Advice from the “Turtlefly”

As writers, we are turtles by nature. We like to hide inside our shells and contemplate the patterns. It’s a necessary, and often UGLY process, which is difficult to SHARE with another person who may NOT be a writer, especially if they are…perhaps say, a social butterfly who prefers to be out and about flying from petal to petal.

There comes a point that the turtle must emerge from the security of her shell and transform into that butterfly if she is to impart the knowledge she crafted while inside. I know – turtles don’t become butterflies, and perhaps I should have used the cliche cocoon, but I’m a sci-fi chic and l prefer to mix DNA.

And so, after a period of darkness, the writer becomes a “Turtlefly.” Often, however, the writer does not become this unless someone starts knocking hard on her shell. “Yo, Turtle. What’s up? You comin’ out anytime soon?” It is to the writer’s surprise that ANYONE is knocking at all. In the density of her contemplations, she concludes that everyone has forgotten her and could give a rat’s booty (hey, there goes another animal!) about her existence. And that’s exactly what she smells like when she emerges from her shell before wrapping up her insecurities: a rat’s booty.

But then the butterfly comes along, like a deus ex machina equipped with Lysol and scrub brush, ready to clean up poor Turtle writer’s stinky aura.

“Dude, time to laugh and play,” says Butterfly. “Lighten the Bleep up!”

Turtle huffs and haws at first, and wants to smash the butterfly’s annoying wings, but eventually, she succumbs and voila!

Turtlefly is here to bounce ideas and circulate energy with Biscayne Writes, who are trying to accomplish similar tasks:

Dear Turtlefly:
Thanks for the feedback on my website. I try to post something new Monday thru Friday, but I have a really busy travel schedule right now, so it’s getting tough. I have some ideas for improving the format of my site, but I haven’t had a chance to really sit down and work things out. I have been going around getting accounts with xtranormal, deviant art, podbean, Flickr etc. so I can have podcasts and videos and things, but that are hosted on other sites. That way I can embed them on my site, but it doesn’t take up bandwidth and memory on my site.

But that comes later.  I actually need a lot of advice on how to promote my site and how to monetize it. I am totally into the idea of using Hostwire, and putting you as a referral so you can get part of the revenue. Right now I don’t get a lot of traffic to my site. I average 15 hits per day mostly from organic Google searches. I am experimenting with Search Engine Optimization. The result is that my articles about Madonna’s biceps and about prom dresses made out of duct tape get the most hits, but I have a terrible bounce rate. I don’t market it very actively at the moment. On occasion, I’ll post a link on Twitter or Facebook. Facebook pushes the most traffic, followed by Twitter. Sometimes, if I write an especially popular article on Fandomania, I notice a spike in traffic to my website.

I also comment sometimes on blogs I like, which in turn gets people to my site. I have about five people that read my blog every day. Three people from California (thru Twitter), one from New England (thru blog comments), and one friend from my old job. Then there are another five or six people who have me on some kind of RSS feed or something, so, they will check out one type of article over the other, although I am not sure how that works. I have ideas for promoting the site, but I need to really get things together. Any ideas for monetizing and driving more traffic to it are welcome. At the moment I am kind of laying low until I have a chance to reformat my blog.

- SeanScottMaguire.com, aka Geek Ambassador

Yo GA!
Do you write while you are flying? I found that this is great time for writing.

You don’t have to go through me to create an affiliate account with Hostwire. And I don’t take any referral feels from you – I am an affiliate myself trying to build traffic so I can make commissions from new web hosting sign-ups. Just go to their site, sign up and cut and paste their embed code into an appropriate ad spot on your site: http://secure.hostwire.com/affiliates/signup.php

And if you can, try to come to the next MWA event at Bookstore in the Grove on Oct. 29. You can read from your blog and promote it. Also, I will be shooting video, and if you notice, I’ve been uploading them to YouTube, which can also help generate more traffic to our web sites. Check out the last one I made:
http://www.biscaynewriters.com/2009/09/30/video-luna-star-cafe-hosts-i-cant-believe-its-not-summer/

And why do you have to reformat your blog? It looks AMAZING!! OK, take it eazy…sorry it takes me a while to write back. I’m circulating a lot of energy these dayz.

Stay tuned for more “Dear Turtlefly,” comin’ to you L-I-V-E and direct from BiscayneWriters.com.