During my bloggin’ hiatus, I got behind on posting links to some of the more interesting stories I’ve written this year.

Probably the most notable (from a name-dropping perspective, anyway) is a Q and A with Bill Maher I wrote for Houston magazine’s January issue. You can check it out here.

As you might expect from a professionally opinionated comedian, he’s a good interview. In the 15 minutes of phone time I had with him, we managed to touch on Houston nightlife, Twitter and the evils of plastic.

I picked up the latest copy of my favorite sailing magazine, and I’m stoked to announce that my piece on Hurricane Ike recovery is inside. It’s a department, so nothing terribly long. But, it might just open up the door to a feature I’ve wanted to pitch them for years.

I’d written this following a positive response to a query, but still on spec.
At one point the source for my art fell through, and I wasn’t sure this was going to come together. I had to run back to Galveston to take some photos, and seeing one of them published above my story made my day.

This month’s Wired has a great story on the the $1 billion company behind Demand Studios.

It’s fascinating. They’ve developed an algorithm that analyzes data from Google and other sources, spits out topics for “articles” and calculates how much money that content can bring in from ads over its life on the net. Afterward, an assembly line forms, starting with people who refine the algorithm’s titles for 8 cents apiece (“how to cake roses,” for example, becomes “how to make icing roses for a cake”) and feed them into the Demand Studios site. There, “writers” pick topics and fill a template with relevant details for up to $15 per article. An editor reads each piece for $2.50 a pop, and the results power sites like ehow.com, livestrong.com (Lance Armstrong is an investor) and a raft of other content sites. The individual pages generate very small returns, but the sheer volume of words the system creates makes it a profitable and fast-growing endeavor.

Naturally, many people who make their living writing for reputable print and Web publication view this as an affront to the value of their work. Good writing, solid research, integrity and the other traits of a successful freelancer are worth more than 2 cents per word (20 to 50 times more, in fact). That people are willing to devalue their own work to the degree required to work for Demand, Helium.com, Suite101.com, Examiner.com and the like cheapens the craft, many say, and drives down the value of the work done by the professionals.

Yet, I’ve begun to think that the proliferation of writer mills will have a negligible effect on professional freelancing in the long run. Here’s the short of it: Journalism and Web content production aren’t the same thing, and as such they draw from two distinct labor markets. Successful Web content sites require high search engine rankings and volume, as opposed to good writing and original research. Creating that content requires a combination of Web surfing, data entry and the language skills of a native speaker with a high-school degree. In short, it’s unskilled labor. Anyone who speaks English can do it.

Journalism — the hard work of interviewing, researching and writing about what we discover in a way that is fresh and compelling — is different. It’s a profession in the sense that it requires a set of hard-earned skills to do well. A limited number of people have what it takes to write for a magazine, and pay rates will reflect that limited supply.

I imagine many of my colleagues are concerned that hordes of content drones eventually will vie for more high-profile work, ask for only 10 cents per word (a 500 percent raise!) and price the rest of us out of a middle-class living. There are a couple reasons why that’s unlikely. First, it’s pretty damn easy to compete with someone whose best writing sample consists of 600 words entitled “The Best Ways to Reduce Your Dog’s Flatulence” that was researched on Wikipedia and dashed off in 40 minutes. Second, anyone who churns out the volume of stories needed to earn worthwhile money writing for content sites is unlikely to have much time to work on projects that would actually bolster his or her portfolio. Demand recently announced that it will offer access to a health insurance plan to some of its writers. That’s great, but it’s also a cunning way to keep Demand’s top producers writing indefinitely for pennies.

Meanwhile, the number of writers walking the tough road toward a career in real freelance journalism will actually shrink. A smaller number will start out in the church newsletter or a friend’s blog, finagling their byline into tiny publications, then leveraging modest clips with great story ideas to craft portfolios that grow with the writers’ skill, connections and business savvy. Instead, many aspiring freelancers will take the $15, hone their speed-writing skills and trade a hard climb toward professionalism for the instant gratification of a job on the assembly line.

As someone who writes stories that are worth a lot more than $15 to the people who assign them, a market full of unskilled workers spinning their wheels at Demand Studios only makes me look more professional by contrast.

I wrote about this form of GPS treasure hunting for Executive Travel’s Time Off department. It was fun to write, the magazine was great to work with, and I was stoked to turn in my first piece for travel-related publication.

There’s a lot of writing about writing. Hunks of wood pulp the size of phone books listing markets, how-to books on crafting queries and writers’ soulful tomes on their prose line the shelves at every Barnes and Noble in the country.

