Free Holiday Reading

Just a quickie to recommend that, if you're after some free holiday reading, you point your browser at the newly launched website www.blogaholidayread.co.uk today.

The site is operated by Penguin Books (UK). They say:

Blog a Holiday Read, the perfect excuse to put your feet up, relax, and escape into one of Penguin's Top 500 bestselling fiction titles, guaranteed to get the nation talking, and you yearning for a break to soak up some top reads. Here's how it works:

Sign up and, if you're quick enough, you'll become one of the lucky people to receive a randomly chosen, FREE Penguin in the post. Plus you'll be the first to review it here, enabling the blog, and comments, to begin!

You can see the books being promoted on the website - there's a wide range, from Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Of course, you don't get to choose which book you receive, but I guess that's part of the fun ;-)

As you may gather from the quote above, if you want to participate in this promotion, you are meant to read the book and submit a review to the Holiday Read Blog within six weeks of receiving it.

As far as I can tell this promotion is open to anyone in the world. In any event, you are asked to enter the country you live in when registering. Don't hang about, though, as this promotion will close as soon as all the free books have been allocated.

Good luck, and I hope you get a book you like!

P.S. I've just heard that I've been allocated Your Blue-Eyed Boy by Helen Dunmore - 'A compelling and passionate psychological thriller'. Sounds good to me!

P.P.S. If you apply and are successful, why not add a comment here letting me and other readers know which book you are getting?

P.P.S.S. Just heard they are fully subscribed already, within a few hours of my posting about it. Very sorry if you tried and missed out.

Writers Bureau Poetry & Short Story Contest

There is still just time to enter the 2008 Poetry and Short Story Competition run by my old friends at The Writers Bureau.

For those who don't know, The Writers Bureau is the UK's leading distance learning college for writers. In days gone by I was a freelance tutor and assessor for them, and I also wrote some of their course material.

The competition is for short stories no longer than 2000 words and poems of up to 40 lines. There is an entry fee of 5 UKP or 9 USD per entry, unless you also happen to subscribe to their newsletter Freelance Market News, in which case reduced fees of 4 UKP/7 USD apply. Work may be on any subject or theme, but should not have been previously published.

The top prize in each category is 1,000 UKP (almost 2,000 USD). There are also nine further prizes in each category, comprising 400, 200, 100 and six prizes of 50 UKP.

The judge for the poetry competition is Alison Chisholm, while for short stories it is Iain Pattison. I know Iain in particular quite well (buyers of my Quick Cash Writing course can read one his excellent stories in the Short Stories module), and you might perhaps be interested to check out this old issue of my E-Writer newsletter, where I set out some of Iain's own advice to people entering short story contests. It's always useful to know what the judge of a writing competition is looking for!

Finally, the closing date is 30 June 2008, so you'll need to get your entry in pretty soon. Here's another link to the full competition details.

Good luck!

Free Short Story Contest

I thought some of you might be interested in this free short story contest, which is sponsored by the DIY self-publishing company Wordclay.

They are actually running two parallel contests, one for a single short story and the other for a short story collection. To enter the latter, you have to have enough short stories to fill the pages of a 48-page book. The maximum length for a single story is 5,000 words.

There are some good prizes on offer for a free contest, including $500 for the winner in each category and $250 for the runner-up. There are also prizes of publication in book form by the sponsors for the other short-listed entries. You do have to register at the site before you can enter, but there is no obligation to buy anything. The closing date is 11.59 pm ET on 31 May 2008 (i.e. before 1 June 2008), so you have about a week to get your story (or stories) in. Once again, here is a link for further details.

Good luck if you decide to enter this contest!

A New Reason to be an Amazon Reviewer

I've just found out a good reason for reviewing products at the Amazon online store - you may receive an invitation to join their new Amazon Vine program and get books, DVDs and so on free of charge. Here's the first paragraph of an email I got from them this morning...

As one of our most valued customer reviewers, we would like to offer you a special invitation to join an exciting new Amazon program called Amazon Vine. As a member of this exclusive community, you will have access to pre-release and new products across various Amazon categories, and the opportunity to be among the very first to review them. There is no cost to you to participate or to receive Vine products. We are simply asking for your time in writing reviews for the products you select from the program.

The email goes on to explain that members of Amazon Vine receive a monthly newsletter listing items that are available for review. You simply choose the items you want, and they are sent to you free.

