I’m apparently in a practical mood this month — large number of “how-to” posts here for freelance writers and bloggers looking to learn more about their craft. Our winners this month are a tasty mix of well-known masters and fresh faces.

Enjoy!

1. The 3-Step Cure for No-Sales Syndrome by Sonia Simone on Copyblogger. Some of the advice in this great post, I find myself saying to people all the time. I recently had a prospect with a 12,000-person email list ask me what they should be blogging about. “Have you asked your audience what they want from you?” I said. They hadn’t. Shoulda read this post. Read it now, and think about how it applies to pitching your freelance writing services.
2. A New Way to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog by Onibalusi Bamidele of YoungPrePro, on Bloggingtips. If you don’t know Oni yet, he’s a very sharp teenage African blogger — just check out his Top 10 Blogs for Writers nominations over on Write to Done (see below for more info on that). Here, Oni documents the results of a guest post-a-thon he did recently.
3. First, ten by Seth Godin on Seth’s blog. I’m not sure I’ve had Seth on my top 10 lists yet — what an oversight! I love the conciseness of Seth’s posts…still working on getting my own wordcount down. This post sums up pretty much all you need to know about product development in nine paragraphs.
4. How to Change from a Social Media User Into a Social Media Leader by Dave Larson, @TweetSmarter, on KISSMetrics. Now that I’ve just finished up a social-media basics Webinar to conclude my How to Make Good Money Writing Online bootcamp, this post looks even more helpful than when I first read it. A great, quick advanced course on how to make your social media time truly productive.
5. How to Create an Immersive Blog Experience by Marko Saric on How to Make My Blog. Here’s a new site (to me, anyway) that I discovered recently. I loved this post — there’s even demo videos that show you his blogging practices in action.
6. How to Show (Not Tell) – a Writing Lesson from John LeCarré by Mary Jaksch on Write to Done. I was browsing all the wonderful nominations for Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2012 this blog got (thanks all — and feel free to add yours, if you haven’t nominated yet!), when this post arrived on top of it. I think I don’t talk enough about writing skill and writing style around here, and reading this post will go a long way to make up that deficit. This post is also a great example of how we can draw ideas from whatever we’re doing in our personal lives to create a great post.
7. How to Work From Home Without Going Insane by David Tate on Lifehacker. We can’t laugh enough in our precious, short time here on Earth, so I always love great, funny posts. This one outlines all the rewards and problems of being a home-based solopreneur in a sharp comedic style. I don’t write funny all that well or often, so I’m particular to posts that really pull it off.
8. Most Freelance Writers Suck – 52 Ways to Make Sure That You Don’t! by Ruth Zive on The Freelance Writing Blog. Ruth’s been hanging around this blog, and in Freelance Writers Den, and learning tons about what makes a rippingly useful blog post and a sharp blog headline — read the results here.
9. Need to Create? Get a Constraint by Jonah Lehrer on Wired.com. This fascinating post delves into the science behind a syndrome I discovered myself, both as a staff writer and a freelancer: Nothing concentrates the mind like a limit say, like, a deadline. Without that, your 500-word article could take two months to get done, hmm? Sort of explains how it is that some of us freelancers with three kids and a range of other responsibilities can still end up more productive than the rest of our writer friends.
10. One Big Reason Why Commercial Writing Pays Better and Resists “Off-Shoring” (and Why this Other Kind of Writing Doesn’t…) by Peter Bowerman on The Well-Fed Writer. Fascinating dissection of what writing types will continue to earn American writers big money, and exactly why. A roadmap for anyone wondering how to keep earning well as the downturn drags on…and on…and on.

Read any good articles for writers lately? Feel free to add more links in the comments.

Tune in next month, when I unveil my first-ever Best Articles for Writers of the Year post, where I’ll pick the best articles from all my monthly compendiums — plus maybe a pick or two from December — to create one best-of-the-best list. If you don’t already, subscribe and you won’t miss it.

Some of you may have heard that this blog was chosen as one of the Top 10 Blogs for Writers yesterday. Here is the crazy, unlikely story of all the people who helped me get there.

