What happens when you've finished writing a blog post and hit the publish button? Well, for one, your blogging software will publish your article for all the world to see. But there's something that's not as obvious. The moment you hit publish, you now own the copyright to that particular post, unless you explicitly state otherwise.

Most bloggers are unaware of this. Or most of us simply don't care. Until some other site automatically republishes our post in full, that is. It's called scraping, one of the ugly cousins of splogging. Worse, they probably have AdSense, text links and other affiliate links slapped on their sites. Where's the link back to your blog, you ask? In all likelihood, it's not there. Or if there's a link, it probably just adds to the insult.

You become a victim of copyright infringement.

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Taking the cue from Dee's post at the EatonWeb blog I think this start of the new year is a good time to come up with goals and resolutions for 2009. I know new year's resolutions are usually difficult to keep, so I'm thinking of these as goals that I would like to work on rather than promises that might end up broken.

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The holidays are here, and most of us folks will most likely be taking some time off of blogging to spend a few precious moments with friends and family, whichever religion you belong to. For those of us who don't necessarily observe the holidays out of faith, but out of some secular reason, then you would most probably be vacationing, too. Not in the holiday mood yet? Oh don't be such a grinch. Go have some fun, or spend time with your loved ones.

But then what happens to your blogs during those times when you take a break?

You blog through the holidays. I'll be on break these next couple of days, but I will most probably still be publishing a few blog posts in my free time, or while on the road visiting relatives. That's the power of mobile computing, anyway. I can either use my mobile phone or my netbook (coupled with a 3G modem) to do this. Why? Because I can!

You have posts saved in advance, and to be published at pre-defined dates. A handful of people I know have the habit of future-posting, so they can take a few days off from their blogs without their readership missing them. Some would clearly tell readers that the posts were done in advance, in case some new developments in the online world override the information in that blog post. Some would not be as transparent.

Your blog takes a break, too. This might be frowned upon by folks who believe in consistent and regular updates. But for those of us who are very much concerned about quality and thoughtfulness of posts would rather not post at all, if these are to be done in a hurry while huddled over a miniaturized laptop with a slow, unreliable Internet connection, while waiting to board your plane/train/bus. Good blogging should be done with good timing, too, right?

Which of these three are you?

At my neighborhood carwash, they hand out cards to first time customers, with boxes they mark with a stamp after every wash. After seven washes, clients get one free. Same with the nearby Thai massage place I go to once a week, when I need to de-stress from hours and hours of work in front of a computer screen. After ten one-hour sessions, you get a one-hour session free. Coca Cola also has a promo in my place--exchange seven bottle caps for a Christmas-themed Luninarc drinking glass.

Near the end of each year, Starbucks also has cards which you can fill up with stickers at every purchase. A few dozen coffees will get you a much-coveted leather-bound planner, which some Twitter contacts of mine collect as prized possessions.

Mobile phone providers usually give free phones to users at the end of their lock-in period, to encourage the user to renew the lock-in for another year or two.

These promotions encourage consumption, while giving the consumer a sense of excitement and anticipation for their next visit, which would eventually lead to freebies. But in effect, the actual value of the freebie would be about 10% to 20% of the total value or amount spent on the products or services.

Still, these kinds of promotions are one way by which you could encourage customer loyalty. This keeps 'em coming back for more.

How about blogs? What are your ways of encouraging loyalty among your readers?

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Back when writing was my sole blogging-related job, I often spent countless hours in front of my laptop writing feature-length posts. Sometimes I spent this time at cafes waiting for my daughter to finish her preschool class (about three hours). Sometimes even more--when I'm just not satisfied with an article, I save it as draft for later editing and publishing. This lets me have more time to

On a recent Blog Herald article, Thord Hedengren wonders why some folks from traditional media often relate blogging to rapid-fire writing akin to being a shoot now, aim later approach. And so when a blogger takes time to write, edit and publish a post, it's called slow blogging.

