Lecture nine: Money Makes the World Go Round

1. If a dead-tree medium falls in the forest... can it become a nurse log?
2. Can blogging pay in the era of freeconomics?
3. Amazon and other affiliates
4. How pay-per-click works
5. Display adverts and providers
6. Newsletters role in the blogosphere. Poindexterish?
7. Micropatronage and blog sponsorship
8. Merchandise me!
9. The cruel truth about exposure
10. More, I want to know MORE about monetization
    
11. Your mission, week nine

Assignment: Add one or more of the following: Google AdSense, a widget, blogroll, a "best of" panel or labels. Monitor statistics, especially referrals, from last week's community outreach, then report on your findings.

Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting

Your mission, week nine

Assignment: Add one or more of the following: Google AdSense, a widget, blogroll, a "best of" panel or labels. Monitor statistics, especially referrals, from last week's community outreach, then report on your findings. Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting

Week 8: Photo finesse and advanced geekery

1. Beyond snapshots: let your art tell a story
2. Ten composition tips for blog photos
3. Images as derivative works
4. The Mona Lisa with a Mustache
5. Permission to publish: the photo release
6. Cameras: from your cell phone to a pro SLR
7. Tinkering with images: software and ethics
8. Web-friendly image formats and compression
9. Web-prepping images, a review
10. Image placement for ace design
11. Art alignment and text-wraps
12. Do I need a domain?
13. Know your Frenemy
14. Is dot.com da bomb?
15. Your mission, week eight

Tips and Tricks (to come)

1. Creating a three-column or custom template
2. Deconstructing a URL
3. Wrangling Google Analytics

Assignment: Comment on at least five newly discovered blogs and respond to all feedback left on your site. Make at least two posts, one with an image, the other with a video

Feedback: (Amanda) holistic critique

Your mission, week eight

Surf the web and find at least five blogs new to you. Leave a comment on each and also respond to all feedback on your site. Make at least two posts, one with an image, the other with a video
Feedback: (Amanda) holistic critique

Shaping Short Narratives & Strong Thematic Posts

This week we're going to explore writing techniques for stronger entries. Because all the widgets and whizbangery in the world can't save a blog without strong content ... To do this, we'll look at a mix of "dead tree" tactics, as well as new media content ... and analyses of both.

1. Storytelling in the age of content curation
2. Making a strong first impression –  on readers and search bots
3. Blog posts deserve snappy ledes (starts)
4. Lively lede devices for bloggers (and other authors)
5. Nut graf – framework to hang the story upon
6. More nut graf goodness
7. Speaking of suspense...
8. Creative nonfiction – Plot your posts
9. Plot arc: get complicated!
10. Transitions: write the sweet segue
11. Satisfying blog-entry conclusions
12. S.W.A.K. – the envelope ending
13. Blogs benefit from short, clear sentence structure
14. Employ imagery and colorful language in posts
15. Murder your darlings
16. Avoiding word repetition
17. Your mission, week seven
    

Some of this advice, I hope, will seem very old and obvious to you. That's because experts have spent decades – centuries even – analyzing what readers enjoy. Hopefully books and dedicated teachers and empirical evidence have brought many of these patterns to your attention already.

Your mission, week seven

Assignment: either a longer post (500 words) or three thematically linked entries (no more than 600 words total). Mawkish praise for the following:

• Three sources – the ole newspaper minimum
• Quotes, which can be drawn from documents or, preferably, interviews.
• Pro and con perspectives, which add balance
• Links and expert opinions.
• Dialogue, plot, imagery, nut grafs and envelope endings

This week, especially, I encourage you to offer your peers feedback. Different eyes spot different strengths and concerns ... and the critiquer has much to learn from the process. WIN for all!

Please post your links on the class forum, as usual.

Feedback: (Amanda) writing line-critique

Week 6: Step Into the Spotlight

1. The mechanics of search engines
2. PageRank – the pixie dust of the pixelverse
3. Squeezing Googlejuice: nabbing higher rankings
4. Avoid the false prophets
5. Attracting even more eyes: aggregators
6. Six degrees of separation: social networking
7. Followers – drink the Kool-Aid
8. So you want repeat business? Feed 'em!
9. Your mission, week six

Burn your feed, add a subscription/email subscription widget to your blog, claim your blog on Technorati
Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting

Your mission, week six

Burn your feed, add a subscription/email subscription widget to your blog, claim your blog on Technorati Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting

Lecture five – Other Voices, Other Rooms

Over the last few weeks, we've talked more and more about the community that can anchor around a strong blog. Today we'll examine some strategies for evolving that, through (to borrow a line from Truman Capote) other voices and other rooms.