The short version: I think it all happened because I love to learn. I was a mad sponge for blogging knowledge. I soaked it all up and kept trying harder. Eventually, key people noticed, and that made all the difference.

I’ll never understand why so many amazing people were so willing to help me, but I’m wildly grateful.

It all began in 2008, when the economy tanked, and I got mad.

I was going along, marketing the daylights out of my freelance writing business, earning more each year, working hard. Life was basically good for me. Living happily-ever-after in freelance-land.

But I was heartsick from hearing writers talk about how they were earning $10 an article, or just plain not earning at all.

I thought maybe I could help.

I started to blog about how to make it in today’s freelance-writing world. On my writer site, initially. But soon I wanted the blog to have its own personality, and in February, the Make a Living Writing blog grew up and moved here. At first, I posted maybe once a week. Then regularly once a week. Then twice. I learned about social media and started promoting my posts.

Along the way, I fell in love with blogging, and with helping people earn more from their writing. Man, it’s way more fun than any other type of writing I do! I started to write my blog posts like they were $1-a-word assignments. I wanted each to be a little masterpiece of usefulness. I was hooked. I tried to give people real-world, practical tips on how to earn more. I told readers exactly how I earn a good living as a freelance writer. They told me they took my tips and found clients. I was ecstatic.

Meanwhile, I used my blog as an audition piece to get a paying blogging gig with Entrepreneur back in summer ’09. That led to more blogging gigs. I don’t even think there was a way to subscribe to this blog yet, but now I saw blogging could generate some income. I also started a regular guest-posting gig on WM Freelance Writers Connection, and got a lot of extra blogging practice in, offering tips for earning more.

All this learning and blogging laid the groundwork so that when influential people checked me out, I was ready for prime time.

Phase I: The Copyblogger connection

One day last May, all that Twitter time paid off when Jon Morrow from Copyblogger noticed my blog. Then he invited me to guest on Copyblogger. Just like that.

I call it my social-media Cinderella story.

For every experienced writer who bristles at being edited by someone younger than them, let me say: Some of those twenty-something editors are freakin’ geniuses. Be open to what they tell you.

I got 900 retweets. My head was spinning. Next post, he handed me off to Sonia Simone. It was like I was a mortal and suddenly, I was hanging out with superheroes of social media. I felt like I came up to their knees.

I did a one-hour consult with Jon and learned a lot about how to make my blog better. I started changing things on my blog to make it more inviting for subscribers.

I just put my head down, kept changing my site, and tried to make less of an ass of myself as a blogger. (Me: “So you should ask people to subscribe? You should have a free report for subscribers? Oh…kay.”) I started working an 8-midnight shift on my blog — it was more fun than any TV show. I put in umpty-million hours. It was crazy…and yet exciting, because I was starting to see my blog had real potential.

Phase II: A-List Blogger Club whips me into shape

Around the time my first Copyblogger post was getting scheduled, I realized I needed to learn so much more about blogging. And I needed to learn it quick.

I mean, I’ve been writing professionally for a long time, but the blogging-and-social-media thing? Kind of a newbie. The dim thought was starting to roll around in my brain that if I really worked on my blog, maybe it could start to earn. And then I could spend more and more time helping other writers, and less time on client work. I loved that idea.

To find out how, I turned to two experts I’d been reading ever since about my first blog post: Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Mary Jaksch of Goodlife Zen and Write to Done (which hosted the Top 10 Blogs contest this year). Their A-List Blogger Club is only $20 a month and you can quit anytime, which is the kind of pricetag that fits my budget.

I thought I’d go in, zoom through all the courses in a month, and leave. Ha! Now my goal is to never leave. The course material is deep and wide in there, they keep adding more, and I’ll be swimming like mad trying to catch up with blogging best practices probably forever.

Before A-List, I really couldn’t figure out what the secret sauce was of monetizing a blog. I knew I wasn’t going to slap up ads everywhere, that seemed awful…so how could it work? If you look at my Tools & Products I Love tab, you can see what I learned about that. I’d never sold anything to anyone before, but A-List taught me a way to sell with integrity. I also learned a ton about design and usability and started improving my blog.

