Why This Site?
I’d love to say that I decided to follow in the footsteps of John Chow and Darren Rowse, but while I’d love to make that kind of money from this blog, that’s not really why I’m starting it.
For years my main career focus was to become a professional novelist. Since I don’t seem to need as much money as many others seem to need, I wasn’t too concerned about becoming a best seller, just enough to cover the basics would be enough.
I spent a lot of time online learning about the writing craft. One day I stumbled upon a community blog that was comprised mostly of writers. About half of these writers were freelancers, not novelists, and I inadvertantly began to learn about the freelance writing world. Eventually I decided that being a freelance writer by day and a novelist by night would be even better than just a novelist since the income would be more predictable.
A few months later that community site folded, and many of us started up our on blogs on Blogger and WordPress. Many of the same freelancers and novelists that I’d been in touch with at the community site continued to stay in touch through our personal blogs, and I began to learn even more. Eventually I put a few things together.
Freelance web content writers write web content for internet marketers. While many of these marketers have physical or informational products to sell, many of them were affiliate marketers. And more, many of these affiliate sites were built with little more than a site template and some Adsense! Granted, I don’t know much about marketing or HTML, but I do know how to use WordPress, and if I was going to be writing content…. maybe it should be for more than a one time $5-15 payment.
And so I began subscribing to professional bloggers and marketers RSS feeds and started learning more about affiliate marketing, programs, etc. However, since all of my focus was on the affiliate sites I was building, I noticed that my writing blog had become more of a “look what I did today!” kind of blog. Readership started to dwindle as most of my readers were there to hear about my writing or personal life. I started feeling guilty when I blogged because I knew it wasn’t what my friends were interested in hearing. And yet I wanted to talk about this. Plus, I totally went on a domain registering binge. I can’t seem to help myself.
So this is the beginner’s blog. Hopefully to become a professional one day, but for now, it’s my platform to shout about what worked, what didn’t, what I’m trying, and what’s new. Maybe some day I’ll be the new Darren or John (I don’t think my husband would like me getting a sex change, but I’m sure he’d enjoy the pay checks), but for now- I’ll just be The Nicher.
P.S. I haven’t begun optimizing this blog. Partly because I tend to get involved in more projects than I can handle, but also because I don’t want to begin truly promoting this site until I have something useful to say.
