That first phone was a Cingular 8125, and I bought it so that I could access Ebay while attending antique auctions. My plan was to look up the market value (average completed sale price) of an item so that I knew the max I could bid on an item without taking a loss.

Riding the Wave of a Technical Trend

The plan was clever, because at the time, noone was using mobile Internet…it had just hit the market and hadn’t quite caught on yet.

The plan wasn’t foolproof though. First, I had to figure out how to get the phone to access full browsing, not the scaled-down ‘media-net’. As insane as it sounds, most of the help desk folks didn’t know the difference. So, I was on my own to figure it out using tips fromk the gurus in the various mobile phone forums.

Next, I learned that the mobile version of Facebook didn’t offer a view of completed items. Once again, I had to figure out how to trick the Ebay website into thinking I wasn’t a mobile phone. Once I accomplished that, I was in business.

Unfortunately, in full browsing mode, conducting the completed item searches on Ebay was unbearably slow. I realized that living life on the technological edge of the mobile Internet was not going to be easy.

Finally, the ease of use of mobile technology is becoming much more manageable. Everything comes pre-programmed and ready to go. Upgrading to the Motorola Droid this year was the best thing I ever did.

It helps me to blog more often than I ever could before, with a very cool mobile Wordpress app called WPtoGo. It let’s you post full blog entries, complete with formatting, pictures, links and more. It rocks, and I highly suggest it to other blogger riding this mobile tech wave into the future.

Because of the insanity of this past month, I’ve decided to put together a list of tips for staying cool under pressure - a new, streamlined approach to handling an overwhelming, almost impossible list of tasks and projects in a way that lets you complete them without sacrificing your livelihood or your family life. It really is possible - and I’ll show you how I’ve finally done it with my own schedule (it’s also the reason that I’m finally blogging here again).

Taking Stock of Projects and Status

So, you’ve got 5 or 6 clients and they all want a piece of you? The better you are as a writer, the more likely you’re going to find yourself in this situation. Once people recognize that you are able to produce quality content at a reasonable speed, you’re going to discover that opportunity knocks. The downside is that opportunity is going to knock from so many sides that you’re simply going to run out of hands to open those doors. You can’t do everything for everyone.

Once you’re at a successful point in your writing career where you have more opportunities than you know what to do with, it’s time to take a step back and reorganize.

From day one, you probably wrote for peanuts just to get your name out there and your writing recognized. After a while, you went from writing for practically free, to writing $10 to $20 articles. The next thing you know, you’re getting offers to write for professional blogs at $35 to $50 and up, as well as job opportunities for editing and management. This is what you’ve worked so hard for - but if you just keep taking more work, eventually you’re going to run out of time and burn out.

So, take a few moments to create a complete and detailed list of all of your current job responsibilities, as well as any upcoming opportunities that you’ve been offered - and make sure to associate an earning amount and “time to complete” for each task. This will help you gauge the true value of your work as well as priority.

Shift Priorities to Higher Paying Work

Here’s the scenario: You have two clients who both want you to write for them as much as possible. You are completely tapped out on time, but you have space to fit in about three more articles per week. One client pays $25 an article, and the other pays $45 per article. Which client should you offer to write more articles for? It certainly doesn’t seem like rocket science does it?

What complicates matters a little bit for writers is when you’ve been writing for a lower-playing client for a very long time, and then a higher paying client comes along and offers you work. Most writers take on the extra work, but maintain their previous workload with other clients.

However, if your new client is offering you even more articles (if you had that time to write them) at such a higher rate than your old client pays, wouldn’t it make sense to cut back on your writing for the old client? This seems intuitive in writing, but you’d be surprised how many writers I’ve met who simply can’t let go of any work, even if it means they’ll be able to replace it with work that pays more. It comes down to your ability to say no to people.

Tips for Staying Cool - Plan Out All Hours Available for Work

I’ve tried all sorts of approaches for scheduling and managing my work, from utilizing online calendar applications like Google Calendar (which I do still use), as well as Astrid for my mobile Droid. It seems that, inevitably, I always come back to using my trusty Excel spreadsheet.

This week I tried using a new color-coded schedule system in Excel, with a different color representing a different client, and assigned blocks of time for the tasks that I need to accomplish every week.

