Writing for Don’t Hate the Geek is beginning to feel like a job. A job I don’t get paid for. Slavery? I’m probably just miffed because of the changes they made to one of my articles. I wrote a piece on Memorial Day Monday, inspired by a suggestion by my friend and roommate Jitters. This is Jitters.
He’s awesome. Jitters suggested I write an article about the heroes of Nerdom and Geekery that we’ve all seen fall in battle. A tribute to my own fallen heroes. It made sense to me, since I have to military idols to remember, and it appealed to our sense of humor. Bumble too thought it was funny. For those that don’t know Bumble, I co-host a podcast with him called The Masquerade with Bumble and the Brit!
I just learned how to do Facebook embeds! More on that later.
Anyway, as I was saying, an admin at DHTG pulled the article. They said it was inappropriate. I said I understood and offered to delete it if they sent it back to me. I was hoping to copy and paste the article into my own blog (this one) and test a theory. The last time I posted a controversial article it spread across Facebook like wildfire. I assumed that, shared it the right strategic places, the same thing would happen with my Memorial day article.
I didn’t get a chance to find out. They edited it to make it obvious that I wasn’t disrespecting the troops and posted it anyway. I need to start making copies of my articles and posting them here. I had been planning on that from the beginning, but they told me posting the same article elsewhere would reduce the number of hits to Don’t Hate the Geek. From what I’ve read about online marketing, duplicating your article increases the chances of it being found. You’re supposed to guest-blog for other sites and include links back to your own blog. I know from working with DHTG that this is only part of it. Links back to other pages of the blog you’re guesting for are also essential too.
I have learned a lot I didn’t know. I’ve read a lot about maximising SEO (that’s Search Engine Optimisation by the way) but it didn’t really stick, or make much sense, until I had to do it for DHTG. I’ve also learned the importance of links within the website and to external sites, the structure for a news piece versus op-ed, and they also made me feel good about my writing. I’ve been told by friends that my writing is good, but it’s good to hear praise from a third party. If my writing sucked, they wouldn’t have taken me on. I would have looked bad for the website. So I’m very grateful to Don’t Hate the Geek.
I still have more to learn too. I have yet to write a review, but that time will come. Maybe. I need to make time to write for myself. My friends are especially eager to hear more of my Sci-fi adventure story, currently called ‘Hermes’, but I’ve been so busy researching and writing for DHTG that my own projects are falling way behind. In addition to the disappointment about the Memorial day article, I’m also miffed about an article I was writing for them about the release of the Dark Brotherhood DLC for The Elder Scrolls Online. I found out that one of the voice actors had posted a shout out to the game and it’s developers, and so I mentioned it in the article. They sent it back, asking me to embed the link to the original post. I could not for the life of me make it work! I’ve deleted the article. I don’t want to write it anymore.
Maybe I’ll get back on the horse with my next article. Maybe the feeling that I’ve disappointed them will go away and I’ll feel like I belong again. Either way I need to move back toward my goal. Becoming a published author of stories. Spaceships, Dragons, Superheroes and Vampires! I’m going to use what I learned to improve this blog where I can (hopefully) keep you updated on my progress. Likely this will be sporadic as I’m still juggling my full-time job as a debt collector, my obligations to DHTG, and my personal writing, without neglecting my friends and housework too much!
I’m not sure if I’m going to have the guts to backlink to Don’t Hate the Geek. Will they be mad at me for talking about them? Will they fire me if they don’t like what I’m saying? Like I said, I’ve learned a lot from them. It might be time to spread my wings and fly solo. Probably not yet. In which case I can’t share it to Facebook yet either, because they might see it there. It’s time to get back to my own writing, but I don’t need to be burning any bridges just yet.
writingarchive 