Writers: Missed Some Great Writers' Links on Twitter?

Hi Everyone, If you are an aspiring, or a professional, writer, here are some of my recent writer-related tweets that might interest you, as you write your expat stories and/or you write for business or pleasure:

Highly Recommended: 52 Great Blogs For Self-Publishers http://bit.ly/i4keQx

5 Strategies for Success as a Freelance Writer http://bit.ly/g6QpM5

Inspiring: Interview with self published, single dad, whose income went from poverty level to US$25k this quarter http://bit.ly/hOENKz

Just Discovered: 50 Things Under $50 To Help Promote Your Book (2009, but still great tips) http://huff.to/gaua80

Tips to help you overcome writer's block, by one of world's leading thinkers http://bit.ly/czJxKr

23 Websites (http://bit.ly/aM56LE) and 23 More Websites (http://bit.ly/d8ClJj) To Help Make Your Writing Stronger

Some good answers to the "How do you prevent a PDF/e-book from being shared?" question: http://su.pr/1otRLj

3 Ways To Capture/Visualize Your Literary Goals http://bit.ly/g58Sff

Thinking of Getting Bloggers to Help Promote Your Book? Advice: http://bit.ly/g80qxh

Writers: How to Find Paying Magazines with Keyword Research http://bit.ly/etmQH4

Writers: Tips For Checking Your Book Proofs From The Printer http://bit.ly/gpvn9e

How to Sell More Books on Amazon http://bit.ly/hcMNsL

Next Big Market For eBooks? South Korea http://goo.gl/uhBn8

Writers: Seen Duotrope's Digest? Free resource site listing publications that might take your articles... http://www.duotrope.com/

Recommended: 7 Secrets for Amazing Author Websites http://bit.ly/dXZ42f

Writers: 12 Ways To Create A Mailing List That Will Sell Books http://huff.to/gjACcX

Writers: Book Designer, Book Shepherd, Book Doctor or Book Producer: Which One Do You Need? http://bit.ly/ewpOx4

Writers: Tips for Setting Financial Goals for Your Book http://bit.ly/fD3vDN

Authors: Thinking of Using a Pseudonym? http://bit.ly/eYMrIh

6 things wannabe expat writers must know featuring Jo Parfitt http://nblo.gs/bGuhp

Is This The Biggest Book Promotion You Have Ever Seen? http://bit.ly/fSyxTg

Want To Get Published? Watch interview with John Wiley and Sons rep at Blog World 2010 http://bit.ly/fNiYSJ

Do You Make These Press Release Mistakes? http://bit.ly/hIhSCq

Writers: Success Story: Karen van der Zee: 35 Romance Novels Published! http://bit.ly/g3NTQm

How do you get Google to notice your eBook? http://oreil.ly/e4HoYJ

Influencers 2010: On Writing, Publishing, Blogging, Marketing and Entrepreneurship http://bit.ly/gI4R85

If you would like to follow me in 'real time' on Twitter, my Twitter ID is @andreaexpat, or you can just click here. Twitter is surprisingly easy, once you take a look.

Best wishes, enjoy your day/evening! Andrea :-)

ps. My apologies if this text/font comes through too large. I'm still adjusting to a Mac and my Mac doesn't talk well to Blogger, apparently. Thanks for your understanding. Andrea.

Update (1 week later): Sorry Everyone. The title was originally "expat" links. It should have been "writers' links". It has been amended now. My sincere apologies for any confusion. 

Happy 4th Birthday Expat Women & Blog Shout-Out Competition!

Hi Everyone, Today is ExpatWomen's 4th Birthday online. It is a day that we celebrate all of the wonderful supporters like you in our audience - who send us positive emails, contribute ideas and who help us gain new members by telling your friends to join ExpatWomen.com as well. (More members = more sponsors = more bills paid = we stay online longer!)

So, a huge thank you to you, wherever you are around the world.  We genuinely appreciate your support and we are eternally grateful that you read our newsletters and share our site with your friends.  Thanks to you, ExpatWomen.com now has over 10,000 members worldwide - of 165 nationalities, based in 187 countries!

We also need to say a big thank you to our sponsors.  Despite the odds at times, we have managed to keep our site completely free and still paid all our bills (which is a great achievement for a very niche site). For that, we would like to take a minute to thank our (2011) sponsors: Aetna (Health Insurance); Barclays Wealth International; SIRVA Relocation; Trafimar Relocation (Mexico); Clements International (Multi-purpose Insurance); and US Global Mail. If you are in need of any of the services that our sponsors offer, please consider supporting them, as they do us.  Many thanks.

***

Expat Women Blog Shout-Out Competition:

To celebrate our birthday, we are randomly giving away one US$100 Amazon.com voucher to one lucky blogger who gives us a positive, happy birthday shout-out on their blog - anytime between now and midnight 31 January 2011 (US EST).

To enter is as easy as 1-2-3:

(1) Say good things about our site and wish us a happy birthday for this month;

(2) Remember to include a link in your shout-out back to ExpatWomen.com; and

(3) Please email us your blog URL (in an email entitled something like “Blog Competition”), your name and location, by the deadline above.