Some are a rehash of basic business practices among freelance journalists while many more strive to describe the more ethereal elements of good writing. Whatever inspires you to sit down and write, you’ll likely find it by wandering into local bookstore (after all, what better way for a writer to increase his cash flow than by cranking out a book on his craft?)

For advice on the practical matters of freelancing, here are a few reads I’d recommend:

- Robert McGarvey’s 25 writing secrets: This is just plain good advice on the nuts and bolts, blood and guts of managing a freelance writing business.

- Robert McGarvey’s updated freelancing tips: These are a little more introspective – which just about every journalist tends to be these days – but they’re good, forward-looking advice for writers trying to make a living.

- The Renegade Writer: Last updated in 2005, the book may come off as a bit dated, but its practical advice on approaching publications, increasing productivity and succeeding by breaking the unwritten rules of the publishing world makes for a good read. The renegade writer blog also has some helpful pointers, e-courses and a small market wiki.

- Six Figure Freelancing: Likewise, this book is a standby among professional writers looking to streamline their operation and bring in more cash. It’s a good read for time management tips, strategies for re-marketing story ideas and other insight most people don’t figure out until they’ve been doing this for a few years.

The Associated Press Guide to News Writing: It doesn’t matter if you’re filing write-throughs on breaking wire copy or penning a letter to your aunt Babs, this book will help you say what you want to say better, shorter and with fewer mistakes.

There are much more celebrated publications than these out there for inspiration and deep thought on the existential questions that arise from putting thoughts onto paper. But if you just want to know how to be a more effective freelancer, the publications above area a good place to start.

Over the last few weeks I’ve helped out a friend who’s starting a new business with some logo development and graphic design. Those who’ve put together a professional Web site or offered design services to a client probably spent as much time as I did searching for good photos with rights that allow commercial use. Sites like Flikr are great for finding images with a Creative Commons license that allows non-commercial use or commercial use with attribution. Unfortunately, it’s hard to link back to a photographer from a logo on printed material…

Here are a few places I’ve found completely royalty-free art with no use restrictions:

- Free Range Stock: While it doesn’t have pictures of every subject you might need, the images are good and completely free because of their ad-revenue sharing scheme with contributing photographers.

- usa.gov: The Freedom of Information Act doesn’t just make reams of bland documents available to the public, it also applies to the photos taken by every agency within the federal government. This is particularly handy for nature shots from national parks, the EPA and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

- The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs collection: This is a fascinating and huge archive of historical photos. The caveat here, though, is that many are still the property of the original rights holders. If it was taken in 1923 or earlier, you’re in the clear. Otherwise, check this chart to figure out if an old photo is in the public domain.

Working from home is great, but it also means technical issues that would be someone else’s problem in a normal office fall to me. Here are a few random thing’s I’ve stumbled upon that might make your life easier if you, too, function as your own help desk.

- Merge .pdfs – I was finally getting around to scanning some new clips, and and I found this handy site to string scanned pages together. If you need a free widget to make .pdfs, try this.

- Need to produce a newsletter or similar publication but can’t afford Quark or Indesign? Scribus provides a freeware alternative. Likewise, GIMP has nearly all the functionality of Photoshop, minus the cost. Open Office can handle most word-processor and spreadsheet tasks and can save files in .doc format.

- Speaking of being cheap, consider a used machine for your next desktop. To avoid frying my laptop with heavy use, I picked up a used IBM Thinkcenter with a Pentium 4 processor, a brand new flat-screen monitor, keyboard and mouse for less than $300. Every year, businesses upgrade and sell scores of decent computers to resellers. I didn’t look too hard at used machines online, but it’s easy to find storefronts that sell cheap, reliable and slightly used business machines.

- Feel tied to your desk because you might miss an e-mail from a new client or an editor with a question on a story? I didn’t want to pay $100 per month for the next two years for a smartphone, so I bought a Peek. It’s $20 and costs $20 per month with no contract. All it does is send and receive e-mail. It’s a great solution for those clients who treat e-mail like SMS and expect a quick reply.

- AVG offers a great, free alternative to naggy Norton anti-virus products. If you want to know if a single suspicious file on your hard drive is a virus, scan it here.

I finally updated my homepage with links to recent stories and a few tweaks around the site. You can check it out here. I’m still tweaking it, so if you see any glaring errors please e-mail me. Thanks!

My trend story for Houston Magazine on the Indian art, food and film is on news stands now.

It’s also available here on page 64.