Sure, blogging does have the benefit of skipping a few editorial steps, and so bloggers often get to post news earlier than most mainstream media outfits. You can catch wind of some news or nasty rumor and post about it in the next two minutes. That can be good blogging, if it's your intent to spread the news as fast as possible. But then good blogging also entails research, painstaking editing, and even thinking twice or thrice whether to publish an article or not.

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For our first Ask Performancing feature, we have a few opinions on the Personal vs. Authoritative voice issue, which has been discussed over at the Hive.

The question is whether to use a personal voice or an authoritative voice, and in this particular case, the site in question is a community resource site that caters to higher education: College Crunch.

And so, the following were compared:

I have tried to come up with a wide range of career options that nearly anyone with any interest can take a look at.

vs.

We have selected a wide range of career options that nearly anyone with any interest can take a look at.

and:

What are your thoughts on how the economic shift will effect higher learning? Let me know in the comments below, especially if you’ve seen other reports regarding this issue.

vs.

What are your thoughts on how the economic shift will effect higher learning? Let us know in the comments below, especially if you’ve seen other reports regarding this issue.

You may notice that the first statements come across as more conversational and informal, particularly with the use of "I" and "me," which pertains to the author of the statement. The latter ones are more of collective, by using "We" and "us."

While the authoritative voice does not necessarily only entail using "we" instead of "I" this is perhaps the easiest difference to spot--that is, talking as if directly conversing with your reader. This is definitely the best approach when emailing a relative, friend or colleague. When emailing on behalf of your business or company, then perhaps it's better to write with a more formal tone, as may be required.

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In the course of my blogging life, I've reviewed a handful of things, including software, gadgets, and even food. Most of these I've bought myself, either out of curiosity or need (of course I need to eat!). But some have been sent in by companies who ask to be featured. And yes, I do admit having written a couple of sponsored reviews before.

The concept of being sent stuff for review is not new to me. I run dozens of personal and Splashpress-run blogs, and I get contacted about anything from parenting books, WiFi gadgets, personal apparel, coffee, software, and the like. I can understand that manufacturers and sellers of these would have no qualms in giving away $50 gadgets in exchange for links and publicity.

As for big-ticket items, I've been lent a few laptops, but those I have had to return within a few weeks' time. And so I was a bit surprised when SonyEricsson representatives in my region invited me for a meeting, and gave me a review unit of their latest Xperia X1. I asked how long I could use it, and they said that as far as they're concerned, the smartphone was mine. And they also gave review units to 10 newspaper journalists and three other bloggers.

And it was no $50 gadget, of course. More like $900.

And so this has made me think about the implications of being given "gifts" for review. When you buy yourself something, you usually feel comfortable writing about both the good and bad sides. And if your review is mostly negative, you would have no qualms about hitting the publish button. But somehow, when you get a freebie, would you still feel comfortable pointing out the bad side?

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With the success of "multi-bloggers" like Problogger's Darren Rowse, there's a tendency for new bloggers to want to build ten, twenty or more blogs in rapid succession, hoping that the volume method of blogging will somehow pay off. It's scary to some people to have to focus on just one niche, wondering if it can pay off, worrying about whether you'll miss the boat if you ignore niche X.

One Niche, Two Niche?

However, here are a few things to consider. Firstly, Darren Rowse is a rare individual who could post up to fifty times a day on the weekends while holding down three part-time jobs. From all accounts, he had a lot of support from his significant other and he started early on (over four years now). The blogosphere is significantly more competitive now, and there's no guarantee that building multiple blogs will result in better online career income-wise. Of course that's true for building a single blog as well.

Still, my non-scientific research over the past four calendar years suggests that more bloggers who focus on a single blog tend to have greater success than most bloggers who do not. Focus allows you to be more passionate in your writing in general. It's hard to be passionate when you write in ten different niches. (Even I rarely write in more than five niches at any given time.) Passion is what holds readers, not necessarily posts about "hot topic X". This is something that all successful writers pre-Internet days understood: passionate writing works.

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Brett, a long-time Performancing reader and semi-regular contributor, commented on my last post, about indecision, that sometimes you have to just do it to get your articles/ blog posts written. Crack out a thousand, two thousand words, then edit after the fact. That's his Zeroth Law of writing productivity. A similar approach applies to other types of creative work.