Blog shout-outs help us a lot, so thank you very much in advance and good luck!

Potentially useful text for your shout-out:

ExpatWomen.com is the largest global website helping women living abroad. The site displays 1,000+ content pages, 1,600+ expat women blogs, 300+ readers' stories, invaluable country resource pages, interviews with successful expat women, loads of motivational articles and an inspirational blog and newsletter.

***

Thank you very much again for your support Everyone! 

Have a great day/evening/week/year! Andrea x

What They Don’t Tell You About Successful Product Launches

Hi Everyone, When reading a great article today on ProBlogger by Darren Rowse, entitled How To Get Things Done When You're Feeling Overwhelmed, (interestingly, it has been retweeted nearly 500 times, so it seems that those of us feeling overwhelmed are certainly not alone!)...

I came across another great article by Darren: What They Don't Tell You About Successful Product Launches - which I watched first in video form (Darren is very genuine and great to watch and listen to - I highly recommend the video), but then I read the transcript as well.

Essentially, Darren says the following (but in a more animated way and with more anecdotes):

1. Build a Content Base.  He emphasized that this does not happen overnight, but that a genuine content base takes time.  He said he has been building his online content base over the last 8 (!) years.

2. Build Relationships.  "Every day you have the opportunity to take yourself closer to that big launch by getting to know someone else on the web, whether that be a potential reader, whether that be another blogger, whether that be just someone who’s interested in the same kind of stuff as you on Twitter, you never know where those relationships will take you."

3. Build Your Skill Set.  Add to your repertoire daily.  Learn new things. Connect more dots.

4. Build Your Email List.  Build a greater audience, over time, and be rewarded with a bigger launch impact.

Darren concludes:

"I guess the point of this video is not to come up with a conclusive list of things that you can do that will take you closer to your, your goals one day, but it’s to get you to think about what you can do today, what you can do tomorrow and to think about some of those little things that will take you closer to your ultimate goals.

Set yourself some tasks this week. Just little things that you can do, posts that you can write, people that you can interact with, just features that you can add to your blog, new skills that you can learn. All of these things will take you closer to that ultimate goal.

It’s great to have the idea of a big product launch in the back of your mind, but at the front of your mind needs to be these sorts of daily activities that will take you closer to that."

I highly recommend Darren's video. Have a great weekend!  Andrea

Expat Expert Blog: Would You Like To Contribute?

Hi Everyone, An update on our friend and a mentor to many expatriate families, Robin Pascoe, who was recently honoured with Jo Parfitt as a "Trailblazer" at the March FIGT Conference.

Robin has given closure to her piano blog this week, having figured out now the next step in her career/life (...stay tuned...) and she has also put a call out for guest contributors to her Expat Expert blog.

If you are interested, here are Robin's guidelines:

"1. ExpatExpert.com is devoted to the needs of the expat family and in particular the accompanying partner and children. Your content must have some semblence of a family component to it, OK?

2. Postings should be no longer than 500 words tops, shorter would be even better.

3. It's perfectly all right to re-blog (is that like re-gift, or re-tweet?) something you have already written on your own blog...

4.....and absolutely give me the URL of your own blog, website, Facebook fan page, whatever. I am here to promote you as well as your writing so I need all the relevant info in order to do that. If there is a picture, even better! I think even I can manage to upload a photo.

5. It would be super (but not necessary) to conclude your posting with a provocative question or just simple question that might inspire some discussion. I'd like to encourage readers to 'talk amongst themselves.'

6. How-to-do-this: Go to my contact page and write to me about your idea for a submission. Together, we will take it from there."

Robin's site and blog are very well-read and respected in the expat/mobility field. So, if you have something valuable to contribute, you might benefit from some nice exposure. :-)

Excellent Video Interview For Bloggers

Hi Everyone, Whether you blog for business or pleasure, I highly recommend that you to take ten minutes and watch this excellent (and enjoyable) Social Media Examiner interview with Wendy Piersall.

Wendy is a blogger who has found online fame in the United States. But despite her online success, health issues almost forced her to give up her online blogging activity. She encourages bloggers to think carefully about why they are blogging and the return on their blogging investment.

She also talks about a very interesting Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruling in the United States regarding bloggers' financial disclosure. Great interview.

Expat Women Bloggers: Want To Be on Mamapedia... or Listed on Technorati?

Hi Everyone, I recently read in a Technorati newsletter that Mamapedia is looking for bloggers who write on topics that are of interest to mothers, to feature on Mamapedia Voices. They launched earlier this year and are reaching an audience of almost 1 million mothers!

You can get more information by signing up here: http://bit.ly/agucO. (They ask everyone to mention that you found out about this opportunity from Technorati. If you do, please mention ExpatWomen.com too - thanks.)

By the way, I see that Technorati have a blog directory that might interest some of you to list on as well - especially the "Travel" section. You never know who might find you unless you list, right?

Thanks, best wishes and good luck! Andrea.

Expat Women Blog Directory: www.expatwomen.com/expatblog/