Original content reigns supreme in the search bots' beady electronic eyes (more on all this next week). But that doesn't always equate to the author slaving over a page or keyboard – or, indeed, behind a vid-cam, these days. Interviews, commentary, memes and sourced multimedia are all devices that help create fresh, pertinent posts without heavy compositional lifting.

1. Citizen journalism
2. Sticky goodness – web content that inspires repeat readers
3. Digging down: creating distinctive, original content
4. Get your interview on
5. Reporting sounds like too much work...
6. Play like a pro: be your own editor
7. Classic blog entry formulas
8. Fighting writer's block: Blog jump starts
9. Tapping pro-writer tools like media kits
10. Memes: Oh those crazy kids with their fads...
11. I'm sold. Meme me!
12. Introduction to audio, video and podcasts
13. Open Source Movement
14. Redefining intellectual property rights
15. Creative Commons License – an intro
16. Yes, sharing can go horribly, horribly wrong
17. Assignment Week Five
    

Assignment: Incorporate at least three sources – quotes, memes or multimedia – to add texture to your blog. Bonus points for original audio or video uploads!

Feedback: (Amanda) writing line-critique

Assignment week five

Incorporate at least three sources – quotes, memes or multimedia – to add texture to your blog. Bonus points for original audio or video uploads!

Feedback: (Amanda) writing line-critique

Lecture four – meet the reader

 

Remember the water cycle from elementary-school science? How rain creates snow that melts into streams, feeding the oceans, which evaporate into clouds that rain and so forth? Bloggers, website publishers and the mainstream media are all bound together in a similar circuit. And readers too play a key role...

As Greg Ruggiero of the Immediast Underground says: "Media is a corporate possession... You cannot participate in the media. Bringing that into the foreground is the first step. The second step is to define the difference between public and audience. An audience is passive; a public is participatory. We need a definition of media that is public in its orientation."

This week we'll explore some bells and whistles to engage the reader, as well as tech and tactics to convert casual skimmers into a dedicated audience.

1. Profile tactics – Look Who's Talking
2. Single author versus group submissions
3. Dynamic Sidebars
4. Widgets Away!
5. Widget wisely and well...
6. Comments: More than the sound of one hand clapping
7. Building community – or not...
8. Exposure – yours, interviewees' and readers'
9. Who's reading?
10. Your mission, week four

Unusually, we've broken key homework components into Tips & Tricks this week. That's because some of you are on WordPress and others don't get a geek buzz off advanced html wizardry. Given all that, it seemed more sensible to quarantine the codey bits. But you can read 'em here:

1. Tips & Tricks: Tell Google About Your Blog
2. Tips & Tricks: Adding Google Analytics to your Blogger blog

Some of you expressed frustration with links. Just a quick reminder: these serve like footnotes – opportunities to dig deeper, but not obligations. And you can open them in another tab by clicking and holding down the apple-splat key (Mac) or control-click on a PC.

Assignment: Add Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, and make two posts
Feedback: (Mike) Q&A, tech troubleshooting

Your mission, week four

Add Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools – see Mike's tips here and here –  and make two posts. This task is by no means mandatory. Tackle it, should the idea appeal. Skip it if code-hacking doesn't... Either way, please leave Mike tech questions in Forums>Assignments>Stats and two posts.

Lecture three: Strong content is key

1. Keep it fresh
2. Content pacing
3. Tease longer material
4. Writing for narrative or thematic continuity
5. News vs. features vs. opinion
6. News format: all hail the inverted pyramid
7. Commentary: Get you rant or rave on
8. Features-style: Spinning a good yarn
9. Finding the right format
10. DJ your blog: mixing expertise and entertainment
11. Bring the context
12. Work all the angles, especially timely ones
13. Your mission, week three
14. Text-trimming tips
15. Custom header primer

Your mission, week three

Three posts – one 25 words, another 100 words, the last 350. Yes, you need to stick to the word limits (see below for advice on this front).