I was quite surprised to receive this invitation, as I've only ever reviewed about a dozen items on Amazon.co.uk (and no, they're not my own books!). But I've bought quite a lot of stuff from them over the years, and am also an affiliate of theirs, so maybe that had some influence too.

I understand that the Amazon Vine program also operates in the US, though I'm not sure about other areas such as France and Germany.

I tend to review items on Amazon I have strong feelings about, perhaps where I disagree with other reviewers and want to 'set the record straight'. Of course, you don't get paid for reviewing on Amazon, but there is nothing to stop you adapting your reviews and publishing them on your blog or website if you wish (which, again, I have done on occasion).

Anyway, I'm grateful to Amazon for offering me this opportunity, and look forward to receiving my first list of free items available for review soon!

Guest Post: All About WEbook

I'm pleased to introduce a guest post today from Melissa Jones, Content Manager of WEbook.com and author of the WEbook blog.

For those who don't know, WEbook is a community writing, editing and publishing project. It aims to use the power of the internet to bring writers together and get them to pool their talents in collaborative writing ventures.

I'm convinced that projects such as WEbook are going to become very big indeed in the years ahead, as new ways of working together creatively with the aid of the net are explored and developed. WEbook offers any writer the opportunity to get involved and see for themselves how online collaboration can work in practice. But perhaps I'd better move aside and let Melissa explain more...

WEbook: The People's Publisher - by Melissa Jones

It's no secret that the traditional publishing industry is - how can I put this? - a bit behind the times.

Every year, a handful of editors select a handful of books and, through massive marketing and PR, attempt to turn them into blockbusters. How they decide which books to promote heavily is largely guess-work; as William Strachan, editor in chief at Carroll & Graf Publishers said in a 2007 New York Times article, "Nobody has the key." That same article points out that, while publishers use the internet to market to their readers, "information rarely flows the other way - from readers back to the editors."

Enter WEbook.com, the people's publisher. Founded by Itai Kohavi, author of two novels and a children's book, WEbook is based on a radically different model, bringing together the best elements of social networking, crowd-sourcing, and web technology to change the way books are written and published. At WEbook, essentially, the readers are the editors.

So what can you do at WEbook?

• Read and Review. WEbook has hundreds of active projects, including collections of articles on everything from the first year of teaching to the first sexual experience. Find a project you're interested in, and read and give feedback to others' work.
• Write. Contribute a new story, poem, or article to an existing project. Or, if you have a book idea of your own, start a new project. You'll be able to decide whether you want to write your book by yourself, get feedback from other WEbookers, or invite your friends to contribute.
• Connect. Project forums allow you to brainstorm about your ideas, solicit research or other assistance, or just chat about writing. You can also connect with other writers on the site-wide forums, and by joining a group.
• Get Published. When a book is completed, it can be submitted for publication. WEbook isn't about choices made by one or two folks behind their desks. Instead, the entire WEbook community votes on which books are worthy. WEbook will consider the highest-rated books for publication, and authors get a 50% share of profits from book sales.

While community votes will ultimately determine what goes to press, we're particularly excited about a few projects that are creating a lot of buzz, both on and off the site. Ex-Pat Journal chronicles the adventures of WEbookers in Thailand, Korea, Costa Rica, France, Cambodia, Nigeria, and - wait for it - Canada. 101 Things Every Man Should Know How to Do is the ultimate guide to guydom, covering cooking a steak to fighting a bear. And Nano Stories challenges writers to create a dramatic arc in 500 words or less.

For a low-pressure entry point to the site, try Haiku Life Stories or The Writing Salon. If you feel like settling in for a good read, you'll be pleased to find quite a few brave souls writing novels on WEbook. I recommend checking out The Open, a tale of vengeance and golf; A Case of Judgment, which puts a modern spin on a classic horror tale; and In the Wake of the Enchantress, a historical novel set in the early days of World War I.

WEbook recently published its first book, Pandora, a romantic thriller written by 34 writers, editors, and other contributors - including me! (once you buy the book, flip to chapters 17 and 26 to read my contribution). If you want to check out the first few chapters for free you can read them here or text the word "webook" to phone number 41411 on your mobile and read them on your very own web-enabled phone. WEbook launched to the public in mid-April. Since then, the number of active projects has grown at a feverish pace, with more new work added every day.

We'll be opening our first voting cycle in the coming months. For now, drop by the site to read, give feedback, and write, and to connect with a fast-growing network of like-minded folks out to revolutionize the publishing world.

