Freelance Writers

• First, establish an online presence. It doesn’t really matter where. I started out blogging and then started writing for www.associatedcontent.com and www.helium.com but then switched to blogging.  My blogs are my playground.  I write about home and family at www.phoenixritu.com and this is about my experience as a freelancer.  Be clear in your mind.  What you are actually aiming at is a presence on the net.  Write articles, make a portfolio.  This portfolio is what gets you writing work.  If your client wants to see your work, you can provide a link so that the person knows your writing style.

 
• Create a serious profile. This means professional.  Do not be juvenile, and do not be a clown.  I write humor on www.phoenixritu.com but it is not silly.  Moreover, that is a sample of work.  Profile is just a better version of a resume.  A more approachable one.  You must appear professional, approachable and competent.  Do not be overly slick or aggressive; people interpret it as expensive and shy away.  Do not appear amateur either.

 
• Work at first with one job board.  I get a bulk of my work from www.getafreelancer.com.  The rest comes from the others, from www.elance.com and www.odesk.com. I have heard horror stories about Craig’s List and so avoid it.  I have just joined www.guru.com but have had no experience there.

 
• Bid often at first, and bid low. I got my first writing gig at GAF and used that money to turn Gold.  Now I have 150 bids a month, and I try to use them all up.  Dont be disappointed.  I get about 25 to 40 out of the 150 bids I make.  But I pick up jobs I know I would enjoy writing and learning about.  I am still not getting quality and high paid work that I keep hearing about.  I guess I need more experience for that.  

 
• Take care while bidding.  Use the cover letter to sell yourself vis a vis the project.  You are a writer and you can take the time to write a personalised cover for your bid.  Dont try the one size fits all cover letter.  It gets shelved and leaves a bad expression.
• Always cross check.  I got into a mess once.  The mail was about 20 odd articles on SEO (that is what was written in the subject line) and I confirmed and began writing them.  I worked so hard and mailed the articles.  But I had not opened the mail.  Turned out only a certain number were on SEO, the rest were on other topics.  I had to spend another half a day to make good the tally.  Needless to say it was embarassing, and painful.  I learnt my lesson.  Now not only do I check the mail but send a detailed mail in reply, with clearly stated objectives, word count, topics and payment/mode of payment as well as deadline

• At first start small.  Working virtually means you do not get non-verbal feedback.  You do not know the person and only have the written word.  This can lead to huge misunderstandings and avoidable bitterness.  So avoid ghostwriting someone’s memoirs, specially for a budget of $250.  I love doing 10 articles of 500 words each.  I happily mail them and collect payment and move on.  Short and sweet with money in the bank.  

 
• Go for escrow payments.  Most job boards have that facility.  Once you are awarded the work, the buyer deposits money in the escrow account.  After have submitted the work and the buyer has checked it, the payment is released to you.  This way you do not get scammed.  Ask to be paid in escrow if possible.

• Decide what you want to do.  I know people who love doing re-writes and that is it.  You may like to write on certain topics.  I avoid technical things, but write on finance, health, weight loss and astrology.  You may have another niche.  Once you narrow your field, you do not need to waste too much time researching.  You already have an idea and can write about what you know.

 
• Be mentally ready for the hard work.  The pay is not that hot, and the work is long and hard.  The sad part is that you do not get credit.  You are relinquishing copyright.  So be thorough, and dont get overly anxious about the words you craft.  You are not writing a Pulitzer copy here.  Save all the wit and magic for your blog.  This is work.  Just do it and collect your payment.

 
• If you miss a deadline, you are cursed.  I am not joking here.  Deadlines are sacred in this line of work.  If you have missed a deadline, the client will just penalize you, or withold payments.  Moreover he will never give you more work.  So keep yourself some margin when you agree to a deadline.  That way you build a profile that is trustworthy and get good work, and repeat clients.

I think that once a person has written and got an audience on various websites that allow you to post for performance pay, one should turn professional.  You are writing for money, are you not?  You need to turn all that talent for churning out good interesting copy into money.

For that you need to register yourself on job boards, and then you have to test the waters ……

Sounds daunting?

