I have had some good luck with AdBrite, although meagre in comparison to Adsense. They were a great source for some extra pocket money and very punctual with their checks. But due to some recent and very annoying new features, I am giving them up.

They have introduced a new feature where advertisers can opt for ‘Channel CPC Ads’. That means, if my website is in the ‘Health & Fitness’ channel, then the ad also gets lined up for approval in my account even though I have specified that I do not want CPC ads at all. And not only this, 100’s of such ads get lined up in my account everyday and the only way to reject them is to manually reject EACH ad and ENTER A REASON for it too!! I might have to hire some person to reject pending ads from my AdBrite account.

After repeated unsuccessful attempts to contact their suppoer and get my account of the Channel CPC Ad program, I have finally decided to put an end to one part of my business relationship with them. As I will need my account to buy ads, I am not closing down my account but simply deleting all my websites from their marketplace.

Goodbye AdBrite!

After all the cards were finally ready to be posted, I took them to the GPO and headed straight for the philately department. I love to buy unique stamps for my annual holiday cards that we send to all our business friends. Peope love to receive cards with stamps that speak about the culture and traditions of the country where the card is sent from.

I was lucky to find some unusual treasures and bought a mix of two types of stamps - one bearing a picture of the famous ‘Taj Mahal’ and the other bearing the picture of a carved Sandalwood elephant and sandalood trees. The latter is also beautifully scented and the scent is Sandalwood of course!

Our Holiday cards have arrived from the printers and here’s what they look like:

Now to print out the list of all business associates and stamp and post these!

If you are considering a career in web writing, it might be a good idea to have some pre-written articles ready for immediate download. Right now, http://www.constant-content.com/ seems to be the only website offering this facility and the market is still open for many more players.

It happens with me and I guess it also happens with other webmasters that you just have to have an article immediately. Contacting your writer and having it written in a day or two seems like a long, impossible wait in such cases. And that leads us to a hunt for ready-to-use articles.

Mind you, I am not taking about free-to-reprint articles or those articles which are sold ‘only to a certain number of persons’. I am talking about articles with Private Label Rights (PLR articles) which transfer all rights to the purchaser.

You can either post your articles for sale on the website mentioned above or out them on sale on your own website.

In my daily course of business, one of the most important tasks I perform is to communicate with content writers. I have some regular writers who provide content for my websites and I am also on a continuous lookout for new creative writers. Since I own mostly quality content websites, ‘SEO’ writers is not what I really need. I am more after identifying and hiring writers who have creative ideas in the ‘Home & Lifestyle’ areas and can also make the articles search-engine friendly without making the article seem a pile of junk filled with ‘keyword-rich’ phrases on the topic.

It is a difficult process to identify such writers and get from them what I want. Many writers are not aware of their own creativity till they write for me. So I have to give almost everyone a chance to see if he or she turns out to be a perfect content-provider for me. Of course, I hit a lot of dead-ends in this proess. It is not rare for me to have paid for some articles and ended up not using those articles at all because they were of inferior quality or unsuitable.

I can classify my writers as:

1. Professional Creative Writers who enjoy doing creative projects at home and then writing about them

2. Amateur Creative Writers who craft and cook and decorate for their hobby and write out their instructions for publishing on websites.

3. Professional Copywriters who have a creative streak in them and give me a little more than just ‘well-researched’ articles by adding some original ideas as well.

4. Professional Writers who give me well-researched information written in a unique way. Fair enough! Sometimes I need just that.

5. Amateur writers who send me articles and tips gathered from their own experiences. These are not writers exactly. They are my website members and visitors and loyal ezine subscribers who send in their tips without even demanding any reimbursement for it.

6. Voluntary Bloggers who blog on my women’s blog site http://www.dcwblogs.com./ I pay them a share of the revenue earned by their blog.

7. Writers who send in good samples of work but give me ‘original’ junk material that I never use. For example, I asked for a ‘Holiday Sales Tips’ articles and I received an article on ‘Shopping during the Holidays’ by a writer who said she was an expert at business topics. Needless to say, I do not go back to these writers beyond the first time.

8. ‘Professional Copywriters’ who give me plagiarised web content which I immediately recognize through http://www.copyscape.com./ What I do with these writers is simple. I sue them!

How Many Writers do you need?

I have various sources of finding good writers and that gives me a varied group of writers to work with. That in turn, gives me lots of creative ideas. Never do the mistake of hiring just one writer who seems to fit your needs. Always have 4-5 good writers working for you. That way, you will have more creative juices flowing and you will also have backups in case one of your writer has other commitments.

Where and How to Find Good Writers and Content Providers

Some of my sources are:

1. Freelance Sites
2. Search on Google for Writer/Photographer/Content Provider
3. Buy/Sell Areas of Webmaster Forums
4. Posting Requirements on my Websites and Newsletters