A Good Lesson for High School Kids?

Shortly before the Content of the Year award was announced by Yahoo! Contributor Network, I was contacted by a member of the editorial staff at Pearson Publishing's Brazil office. Pearson wanted get permission to use an excerpt from one of my articles in a high school English textbook.

It was the same article that I had been told was about to be announced as the Content of the Year winner. The Pearson editor told me that they had sent the request to Yahoo!'s permissions office, but had not received a reply. Because the article was licensed exclusively to Yahoo! Contributor Network, only Y!CN can grant reprint or usage rights such as those requested by Pearson.

I replied to the editor letting them know the situation and also forwarded the request to a contact at Y!CN to try to make sure it was seen by the right department. A few days later, the editor from Pearson Brazil let me know that they had received approval from Yahoo!'s legal department to use the excerpt from my article.

So as of the release date of the next edition of 'Hyperlink' in Brazil, my work will appear in an English text book written for native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Remembering my own foreign language classes, I can picture a room full of high school kids debating the greater meaning of the article in accented English. "What was the author's opinion of Jake Reilly's experiment?" the teacher may ask, hoping that the students can infer from the subtleties of my specific word choice and phrasing whether I was sympathetic to Jake's self-imposed hardships.

Interview Finds Continued Popularity Through Social Media

This article remains one of my most viewed pieces at Yahoo! month after month, even a year after it was first published. It isn't a particularly popular search topic, and it isn't written with SEO in mind. The traffic it receives must, therefore, be based on the content and concept of the article itself. It appeals to the imagination and emotion of readers and makes them want to share it.

It was shared tens of thousands of times through Twitter, Facebook, email and other social media, and I'm assuming that the continued traffic comes through blog links and social media mentions. It can be found on search engines, highly placed, but only for very rare search terms that one might use if they had heard about the topic previously and were actually looking for the article.

At some point, it came to the attention of the editorial staff of a textbook company in Brazil who thought, for those same reasons that it would capture the imagination or at least hold the attention of high school students learning English.

Payment for Textbook Usage?

For those who maybe curious, I am not getting paid by Pearson for the use of my material in their text. While I generally (always) insist on being paid for my work, I chalk this one up to good will, despite the fact that Pearson does sell its texts for profit. My work will be helping kids learn. It's my first appearance in a textbook or any printed book, to my knowledge. I'll use the credit in my writing bio. This particular article is already my highest paid writing effort to date, having earned me thousands of dollars in royalties (with more coming in each month) plus another thousand for winning Content of the Year at Y!CN.

Writing for Free?

As a general rule, when asked to write something in return for the exposure and without other cash compensation, I decline and have even been known to ask the person who proposed it if they would like to wash my car in exchange for me touting their car washing skill to my friends. So far, none of the people asking me to work for free have been willing to work for free. Go figure.

 

Interview Wins Content of the Year Award

The Yahoo! Contributor Network has announced today that one of my interviews was selected as the winner of one of five Content of the Year awarded for 2012. The article in question, my interview with Jake Reilly, was published by Yahoo! News and was selected as a feature to appear on the front landing page at Yahoo.com.

One day Jake was visiting friends and looked up from his cell phone long enough to notice that all the friends were spending the entire visit texting people who weren't there. The sudden realization that he and his friends seemed more connected to their electronics and social media apps than they were to each other caused him to swear off using his cell phone, email, and social media for 90 days in favor of in-person conversations and good old-fashioned letter writing.

The experience, he says, changed his life and the way he views his friends. Without the crutch of IM and social media messaging, some 'friends' just faded out of his life, others became closer than ever. He even managed to recapture the heart of a former girlfriend.

When I initially heard of the story and decided to interview Jake about his experience, I expected it to be a quirky, almost glib article that was mildly interesting. Instead, as I talked to Jake and dug into his experience, the depth of the emotions he experienced during what he termed his 'Amish' experiment began to come through. I was moved, and I hope that I was able to convey some of that emotion to readers.

Ironically, when it was first published the article went viral with tens of thousands of social media shares and readers measured in the millions. Even before the $1000 bonus for the Content of the Year award from Y!CN, this article was my single highest paid article for any publishing platform. To date, this article has earned a little over $3,300 and it continues to earn royalties every month. That's for about six or seven hours of work.

Most articles don't earn nearly that much, but Y!CN articles which are chosen for features on Yahoo.com can earn thousands of dollars since payment is based on readership statistics. Articles must be entertaining and unique to get such prominent placement. Think about the kind of articles that you can't resist clicking to read more. That's what web publishers want, and most of them are willing to pay well for them. Sometimes, you guess wrong and end up with a dud. At other times, you might write something for the upfront fee with little expectation for future royalties and wind up amazed at its popularity.

What advice do I have for anyone who wants to be a successful web content writer? Write what you'd like to read, but can't find anywhere else. Write often. Be yourself. When you're finished with each article, ask yourself if you would have been disappointed if you had clicked an eye-catching headline to read that article. If the answer is yes, then no matter how many popular search terms or celebrity names you've included, it probably shouldn't be published. Don't use cheap tricks to attract readers who will only end up disappointed. Strive for quality. Learn from your successes and your mistakes. Listen to your editor(s).

More than any paycheck, I am rewarded by overhearing strangers or my son's friends talking about something they read online and realizing that I wrote it. That's happened to me several times, and it's as satisfying as having the referee raise your hand in the middle of the ring after a fight. Getting paid to do what I love to is great, but it's those little moments of vindication, the praise of a stranger, an editor's choice to feature something you've written, or an award like Y!CN's Content of the Year that are my most prized compensation.