Dont be scared.  At the worst you wont get a writing gig.  At the best, you’ll make some money.  That is all there is to it.

There are many websites specially working at getting freelance writers a job.  The best part about these websites is

• You dont need to waste time and burn fuel to get to interviews, they come walking to you
• You get to work for people all around the world
• You get to pit your skills against people all around the world (and if you win the writing gig, you know how great that makes you feel?)
• You gain a whole lot of experience and practise.  I can churn out 15 articles a day along with my day job ….. that is the kind of skill you gain.

This looks very impressive does it not?  It is the logo of a website written in horrible English.

I visited it yesterday, looking for job boards for my freelance work.  The website states that the job board is basically set up in UK, but deals with clients all around the world.

Of course, since the writing gigs uploaded there seem genuine and high paying, an unsuspecting freelancer will register there.  I did that too.

I promptly got a mail asking me to activate my account.  After activating my account, I started trying to bid.  I could not bid for anything.  Then I started looking around for the FAQs, which did not give any membership information.  The website kept asking me for $9 to bid.  $9 is not a big deal, but something made me start looking around for more information about the site.

This website is made by scamsters in Chennai.  It has nothing to do with freelance writing.  It has everything to do with $9 the scamsters want from you.

Well, you have been warned

May be you have been laid off, or may be you have just graduated from college/school, and given the current economic scenario, there is no job for you.  Perhaps you are a stay at home Mom and your kids have grown up.  Whatever the reason, you are looking for occupation that pays.

There are many ways in which you can work online from home.  You can work for a company, you can work for other people, or you can be self employed and work for yourself.  Sounds simple?  It is anything but simple!

Most succesful online entrepreneurs have multiple sources of income.  They use websites, blogs, affiliate products, capitalise on residual incomes, Ebay income etc.  Few people that are succesful have become so using any single technique.

As a newbie, you need to avoid the common mistake made by all newcomers.  Do not commit to any single program.  It is too easy to invest all your time and effort to a single thing, and then, if it does not work, to get disheartened and quit.  The key to being succesful is to diversify.  Join Ebay, Amazon, blog about your strenghts, sell affiliate products.  You may not start making a six figure income instantly, but a few dollars will start trickling in and do wonders to your self esteem.

You do not have to be a techie to make money online.  It helps, but that is not the only way.  I am a writer, and I freelance my writing skills.  I am not a techie or a marketing expert.  Any one who can read and write can make a good income by choosing the most fitting work at home opportunity for themselves.  Companies are outsourcing jobs to interested individuals and companies.  Moreover, once you bring a company a referral or sale, you earn a commission.  That is what affiliate marketing is all about.  You can research which affiliate program interests you and use their free training and tools to learn how to earn.

Forex trading, affiliate programs, creating an ebook, setting up an online store….. there are myriads of opportunities to learn about and chose from.

Just be careful when you are searching for internet jobs.  You should never have to pay for work or job lists.  If someone is offering you work on those conditions, the person is a scammer and a cheat.  Those lists are filled with dead job leads, or lists of more scammers who want to charge you money.  Do not fall for companies that require you to “invest” or “pay money to cover training costs”.  Legitimate jobs will never require your money.  They want work and they pay for it.

If a website tells you to “act now” do your research before joining the company.  Do not get pressured into making a decision right away.  Most of these websites are set up with text that says the offer will expire on today’s date.  If you revisit the website the next day, the text says the same thing with the next day’s date.

Technorati Tags: Freelancing, scams

The coolest thing on internet right now is Twitter.  It has the immediacy of having a conversation on the phone, and its short, sweet and to the point.  The added advantage is that you dont have to dial or wonder how to cut a conversation short.  I think its a great idea.  One just has to get used to the language and also the style.  It is just like getting used to Facebook when its time came, and also the internet!!  Both took some time to get used too, and both are powerful tools in their own right.

