I enjoy writing. I like the research and the organizing. I love the writing and even enjoy the editing and re-visioning. About the only thing I have trouble with is choosing topics and finding time.
I also love working on websites. It is like working a puzzle. Deciding what to use and where to put it. Getting it all to work together in a pleasing, logical way. Fitting all the little pieces together to create a showcase for the content.
I’m not sure which I enjoy the most. The problem is I don’t seem to have enough time to do both. I frequently have to make a choice and the websites usually win for the simple reason that they are ready money.
I don’t yet have regular clients for writing. Most of my current writing projects are for our blogs. I do a little anonymous copy writing through an online service, but it doesn’t pay enough to brag about. If I find enough jobs of interest, I can make a hundred or so a month, but no where near enough to make a significant impact on my finances.
I make the choice a financial one because it’s the easy way. “Follow the money.” is a shallow and trite way of deciding, but it works if you enjoy both alternatives. But, designing websites is a back-end business. The designer’s name isn’t likely to be nationally known except in the immediate industry. Not that I expect to ever reach that stature. I’m not innovative or ambitious enough for that. My web design goals are simply to make enough money, while doing something I enjoy, to pay bills and have a small “nest egg” for impulse purchases and vacations. So, it is mostly about the money.
The writing is something else entirely. It is a way to share my feelings, memories, and dreams. I could make more money with the agency I work for, if I was willing to write anything that was available. Their job listing board is usually full. There are not many top-level jobs, but the next level down usually has more topics than I could write full time in a week. The thing is, writing is such a personal thing for me that I can’t make myself take on projects that are ethically or philosophically distasteful to me. Not that they are legally wrong, just that they offend my sensibilities. When a proposed article is supposed to be so thickly padded with keywords that making the text readable is almost impossible, I simply can’t make myself do it. If I wanted to write advertisements, I would have majored there instead of Journalism and Creative Writing.
I guess I need to find a way to get writing assignments for feature stories or even on-line biographies. Something that doesn’t care about the percentage of keywords to text. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. I can handle the ones that stick to a realistic keyword percentage. As a web designer, I understand about search engine optimization needs. I can fit keywords into the content on as much as a 5 percent basis without a problem.
It’s the ones that demand 20 keywords be repeated 2 or 3 times each in a 200 word article that hit my personal wall. That means that from 20 to 30 percent of the words in the text are already defined and you have to find ways to fit them into logical sentences that can be used to form readable paragraphs. To me, that reeks of spam and I simply can’t make myself do it.
from kent smith nz
I realize there are people who enjoy doing this. Crafting copy that uses all the buzz words to make a sales pitch requires intelligence and talent. I’ve read that many famous writers and other creative people got their start as copy writers. I’m sure others started out as telemarketers and I can’t make myself do that either.
I am afraid that my writing will always lose out to the web designing until I can find a convenient way to get writing assignments that suit my tastes. Making content into an acrostic would be more fun for me than trying to cram multiple instances of the same three word phrases into one short paragraph of text.
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