10 Things You May Not Know About The WCCL Network

In this blog I quite often refer to my publishers, The WCCL Network. However, from the feedback I get I know that there are still quite a few misunderstandings about them. So I thought I would take this opportunity to cast a little more light on WCCL (as I'll call them for short from now on).

1. WCCL is the online arm of White Cliff Computing Limited, an international new media group. And despite what some people think, I am not employed by WCCL, and I certainly don't own them!

2. The Managing Director of WCCL is Karl Moore. Karl is an author of two published books on computer programming. He is also a self-development guru of international renown. As well as his homepage, he has a blog at www.karlblog.com and a self-development forum at www.karlforum.com.

3. WCCL is an online publishing company. As such it is quite different from Clickbank, which is simply a self-publishing platform. All WCCL courses, manuals and software products are commissioned from specialist authors and software designers. All WCCL courses and manuals are professionally edited, designed and produced.

4. WCCL currently offers nearly 100 different product lines, in categories including Writers & Artists, Self-Development, Internet Business Tools, Computer Privacy tools, Windows Utilities, and UK Driving Products. In total they sell nearly 2000 different products.

5. WCCL runs one of the best affiliate programs on the internet. If you have a blog or website, you can sign up with them to promote any (or all) of their products. You will then receive a generous commission any time someone makes a purchase via your link. See my blog post about this for more info.

6. WCCL also provides a range of free services for writers. These include the forum Mywriterscircle.com (which I run in partnership with them), the internet radio station WritersFM, the writers chat room at www.mywriterschat.com, and the free Smart Writers newsletter. In addition, this blog is sponsored by WCCL.

7. WCCL are always happy to consider proposals for new courses and manuals that will fit into their portfolio. If you have an idea for such a product (or, indeed, already have such a product) you are welcome to submit a proposal and outline to them in the normal way. If they like your idea, they will make you an offer. I shan't provide contact details here, as I wouldn't like them to be inundated; but if you are keen, I'm sure you can soon discover this information for yourself.

8. WCCL also have a number of free giveaways. These include the writers' giveaway site, the self-growth giveaway, the software giveaway, and their free Motivator software. Thousands of dollars of free software are available from these sites. You may have to sign up to receive a newsletter as a condition of obtaining it, but you can of course unsubscribe at any time.

9. WCCL provide a free online helpdesk service at www.myhelphub.com. This operates 24/7, and offers advice and assistance to buyers of all WCCL products (you won't find anything like this at Clickbank, by the way!).

10. Finally, WCCL have an active program of charitable giving. Among other things, in the last year they have donated sheep and beehives to help develop starving towns in Africa and the East, provided over 6,550 cups of food to feed thousands of starving children, given over 2,500 UK pounds in food to starving and abused cats and dogs in north-east England, organized free relaxation workshops for thousands of nurses in British Columbia, Canada, and provided food for rescued wild horses at the Black Beauty Ranch, Texas. So if you buy any product from WCCL (including any of my courses!), you can be confident that some of your money will be going to support these and other excellent causes!

Who wants to take over a writing blog?

No, not this one! My colleague and near-neighbour Linda Jones is looking for someone to take over her Freelance Writing Tips blog. In a post made yesterday, she writes:

Time is against me. As much as I would love to continue with this blog, and have plenty of information and ideas that I could upload, it's just not happening.

I think the small matter of having a family to spend time with, and a company to run has something to do with this. If you are interested in taking the baton (is that the expression? Oh you know what I mean!) then please get in touch.

Linda says she has made no attempt to monetize her blog, other than setting up an Amazon bookshop. However, this is certainly an area that could be developed in future.

If you are interested in taking over an attractive-looking blog which has already built up a solid readership, please contact Linda directly via her blog.

Hardline Online Magazine Open for Contributions

Hardline Magazine is a new monthly online publication created by and for writers. It features both fiction and non-fiction writing: short stories, poetry, reviews and articles.

Hardline Magazine is co-edited by two members of my forum, Steve Sweeney and Ken Preston. The poetry editor is Amie Saramelkonian (whom forum members may know better as our moderator Saturnine).

The magazine exists primarily to showcase the work of unpublished, and self published, writers. It's free to view, and they are not currently paying any fees to contributors. There are, however, plans to run a contest in each issue, with prizes for the winning authors.

Even though it is non-paying, the editors are adamant that quality will be key to the success of the magazine. They write: 'Hardline has to be a project that bears the hallmark of quality - it will benefit no-one if the quality of writing is negligible. So, if you are going to submit a piece of work to Hardline, be it fiction or nonfiction, it needs to be tight, well-written and compelling. Hardline needs to showcase good writing if it's to gain attention, and a reading audience - please help us to help you. We eagerly await your contributions.'

