Article Marketing for Real Writers: Launch Your Freelance Career!
August 28, 2007
Looking to build your freelance writing career but don’t know where to begin? Maybe I can help.
Let’s start with a perspective on web exposure and your business. You know you’re a wonderful writer. You know you can provide flawless copy for any number of industries!
But does anyone else on the World Wide Web know?
Let’s talk about page rank. If you have a website, how many visitors do you get per day? Have you ever typed your web link into the Alexa.com Page Rank calculator? If so, what came up? Was it 9,547,893, or something equally upsetting?
As you may know, the higher your page rank number, the LESS visitors you’re receiving.
Example: Alexa pagerank of 1 is usually either Google, Hotmail or Yahoo (this vascillates daily). That means that these three websites alternately swap the title of Most Visited Website in the World. Think you can get your website up there, or even close?
Umm… no.
FACT: Not many writers with websites are getting much in the way of web visitors. Most are getting buried by the big dogs, or lost in Blogger land.
How To Become a Freelance Grant Writer
August 28, 2007
What is a freelance grant writer? These individuals have a lot of power in their hands. When they work for companies, they are essentially trying to help gain free money for that company to help the company expand, do research, or to stay in business. These individuals will use a detailed knowledge of the environment to create the best piece of work they can. Freelance grant writers hold a lot of people’s jobs within their hands.
For those looking to become a grant writer, there are a wide range of choices out there. For example, you can get jobs within the medical fields where you help to write to raise money for medical research. Here, you could be showing the importance of why the research is vital to creating a vaccine or to developing a cure. Or, you may be working with a company developing new technology to expand. In any case, most people who hold these jobs will need experience and a lot of training and schooling to prepare quality work that delivers these companies the results they need.
Its Time To Start That Swipe File
August 27, 2007
Just as great fiction is an art, so is great copywriting. Beneath the art, however, there’s a foundation of basic knowledge and skills. The craft that goes into your writing.
Craft comes first. Art follows.
You learn the craft of writing by educating yourself, by the actual process of writing (the doing), and by reading incessantly. Every successful writer will tell you that reading has been and still is the cornerstone of developing his craft.
Reading presents you with a written illustration of what works and what doesn’t, of what you like as a writer and what you don’t. It helps you understand the possibilities, and offers practical instruction of how the rules of your craft are used.
Most writers, when they start out, mimic their favorite authors. I have a friend who became incredibly adept at writing like Stephen King. For several years, everything I wrote had a Ray Bradbury flavor.
Eventually, we developed our own styles, which were richer for having first gone through this mimic stage.
The point is this: part of any effective learning process is to mimic what has been successful before you.
Before You Write Your Book, Organize Its Parts - Part 2
August 27, 2007
If you are a serious writer who wants to publish and sell books and informational products, you need to be able to find all of its parts in a minute or less. Filing only the important parts of your book will yield fast-writing your book. With the tips below, you will find any book-related paper within two minutes!
After you decide on your topic, working title, audience, thesis, and “tell and sell” and before you write a single page of a chapter, it’s best to organize your book, its chapters, even your promotion how-to’s. Part one of this article is available at http://www.bookcoaching.com/freearticles/article-54.shtml.
Other Book Files to Keep
1. Front Matter. Placed at the front of your book, you may use all or only a few of these: acknowledgements, testimonials, forward, copyright page, Introduction, dedication, Library of Congress and ISBN information. If you sell on your own site, you do not need an ISBN number.
2. Book Chapters 1-End. Within each you will put your research, articles, quotes, how-to’s, exercises, tips, partially written chapter using your book chapter format worksheet, and four-fifteen questions you want to answer in each chapter. You can file both in your computer and in your hard files arranged from A-Z.
Are You Wasting Your Time With Free Ezine Ads?
August 27, 2007
There are lots of ezines (newsletters) out there that offer free classified ads to new subscribers (and many even offer free ads on an ongoing basis).
This can be a nice little source of free traffic and exposure for your website/ebook/ezine but, if not handled properly it can have its downside.
The biggest problem is that, by joining a whole plethora of ezines your mail box risks becoming very crowded very quickly, and it’s easy to become overwhelmed with it all.
This is especially true if some of those ezines send out messages every single day — as many do.
To get around this, and to keep your free ezine advertising campaign under control, follow these steps:
STEP 1. Create a separate e-mail address for your ezine subscriptions (e.g. my_ezines@…..).
STEP 2. In your email software (e.g. Outlook Express) create a folder (directory) called ‘free_ezine_ads’.
STEP 3. Using your e-mail software set up a rule that sends all mails that arrive to your e-mail address ‘my_ezines@….’ to the folder called ‘free_ezine_ads’.
