If you are a freelance writer then you will be familiar with the big drop in certain publishing websites such as ezinearticles and hubpages. For example, one notable publisher on ezine was getting a lot of impressions on his writing profile. Since the update (codename Panda) his profile has moved down rapidly in the search results, as has many other people who have seen similar problems with their traffic.
Obviously certain sites were hit more than others, like we know ezinearticles was penalised, but contrary to that, DemandMedia actually saw an increase in their search results. Overall, there were many losers in the update, but also many winners.
...because of the loss in traffic freelance writers were receiving, what are they doing now to earn an income online? It seems the trend has moved quite rapidly into niche sites and expert information exchange. Gone are the days of writing generic text on a subject and getting it high in the results with little to no work.
There are a few options which have now opened up to freelance writers -
- Writing for a niche blog - this is quite popular as many of these blogs already have an existing readership who are likely to share your post. If you are already writing about parenting, then tapping into a popular parenting blog can increase your following to no end.
- Heavy optimisation - if you have built up a readership on an article site, it may be hard to let that go. Some writers have managed to make this work for them though. For example, this baby clothing article picked up quite a lot of traction from the authors readers, who are then encouraged to share it and blog about it. This social media promotion provides extra traffic, but also provides quality links which helps the article rank organically.
- Starting your own blog - if you are a enthusiastic writer about parenting, and already have a readership, then it can be quite easy to start your own parenting blog. Promoting it to your existing readership can be easy and that way you do not have a cold start. Admittedly you will be taking a couple of steps back...but in the end you are in control of everything so you are given a lot more flexibility