I have discovered Twitter recently and am still getting used to it.  Here are some things that I have learnt

• Put all the information about yourself that you can in your profile.  Put a photo, your blog address.  People dont like to follow someone they dont know and if you have no profile ID and you decide to follow someone, you look like a spammer.  People dont like that.  So personalise your profile.
• Keep your tweets short and sweet.  Twitter limits messages to 140 characters.  So be short, and to the point.  Use emoticons if you want to add punch to your tweet.  Links are not a problem, and Twitter shortens links automatically.
• When in France talk French.  When at Twitter, use Twitter language.  Tweeple is People who use Twitter, DM is direct message which only the person who its meant for can see, @replies is meant for a specific person but every one can see it.  RT is retweeting or resending a message.
• RT is a powerful and popular action.  If you like some information put up by another person, RT it.  It is like paying that person a huge compliment.  Do it often enough, other people will notice and RT your links and messages too.
• Use hash #.  People who want to keep track of a specific conversation use # a lot.  Sports lovers keep track of soccer or cricket comments with #.  If you like a certain subject, keep track of those with this symbol #.  These are particularly useful for online meet-ups

• Twitter is used by a lot of people including online marketing spammers.  Be discriminating.  Do not suddenly start following a whole lot of Tweeple who have nothing to do with you and your interests, just because they have started following you.  Decide what you want to do with Twitter, promote your writing, hang out with friends, share music or whatever and unfollow people who have nothing to do with your goals.
• I am sure more technically adept people know a whole lot of functions that I do not.  You are welcome to leave me a comment enlightening me of some wonderful feature that I dont know about.

I quite enjoy Twitter and am found hanging around at this link.

You are welcome to follow me.

Technorati Tags: Freelancing, Networking, Twitter

SEO is the art of writing an article or any content with the aim of optimizing it for search engines.  Search Engines crawl all over the internet looking for and finding words that are being searched for by people.  As a freelance writer, you have to be aware of SEO and able to write articles that are picked up by the search engines.

The majority of web traffic is driven by the popular search engines Yahoo, MSN, Google and AskJeeves.  If your site is not picked up by the search engines, you do not get traffic.  Traffic means existence on the net, and it also means money.

It is surprisingly simple to write an SEO optimized article.  Say you have to write an article on a slimming product and your main key words are XXX product, weightloss, obesity and secondary key words are slimming and health.

Your title should have all the main key words, for example

“Fight obesity, lose weight with XXX”

The secondary key words go into the sub heading like

It is really effective for slimming and improving health

Now the main key word density in the article should be about 2-3% and the secondary key words be scattered in the article.

Hello everyone.  Let me tell you about myself.  I was obese.  It made me depressed and gave me health problems.  I tried many slimming products and went on many diet programmes but could not lose weight.  Then I discovered XXX.  This is wonderful and I lost 20 pounds in one month.  I was thrilled to lose weight.  This is really effective to fight obesity, regain health.  I am proud of my weightloss.  I have regained my health and my husband’s so proud of me.

The search engines will find your content if they search for weightloss, obesity, health and the product.

Technorati Tags: SEO

Develop Skill and Technique to keep material fresh

Has it every happened to you?  You get a fantastic idea, totally fresh and original and rush to research it and write a mint-fresh original copy only to find that it’s been done to death?  The truth is that there is no such thing as a fresh original idea.  In my experience, any thing my brain has come up with has already been discussed and written about from every angle on the internet.

So what can a person do?

All we can do is make our “take” on the subject unique.  The subject is never original, the copy is original if we pay attention and take the pains to make it so.  Plagarism is cheap and shoddy.  We have to put our own stamp on the copy we create.  That is what creative process is all about.  It is said that Shakespeare did not write a single new story.  The tales already existed.  He wrote his own version of them, and he did the job so well that all the older tales got eclipsed by his version.  He stamped his own personality on the tales and made himself immortal.

How does one get fresh ideas?

This world is teeming with fresh and original content.  I would suffest carrying a handy notebook and a camera with you at every waking moment.  I accidentally discovered the value of this.  I used to carry a gratitude journal with me to the park.  While resting on the benches I started writing things I saw on the back pages.  A few of my observations became the base for articles, one of which won me a job with an Ezine, my first paying writing gig.  Much encouraged, I now never leave home without a notebook and a camera.