Originally, I had an Excel spreadsheet that just listed all of the tasks I needed to do without any color coding at all, but by coloring blocks of time, it better differentiates the limits of your blocks of time - and there’s no question where the task starts and stops. Most importantly, use large gray areas for periods of time when you simply do not do any writing work, whether that’s time off, time with family, or otherwise.

This approach insures that not only do you get your work done when you’re supposed to, but it also assigns blocks of time to not working, which is just as important to not getting burnt out.

Respect Your Schedule!

Rule #1 to making an efficient schedule work is this is more important than any other one of these tips for staying cool under stress - follow the schedule you’ve defined. Don’t overrun the block of time you’ve set up for work and then eat into your evening sleep, because the next morning you’ll never be able to get up and accomplish the block of time you’ve set aside there. Each overrun will intrude on the next until you’ve completely burnt out.

What makes a schedule work is when you respect it and follow it. Trust that you’ve analyzed your demands properly and that you’ve assigned the right priorities. After that, stop worrying about what you’ve got due next - just focus on that task at hand and get it done in the time that you’ve assigned (or earlier). Make sure to assign enough time to the tasks (don’t short-change yourself), and you’ll find that not only are you less burnt out, but when you are not working and taking time to relax, you’ll worry much less.

We’ve all been there; those months when you carefully plan out your writing and editing work, and then something unexpected strikes. When you plan out your trip with the assumption that you’ll have to drive 80 mph or faster to get to your destination, anything unexpected can lead to disaster.

I learned this lesson the hard way this month, and it’s going to require a couple of all-nighters and a lot of coffee to meet all of my obligations this month.

I know I can accomplish what I need to accomplish before the end of the month, because I’ve done it before. However, if I’d just planned a little better, I wouldn’t even be in this situation.

Plan Your Writing Work With a 30% Buffer

My typical mode of operation each month is to plan out enough writing work to account for about 90% of my available writing time. The problem with this approach is that it assumes every month will be a perfect month where you will always have the amount of time to work that you expect you’ll have.

What happens is that essentially ‘life’ happens. Family gets sick, major life events like funerals or weddings come up, or the worst thing that could happen to an online writer happens - you burn out.

The moment you burn out, work that used to take an hour takes several, and a sickening feeling comes over you as you realize what’s happening, and as you watch your precious work hours fade away.

Plan For a Hard Month and then Overachieve

Instead of accounting for 90% of your estimate work hours, cut back your planned work to only 70% of those hours. On a bad month, this allows for a stress free month even when the unexpected occurs, because you can give up 30% of your work hours and still accomplish what you need to accomplish.

Even better, on a good month, you’ll easily finish everything you planned, with lots of time left over to finish extra tasks - and come out shining like a hero.

More recently, I wrote an article titled Top 5 Websites To Research Weird Science Claims over at MakeUseOf. When it comes to looking for accurate and sane articles on technology or science, especially in the realm of fringe scientific claims - the websites mentioned in that article are the absolute first places anyone should go.

The label “skeptic” has always had very negative connotations. It has been a field dominated by atheists and outright non-believers. However, the term no longer applies to only stringent non-believers. A new “type” of skeptic is emerging - the “open-minded” skeptic.

Articles on Technology or Science for Open Minded Skeptics

For a true skeptic, a glass is neither half empty or half full. The first question is whether the glass is truly even there to begin with. Skeptics question everything. And in the case of open-minded skeptics where they are willing to entertain the weird and wild areas of paranormal claims - questioning everything becomes absolutely critical.

In yet another of my blogs (which I have very little time to keep up with - but I try!) called Invisible Articles, I try to focus on many of the hauntings, possessions and ghost activity reported from around the world in a critical minded and “skeptical” way. Again, writing articles on technology or science in the paranormal field is not easy.

Self Proclaimed Skeptics

Unfortunately, many outright believers have taken to calling themselves skeptics. The label is fast becoming a positive thing within the paranormal - and people who are not at all critical thinkers or even sane are calling themselves skeptical.

I once interviewed a psychic who claimed her powers were very powerful, but that she was also a skeptic and pursued all of her predictions in a manner where she could verify them in a “scientific way.”

