Exciting Updates, and How You Can Help a Brother Out

As I may have mentioned earlier, our recent move to Denver was not for the typical reasons people move from one place to another. We moved with a dream incubating in our hearts, to start a new life based on focusing on our strengths, and on doing the things we love…to see what God would do with that. We didn’t come here knowing what everything was going to look like, but believing that God would show us when we got here.

We know that The Wild One will be building her photography business. The Director will focus on filmmaking. Which leaves me, the blogger/musician, looking for gigs. 🙂 But for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been brainstorming and researching on some ideas I’ve had on how I can begin blending my two passions–writing and music–into something productive and beneficial. And the bottom line is…I’ve got some irons in the fire that I’m quite excited about, and am ready to share with you.

Firstly…I have taken a freelance contract writing for the web, about the local music scene. I am the new Denver Local Music Examiner for Examiner.com. Examiner.com is an up-and-coming news site in numerous major markets, relying on local correspondents to provide their material. As the Local Music Examiner for Denver, I’ll be posting to the site several times a week, reviewing local talent and venues, providing valuable information as to what’s happening here in town.

Secondly…correlating with this contract, I have opened a brand-new blog called The Oomph. This blog will also focus on the music scene, but where the Examiner contract focuses on a journalistic style, The Oomph will take a more first-person, opinion-based, and in-depth approach to the topic, supplementing my Examiner page, where readers can go for a deeper analysis. The two will complement each other.

Thirdly…I’ll continue to focus on doing music myself, actually becoming part of the local music scene. 🙂

Now, here’s the interesting part. These writing assignments don’t pay by the hour or by the piece–they pay according to writing quality, traffic, interaction, and overall popularity of the content. The more visibility and traffic that my articles generate, the more they pay me. And Examiner.com openly encourages me to promote my content to everyone in my circle, and to spread the word virally through social networking.

So here’s the shameless plug. Here’s how you can help a brother out…and it won’t cost you anything but a little time. I’m inviting all my readers here to take a few moments and do the following things:

1. Go to my page at Examiner.com, and interact with it. Click on the stories and read them–and come back and do it some more. Subscribe to the feed, or subscribe by email…or both. Even if you’re not from Denver–you’ll probably find something interesting there! Leave comments, if you like. Bookmark the page. There’s even a feature where you can add me to your list of “favorite examiners.” All this stuff helps increase the overall value of the page.
2. Go to my new blog, The Oomph, and subscribe to it, also. Even though the blog is a more personal endeavor, I have some ideas for it, and the more traffic it has, the better. Again, even if you’re not directly interested in the Denver music scene…by reading this blog, you’ll get a better idea of my take on music topics, if you’re interested in that kind of thing.
3. Follow me and friend me on your social networks.
4. Share my content from the Examiner and the new blog on whatever social networks you belong to. Share articles in places like Facebook and Twitter, and vote for them on Digg and StumbleUpon. All these kinds of things really help to bring more traffic to the page.

Now, in the interest of honesty…if you get to my Examiner page and my new blog, and you think they’re crap–don’t feel compelled to do this stuff. I’m not asking anyone to provide me with meaningless hype. But I don’t think you’ll think it’s crap. I’m going to be working hard to provide content that’s genuinely worthy of being shared and subscribed to and buzzed about. If I have anything to do with it, it will be content you won’t be ashamed to share.

As for this blog–never fear. It’s not going anywhere. This is a labor of love, and will continue to be so. But if you are enjoying what I’m writing here in this blog, then I’d be grateful for your support of what I’m writing elsewhere.

So…the first article is up on my Examiner page, and there are already two or three posts up at The Oomph. Go check them out!

P.S. One other thing…Examiner.com is growing and looking for more local writers, so if you look at their site and see an opening you might want to write for, let me know, either in the comments (I moderate comments, so don’t worry about private remarks being published), or via the email address on my Blogger profile. I’ll reply with some instructions on how to mention me as a reference.