Live life outside the internet

Watch movies, walk in the neighboring park, interact with other people, go shopping to the mall.  These activities will keep you abreast with what is happening around you and also give you fresh material to write about.  If the weather is bad, switch on the T.V., or listen to the radio.  There is so much happening in the world that we can never be out of good material to write about.  But again, do not report news, personalize it and make it yours.  This makes the content original and gives it life.

Read

Reading other people’s work improves your writing style.  Besides, magazines are a good source of content.  They have done surveys and know what the trends are.  They base articles around the trends.  One can pick up subjects and write about them.  So subscribe to magazines on subjects that interest you - Health, Gardening, Cooking, Cars, Games or technical stuff.  Read these magazines, discuss the articles with friends and family.  Form clear ideas and then write your content.

Another benefit of reading is that it improves your vocabulary and teaches you how to write a taut effective copy.

Make your day job work for you

You may be a housewife and a mother looking after children.  Or perhaps you are caring for the elderly.  You may be a teacher or dealing in software, insurance, automobiles or whatever.  You must be having in-depth knowledge about your sphere of work, its plus and minus points, its future, its details.  That is hundreds of articles.  Develop a niche that you can write for.

Do the same with your hobby/lifestyle

Love movies? Can’t live without music? Or do you love to cook/eat?  I know a young man who is very fond of playing internet games.  He has amazing in-depth knowledge about games and also the websites and forums.  He could write a lot on that subject if he cared to.  Make your hobby work for you.  Gardening, recipes, alternative health care, even astrology has its own readers.

If you have a detailed knowledge about things you love to do in your spare time, write about them.  If not, brush up your knowledge and then write about them

Technorati Tags: Add new tag, original content

Now you have a blog, a nice one, with content that you have posted, and you have followed all the steps that I have listed out.  If you have done that, you have an audience.  A group of friends who drop in and leave comments.

Remember, nothing runs on autopilot.  You have to keep working.  Only scams advertise that you have fully automated programs that you can set up and forget.  The truth is that this is work.  You have to keep on working hard to maintain the friendships that you have.  It is a continuous process.  Any one who has an online presence, reads other people’s work.  That is the only way to ensure that your work gets read.

Always pay attention to quality.  Shoddy content is embarassing.  If you can not write grammatically correct language and can not spell, you have no business wanting to be a freelance writer.  Shoddy content is embarassing, to say the least.  I have a couple of pieces online that I am very ashamed of.  I was tired and preoccupied when I wrote them.  Now they are online for ever, and they are in my name.  I can not delete them and it makes me very uneasy to think of people reading them and associating them with me. 

Please pay attention to spelling and grammar.  Always preview and spell check before you hit the publish button.

Do not be a plagarist

I can not even begin to over-stress this point.  It is too easy and tempting to copy and paste other published work.  It never works.  If the person sees it (and he/she will) you can be facing a law suit.  The person may decide not to take you to court, but will definitely slander you in each and every social networking site.  That kind of reputation is hard to live down.  It will end your career as a freelance writer.  Every one reads Wikipedia and other public sites, so copying from them also does not work.  Read your subject, research it, digest it and then re-write in your own words.

Network

This is a never ending continuous exercise.  You have to be visible on the social networking sites.  It increases your ratings and helps your original work gain a huge presence.

Keep polishing, editing and retagging your old articles so that they remain fresh, new and highly visible to newer readership.  It will make a continuous source of income.

SEO

Learn the importance of key words, how to use them in your work.  Without SEO your work does not dominate or even feature in the search engines.  I will speak of this in future postings.

There should be no question in our minds that we need people to read what we write.  To become a serious web content creator who earns a significant income from one’s writing, we need viewership.  The very first thing to do when you join a website that publishes content is to make friends.

I have had people ask me why they needed to make friends when all they wanted to do was publish content.  Well, if you just want to see your stuff printed on the net, you do not need friends.  If you need a viewership (and most websites pay for page-views) you need people who will read and comment.

