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Nick's Content Portfolio

Below you'll find examples of my skills in action. For the most detailed and complete picture of what I can do, I recommend opening The Lyric Writer's Workroom first.

Armorbelle

Armorbelle

As of late 2017 I’m writing for Armorbelle!

Nick’s Posts at Armorbelle:

Here’s how founder Rhylan Dane describes Armorbelle:

Armorbelle is a “fantasy culture” site for the geeks, dreamers and eccentrics who make it up. Literally.

We share all manner of magical media here, from old world myths to modern RPGs, so long as it takes you on a trip away from the mundane and into the imagination […] We make it easy to discover unique treasures and discuss creative media. The mind can take you to some wild places, whether it’s through art, music, games, books or beyond.

Feel free to visit whenever you want some inspiration, adventure or a step out of time.

Click here to return to Nick’s writing portfolio

The Lyric Writer’s Workroom

The Lyric Writer’s Workroom

Click here to view this project’s website

Description

The Lyric Writer’s Workroom began with no readers and no email subscribers. I registered my name as a domain in late 2009 and installed WordPress. This led to learning HTML, then CSS, then email marketing and automation software. I wrote and published hundreds of articles, some of which traveled far on social media.

Role

Founder, writer, podcaster

Results

  • Top ten on Google search results for terms like: “how to write a chorus,” “song ideas,” “rhyme schemes,” and “songwriting prompts.”
  • 3,733 email subscribers1 from scratch
  • 106,643 StumbleUpon visitors2 to an article called “33 Ways to Make More Time in Your Life for Music-Making”
  • 13.2% click-through rate on a single link in an email campaign. The Workroom routinely scores 7.5% click-through.3
  • Designed, published, and sold my first eBook
  • Designed, built, and sold four editions of my first online course

Writing Samples

Skills used

  • Content writing
  • Content editing
  • Podcast scripting & production
  • SEO
  • Email coding, segmentation, automation, and metrics
  • Double opt-in, CAN-SPAM compliance, and other best practices

Software and systems used

  • WordPress
  • MailChimp
  • HTML & CSS
  • Markdown, a plain text syntax that streamlines content workflow (converts to HTML)
  • Sensei instructional design software (integrates with WooCommerce)
  • Getting Things Done (GTD) for project organization & deadline management
  • Microsoft office
  • Adobe Audition recording software
  • Filezilla FTP software

Click here to return to portfoliobeautifully framed notebook photo brought to you by waferboard

  1. Source: MailChimp stats, retrieved January 2, 2018 ↩
  2. Source: StumbleUpon ↩
  3. Source: MailChimp stats, retrieved January 2, 2018. The high percentage is due to a long-term strategy I’ve been rolling out for years. Ask if you’re curious. ↩
Awards, Press, & Publications

Awards, Press, & Publications

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My name appeared in print in Berklee professor Pat Pattison’s creative writing textbook, Songwriting Without Boundaries published by Writer’s Digest Press. After publication, I was invited back to write examples of sensory description to instruct and inspire students of Pattison’s Berklee Online course.

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I’ve been listed as one of CDBaby’s Top 100 Music Resources to Follow on Twitter. Note that my site’s name has since been rebranded from song written to The Lyric Writer’s Workroom.

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I appeared on HuffPost Live to ask songcraft questions of the legendary Diane Warren, songwriter of “Unbreak my Heart,” “Because You Loved Me,” “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing,” and hundreds of other popular songs. Unfortunately the interview has since been trimmed down to shave off all the songwriting questions, including my segment. All that’s left is Diane Warren describing what it’s like to party with Snoop Dogg. Only some very badly-filtered Instagram screenshots remain of my segment (see bottom of page).

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I was interviewed by Lukas Kyska of The Aspiring Guitarist Podcast to talk about deliberate practice of guitar and songwriting skills.

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I was cited in Muscle Shoals Sound Studio: How the Swampers Changed American Music, a book by Carla Jean Whitley for The History Press.

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A page featuring my writing in Pattison’s *Songwriting Without Boundaries*.

Badly-filtered Instagram posts from HuffPost Live appearance with the legendary Diane Warren.


Citation of my article on Muscle Shoals in the book Muscle Shoals Sound Studio: How the Swampers Changed American Music.Click here to return to Nick’s writing portfolio

Timberwolf Bay

Timberwolf Bay

Description

I wrote over 100 unique descriptions of furniture for Timberwolf Bay, a vintage home furnishings eCommerce site, with quick turnaround. I cross-linked matching items where applicable.

My favorite piece to describe was the French Rosieriste Flower Arranger’s Table:

Keep your secrets where florists kept their rose stems. This classic French Rosieriste console table is modeled after the desks where early-century florists prepared bouquets. The special rack edging three sides of the tabletop holds roses, greens, and other flowers out of the way as the artist works. The compartment holds leaves and cuttings — or, with its removable trapdoor lid, it could serve as a secret place to keep love letters.

Role

Copywriter

Samples

Here’s how a product description looks on the page:

Small seafarer desk

Click here to return to portfolio

Guitar Muse

Guitar Muse

I’ve published 82 articles for Guitar-Muse. I reviewed gear, interviewed guitarists, drew diagrams, and researched an infographic (see below).

The tone of my writing for Guitar-Muse was technical yet informal. Some of the best-performing pieces:

Here’s the finished infographic that I researched:

Songfacts

Songfacts

I researched and wrote feature articles for Songfacts. I also wrote “Fact or Fiction?” quizzes and entered them via Songfacts’s custom-built CMS, and generally built out Songfacts’s vast store of information with researched facts about specific songs and artists.

Writing samples from Songfacts

I also coordinated a feature on “Working Class Musicians” between CDBaby’s D.I.Y. Musician blog and Songfacts. We surveyed middle-class musicians via CDBaby’s blog and then told their stories.

Here’s a comment from a Songfacts reader about the “Middle Class Musicians” article:

My daughter is a very serious cellist. I’m going to send her this link so she can see for herself what life might be like if she decides to pursue this as a career. I think it’s both sobering and inspiring. I remember seeing an interview with a musician who had enjoyed some mid-level success as a recording artist in the past and he discussed how people think you’re a failure if you’re not still selling a million records. He said he always considered himself a success because he had a nice home and a family, and he still got to make music for a living.
—Jonah from Toronto, Canada

Finally, the article “Aretha to the Black Keys: The Muscle Shoals Story” was cited in Carla Jean Whitley’s Muscle Shoals Sound Studio: How the Swampers Changed American Music.