Mystery Writer (4)

The wild ride continues ... who will be the first wildcard nominee? Will I learn enough about online promotion to get hired for a job in marketing? ;)

I'm excited about the upcoming wildcard pick. I was surprised at the requirement for 50 new votes and 10 new reviews in the upcoming week, but I think I'm probably getting 50 votes as it is. It's harder to get people to write a review (it's much harder than clicking a button, poor things ...) but I think if I tell them it's for a specific wildcard nomination they will help out. I feel that my writing is good enough to warrant a wildcard nomination. I'll be interested to see who gets it, even if it's not me.

This competition has been a great learning experience for me, in terms of online marketing. A little while ago I started reading about online marketing because I wanted to get the word out about my blog, and I was curious about what could be accomplished without having to pay any money. After doing a little research, I never really put anything into practice, but with this competition I've had a real reason to start doing it.

I've actually enjoyed learning online marketing strategies, and I think it will be a useful skill for the future. (Maybe I'll even put it on my resume!) I think all of the work is even bringing me some good results because I've noticed some tweets about my story that are from people I don't know. With new stories being added to the competition every new round, it's tough to keep up my ranking each week, but I'm not going to let that stop me.

I also want to mention that I've read a lot of the other stories at ANA and watched many of the videos that people have added to their pages, and there's a lot of great talent here. Many of the stories are really well written and some of the videos are very creative. I'm glad to be part of a contest that might discover a talented new writer. It would be pretty cool if some of us went on to be bestselling authors!