Small Fish in a Big Pond

I’m trying something new. I set up a profile with the Yahoo! Contributor Network a few days ago, and I’m going to try submitting some writing for on-line publication. It’s pretty much like blogging, but submissions have to go through editors first, and some of Yahoo!’s corporate partners might pick up an article if it tickles their fancy.

There’s a potential to earn some money doing this, but I can’t imagine that it’s very lucrative. I’m sure it takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.3 billion hits to earn a nickel, so I’m not quitting my day job anytime soon. But at the same time, I’m not turning down an extra quarter or two in my pocket every six months.

My main motivator for doing this is to see how my writing stacks up to that of the rest of the world. To be honest, I’m pretty nervous about going through editors. What if they don’t like my stuff? That would be embarrassing. I’ve long considered writing to be one of the few things I’m relatively good at, so for that to be taken away would just leave drinking beer and losing fantasy football championship games as my only talents worth mentioning.

But what if they do like it? That’d be pretty cool.

I’m also motivated by their suggested limit of 300 to 500 words per submission. Brevity has never been a strong suit of mine, so this will be a challenge. Being challenged is something I enjoy.

I submitted a few things yesterday and the day before, and they’re all awaiting review. Well, to be honest, one of them was declined today. After overcoming the debilitating shame of having my worth as a human being reduced in value, I worked up the courage to read the reason why it was declined. There was some problem with the picture I attached to it. The picture wasn’t critical at all to the submission, so I just removed it and resubmitted the article. Whew. I’m not a failure after all. Yet.

They say it could take up to two weeks to get something published, but responses are often much quicker. I hope they’re quicker than that on my first submission. It was the Seahawks bit just below this entry. It’ll look pretty dumb if it’s published sometime after Saturday afternoon.

We’ll see how things go for awhile. School starts back up next Thursday, so that will drastically affect how much time I have for recreational writing until sometime in mid-May, but if you want to check in from time to time to see how it’s going, I encourage you to check out my profile. Every day. Roughly 2.3 billion times a day. And if you’re interested in becoming a Yahoo! Contributor, too, click on the little graphic of the bullhorn in the right-hand column of this blog. For every 9000 people I recruit, I get a free toaster.

Incidentally, this entry is 494 words long. Jackpot.

UPDATE: My first article was published this evening (1/7/11). Check it out here.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/6190438/online_resource_available_for_parents.html?cat=8