WebWriMo - what I have learned so far
With just over the half of the moht gone, I am going to take a few moments to reflect on what I have learned from the WebWriMo challenge so far.
Content is hard work
Generating content - lots of it - is hard work. From thinking up new topics to actually typing the stuff to linking and formatting it nicely - Content providers have new earned repect from me.
A little content can go a long way
While I did not always *ahem* manage to write my 2K words a day, it is incredible how little content is actually needed to keep some sites running. If you look, for example at a typical “fun” blog - for the sake of example, take a look at the funcaptain - you will notice that most post seem to be around 50 words long.
This means that with just 500 words, the site could be kept alive for 10 days. If you have a site like that, write 2000 words one day, pace your posts and be done for over a month of 5 post weeks.
Other sites that would benefit from this are sites that are normally lacking in the content area. Wallpaper sites that benefit from a short description of the pics (20 words each), value that can be added to funny picture or video sites with a caption or description (10-50 words). A lot of times, you only need a bit of content per item.
New workflow
This challenge also meant that I revised my content creation workflow.
Before, I would use the online editor in WordPress. With mass content creation, I use a desktop editor (Notepad++), prepare the images locally and then put the content together in the online editor.
It is much faster for me.
Seperation of Writing and Editing
Although not as beautiful as the separation of church and state, it helps to speed things up if you manage to banish your inner editor and just write write write.
Now I have several articles sitting in draft mode that I can (and will) use at a later date.
Growing a moustache
While this is not an option for me, I have learned that there is a guy who is growing a moustache to promote prostrate cancer awareness. Go Greg!
What about you?
What are your experiences so far? Let me know in the comments.
5 Comments so far
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Oy.
I need to narrow my focus; with sites ranging from parenting to coding to making internet monies to spyware removal, and yes, even to collecting those stupid houses and making street scenes for the holidays - I don’t have any content I can rewrite from one site to another.
And since my “day job” is writing php code (40 hours a week) and then I have three clients needing a total of about 25 hours a week, and a family to care for, the time involved is important. So I need to narrow my focus (and broaden those reaches, for instance, adding sites about good wii games and relating it to the site about new console games).
You totally missed the ’s’ in the word respect! That just proves how difficult it is to make content. <3
I’ve tried to comment before, but nothing seems to show up so we’ll see if this one gets through…
Content writing being my main source of income (sadly) I thought this challenge was going to be really easy. I’ve learned this is not the case.
While it is easy to write for other, in which case I get almost immediate reward, writing product descriptions, blog posts, and the like is far more difficult.
With only 10 days left its time to power through my remaining ~32k words. But to be honest I highly doubt I’ll reach it.
Regardless, this has been a great way to keep myself motivated and constantly working. This has easily been my most productive month in a long time.
Haven’t seen a more recent posting, so I thought I’d post here that I’ve hit 50k. In fact, I’ve hit 51,131 words with about 12k to go before I can November complete.
I’m a bit taken aback to see exactly how much I really do in a month since I usually just take it a day at a time and schedule things out in manageable chunks. 63,000 words in a month is akin to a 150 page novel. WTF! I’m in the wrong business!
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