Hardline Magazine is already attracting interest from established authors and publishers, thanks partly to groups that have been set up at the major social networking sites such as Bebo, Facebook, Technorati, and (especially) MySpace. According to Steve Sweeney, even before its official launch the Hardline Magazine website was attracting around 100 'hits' a day, and this figure is sure to go on rising.

If you are interested in submitting work to Hardline Magazine - and Steve has just put out a call for short stories for issue two - take a look at the launch issue, then go to the Contact page to see where your submissions and enquiries should be directed. Note that Hardline Magazine will soon be moving to a new, permanent home at www.hardlinemagazine.com.

Writers at Large: Prisons

In this new series of articles, I'll be discussing some of the many opportunities that exist for writers to make a sideline income talking about writing and encouraging others to write. In this first article I'm looking at writer-in-prison work.

I should start by saying that all these articles are written primarily with reference to the UK, which is where I live. Most will apply to a greater or lesser extent in other countries as well, but you will need to do your own research here.

The UK Prison Service has a long tradition of inviting writers (and other artists) into prisons. The role involves encouraging prisoners with an interest in writing to explore and develop this. Writers in prisons typically run writing groups and classes, and also offer one-to-one advice and support. They may give readings of their own work, and also take on projects such as producing an anthology or display of prisoners' writing.

Another aspect can involve collaborating with other freelancers, such as musicians, actors and visual artists. A collaborative project might, for example, involve writing, producing and performing a play or even a musical. The ultimate aim, of course, is to enrich the day-to-day experience of the inmates, and hopefully make it less likely they will re-offend when they are released.

Many people (including me, I admit) find the thought of working in a prison rather daunting. However, most writers I know who have done this have found it a rewarding and enjoyable experience. As a writer in prison, you won't be expected to try to 'convert' the inmates to writing. Rather, in most cases you will work with a small group of prisoners who have expressed an interest in creative writing. With lots of time on their hands, writing can be a popular pastime, and one which can be therapeutic for the individuals concerned in coming to terms with the situation they find themselves in.

Writer-in-prison work in the UK is reasonably paid, though you won't get rich. Typically, you will be employed for three days a week, for a period of three to twelve months (which may be extended). The sort of fee I have seen offered is 20,000 UK pounds (around $38,000 US) a year, pro rata. So if you were employed for a year working three days a week, you would receive 12,000 pounds, plus travel and any other out-of-pocket expenses. This is just an example, and in practice you might get paid more or less than this.

In my experience, the best place to find ads for writer-in-prison jobs in the UK is the Guardian newspaper - check out the Creative & Media pages on Mondays, or you could do a search in their jobs section.

You don't need to be a 'household name' to get work as a writer in prison, though obviously you need some sort of track record as a writer. All types of writer are required, and this can be a good opportunity for poets, who can otherwise struggle to find paying outlets for their talents. Indeed, many of the people I know who have done this type of work - e.g. my old friend Gary Boswell - are primarily poets, though Gary is also a talented short-story and non-fiction writer.

Finally - and this is why I started this series with a look at prison work - there is currently a call for writers to work in prisons in Lancashire. The organisation concerned, Litfest, writes:

We are running six short-term residencies across Lancashire prisons during April and May 2008 for the Offenders Learning and Skills Council at Lancaster and Morecambe College. These residencies will work with offenders to produce new writing, audio recordings and artwork to be broadcast on BBC Radio Lancashire and exhibited across the county and online throughout 2008.

We want to recruit 6 writers to take part in an initial training and development programme to both equip them with the skills and understanding to work in prisons, and to develop a model for working collaboratively with visual and sound artists.

Writers will be selected from this initial programme to work on the residencies. There are bursaries and travel expenses available to attend the training and development sessions and writers fees for those working on the residencies.

For more information about this, and details of how to apply, please see this topic on my forum. Note that the closing date for applications is 14 March 2008, so you will need to move quite swiftly if you are interested.

In future 'Writers at Large' articles I will look at the opportunities that exist for writers in other fields, including schools, adult education, writers circles/conferences and in the community.

Advice on Becoming an About.com Subject Guide

I've written a few times in this blog (most recently here) about the opportunities for freelance writers and editors with the giant About.com website.