The really unexpected part of A-List Blogger Club was the forums. Rather than hanging out on any old writer forum where many of the writers aren’t that serious, now I was hanging with more than 2,000 other bloggers who really cared about making their blogs work.

Lots of members turned out to be great resources, and Leo and Mary are active as well, so it was a chance to ask them questions directly. I found great new friendships, and learned even more. A-List started retweeting some of my blog posts. I also gained subscribers, as people got to know me on the forums and then came over to visit my blog.

Phase III: Mary Jaksch, Write to Done, Darren Rowse, DIYThemes, and more…

Between my Copyblogger exposure and being in A-List, more and more influential people started to contact me. Mary Jaksch started commenting on my blog, emailing me personally now and then, and then she subscribed (!). I started attracting more students for my mentoring program, and I learned a ton from them, too, about what freelance writers need to know to succeed.

Derek Halpern from DIYThemes (home of the Thesis theme) got in touch and asked me to guest there. Derek is seriously young enough to be my kid…but he taught me a ton about conversion strategy. He said he just wanted to call me and talk to me for an hour about my site…I was sure there would be a secret agenda to sell me a timeshare or something…but there wasn’t. He just loved my content and wanted to help me succeed.

Using what I’d learned from my many mentors, I started targeting thought leaders on Twitter and sending them my posts. Darren Rowse of Problogger retweeted one. My site crashed…and I got a private server. And more subscribers. My baby blog was growing up.

I kept sort of pinching myself…but I apparently wasn’t dreaming.

One day, Mary sent me an email about the Top 10 Blogs for Writers contest. She thought I should enter. She thought I should guest on Write to Done. The rest of the story I think you know — I asked for nominations, you nominated, it was a finalist, and then it won.

I say “it” won because this blog isn’t me — it’s me plus all of you, and your comments and suggestions. Here’s hoping the spotlight that’s shining over here now will help us go more great places and help more writers go out and earn a good income. That’s what it’s all about.

What I learned along the way:

• Strive for constant improvement.
• Be supremely helpful to readers.
• Give away a lot of free stuff.
• Learn from many teachers.
• Believe you have something unique and valuable to offer the world.
• Persist.

Special ‘Top 10′ celebration offer: If you join A-List Blogger Club through me from now until the end of the year, I’ll send you a free copy of the ’40 Ways to Market Your Writing’ audio recording. Nothing extra for you to do — just click one of my links or banners here on the site, sign up, and I’ll email you a link to the audio as a thank-you.

There’s a contest for writing blogs that used to run on Michael Stelzner’s site called the Top 10 Blogs for Writers. Now, my A-List Blogger Club leaders Mary Jaksch and Leo Babauta have taken the contest over. This year’s contest just kicked off on their Write to Done site.

So (gulp), I’m going to ask you a big favor. If you enjoy this blog and find the information useful in your writing life, head over to the contest and vote for Make a Living Writing. If a lot of folks nominate this blog by commenting on the contest post over at Write to Done, I’m thinking a crazy thought: Maybe this blog has a shot at ending up on that list.

As it happens, I have a personal connection to three of the four contest judges. I’ve guested for Brian Clark on Copyblogger. I just mentioned Michael Stelzner, who’s still judging the contest, in my recent post about writing and blogging experts I trust, and we chatted on Twitter about it. And Leo Babauta is getting to know my work through the A-List.

In an interesting twist, Mary Jaksch actually emailed me and told me I should ask you to vote for Make a Living Writing. She made a point of reaching out and telling me about the contest, and encouraged me to get out the word about my blog. Interesting, huh? But maybe she’s just promoting Write to Done there.

Early in my career, I really got a jump-start when I won two writing contests. Which makes me wonder if now I could win a prize for my entire body of blogging work here.

Winning a contest like this one would give this blog more visibility and likely bring more readers. More readers could help this blog generate more income — which in turn means I could spend more time giving you free tips on how to earn more from your writing. So in a way, everybody wins.

