10,000 hits

The article on writing prompts has 10,000 hits on StumbleUpon and earned $28.00 in 7 days. I'm not complaining obviously. The how-to on keeping ice cold still earns at least 400 hits a day. I think it's at 42,000 but haven't checked in a couple of days.

Update on rewritten article

Have to update this post. Very happy now. This article may not stay where it is but at the moment, this is what it is showing on my screen.

Memoirs: Death of a friend
Active 08/29/10
1 of 69

It probably won't remain at #1 but this is just great!!!

Earlier in the day
Little happier with the rewritten article. Now sitting at 4 of 64, the percentage is actually better than it was in the other title. I know that it is well-written and going forward, will actually pay attention to what title I am writing to.

Article update

It has now earned $20.19. This is very fun.

Essay, memoir, testamonies and reflections

Helium deleted one of my articles. Made me mad until I gave it some thought. It was sitting at 3 of 24. It didn't make much money but it was personal for me. It was essay: Death of a friend. When I wrote it over a year ago I'm not sure that I even knew that it was an essay title since I don't think I bothered to look. OK, so I rewrote it today and resubmitted it as Memoir: Death of a friend. Now it's sitting at 15 of 64. It has lost ground and there goes my creative writing percentage.

So I don't make the same mistake, I did a little research. This is stuff I should have remembered but didn't take into consideration when I started writing at Helium.

So here is my mini-refresher for me to refer back to next time I want to write something that is not fiction but is personal in nature.

Memoir is a personal tale, with dialog and description like an autobiography.

Essay is written from a personal point of view. A short literary composition on a single subject, usually presenting the personal view of the author.

Testimony - A Testimony is something that comes straight from your heart, and tells people what you believe in.

Reflection - Reflections lets us analyze our experiences. It is not autobiographical although it is built on a personal experience. This lets us reflect on the event and make connections.

Now that I think I have what I need, well, I am not going back through my articles to see which ones might be incorrect. They can delete them and I will simply update them and reissue. Still, I am very sad about my creative writing score that took a dive.

Article continues to make money

In less than a week, I have made $17.50 on one article. I don't care if it never makes another penny, it was just fun to watch it grow.

Finished a new how-to on "How to make a compass with a pencil and string". Waiting for approval and it will be out there. That makes #17. Can't decide what to do. Just wrote two really bad articles that I should clean up. I have 3 how-to's pending and so now the quandary is, what should I really do. I think I will play on this blog. That way, I can tell myself that I am doing the required writing while really not doing anything. I think I need to read the article that is making money. It's about writers block.

Interesting day - Helium is creating a book that will be sold on Amazon

Got an email that said that my article was one of several chosen for a new book. It says that the book will show me with a byline, photo and bio. This is very interesting.

My article "Using writing prompts to defeat writer's block" just received 3969 hits on StumbleUpon. That's pretty amazing. I just made more money on one article in three days that I have on the rest for one month.

Clinton did not have sex with that woman

This has amused me for a very long time. The Baby Boomer generation has some very different idea on many things and this is one of them. Although today, many people my age will gasp if you say this out loud, they ought to be really clear on what they really did and thought then.

The term “sex” was the actual event. Anything leading up to that was heavy petting. It was frowned upon by our parents and our churches but since we were not having sex we were unconcerned.

Clinton said he didn’t have sex with that woman. Cut the man some slack. By our definition, he didn’t.