For those who don't know, About.com Guides are home-based freelances who take responsibility for a particular content area on the About.com site. Guides are expected to build up 'their' sites by sourcing (and writing) articles, adding links, hosting web-based discussions, and so on.

Payment is based on the advertising revenue generated by your site, but as long as you fulfil the company's requirements they guarantee you will earn a minimum of $725 a month. Maximum earnings are unlimited, based on a percentage of advertising turnover - according to the About.com website, they have some Guides who earn in excess of $100,000 a year. You can see a list of the current vacancies for Guides here.

Anyway, my main reason for writing about this again today is that, via the excellent TrafficJam website, I discovered this blog article on getting a job as an About.com guide, from someone who has actually been through the application process. It's quite short, but if you're thinking of applying for this opportunity (and at an earlier stage in my freelance career it's something I would have seriously considered) there's some very solid advice here.

Qassia: A New Revenue-Sharing Website

I recently signed up with Qassia, a new revenue-sharing content site that also operates as a web directory.

Like certain other sites such as Helium Knowledge, Qassia lets anyone upload articles to its website. Unlike most other such sites, however, you then receive a full 100 per cent of the advertising revenue generated by the Google AdSense ads displayed beside your own content (most other services split the revenue from advertising 50:50 or less).

Content on Qassia is called 'intel' (short for intelligence). Intel can be anything from full-length articles to an interesting fact. One of the many innovative features of Qassia is that new intel is rated by other Qassia members. The average rating given to your intel determines how high it appears in search results in the Qassia web directory for the topic in question.

As well as giving you the advertising revenue generated by your intel, Qassia also allows you to include a link back to your own website (or any website of your choice) on the same page as each piece of intel you contribute. This could help drive extra traffic to your site, and should also help boost your site's ranking in the search engines. As you may know, most search engines rate a website's popularity according to the number of incoming links it has, especially when these links are non-reciprocal (as is the case with Qassia).

Qassia operates in its own internal currency called Qassia Dollars. These are earned by posting intel and by rating intel posted by other members. Qassia Dollars cannot currently be converted directly into cash, but you can allocate your Qassia Dollars to any number of websites you want to promote. The more Qassia Dollars you allocate to any particular site, the higher up the Qassia rankings it appears. I must admit I don't fully understand this yet, but no doubt all will become clear in due course!

I'm still getting the hang of Qassia, but I can already see it has the potential to become huge. In some ways it reminds me of Kwickee, the mobile phone content publishing company I was involved with a few years ago (see this link for historical information!). Kwickee was ultimately unsuccessful, but in my work as a group editor for them I saw hundreds of articles submitted, many of which I think would now be prime candidates for Qassia. Articles about local tourist attractions (as were many of the Kwickee articles I edited) are a case in point - so if you wrote any of these for Kwickee, this could be the perfect outlet for them. On the other hand, I'm not sure that Qassia is really a suitable place for posting fiction.

Qassia is still in pre-launch phase, and currently you can only join at the invitation of an existing member. However, I'm more than happy to invite any reader of this blog to join through me! Just click on any of the Qassia links in this post, and follow the on-screen instructions to sign up. It's free of charge, of course. I found it all reasonably intuitive, but if you have any problems, do feel free to run them past me and I'll help if I can.

Oh, and look out for my first bit of intel, my recipe for the Greek vegetarian speciality briam! And yes, this did start life as a Kwickee article!

Write a TV Ad for a Book!

In my blog last year I mentioned a contest held by thriller writer Dean Koontz to promote his new book The Good Guy. Contestants had to write and produce a 30-second video trailer for the book. All entries appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube, and as far as I know the winning entry was broadcast on US TV.

Well, UK publishers Little, Brown have decided to use a similar method to promote the new crime novel by the American author Patricia Cornwell, Book of the Dead. They are running a competition for people to create a 20-second TV ad for this book. Entrants have to shoot their own 20-second video, and/or submit a script and/or a storyboard for an ad (so you can still enter even if you don't own a video camera). The contest is only open to people in the UK and Eire, unfortunately, and you must be over 18.

Submissions must include a product shot (included in the competition kit) for a minimum of 5 seconds, so you really only have to come up with a 15-second advertisement. There is a top prize of 2500 UK pounds for the winning entry, which will be chosen by Patricia Cornwell herself from a shortlist of six.

For more details, and to download a competition kit, visit www.bookofthedead.hyptv.com. The closing date is Friday 29 February.

Good luck!