STEP 4. Prepare the free ad you want to place in the ezines and keep a copy of it handy in a text file.
Before You Write Your Book, Organize Its Parts - Part 1
August 26, 2007
If you are a serious writer who wants to publish and sell books and informational products, you need to be able to find all of its parts in a minute or less. Filing only the important parts of your book will yield fast-writing your book. With the tips below, you will find any book-related paper within two minutes!
After you decide on your topic, working title, audience, thesis, and “tell and sell” and before you write a single page of a chapter, it’s best to organize your book, its chapters, even your promotion how-to’s.
Five Hard Copy Filing Tips
1. Stop Piling and Start Filing!
Maybe you’re a stacker (horizontal multiple piles), a stuffer (look organized, but can’t find things, a spreader (spread one pile to another place, then another), a slinger (undecided, you sling into a place behind closed doors).
For those of you who want a hard copy of your book’s parts, you’ll want to leave the bad habits above.
How To Get The Most From Your Free eBooks Marketing Campaign
August 26, 2007
First, your ebook needs to have an attractive title. The title should grab the attention of your intended target audience. The more appealing the title, the more your ebook will be downloaded.
Your ebook needs to have quality content. You can write your own content or ask permission to use another author’s content. Your ebook will be read more if the content is original.
You will want to put your ad on the title page or on the table of contents. This will give the most exposure for your web site or the products you’re selling.
It’s important to put your ebook in as many formats as possible. Most ebook software only allows the ebook to be read by certain browers and software. People may not take the time to download a new software program in order to read your ebook. Other versions of your ebook could be in HTML, auto responder and downloadable text format.
You can contact other business owners and ask them if they would like to include their ad in your ebook. Just ask them in return to advertise your free ebook on their web site or in their e-zine for a set period of time. This method will get your free ebook marketing campaign off to a fast start.
Writing Articles for the Search Engines
August 26, 2007
This is precisely what I am doing here today (and every other day in my life)! I am writing to share my experience and hopefully, my knowledge and information can help some others who are in need of such information and advice. Writing is a very powerful way to connect with people and we can use it to not only share information but promote ourselves.
When you’re writing an article or some form of web content, you have to bear the following things in mind:-
a. The purpose of writing
What I do is this?.before I start an article, I leave the title of the article empty and start typing out the purpose of the article. What kind of feeling do I want to leave with the reader? Then I move on to the keywords that I want to use consistently throughout the article (for search engine optimization purposes). Right after that, I write down (in point form) the content of the article.
Then and only then, I start beefing up the article.
Screenwriting ? Five Golden Insights
August 25, 2007
Originality emerges from structure. Once you have a story idea, you can expand the idea into a story by using structure. In the initial extrapolation the new story structure will resemble the one being mirrored, but past a critical threshold, the needs of the new story will begin to dictate the structure. As you proceed (second and third drafts) the distance from the original mirror will increase significantly ? enough that the terms "novel" or "original" can be applied to the new story. Hence originality emerges from structure and mirroring.
You can mirror structure but not ideas. If you analyse all your favourite movies or stories, scene by scene and sequence by sequence (admittedly, this relies on you knowing how to analyse stories), you will realise that you can argue that all stories are more or less the same. The expression "there is only one story" has some truth to it. Many writers, consciously or subconsciously, mirror story structure but not story ideas. After all, the audience has expectations as to what a story should be.
Time pressure versus incubation. Both are valuable. Initially use time pressure to extrapolate an idea into a complete story. Then allow incubation to provide you with richer insights.
How To Become Qualified As A Proofreader
August 25, 2007
The field of proofreading is not as easy to get into as you might think. In fact, there are many proof reading qualifications that you must possess in order to qualify. While these qualifications change from company to company, the over all concepts are the same throughout. Unless you can prove your worth and be able to do the job, you will not have the proof reading qualifications that are necessary. To get these, you must dedicate yourself to the cause.
Many people see the world of freelance to be an easy to do from home job. It is anything but this. It is vitally important that people understand that writing skills and communication skills are the most important aspects of this career. A career as a proofreader is not something to take lightly. In fact, in order to be taken seriously, you need to have the proper proof reading qualifications. Here are some basic things you will need to understand. We say basic because there are many more areas that you will need to learn as well as these. First, you will need to be able to grasp the basics. Proofreading entails catching the spelling and grammatical errors of the piece. But, it also is about correcting problems with the flow of the piece, the tone of the piece, the layout and even fixing mistakes with facts. A good way to get this training is to take a basic proofreading training certification. Although this is not the only training you will need, it is a step into the right direction.
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