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The Best Freelance Job Boards for Writers

How many times have you checked out a job board to that either it no longer exists or that there is one or two jobs listed. Out of the hundreds of job boards on the Web today, how do you find those containing projects that you are interested in and qualified for.

I have recently surveyed over 300 freelance web sites and these are the best boards for freelance writers. The benchmark that I used for judging the board was the number of legitimate projects (as opposed to "business opportunities" ) and requests for submission being posted every month. I have only included ones posting 30 projects or more a month

The very best

I picked Guru This huge all-inclusive board connects independent professionals (a.k.a. “gurus”) with contract projects. If you are new to independent consulting, check out the Run Your Biz section, which includes a "Getting Started" column, where you can leave a question to be answered by experts. Lots of other useful information (e.g. tax and finance, legal, etc.) for contractors. Find a contracting job (”gig”) searching by field (creative/media, finance and legal, etc.), keyword, and geography.. Recently, it acquired IT Moonlighter , another with lots of freelance jobs. Whatever, Guru is probably the largest freelance marketplace on the Web. Over 3,300 projects posted last month.

Writers Block is No Longer a Problem

“If you’re like me, than I’m sure you’re pretty familiar with the well-known writer’s block.

From time to time, when you have to start writing something, be it an article, an ebook, or just a letter, there is that moment when you just stare at the blank sheet of paper (or at the vibrant colors of your monitor) and nothing seems to come out from your mind.

The good news is that there is a cure for this disease.

American poet William Stafford offers this advice to poets who suffer from Writer’s Block: “”There is no such thing as writer’s block for writers whose standards are low enough.”"

But, this is not an incentive to write junk!

Perhaps the most important reason that leads to WB is the lack of an idea. You just sit down in front of your perfectly empty monitor and think about what should you be writing. “”There is nothing I can write about”" seems to be the only thing that you can think about.

How To Write an Ezine Article

Writing can be fraught at the best of times but it never ceases to amaze me just how much more difficult we make it by our approach. Writing an Ezine Article is no different to writing anything else. You need to approach the task in a professional way. There is little point in attempting to write anything whilst trying to answer mail, doing the dishes or grooming the pet. You have to give the article your undivided attention.

There is no set formula for the equipment you choose to write with, it just boils down to personal preference. Some people prefer to use a computer, others prefer a typewriter and some still like to use pen and paper. Select the one that you are most comfortable with.

Here are ten tips on how to make writing an Ezine Article a lot easier:

1. Allocate time

This will ensure that your train of thought is not interrupted. There is nothing worse for a writer than to have a good idea ruined by an interruption. To help yourself think find the quietest spot in the house, put up a "Do Not Disturb" sign up and close the door.

Effective Editing: It Spells the Difference!

If you think proofreading equals editing, then you’re wrong! Editing is a lot more than just scrutinizing your manuscript for misspelled words or missing punctuation marks.

As a whole:

• Edit only *after* you’ve written the *whole* piece. If you stop to edit after every paragraph or sentence, you will disrupt the flow of your thoughts.
• It is better to take a break before starting to edit a long manuscript so you’ll have a fresh perspective.
• Revise only *hard copy* especially if your manuscript is quite long. Revising from a monitor is confusing.
• Verify the spelling of names, figures, dates, and addresses. These are the most murdered items in manuscripts!
• Be sure of what you put between those quotation marks! Otherwise, rephrase the line and omit the quotation marks.
• Did you follow the writer guidelines? e.g., number of words required, font/font size specified, spacing, margins…

Edit your content:

• Be sure that you did not stray from your topic. Are your paragraphs coherent?
• Did you fulfill your purpose for writing that piece? Is your entertainment feature article entertaining enough? Did your personality sketch bring out your subject’s unique and distinct qualities?
• If necessary, did you provide enough supporting data (graphs, charts, figures) for your piece?
• If applicable, did your article answer the 5 Ws and H? Who, what, why, were, when and how.

Edit for tightness:

Organizing Your Data to Write Better Copy

Last quarter I talked about interviewing / gathering data. So now you’ve got several thousand words of notes, hopefully digitally recorded. What comes next?

GETTING ORGANIZED

I suggested organizing your interview questions into 4 groups. I’m going to label them for you A, B, C, D.

·what is the business problem? = A

·what is the high level solution? = B

·can you tell me more about the solution? = C

·why should I trust you (as my vendor?) = D

Any decent piece of writing has a beginning, a middle and an end. So before you start editing / writing you want a map, to show you where you are going. Take a blank sheet of paper, write four major headings and label them A, B, C, D, as above.

Now read your notes. When you find data relevant to "A" (the business problem), underline that copy and mark a big "A" in the margin (in red?) . Keep working through until you have marked up relevant copy for all four sections of your piece.

You will be leaving out anything that does not seem suitable as you go.

Writing Personal Statements - Top Tips

WRITING THE PERSONAL STATEMENT TO GET INTO UK UNIVERSITY

HOW DO YOU DO IT?