My Thoughts on the Simpleology Blogging Course

In my post yesterday I mentioned this new course on blogging for fun and profit. As I said in that post, the course is currently being given away free to anyone who has a blog, so long as they mention it in a blog post. I promised I'd let you know a bit more about the course after I'd evaluated it, so here's what I thought...

To start with, accessing the course proved more tricky than I expected. As you may know if you've taken up this offer, once you've placed the pre-written post on your blog, you then have to enter the URL on this web page. I assumed after doing this that I would 'simply' be taken to the course material, but not a bit of it. Instead I was taken through a series of steps that involved confirming that I wanted to sign up with Simpleology, setting a user-name and password, viewing a 'one-time offer' of something or the other, and being invited to download various items of free software.

Indeed, so laborious was the process that I was on the point of deleting my original post and apologising to anyone who had acted upon it. However, after jumping through all these hoops, I did eventually arrive at a page where I could access the free blogging course. And I have to say, it's very well done and informative.

The core of the course comprises 15 lessons. Each of these lessons is around five minutes and plays in a browser window (you DON'T need to download any special software to watch them). The lessons start with the absolute basics - i.e. what is a blog? - and move on through topics such as what to blog about, what blogging software to use, how to attract more readers, how to make money from your blog, and so on. Nowadays I'm quite an experienced blogger, but there were a number of suggestions that I hadn't thought of, and I definitely plan to act on these in the months ahead.

Alongside each lesson, there is an interactive quiz you can take to test your understanding of the points covered. You can also download the lessons in printable (PDF) format and as audio files (for listening to on your MP3 player). Some bonus materials are included as well, including interviews with a number of well-known bloggers in the Internet Marketing field.

Overall, it's a highly professional course, and if you have a blog I do recommend checking it out now while it's still free. But - as mentioned above - do be aware that accessing it will involve negotiating what seemed to me an excessive number of hurdles. It's worth noting that you don't have to accept ANY of the offers made to you or download any of Simpleology's proprietary software in order to view the course. Once you're logged in to the Simpleology 'WebCockpit' page, you'll see a heading 'Daily Targets' at the top left. The blogging course can be found in the right-hand column under Electives. Click on Blogging, and the course material will all be set out for you.

Finally, I should say that Simpleology appears to be a personal development system for organising your life, and in particular your business. Their logo has the strap-line 'The Simple Science of Getting What You Want'. By signing up to view the free course, you also become a member of Simpleology, and get access to a lot more course material as well. Personally I haven't looked into this - I'm not sure it's quite my thing really - but if you're interested in learning more, obviously the opportunity is there for you.

Free Multi-Media Course for Bloggers

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Fifty Pounds an Hour Entering Consumer Contests!

I'm talking mainly to my readers in the UK and Republic of Ireland in this post, so I hope the rest of you out there will bear with me. Your turn will come again soon!

If you're in either of these countries, did you happen to see the new TV show on UK Channel 5 last night titled It Pays to Watch? It's on at 7.30 pm on Wednesdays, and features Martin Lewis, the renowned personal finance campaigner.

Martin runs the excellent Moneysaving Expert website. If you haven't already, by the way, you really should sign up here for his free weekly email of money-saving (and money-making) tips. You can also read about the TV show, and view an extended online version, at the It Pays to Watch website.

Anyway, the show was very interesting - if a little frenetic at times - but one thing that especially caught my eye was when they interviewed a guy called Glynn Olive. Since he retired from the police force in 2007, Glynn has been spending an hour a day simply entering consumer competitions. During that time he has apparently won over 6000 UK pounds' (about $12000 US) worth of prizes. Some of these, such as a holiday at a five-star hotel in Malta, he and his family enjoyed - but others they didn't want, such as a Kymco motor scooter, he sold on for cash.

Martin Lewis worked out that, in effect, Glynn's hobby was earning him a staggering fifty pounds ($100 US) an hour. In fact, because in the UK prizes won in consumer contests are normally tax-free, this is the equivalent of a much higher rate of pay in a normal job. It's food for thought, isn't it?

Entering consumer contests has long been a sideline interest of mine, and over the years I've won various prizes, from a Mediterranean cruise to a crate of lager. I particularly favour the sort of contest which includes a tie-breaker slogan, e.g. where you have to complete a line such as "I love eating Australian apples every day because..." in 15 words or less.

These sort of contests are great for writers, because you really can use your professional skills to give you an edge over most of the other entrants. Here's an example of one such contest running online at the moment, so you can see what I mean. Note that these contests often require you to answer one or two other questions as well, but almost always these are very easy. Really, it all comes down to who can write the best "tie-breaker" slogan.