I didn’t ask her to elaborate what her definition of a scientific way was, because she’d already failed the litmus test of being a skeptic. She’d already drawn the conclusion that her experiences could be explained by her own psychic powers, before exploring all of the other possibilities.

Toward the end of the interview, I performed a test. I asked her to tell me about a major event in my life that had just occurred. There was a recent death in my family - a significant event that a true psychic could easily pick up on. Unfortunately she described a positive celebration - I could tell she was guessing a wedding or a birthday of some sort, proving to me that she wasn’t at all psychic (and I’ve yet to meet a true psychic yet - for that matter).

How to Write Articles on Technology or Science

If you are considering exploring the areas of science such as those that are covered by the websites I wrote about at MakeUseOf, I highly recommend a careful series of study sessions first. Take the time to read articles at each of the websites I mentioned in that article. Take time to understand the process of opening your mind to new possibilities without opening your mind to being scammed.

The careful, deliberate and analytical process exemplified by the websites that I highlighted in the MakeUseOf article are exactly what the paranormal field needs if any answers are ever going to be uncovered. If you have an interest in the Paranormal, I highly recommend doing your own research in the field with the scientific approach of the “open-minded” skeptic.

All of us have “competitors” if you’re in the field of producing online content. Maybe you own a forum or a blog, and you’re competing for organic Google traffic. There may come a point when, during your keyword research, you recognize that a significant number of people are searching for information about your competition.

Or, another situation may be that a specific newsworthy event is taking place involving your competitor. There are a few techniques that you can use to harness those search keywords and use them to your own advantage.

Flanking The Enemy With Aggressive SEO Techniques

Whenever you recognize a newsworthy event, or a large influx of search requests for the web domain of your competition - the best way to handle that information is to turn it around to your advantage.

In warfare, the larger the enemy is, the easier it is to covertly slip behind enemy lines and plant weapons of sabotage. The same is true here - you can take the popularity and size of your competition and turn it around to your own advantage.

Identify the Weak Points of Your Competition

The first step in accomplishing this “aggressive SEO” strategy is by crossing enemy lines. This means using all of the keyword SEO tools at your disposal to uncover keyword phrases that involve your competitor’s website, are very popular (highly searched for in the search engines) and low competition (hardly anyone else is writing about it).

You can see these sort of opportunities with the large online retailers. They have very popular online stores, and many people can’t remember the URL, so they use Google to search for the site. Most other websites and bloggers wouldn’t think about focusing on that keyword phrase, because it’s obvious the person typing it in is looking for the store front.

However, the savvy blogger would take that popularity and do something like write a review about the retailer’s storefront, or otherwise capture the high popularity of that phrase, and take advantage of the low competition.

Exploit the Weak Spots

Once you’ve identified those keyword phrases that are normally “owned” by your competition, then it’s time to produce content on your own domain that focuses on those particular keyword phrases. There is no law that says you can’t write about, or review, your competitor’s products or website - so you don’t have to worry about copyright or infringing on the trademark name.

It’s a free country - and you are allowed to write about anything you like, so long as you don’t claim the products and services are yours. Write a high-quality and very useful review or overview of your competitor’s product or service (or newsworthy event), and then make sure to use the SEO techniques I’ve described on this blog to draw in those search engine queries that are normally aimed toward your competitor.

By using this approach, even small-time bloggers can reroute high-volume traffic of the much larger and more powerful competition.

This should not be your own focus of content - because you want to differentiate yourself from your competition, but by funneling keyword traffic away from your competition, you may be able to show people who were originally looking for your competitor’s site why your site is so much better.

There are a lot of online writers out there who are just like me - with their hands and their words in everything. Submitting writing and content for clients and at websites throughout the Internet. In my case, I do paranormal research and writing with RealityUncovered, I explore conspiracy theories at TopSecretWriters, I write countless informational articles for LoveToKnow.com, technology articles for MakeUseOf.com, educational articles for Educational-Freeware.com, and I’ve published numerous articles for Associated Content, Helium and even eHow.

As I said to my friend and RU colleague Steve recently - it’s like I’m a grenade victim and I have bits and pieces of me that have exploded all over the Internet.

