Updates on freelance writing and hubbing

a lot of you who work with Google's adsense program may have felt the frustrations of the up and down fluctuations of the past couple of months due to the Panda algorithm changes.

When this all started in August, I saw my adsense revenue go down overall by about 20% and many people bottomed out altogether. It seemed a bit distressing at first, but gradually as Google's algorithms have changed and they have been weeding out a lot of the crap and content fodder and focusing on quality - my earnings the past two months have almost doubled! For those of us who produce quality content and write about what we know and are passionate about (rather than keyword stuffed, article spinning nonsense) we are now seeing the rewards from our devotion to quality and our passion for writing - hooray.

It's a very nice bonus for my family in a tough economy to have this extra residual income every month coming in - and it has kind of restored my faith in the internet being a great place for writer's (real ones) to actually make a difference.

Once Hubpages took their initial hit, they split up into subdomains, with each writer controlling his/her own. This gave them a measure of quality control they didn't have before and my earnings there have gone up despite not having had the time to publish hubs regularly the past few months. The quality of my content is so good that my subdomain already has a google pagerank of 3 - not bad! I actually get consistent search engine traffic I wasn't getting before because now I am not competing with article spinning software and junk content as much.

I am very happy that Google has dedicated itself to cleaning up the internet - it means more quality information being placed front and center. I love Panda :) and I am sure that those of us striving to provide high quality content (not merely for a profit) are liking it too now that the dust is settling a bit.

Writing, Speaking - or both?

I recently signed up to take a public speaking class. I was down to the wire and my original class had been cancelled. To keep my scholarship I am required to take at least 12 credit hours this semester. In a panic, I had to search through the few classes left and the only one I found that would work with my current work/school schedule was a public speaking course - gulp.

I love to write. Writing is my passion and there was never an English class that I didn't feel confident about. A 30 page research paper fully cited over summer semester you say? No problem - bring it on! Been there did that, but public speaking... oh my. I am not an outgoing person at all. In fact, many writers that I know are not either and for many of us writing is our "voice".

Although I am somewhat nervous, I do feel this is going to be a great experience for me. As writers, we have to be able to communicate verbally as well. Think about it. How else will you promote your writing? If you can build confidence in your ability to speak with as much passion as you write you suddenly have an edge in a very competitive field. I know that this class is going to benefit me in more ways than a letter grade at the end of the term. My hope is that it is going to build me up and help me speak with poise and confidence about my writing.

I had never really stopped to consider before this how beneficial a public speaking course might be. I know though that the universe has a way of leading us to the right place at the right time and so I am going to roll up my sleeves, swallow that lump in my throat and go for it! Hopefully it will help me in the future when it comes to promotion - and well, just feeling more confident in general.