Unfortunately, this sort of contest is mainly open to people in the UK, and to a lesser extent in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Elsewhere in the world - e.g. the USA - sweepstakes abound, but because there is little skill in entering these, you have no opportunity to apply your writing abilities, and your chances of winning are therefore much less.

Anyway, I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention that entering consumer contests is a topic covered in my Quick Cash Writing course and, in much more depth, in my new course How to Win Contests. If you want to know all about entering consumer contests, how to devise winning slogans, essential online (and off-line) resources for "compers", and much more, you really should check them out. How to Win Contests does also discuss sweepstakes, but as mentioned above you can't do a lot to improve your chances of winning these. There are a few things, however, and naturally in my full course I reveal them :)

Good luck, and I hope you're soon earning the equivalent of fifty pounds an hour!

Another New Opportunity to Make Money From Your Website

My post a few weeks ago about Money4Banners generated a lot of interest, so I thought you might perhaps be interested to hear about another new opportunity to make a bit of painless extra income from your blog or website.

WidgetBucks works in a similar way to Google AdSense. You copy and paste some special code into your website HTML. A banner advert is then displayed on your site, and every time someone clicks on it, you get paid a fee. As with AdSense, you can choose from a range of different banner sizes and colour schemes. You can also choose the type of ad displayed (e.g. video games), or let WidgetBucks analyze your site and automatically display ads that are relevant to the site's content. The latter method is how Google AdSense works, of course.

So what advantages does WidgetBucks have over AdSense? Well, as mentioned, unlike AdSense you can choose the type of ads displayed. The ads themselves tend to be a bit jazzier than those generated by AdSense, and the WidgetBucks site is more user-friendly. And they are giving all new publishers a sign-up bonus of $25 (admittedly, you do have to earn another $25 before you can withdraw this, but I guess that's only fair). The ads themselves supposedly pay about twice what AdSense do. And finally, they have an affiliate program where you can introduce new members and get 10% of whatever they earn in the first year. So, to me anyway, it looks a pretty good deal all round!

If you'd like to see what a typical WidgetBucks ad looks like, I've put one on this page of my Stop Spam Email site - it's under the paragraph about E-Cloaker. Just a word of caution, however. I'm finding that the ads show up in Internet Explorer, but I don't see them in Firefox. Also, the main WidgetBucks site doesn't display correctly in Firefox on my PC, so again it's probably best to view it using Explorer. Hopefully WidgetBucks will address this issue soon.

Anyway, if you have a website or a blog - both are equally welcome - and you'd like to generate a bit of extra cash from banner advertising, it's well worth checking out WidgetBucks. Note that you will need to apply including details of your blog or website, and wait (about 12 hours in my case) for your application to be approved. As far as I can see, most mainstream sites will be accepted, but understandably there are some exclusions, notably sites with "adult" content.

My Christmas Gift to You!

It's nearly Christmas, and I'm in a generous mood. So I've decided to offer a free gift to every reader of my blog. It's a copy of my unique mini-report "How to Make Big Bucks Selling Your Movie Idea to Hollywood".

This report is based on the module about selling ideas for films and TV shows in my course Quick Cash Writing. It explains how, if you have a great idea for a movie, you may be able to get a Hollywood "insider" to pitch it to the studios on your behalf. If your idea is optioned you will pick up a fee of at least $5,000, and much more if the movie is put into production. And no, you don't have to write the screenplay yourself!

There are no strings attached. The report is available for you to download now, free, gratis and for nothing. It's in the universal RT Just click on this link [SORRY, LINK DELETED!] and it should open in a separate window in your word processing software. You can then read it, print it out, or save it to your own PC by selecting "Save As" and saving to a folder of your choice.

But please, if you want to do this, don't leave it too long. I can only leave this offer up until Christmas, after which you will again only be able to obtain the report if you buy WCCL's blockbusting Write a Movie in a Month course via my blog review (or, in a slightly different form, if you buy my Quick Cash Writing course).

And speaking of Write a Movie in a Month, if you're interested in screenwriting you can still take advantage of my special offer on this amazing CD-ROM. Just click on this link to read my blog review, and scroll down to see the offer details (which include both a $20 discount and further bonus items).

Happy Christmas, and happy screenwriting!

SORRY, this offer has now closed. Hope you got to download the report in time! If not, you can still get it, but only if you buy WCCL's blockbusting Write a Movie in a Month course via my blog review (or, in a slightly different form, if you buy my Quick Cash Writing course).