Even if you don’t vote for me, and you have some other writing blog you love, go vote. It’s going to be interesting.

If you enjoyed this blog, you can do one other thing, too — subscribe. You won’t want to miss the action here next week, when I call bull*&! on the theories of a certain celebrity work/life author.

Technical note for subscribers: Starting Monday, I am migrating my email list to a new provider. I apologize in advance for any technical glitches that may occur.

Photo via Flickr user Shorts and Longs | The Both And

Have you noticed some changes to this blog? They’re all a result of what I’ve learned in the A-List Blogger Club. I joined a month ago, and promised to report on whether I thought it was worthwhile. For the uninitiated, this bloggers’ learning community is run by super-successful bloggers Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Write to Done, and Mary Jaksch of Goodlife Zen and Write to Done.

I’ve been using the club materials nearly every day, and I think the club is a terrific value for anyone who wants to learn about how to make their blog pay. I got in for $20 a month, and it’s all-you-can-eat content and participation in their forums.

The course materials are a combination of articles and video “masterclasses” on various topics related to themes such as creating your blog or ramping up subscribers. You can also absorb the content grouped in other sets, such as if you want to learn about branding, or affiliate marketing. I found I don’t relate very well to videos — but I’m sure some folks don’t extract information from articles well, so it’s nice that they have content in both formats.

To give you a little free dose of the A-List club, here is what I’ve changed on my Web site as a result of the courses I took in October. I learned there were a lot of small, subtle things I could do to make my blog more shareable, usable, and enjoyable for readers. Maybe they’ll help your blog, too.

1. New theme colors. Learning more about design, I found out having a white background is pretty strongly recommended. I tinkered with my simpleX theme and discovered it had another version with a white background and some nice warm, fall colors. I personally love green, but the green background was more distracting.
2. Added email contact. There was previously no way to contact me directly from this blog! I feel dumb now. There was just a link over to my writer site, where you could then find my email. But I rectified that with a big email text link in the sidebar.
3. Added Facebook fan page. I’ve only read umpty-million articles about how important Facebook is as a social-media marketing tool…but I’d resisted. Now I have a Facebook fan page where I can leave goodies, discounts, and bonus posts for Make a Living Writing fans. If you haven’t joined over there,  you might want to, as discount deals will be popping up for fans soon. Have a question about freelance writing? Leave it on my wall, and I may answer it in one of my mailbag posts.
4. Added “most popular posts” widget. I learned that one of the ways readers check out your site is to see how many comments your blog gets. If the top post doesn’t have many, they may move on. The popular posts tool keeps your busiest posts on your front page forever, so people can see yes, this blog does have a lively community.
5. Collapsed archive. My blog archive was taking up a lot of real estate in the sidebar and I felt not adding much, so I shrunk it to a toggle bar. That made room for better stuff such as popular posts.
6. Expanded blogroll. I realized I hadn’t updated my links in a while and my list didn’t have many of the sites I really like, so I added to this section. Blogroll links can help you connect with other, more prominent bloggers, who might notice you’ve got them in your ‘roll.
7. Added more social sharing. I would have added Sexy Bookmarks (the cute one where little icons pop up out of bar) but I couldn’t get it to work, so I added the AddtoAny tool you see at the bottom of this post. Maybe I’ll improve on that, but for now it gave me the ability to let readers easily share posts through one tool on Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook and several other sites I’d wanted to add.
8. New “About” page. I’d been faking it with an ‘about’ tab that was really just a link to my writer site. But I learned the ‘about’ page is really important, that potential subscribers do read it and it figures into their decision whether to subscribe.  So I added a new ‘about’ page just about the blog and why I write it. See what you think.
9. Bigger RSS buttons explained in plain English. I learned your RSS and other subscription buttons should be BIG. I’d always been frustrated by my teeny button, so I finally broke down and paid a coder to get rid of it. Then I added a text widget in the sidebar with nice big buttons. I also learned that you have to be careful with the word “subscribe,” because many people associate it with paid magazine subscriptions, and think you’re asking them to pay for something. So my link now says “click here for your free email subscription.” More changes will be coming here, as I hope to soon add a free download subscribers will get when they sign up.
10. Added Commentluv. I’m sure many of you have already noticed the addition of this great tool, which automatically snatches up your latest blog post title and puts it at the bottom of your comment. I’ve been in love (or is that luv?) with this widget for ages, and find I leave way more comments on sites that have it. Finally — ding! — the light went on. “Hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if my blog had Commentluv, too?” Yes, it would.
11. New header. I quickly noticed many other Club bloggers had fabulous, graphical headers, while mine was a slab of boring, plain, chocolate brown. Broke down and hired a designer to insert my graphic above. To me it says, “I love what I’m doing, making money with my computer as a writer.” Eventually, I want to add a snappy cartoon graphic instead, but I consider this a huge improvement for now.
12. Tried to improve tag cloud. And discovered SimpleX doesn’t do tag clouds…it does tag lists, as you can see in the sidebar. So that’s a stumbling block I’m still working to overcome.
13. First sentences are also SEO bait. I’ve been very focused on writing sharp headlines, but a guest video from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger enlightened me that the first sentence of your post has a lot of SEO potential, too. Duh — took a look in my RSS reader version of my blog and you can see the first sentence of the post. So I’m trying to focus more on making that sentence something that might make readers click over to the site.
14. Going to three times weekly posts. I learned that to draw more attention to the blog and grow readership faster, I needed to think about increasing my post frequency. So starting next month, I’m aiming for three posts a week on this blog. Wednesday posts will be a combination of mailbag answers, guest posts, and a new regular feature on the best 10 articles for writers online that month.
15. Adding A-list affiliate deal. In looking at possible ways to make my blog earn its keep so that I can spend more time offering you free tips on earning more from writing, I’ve considered and rejected quite a few options, including slapping AdSense ads on the site. I feel comfortable with my Amazon affiliate deal, recommending writing books I really like. Now, I’m adding one more affiliate deal — for A-List Blogger Club and its close relative, the A-List Blogger Bootcamps.