I couldn't agree more with Brett, and this in fact is the nature of most of this post: building creativity and just writing. In my over-long creative drought since about mid-June of this year, one overwhelming fact escaped me until a few days ago: I was denying my creativity, which is necessary to get your creative juices flowing. Sounds obvious, but this can be become overlooked.

To write every day is an important goal if you're a writer/ blogger, but sometimes the words just don't want to come. To write is to create, to be creative, and to be creative, you have to create something. It's a bit of circle, really, and while not a "vicious circle," if you deny yourself, you sink into a creative block, finding it ever harder to pull yourself out of.

You have to create something each morning, to get your creative juices flowing, and it really doesn't matter what. Build a morning "creativity routine" and change it as necessary. Spend 20-30 minutes on it each day. Here are some creativity tips that I've picked up over the years, either from reading about other writers' writing processes or simply discovering them.

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If you freelance write/ blog for a living, you might have run into a problem that's cropped up for me in the past: that of working on two articles at once for one client, unable to decide which one will get done sooner. While you might have the freedom to decide, it's possible that neither one gets done on time if you're indecisive.

The importance of pillar/ flagship/ comprehensive content on a blog has been much touted. However, when you do it for a client, it's potentially more of a money-loser if you're indecisive. To wit, if you have the option of six short articles at $20 each or one larger article at $120, which do you choose? That $120 article might take a bit of research, writing and editing, whereas you might be able to write the short ones with little to no research.

Even worse is when you have the option to work on several large articles, all of which might require an yet unknown amount of research. What if you spent half the week scoping out four articles, starting two or three, and then got stumped. Maybe it's the fifth article that you didn't scope out that you could have completed by now.

Four articles half-done means no billables for the week. Obviously, this method of writing can be a real money loser, especially if you have too many open options. If you have this sort of problem, here are a few tips to conquer it:

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During a bit of downtime this past weekend, I thought about the various articles I have written over the course of two years. Some have been total successes while others have been failures. However, when I began to piece together some of the best stuff I have ever written, I noticed a commonality between them all.

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(Note: I feel a bit silly placing a Copyright notice on this article because, as a professional writer I know that Copyright is in place from the minute I create a work and does not necessarily require the symbol. Copyright ownership rests with the creator of content. That's part of the TofS of this site. Professionals respect Copyright, but thieves do not. Since Zurza stole one of my posts on this blog, I want to make it a little tedious for him/her or anyone inclined to steal others' work to have to check every line to see if something needs to be removed before they scrape it and post it their sites. If nothing else, they might learn something about how to write so they can do it themselves without stealing words from others.)

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Why didn't I post this weekend as usual? Because I was trying to sort my feelings out about the plagiarism of my previous Performancing blog post by the anonymous people behind Zurza (http://zurza.com/be-a-happy-hooker/). I'll be posting more about this and the anonymous Zurza's copyright infringement on Sling Words this week.

Why Do Some Steal

Why do others steal your content? What can you do about it when they do? I've had to confront these two questions this past week upon discovering the morning of August 4 that my post had been hijacked down to the very last period by Zurza, apparently well-known in the blog community for its plagiaristic, copyright-infringing actions.

Do they steal because they're too lazy to write their own posts? Do they steal because they're too stupid to write? I don't know. I could pose questions all day long, but I suspect one of the reasons they do it is because they can. It's so easy on the Internet to copy something. The sad thing is that there is little that can be done to prevent it from happening or to punish those who do it so they won't do it again.

What To Do

The DMCA (Digital Media Copyright Act) is supposed to protect the rights of us creators of content. So the only thing you can do is follow the protocols established by it. That's what I'm doing. If you want examples of the letters to write and to whom you should send a letter, please visit Jonathan Bailey at Plagiarism Today.

Jonathan Bailey maintains a resource treasure for writers. One of the tabs you'll see is Stock Letters, actual letters you can personalize and use to send your notices of copyright infringement.