Congratulations to our latest prize-winner!

Many congratulations to Mywriterscircle.com member Bry, who won our recent contest to write a short verse about the forum with the following ditty:

My writers circle, prose and poetry is their game
If you want to know more then Nick is the name.

Queries and questions answered by members
Stickies and posts, sites to remember.

Coffee shop and chat rooms there for the bidding
Newbies and hero's all lifting the lidding.

A club for writers, well I certainly feel part
A world wide web of knowledge that gets to the heart.

So here's to the circle and long may it reign
The site with a body as well as a brain.

Great effort, Bry, and I like the last couplet especially. Your verse was a worthy winner, even if there weren't many (OK, any!) competing entries.

Bry wins a year's subscription to SpellCheckPlus Pro, the professional version of the free online spelling and grammar checker SpellCheckPlus, discussed in my recent blog post. As part of his prize, he also gets a complimentary subscription to the French language version of the site, Bon Patron Pro.

We still have one more subscription to SpellCheckPlus Pro to give away (again including the Bon Patron Pro subscription as well), so this time we're simply donating it to whoever posts message number 115000 on the forum. Please see this topic for more information.

Good luck, and happy forum posting!

Another Record-Breaking Month

My forum at www.mywriterscircle.com is becoming ever more popular. Already in November we have smashed the previous record for the number of posts in a month. The old record was 7774, but in November we're already up to 8446, with one more day still to go!

If you haven't yet joined my forum, therefore, do give it a try. It's free and easy to do, and you will then be able to post any writing-related questions you may have, put up extracts of your work for feedback from other members, and generally enjoy belonging to a friendly, world-wide online writing community. Just go to www.mywriterscircle.com and click on Register to get started.

You will also be able to take part in our regular prize competitions, such as the current contest to win a year's subscription to SpellCheckPlus Pro. The closing date for this one is tomorrow, so there's still time to enter. Just click on this link to go straight to the topic concerned, though note that you will need to be a logged-in member to post your entry.

Finally, even if you don't want to register yet, it's still well worth reading our Writers Wanted board, as a number of interesting opportunities for writers have been posted there recently by long-standing member Linda Jones. They include details of an in-flight magazine looking for article pitches, a UK non-fiction book publisher inviting submissions, and a very interesting opportunity for a fiction writer to get involved in film work. Thanks for all the great market info, Linda!

Three Days Left!

A quick reminder that you have just three days left to enter the contest on my forum at www.mywriterscircle.com to win a year's subscription to SpellCheckPlus Pro.

All you have to do is write a short verse about Mywriterscircle.com and post it in this topic. Any verse-form may be used, with an upper limit of 14 lines. The judges will be Karl Moore of WCCL and myself, and we will each pick our favourite of the entries submitted. Each winner will then receive a prize (we have two to give away in total).

Forum members can post their entries as a reply in this forum topic, which also includes the full rules. Any comments or questions about the contest can be posted in this other topic.

The closing date is Friday 30 November at 12 noon GMT - so have fun, and get writing!

Earn a Sideline Income from your Website

If you have your own website - and in my view every writer should - here's an opportunity to earn a little extra from it.

I should say at once that this opportunity, Money4Banners, does not require any financial outlay. Rather, you are required to place three small advertising banners on three different pages of your website. In practice that just means copying and pasting a bit of code supplied by Money4Banners into your website HTML.

Assuming your site is approved - and it almost certainly will be - you will then receive a fee of 10 UK pounds ($20 US) on acceptance, and 5 UK pounds ($10 US) every month for as long as you keep the ads running. Payments can be taken either in cash (via Paypal) or in Amazon vouchers.

I admit five pounds a month might not sound a fortune, but that's 60 pounds a year, every year, that you wouldn't otherwise have. I've been a member of the program run by Money4Banners' parent company for over two years now, so I can testify that it really is that easy, and you really do get paid. You can see a sample of the sort of ads they use on the homepage of my anti-spam website (it's the insurance ad about half-way down).

OK, if you don't have a website or you faint at the sight of HTML, this opportunity might not be for you. But if you have a site and don't mind adding a few extra banners - in locations of your own choice - this scheme could cover all your hosting costs and a bit more besides.

By the way, I asked and was told that the Money4Banners scheme is available to anyone, anywhere in the world.

P.S. If you don't yet have your own website, I highly recommend The Newbie Club First Website Builder, which will show you everything you need to know to build a professional-looking site