As with the books, I feel good about recommending the A-List materials to readers, because I’m using them myself. As you can see above, there really is a wealth of tips in their materials that can improve your site. There’s also a link in the sidebar now to Leo’s free ebook on how he got 150,000 subscribers, which I’ve been recommending for a long time. So now I get credit for recommending it with the A-List folks. If after you read it, you decide to buy one of their classes, I get a cut of the fee. You don’t pay a dime more for the club or class. I feel like these are products readers of this blog might well want to use. If having these affiliate deals on my site bugs you, I’m sure I can count on you to let me know.

The final change to my blog was unexpected. Being in the club gave Leo and Mary a chance to get to know me and my blog. Mary visited the blog and left some positive feedback, and A-list has since retweeted several of my posts and a discount deal on my Make a Living Writing ebook, which I know led to some sales and new subscribers. She also gave me feedback in the forums that led me to change the new ‘About’ page. I didn’t realize being in the club would be a chance to get individualized feedback and marketing help directly from the club founders, so that’s been a bonus. So this is not one of those clubs that’s running on autopilot while the founders are off skiing or something — they are actively involved and interacting with members. Also, you can bounce ideas off 700+ other members in the forums, which is useful as well.

I bring all this up just now because I just got a memo from Leo that the current Blogger Club will close to new members on Oct. 31. I consider the Club the better deal because you get the bootcamps included with your low monthly fee — though if you’d prefer an intense one-shot of blog-growing info, maybe the Bootcamps are more your speed. The next bootcamp, How to Write Like an A-List Blogger, starts Nov. 8. Check it out if you’re interested in blog monetization. They offer the first week free.

A-List Results: I about doubled my subscriber base in the course of the past month, which is my immediate goal. I also saw some steady sales of my ebook. Hard to say how much of it is from A-List-related activities and how much from my Copyblogger guest post. But between the two, I feel like this blog is on its way.

What’s your reaction to the changes here at Make a Living Writing? Leave a comment and let me know.

Looking to spice up your blog? Subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s list: 20 different types of blog posts.

Photo via Flickr user Hugo90