Managing Your Online Activities in a Sane Way

The first thing I should point out is that I don’t do all of these things all at once, or all of the time. Building a powerful online presence and a solid reputation as a professional writer takes a long time, and a lot of building blocks. All of these pieces throughout the Internet are simply stepping stones toward a larger and greater future. Some of them will become cornerstones of that future, while others will not.

The benefit of distributing almost 50 articles every month, to a variety of online destinations with your name credited to each one of them, is that you control your online identity. Even if anyone attempted to write something negative about you, you’ve overwhelmed the Internet with so much of your own work, that anything anyone else writes will never see the light of day - it’s a perfect online insurance policy. Plus - whose going to take you on when they see that you are such a prolific writer, willing to take on any topic and any issue?

Tools You Can Use to Organize

The key to managing all of this is organization. While Twitter and Facebook can certainly turn into a time-drainer, they can also provide a perfect platform to distribute new material of yours to your fans. And yes, you will soon have fans because people have preferences - and your writing will appeal to a specific crowd.

Don’t doubt it. But when that happens, you need an easy way to let those people know that you’ve just written something they may be interested in reading.

Another approach is something that I’ll be writing about soon at MakeUseOf, and that is this - one of the best ways that you can organize yourself online is by creating an author profile blog. I know, you’re thinking not another blog!? However, this one isn’t a blog that you’ll need to babysit. It’s one where you can embed all of the feeds from your online endeavours, and where you can offer an occasional update about your work and your current activities.

A personal bio blog can also help you organize all of the places that you’ve already been published, and it can land you some amazing opportunities for even better places to get published in the future.

So, here’s to staying busy and profitable in all of your online efforts!

As I’ve written about earlier on this blog, there is a parting of ways for people who spend a lot of time online. In particular, there is the “content producer” - the writer who exhibits the skill and ability to not only research topics that are in demand, but also to put the result of that research together in ways that are coherent and useful for readers. Then, on the other side, there are the Internet users. Those who search and surf, post comments and forum posts and in general “make use of” the Internet.

Yes, it is a parting of ways - that of the paid writer, and that of the entertained or educated (whichever the case may be) reader. Which group do you fit into, and is the line really that clear?

Are You a Content Producer or a Consumer?

I used to work for clients who were web designers that would purchase domain names with the home of publishing a page featuring lots of Google ads, with the hopes that the one web page would start generating tremendous ad revenue over time. In fact, there are still folks out there who believe that this dream will really come true.

In a recent article that I wrote for MakeUseOf, the popular tech blog, I discussed among other things the importance of fresh content for the SEO quality of a website. Stagnant websites simply don’t do as well as competitors who are always adding new content. A number of commentators either didn’t know about this fact or didn’t believe it, but it’s part of the reason why the Internet is now splitting into these two groups - the content producers and content consumers.

The Growth of the Internet

Just pause for a moment and consider the sheer growth of the Internet thanks to this phenomenon of competition for the freshest, most relevant content. Now, blogs and major informational portals are hiring and paying decent wages for high-quality writers to produce informative, novel and useful articles for the Internet audience.

Yes, there are still all of those spammy websites out there that produce garbage pages only to “trick” search engines into ranking them highly and to attract the occasional web visitor - but in time those are getting weeded out as search engine algorithms become more and more intelligent at identifying the relevant, high quality pages that pertain to an Internet traveler’s search terms.

This is the reality. As the Internet evolves into a massive database filled with more and more pages of content, the websites that win are those that have the better content - the high quality, well-written useful articles. And how do you get the content that’s better than your competition? You hire a high-quality writer with a mastery of the English language and with the ability to persuade, convince and teach your readers on the niche topics that you target.

When you choose your writers, just remember that more than any other service in the entire world, with online writers - you get what you pay for. So pay well, and screen out all of your applicants who can’t write well - only hire the best!

If you do hire well - before long, you’ll quickly recognize that your content and your website as a whole is consistently ranked at the top of search engine results.

One of the hardest things about being a write is the fact that 100 percent of your job consists of you sitting on your backside, and the only part of your body that’s moving is your fingers. Sure, you’ll end up with some pretty dexterous fingers, but I can guarantee that your midsection won’t turn out quite as well.

