I am Not Making Any Promises . . .
. . . but I hope to post here more and get this blog a little notice. I just had an experience with an online blogging service that was interesting, to say the least. I will not name the company, because they were as nice as could be expected, given the situation.
The blogging service pays $5.00 per weekly post on various topics. The contract with freelance writers does not require that pictures be posted. That became a bone of contention when I sometimes did and sometimes did not post pictures. Call me snooty, maybe even stupid, but I'm not going to snap photos and/or troll the Internet for copyright free photos for $5.00 per post. The topics I was writing on did not exactly lend themselves to graphics. Supreme Court cases on church-state issues and covering the Republican primaries. Yes, I could have looked for a copyright-free picture of the Supreme Court building or an electoral map, but for $5.00. No. As it was, I did provided pictures most of the time for my other blogs. A few days ago, I did not feel like breaking out the camera to take a picture of a book I reviewed. Or maybe they wanted me to steal a graphic from Amazon.com. Anyway, the next thing I knew, I received an e-mail saying that if I did not submit a photo with every post, they would end the relationship. I don't know if they expected me to beg to be kept or what, but I told them the problem was not going to change and that even when I submitted pictures according to their instructions, I was getting email messages suggesting that I had not. I never had an article returned for revisions or outright rejected, but they did not want my content because it did not always include pictures. Whatever. I am not going to break out the digital camera and upload pictures for their measly $5.00. Sorry.
Okay, so why am I writing about this here? Am I just venting inappropriately. Yes, a little bit. More importantly, the experience, while upsetting, did get me thinking. I have my own craft blog. A blog I don't pay much attention. A blog that needs attention, and yes, even a few pictures. I can write some of the articles that I would have written for the blogging company here. I can choose whether or not to post photos. This blog won't bore readers with the nuances of the Lemon test or Edwards v. Aguillard. I promise.
You may have noticed that there are no pictures on this craft blog. Odd as that may be, my aim in this blog was and is to point people to other craft blogs, online classes, workshops, and the like. (Yeah, I still use the serial comma.) This blog is not here to showcase my work. I may post a fuzzy picture of an art journal page or two in the future, or perhaps a greeting card. Eventually, there will be some graphics and buttons in the sidebar. That's about it.
Pictures of a sort may come soon. My greeting cards have been published in five issues of Take Ten. As soon as I can figure out how to put one of those cool "I was published in" graphics (as seen here) on this blog, I will add them to the sidebar. In the most recent issue, three of my cards were featured in the "Glorious Green" article. I was stunned. I have never had the honor of getting one of the features in Take Ten. Furthermore, the cards were from two years ago.
The blogging service pays $5.00 per weekly post on various topics. The contract with freelance writers does not require that pictures be posted. That became a bone of contention when I sometimes did and sometimes did not post pictures. Call me snooty, maybe even stupid, but I'm not going to snap photos and/or troll the Internet for copyright free photos for $5.00 per post. The topics I was writing on did not exactly lend themselves to graphics. Supreme Court cases on church-state issues and covering the Republican primaries. Yes, I could have looked for a copyright-free picture of the Supreme Court building or an electoral map, but for $5.00. No. As it was, I did provided pictures most of the time for my other blogs. A few days ago, I did not feel like breaking out the camera to take a picture of a book I reviewed. Or maybe they wanted me to steal a graphic from Amazon.com. Anyway, the next thing I knew, I received an e-mail saying that if I did not submit a photo with every post, they would end the relationship. I don't know if they expected me to beg to be kept or what, but I told them the problem was not going to change and that even when I submitted pictures according to their instructions, I was getting email messages suggesting that I had not. I never had an article returned for revisions or outright rejected, but they did not want my content because it did not always include pictures. Whatever. I am not going to break out the digital camera and upload pictures for their measly $5.00. Sorry.
Okay, so why am I writing about this here? Am I just venting inappropriately. Yes, a little bit. More importantly, the experience, while upsetting, did get me thinking. I have my own craft blog. A blog I don't pay much attention. A blog that needs attention, and yes, even a few pictures. I can write some of the articles that I would have written for the blogging company here. I can choose whether or not to post photos. This blog won't bore readers with the nuances of the Lemon test or Edwards v. Aguillard. I promise.
You may have noticed that there are no pictures on this craft blog. Odd as that may be, my aim in this blog was and is to point people to other craft blogs, online classes, workshops, and the like. (Yeah, I still use the serial comma.) This blog is not here to showcase my work. I may post a fuzzy picture of an art journal page or two in the future, or perhaps a greeting card. Eventually, there will be some graphics and buttons in the sidebar. That's about it.
Pictures of a sort may come soon. My greeting cards have been published in five issues of Take Ten. As soon as I can figure out how to put one of those cool "I was published in" graphics (as seen here) on this blog, I will add them to the sidebar. In the most recent issue, three of my cards were featured in the "Glorious Green" article. I was stunned. I have never had the honor of getting one of the features in Take Ten. Furthermore, the cards were from two years ago.
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