And the only way to do that has been largely ignored or is unknown by most students.

The failure of the vast majority of students to get admission to their chosen university is one of the great unpublicised stories of our time.

Why do they fail?

Because they think in their terms and do not consider the reader: the admission officer.

They don’t even know they are doing it.

But THAT is why they fail.

IN THIS ARTICLE

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SECRETS TO SUCCESS

MAKING A POWERFUL FIRST IMPRESSION

AVOID AMBIGUITY

MAKING A PROFESSIONAL IMPRESSION

SECRETS TO SUCCESS

Your first aim is to make sure that your personal statement gets read; start with a powerful selling point that catches the admission officer’s eye. Admission officers usually give each personal statement a quick scan before picking the best for a more thorough reading.

Your personal statement must therefore clearly show the most perfunctory reader what you have to offer.

This means that your words need to be short and punchy. See http://www.getintouni.com for examples.

The Top Five Mistakes That Companies Make with Regard to Technical Documentation

I’ve seen it time and again. One of the most common weaknesses that I’ve seen in engineering companies-indeed, an almost universal fault-is the lack of proper technical documentation. Some would laugh this off as a minor detail; however, the repercussions are often severe. A company’s entire future can be made or lost based on the amount of attention they pay to this issue.

Over the years, I’ve identified five problems that I’ve found to be particularly common when it comes to writing technical documentation. I’d like to share these thoughts with you, in the hope of preventing others from falling down the same paths.

1. Not having any user manuals

Don’t laugh. This may seem like a fairly basic mistake-absurd, even-but it is surprisingly common. I’ve encountered many companies that don’t provide user manuals for their products, or whose manuals are skeletally thin or years out of date. In fact, I’d estimate that about half of the small engineering companies that I’ve encountered fall into this category. (Of course, one seldom encounters this problem when buying off-the-shelf software or consumer electronics. Amongst engineers though, it’s a depressingly familiar story.)

Future of Electronic Publishing

UNESCO’s somewhat arbitrary definition of “book” is: “Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding covers”.

The emergence of electronic publishing was supposed to change all that. Yet a bloodbath of unusual proportions has taken place in the last few months. Time Warner’s iPublish and MightyWords (partly owned by Barnes and Noble) were the last in a string of resounding failures which cast in doubt the business model underlying digital content. Everything seemed to have gone wrong: the dot.coms dot bombed, venture capital dried up, competing standards fractured an already fragile marketplace, the hardware (e-book readers) was clunky and awkward, the software unwieldy, the e-books badly written or already in the public domain.

Terrified by the inexorable process of disintermediation (the establishment of direct contact between author and readers, excluding publishers and bookstores) and by the ease with which digital content can be replicated - publishers resorted to draconian copyright protection measures (euphemistically known as “digital rights management”). This further alienated the few potential readers left. The opposite model of “viral” or “buzz” marketing (by encouraging the dissemination of free copies of the promoted book) was only marginally more successful.

Dont Clone your Book or Business Marketing

Remember that the miracle of cloning sheep has its drawbacks. The main one–dying young.

Don’t let your business die young by following the herd. Instead, think of the natural ways you like to market.

Here are some Marketing Ideas that Make Big Promises. And, when followed by investing a large amount of money and time, only a few will get the results they hope for.

1. Make your book a #1 best seller on Amazon. This idea teaches authors that if they offer $1000’s of bonus books, reports and the like, and tell all their email lists to buy the book on a particular day at Amazon, they will make extreme sales.

In many sales letters that give away $1000’s more than the price of their book, it looks a little suspicious or gimmicky. “Killer copy” and other web sizzle language doesn’t bring confidence to most business people. The programs sold are over $2000. An old saying came from Robert Allen something like: “You make much more money teaching people how to make money than they ever will implementing the skills.”

2. Optimize your web site standings in the search engines with ads placed in Google.com and through ——.

Creating Your Perfect Article Summary ? 7 Tips

What should be in your article summary?

It’s otherwise known as an abstract or article teaser. The purpose of your article summary is to entice a potential reader to read the rest of your article. It’s a sales pitch for the benefits your article delivers and in many cases, it makes the difference as to whether your article gets read or bypassed.

Remove your “author/writer” hat and put on your “copywriter” thinking cap:

Here’s what should be in your article summary:

• Should be 2-7 sentences in length

• Emotional benefits listed that speak directly to your target reader’s interests.
• Reasons why your target ideal reader should continue reading your article.
• Mentions of at least 4-7 keywords relating to your article topic using keyword research tools.

Here’s what should not be in your article summary:

• Do not repeat the title of your article or your author name in your summary. This is redundant.

• Leave out the sales pitch for yourself or your business.
• Leave out your URL and email address.
• Leave out any blatant self-promotion. You’re here to do blatant article-promotion, not self- promotion.

— Next Page »

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