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PROTECT YOURSELF FROM SCAMS!  Research all business opportunities thoroughly, and never blow off other people's bad experiences.  Ask around (and listen!).  The Scams101 Message Board is a good place to start.  What's that?  You've found a Biz Op and you're wondering if it's endorsed by FIB?...  Not unless it's listed in MaaMaw's Magnificent Toolbox.






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FIB - Scams 101

Pros and cons

Posted By: Mel. White
Date: Wednesday, April 15, 2009, at 10:06 p.m.(pst)

In Response To: Re: I like this business model - pros, cons? (Diana)

>> I wasn't thinking of a blog at all - JUST articles to be distributed
>> on article & blog directories.

I (personally) have a (professional) concern with submitting articles to the "take my article, please" network -- that of losing copyright. If the material ends up on a site other than your own, there is nothing to prevent someone from taking your affiliate link and substituting theirs. If it's other types of materials (like stories), then theft does happen.

I've had friends who had their writing swiped and put in someone else's book (to sell.)

This may not be an issue for you. It is for me, because I do get royalty income from publishers (as in, I have sold to places like Baen Books and Benbella Books... large publishing houses) and if my work shows up elsewhere I don't get royalties for it (one story has had royalty income that lasted for about 10 years). I'm pretty cautious about copyrights.

I do, for instance, have copyrights of my old articles I wrote for Suite 101... some day I'll turn them into several books on Wildscaping and use photos that we took on our travels. That will go on Amazon, and the income from the book may continue for many years.

Your business model will work only if you control the places your words appear (for an example, writing for a large and popular blog network with a target audience such as http://scienceblogs.com/ Their copyrights are secure, they develop an audience, and things they recommend do get bought (and they get some affiliate income from it.)

I don't know much about the other model (write it and release it into the wild), so I can't comment on it. I *do* know that the 'write and control publication' model works. I've gotten back into writing and art, and am beginning to apply that model to my work.

The other thing I found out is that you should do some test runs first. I did this with my webcomic. I'm not truly happy with the results for the first one... BUT... it's a prelude to putting my 3-issue graphic novel on the web (which had a good audience when it was in print 20 years ago) and doing a fourth one. In setting up the test one, I ran into ALL sorts of issues that nobody told me about (like, having a banner for the top of the page. D'oh!) A friend and I are testing out using a Wiki as a "chapter a week book with illustrations" -- a prelude to possibly publishing something as a book.

So, test out your model. Try some different things. Look at other articles and google a sentence from them to see how rapidly they're being picked up and how broad the distribution is.

The business model is an interesting one, but I do think you're going to need to tweak. I've seen some similar things elsewhere and they didn't work... but at its base, it's not an UNworkable idea.

If you do the "release into the wild", I think you're probably going to have to have a main site with a lot of stuff on it for your released articles to be successful. There's a few folks around (I can't think of names but I bet the board buddies can) who are "gurus" who occasionally put out release-into-the-wild articles and get a lot of hits back to their main site (which is packed with info and things to buy.)

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