Yes, being a writer involves a lot of sitting, but that doesn’t mean you have to end up three times you’re optimal body weight and with a waistline the size of Texas. As you enter the new year, you know that you’ll be faced with the same writer demands and deadlines, but I’d like to offer a few very effective tips that you can use to maintain your health while also maintaining your schedule.

Effective Writers and Sedentary Lifestyle Changes

Sitting for many hours a day is probably more hazardous to your health than the coffee you drink, the cigarettes you smoke, the fat-laden steaks that you eat, or how fast you drive. Every hour that you sit there not using most of your muscle mass, you are burning almost the least possible number of calories you can.

While your brain may be getting all of the exercise in the world, the container that supports your brain is going to start falling apart. There are several important things you can do to maintain (and even strengthen) the parts of your body most negatively impacted by a writer’s sedentary lifestyle.

If you’ve never tried yoga, this is a great time to start. By taking a break every 30 minutes to an hour, getting on your yoga mat and going through a few yoga exercises. You’ll find yourself not only losing the weight you gained through your sedentary lifestyle, but you’ll also find yourself feeling more energized and stronger than you ever did before.

While it might take time out of your schedule to do these exercises, in the long run it will give you more time because you’ll feel more energetic, refreshed and awake.

Finally, I wanted to save the best for last. The device above is called an exercise ball chair. Want to get transform your body out of that sedentary lifestyle the fastest? Give this baby a try.

All you do is use it instead of your regular office chair. Sounds simple right? It takes some getting use to. The balance required to sit on this ball forces your body to make the necessary weight changes using almost every muscle in your body to maintain equilibrium. These subtle changes, over time, keep your body in a constant state of energy and balance - so while you’re writing, your body is building it’s core strength…it’s like the best of both worlds.

With that said, while the FitBall Exercise Ball Chair will definitely be one of your most effective weapons against weight gain from your writing, it will definitely take some getting used to. No more slouching for you!

I hope some of these ideas can make a change for the many writers and sedentary lifestyles that they maintain. I know that I’ve made it my New Year’s resolution to get back to the healthy young lad that I was only ten years ago - and I know that you can too!

Come back and let me know how you do with your health goals in the comments section below!

The first thing I’d like to say is that this particular post is not SEO optimized. I couldn’t be bothered because this behavior is just too urgent and needs to be exposed this very moment - no need to SEO optimize my vent, it will speak for itself.

SEO Fools Writing Useless Web Content Just for Search Engine Traffic

This is how it works. There are countless guys and girls out there who recognize that once you can identify certain keywords and them use them in a particular pattern, a particular number of times and using very particular rules - you can place your website and your article on the very first page of Google results. That’s the approach of the SEO expert and that’s how the system works, and it works well. But you know what else?

That’s pretty much where 90% of the SEO experts out there finish their efforts. When you arrive at their website, guess what you discover? Half the time it’s one paragraph jam-packed with gibberish - a collection of keyword phrases and a few lines or two of semi-coherent writing. The page is nothing more than an absolute, one-hundred percent, useless and idiotic waste of space. Therefore, I’ve decided in this particular post to run through a few high value SEO keywords to point out some of these brainless twits out there that take part in this kind of behavior.

Keyword Phrase: World Wide Web History

This is a huge, highly-searched keyword phrase. So, let’s take a look at the top Google results.

World Wide Web (WWW), system of resources that enable computer users to view and interact with a variety of information, including magazine archives, public- and university-library resources, current world and business news, and software programs. The WWW can be accessed by a computer connected to an internet, an interconnection of computer networks or through the public Internet, the global consortium of interconnected computer networks.

Has this guy ever heard of grammar? How about writing a sentence that at least makes sense? “system of resources that enable computer users to view and interact with a variety of information” - what the hell does that even mean? I’ll bet this guy went out and paid a team of foreign guys sitting in a cube in some third-world countries a dollar an article for this garbage. And every day that passes, more and more of this horrendous excuse for content continues to pollute the Internet. Okay then, let’s continue on to the next site that follows this one on Google’s top 10 listing for this search term - Elsop.com. Let’s take a look.

Have you come across the many “traffic traps” that exist on the web, just like these? Share your own experiences and opinions in the comments section below.