Takeaway Truth

Every writer needs to protect his or her work. If you want others to use it, then select one of the Creative Commons licenses. If you want your name attached to your work in whatever license you choose, then you need to educate yourself about copyright, the different licenses available to you as a creator, and the redress available to you when someone infringes on your license or copyright.

Most importantly, you need to bear the responsibility for fighting plagiarists and copyright theft by doing your part when it happens to you.

Do you like negative comments? Most people don't, but I find they can inspire as much as positive remarks.

Last week I talked about the Pyramid Style of Writing. James Mowery, another Performancing blogger, commented on my post. Though I disagreed with some of his commentary, I wholeheartedly agree with James about the importance of a strong introductory sentence as a key to getting readers to read your blog or article, essay, screenplay, or book. In the book biz, we call that a hook sentence.

So I'll give James Mowery credit for inspiring today's blog.

A few years ago, I gave a presentation to a room full of novelists. Since I know not only the importance of a strong hook sentence but also the importance of a good title, I called the workshop The Happy Hooker.

Yep, that packed the room. Seriously, that's what you always need to keep in mind when opening your piece of writing whatever it might be. You have a few seconds to hook the reader.

The Art of Fishing

It's like fishing. You bait the hook. The bait is the title and/or any artwork. You want to capture the reader's attention so that he or she stops and looks.

Once the hook is baited, it waits for the fish to bite. In our analogy, once the reader stops cruising - whether you're talking about a reader in a bookstore or a reader on the Internet - because you've captured his attention with the bait, you have a few seconds to see if he will bite and be hooked.

Those few seconds are when he reads the first sentence. That sentence has got to have something compelling in it to make him read the second sentence and the third. If he reads the second and third and on to the rest of the copy, you have succeeded in hooking him.

Last week on Sling Words, I wrote a two-parter on hook sentences in books, giving examples one day and telling why they work the second day.

I suspect, from a lot of web copy and blogs I read, many writers don't realize the importance of crafting a compelling sentence. Perhaps they stumbled into Internet writing and haven't really studied the art and craft of writing before. There are many wonderful books out there to help improve writing skills. (I call it your Writer's Tool Kit.) Writer's Digest publishes a magazine, books, and has a great website for you to take advantage of.

5 Ways to Create Hook Sentences

1. Make a startling or interesting statement then follow it with a factual statement. (See my opening above.)

2. Begin by evoking an emotional reaction in the reader. Laughter, tears, anger, disgust, whatever you elicit, make sure it has a universality which gets the same response from someone in Houston as it does someone in Rio or Prague. We are all basically the same human animal once you remove the trappings of our respective cultures. What makes me cry, more than likely makes someone in Tokyo cry. This will cause the reader to stick with you from the first word to the last.

3. By description but only if it is a compelling description of something or someone remarkable. Most people don't get hooked by reading about an amazing sunset unless you're talking about the sunset as seen from a bar in Key West AND you use such evocative terms that make the reader lust after an ice-cold mojito.

4. By speech, meaning you directly quote or paraphrase what someone said. Maybe it's a joke Leno told that is germane to what you're writing about or something a kindergartener said about Life. Maybe it's the dying words of a soldier. Again, the keys are: compelling quotation and appealing to emotion.

5. By name dropping. Hey, face it. We're a celebrity culture. There are millions who will stop to read: Paris Hilton gives fashion advice to female inmates. They'll turn a blind eye to: High school home economics teacher gives fashion advice to female inmates.

These are just 5 ways from many. Study a little and find the other ways. When you can easily craft a great opening sentence, you'll be a happy hooker too.

Takeaway Truth

Don't be afraid to write a beginning and toss it away. Sometimes you have to write just to figure out what you’re trying to say. Don’t look at your words as if they are carved in stone. Be willing to experiment.

Here is my favorite method for increasing your writing speed without sacrificing quality. In fact, this method may actually help you create higher quality, more organized, better flowing posts.

Many bloggers don't realize writing is a two step process.

1. Creating
2. Editing

Both are needed to create a quality piece of content. However, if you try to do both at the same time, you'll get bogged down. Your mind is less efficient when it's multitasking.

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