Please post the permalinks on the class site under Forums>Assignments>Three posts. You must submit if you want your work evaluated. Thanks!

Flushing or hiding: You can bin the posts after critiques, if you hate 'em. Or use Mike's "Tips and Tricks" dodge: backdate the entries to before the blog's launch, so they don't publish on to the front page. The time-stamp controls are under the post-entry field. On Mac, I have to click the little "post options" arrow on the left. PCs display automatically, if memory serves.

Why we do this: all writers have unconscious habits. Drills like this help jar authors out of ruts. They also force us to make every word count, rather than writing reflexively, and to self-edit (which can be painful, but also very illuminating and instructive too).

Feedback: (Amanda) writing critique

Lesson two: Start the press

This week we'll dig into the basics that launch a healthy blog from headlines to links and art alignment. For anyone feeling tech-anxious, this lecture will walk you through the set-up. Remember that you don't have to master all these tools at once ... and Mike and I are here to cheer, cajole and handhold, as required.

More advanced students can look forward to some serious opt-in geekery soon, as well as line-critiques and literary-technique discussions.

Whatever your level, enjoy! – Amanda

1. Target audience
2. Keep the home court advantage
3. Who was that masked blogger?
4. Bios: should you claim that blog?
5. Kicky bios and other profile tactics
6. SEO starter-kit – Master the headline
7. Oh, behave, with your bad headline self!
8. Organizing blog material
9. Intro to blog design: template primer
10. Search capacities for your blog
11. Adding, deleting and repositioning sidebar elements
12. Archiving your blog
13. Hang on, what's a blogroll? Sushi?
14. Stop skeezy link farms now!
15. Hey, I want one of those blogroll things!
16. Feature context and original content high
17. Matching design to content
18. Linktasia – connecting your blog to the larger world
19. How to link and create permalinks
20. The importance of art
21. Photo preparation for your blog
22. How to upload an image
23. Hear Amanda's headcold in almost real-time!
24. Assignment week two

Note, for the geek-enthusiastic, Mike and I posted five new tips and tricks. As he explains, these files are meaty, tech-tastic extravaganzas. Think of them as help documents or extra-curricular reading...

Blogger Settings Explained
Tools for Writing Posts
Photo Software Advice
Web-friendly Image Formats and Compression
Troubleshooting Image Compression

Just a reminder: your first critiques will post by midnight PST on Thursday. From here out, please submit your homework in that same Assignments folder under Forums.

Explore the Publishing Frontier – Lecture one

Welcome to Writers.com's ten-week new media workshop, taught by Amanda Castleman and Mike Keran. The class blog is open to the public, so we can demonstrate feeds and widgets properly (visitors are welcome to sign up here until 1/24/2010). Enrolled students can access private calendars and bulletin boards at the classroom Web site.

We're working on integrating the blog and classroom further. Mike custom-built the workshop space, which Writers.com may adopt for future classes. So we would love feedback to make it even better!

1. Media revolution: Draw that Mammoth
2. Introduction to Web 2.0
3. Blog stars are born
4. Ripples outside the pond
5. But these bloggers are just a buncha punks!
6. Citizen journalism
7. Why should you blog?
8. You're not alone – or screaming into the void
9. Pick a topic. Any topic, as long as it's toe-curling
10. Amanda's experience
11. Bloggers making it work
12. Successful bloggers who moved on
13. Why write without pay? Intro to freeconomics
14. Think geek
15. Ponder your genre
16. Naming and branding your blog
17. What’s in a name?
18. Yet more examples
19. Choose a blog host
20. Anatomy of a blog
21. Taglines
22. Get busy blogging!
23. But eeeek! How do I start?
24. The look and feel of your blog
25. How to navigate the site?
26. Say hello to the class

Get busy blogging!

Roll up your sleeves and wade in, gang! Launch that blog and make at least one post on any topic and of any length (though note that most entries weigh in from 100-500 words in this medium).

