eHow.com for one of our health-related campaigns.
A note for you guys, you should know that a lot of article submission sites have approval periods and when you submit articles, you might not see it on the website for another two days or maybe even a week. That’s the reason why we make sure that our content is shining, shimmering, and splendid quality-wise so we don’t waste time going through the cycle of researching-writing-submitting-waiting only to find out after a week that the article had been rejected and we’ll have to go through the spin cycle all over again.
I read more on the health-related niches and wrote one article. I felt a little better this time because burying myself into the research lets me write faster. Admittedly, I still find it hard to fight against the urge to multitask and the temptation of various internet links and others, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.
Yuppie Journal: Day Four
Day Four was crazy; it was an incredibly busy day for both The Overlord and me. For The Overlord, Thursday was keyword overload day as she managed to do keyword research on four different health niches (a particular one was scrapped and deemed unusable and so she ended with a grand total of three). She did minor adjustments on an article we submitted for EZineArticles and it was approved eventually. On the same day, the eHow article we submitted on Day Three was approved. I, on the other hand, managed to write three articles for a couple of our health-related campaigns.
Day Four was crazy, not only because it was a busy day but because it was one of those days when the cosmos decides to throw several life lessons at your face at the same time while you were not paying attention. The day will live in infamy as the Learn-Things-The-Hard-Way Day.
• We found out that Hubpages won’t be suitable for our purposes and we moved to GoArticles instead.
• We found out that EZineArticles.com doesn’t like certain domains and we had to buy a new one.
• We found out that Buzzle.com has a long, loooong waiting period for signing up and we didn’t have time to wait 2 weeks to a month to get approved.
• We found out that EZineArticles takes two more days after article approval before the content shows up on their homepage.
Day Four’s results had The Overlord swear off keyword research for Day Five, and while it was crazy, we were both a little wiser because of it.
Yuppie Journal: Day Five
For Friday, The Overlord submitted an article I wrote to eHow and wrote one for a health niche. You might notice that this is the first mention of The Overlord writing an article herself, and that’s because she finds writing content intimidating (it’s ironic because people find HER intimidating). I guess some people have similar apprehensions regarding writing and let me tell you, it isn’t so hard. Here’s a tip: Take note of your grammar, write in a tone you find comfortable, and once you’re done writing, read your article out loud so you can check for parts that don’t sound right. Better yet, grab a random friend and have him/her test read it.
When I said it isn’t that hard, I didn’t mean it was going to be easy. Like everything else, writing requires practice.
Anyway, I wrote one article and sat down with a pen and a notebook to write longhand hard copy notes of what I’d need to do. I’m the polar opposite of The Overlord when it comes to planning and basically speaking, that means I suck at remembering what I need to do next and keeping track of what I’ve done. Regular work with regular companies might have you sending daily reports and that’s how your slave drivers supervisors monitor your progress. Since I now have me to monitor my own progress, I might not reach the goals I’ve set for myself and slack off. To avoid that, I’ve written my notes on my blotter under the keyboard so it’s always peeking out at me, ready to strike at the guilt nerve whenever I get distracted. Also in the spirit of keeping track of what I’ve been doing, I made a couple of spreadsheets of the articles I’ve written and what campaigns I’ve covered.
So far, the week was a mix of productive and not-so-productive days. We’ll see what happens next week. Will we see motivation? Or will we meet indolence?