Also, please turn in one assignment by Tuesday at midnight, containing these elements:
1. Why is this blog important? (25 words or less)
2. Who cares (target audience)? (25 words or less)
3. What skills do I bring to this subject? (25 words or less)
4. What community is my blog building? (25 words or less)
5. What's my mission statement? (25 words or less)
6. Note your URL, so we can add your site to the blogroll

Please submit in the assignment folder. Each week has a separate bin, such as Assignment One, Introduce Your Blog. Please file accordingly – and check back in the same area for our comments late on Thursdays (or sometimes early, early Fridays PST).

Very personal questions can be sent via email: Mike and Amanda. But we much prefer chatting in the classroom, where everyone can benefit – and where spam folders don't lurk. Chances are, if you're panicking about image insertion on Blogger, someone else is too. And then we can inform y'all that we're covering that next week...

Ask questions in your Student folder, in the Q&A bin or via the comments here on the blog site. We've tried to create a lot of avenues into the information: what folks in the industry call "points of entry". So you'll see a list of recent comments, my conversations and active forum topics on the classroom site's sidebar. You can also view the whole list of forums. The site alerts you to new material.

Misplace a thread? Search or check low on the sidebar for "recent posts" under your name.

1. Target audience
2. Keep the home court advantage
3. Who was that masked blogger?
4. Bios: should you claim that blog?
5. Kicky bios and other profile tactics
6. SEO starter-kit – Master the headline
7. Oh, behave, with your bad headline self!
8. Organizing blog material
9. Intro to blog design: template primer
10. Search capacities for your blog
11. Adding, deleting and repositioning sidebar elements
12. Archiving your blog
13. Hang on, what's a blogroll? Sushi?
14. Stop skeezy link farms now!
15. Hey, I want one of those blogroll things!
16. Feature context and original content high
17. Matching design to content
18. Linktasia – connecting your blog to the larger world
19. How to link and create permalinks
20. The importance of art
21. Photo preparation for your blog
22. How to upload an image
23. Hear Amanda's headcold in almost real-time!
24. Assignment week two
25. Blogger Settings Explained
26. Tools for Writing Posts
27. Photo Software Advice
28. Web-friendly Image Formats and Compression
29. Troubleshooting Image Compression

How to navigate the site?

The blog's sidebar contains a list of lectures for easy reference. More importantly, the blue navigation bar at the top contains a "search" function. This is your friend.

Mike and I are delighted to field questions – that's why we're here, after all. But we also want y'all to learn self-sufficiency, because, like parents, we won't be here forever. So here's our recommended drill:

1. Search the class site
2. Check out Blogger's Help Section
3. Google it (You Tube, in particular, often has excellent tutorials)
4. Leave us a question, either on the relevant post or in the week's query bin.

The "recent comments" widget in the sidebar will show what posts are under discussion.

At the outset, terminology may be a challenge: sometimes the hardest part is knowing what terms to search on. Please don't hesitate to ask us. We love inquiries like "how can Twitter help build blog traffic?" What we're trying to avoid is wasting class time on stuff like "What's Twitter?" when a simple search will land you on Twitter.com or any number of articles on the subject.

Say hello to the class

So we can get better acquainted, devise a short introduction and post it to your Forum folder by Friday. Also, please fill in your profile details.

How to: On the right-hand navigation panel, you should see your name in bold. Underneath is a blue hyperlink "my account". Here you can adjust your name if needed, upload a profile picture and some bio details

Check out Bios –why and how and Amanda's Bio – meet the teach if you need inspiration on topics and formats. Also, please post a photograph – otherwise you will be saddled with the Default Baboon of Shame. (Avatars personalize the online classroom and make the bulletin board conversations easier to follow. Closely cropped vertical portraits work best. However, camera-shy folks are welcome to post any image, not necessarily one of themselves.)

Mike and I are excited to work with you all over the next months. Again, welcome to Writers.com's New Media class!

About the Tips & Tricks Articles

There are some aspects of the Blogger platform that require detailed, step-by-step instructions to make sense out of. These tend to be the subjects in our Tips & Tricks section. The hope is that by combining easy-to-follow directions along with screen shots we can simplify the complicated.

In general, one article will build on the information in earlier articles. So, while the first Tips & Tricks post may have screen shots showing how to reach the Edit Template HTML page, later articles will just say Layout -> Edit HTML.

So, keep an eye out in the Lectures and Articles sidebar for new subject popping up.