Friends are the first people who will read you work when it’s published.  If they have you on their list of friends, on most content writing sites, anything you publish will show up at once on their dashboard/community page.  Some sites like Associated Content sends mails to friends to notify them every time you post something new.

Friends usually leave you feedback, which is good for the ego, and if there is something amiss, they even (if they are really good friends) let you know and suggest ways to edit or change the content.  They will often submit your work to social networking sites, where it is viewed by hundreds or thousands of other viewers, who are your potential fans and are looking for the kind of content you write.  You can not yourself submit your work, because this will be considered spamming and get you banned from these sites.

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS

Do not simply add people or ask someone to be your friend.  Seek out people whose work you genuinely like and show interest in their work.  Showing interest once and then fading away is simply not acceptable.  So do not go and comment on a bunch of posts by someone popular and then fade into the woodwork.  People are intelligent and they do not appreciate such false appreciation.  Do not befriend an entire community, because you will not be able to handle it and will be overwhelmed by all the content and comments.  Go slow here.

Once you have a group of friends, read their work, promote it.  Once they see you doing this, they will promote your work too.

This does not mean that you can present shoddy work.  No one wants to hang out with losers.  You need to keep your friends and producing superior classy content is the key to doing so.

You should work towards having great content and a great bunch of promoters.

Keep in mind that this is just the first step.  We have only scratched the surface.

TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC

Creating a blog is not difficult, but ensuring that it has a lot of visitors can be very challenging.

There are many Mommy blogs, Daddy blogs and Kiddy blogs.  There are also a special genre of blogs like Rant blogs commonly made by angst ridden teenagers.  These can be safely dropped over here. 

We are looking at writing for money.

Every blogger has a purpose behind creating a blog. So starting a blog isn’t hard, but maintaining one and gaining readership can be quite a task, but all that is required is an understanding of the reader and the effort to keep the blog alive.

Here’s what you need.

1. TOPIC AND URL

Choose the subject and the URL with great care.  It has to be an interesting topic that will attract readers.  The url has to be related to the topic and should be easy for the reader to remember.

A celebrity blog is simple, the person’s name sells - like Amitabh Bachchan or Brad Pitt.  It is easy to trace such blogs in the whole www

But a blog on technology should have a url related to technology, a blog on cooking should have something to do with cooking like xyzrecipes.com

2.DESIGN

Try and have a design that is soft on eyes. This includes the background theme, colour, fonts and font size but all this should match the subject of the blog.  Upload a lot of pictures if you can related to the subject of your content.

Designers suggest text in black or gray on a white background is the safest bet. Subtle colours should be used on the sides.

3. CONTENT

Whatever subject you may choose to write about, try and offer something fresh to the reader. It can be an opinion about something or even an instance. Readers look for something new.  A unique perspective always helps in keeping the blog in the memory of net surfers.  There are a lot of blogs each competing for eyeball space.

4. UPDATES

Update your blog on weekly basis. If possible past twice a week. Those blogs that are not uploaded for a couple of months are considered dead.

5. RSS FEEDS AND NEWSLETTERS

These are some ways to notify your reader about the updates.

RSS feeds will help those readers who wish to keep track of your writing. Twitter is a wonderful tool that is immediate and effective.  Just a simple message saying “blog updated” along with a link is useful

6. INTERACT

Comments work as a medium for communication between the blogger and his readers. How whatever the comments may be, try and revert. This will help the reader feeling important and he feels a kinship to your blog. He will definitely visit again. 

7. SEARCH ENGINE

Search engines often pick up blogs that are popular. This might depend upon the various things such as number of hits, quality of content or the popularity of the blogger.  I will discuss this later.  SEO is a science and requires a larger discusion.

8. COUNTERS

Visit counters show the number of visits. But try and keep it invisible initially. Once you have a respectable number of visits, make it visible. More visits or numbers are likely to influence the readers into thinking it’s a popular blog as a lot a people keep coming. But it might as well work the other way round if the visits are less.

9. MONEY MAKING

If you are interested in earning money from your blog, try writing on subject such as technology, real estate, online marketing, etc. people are curious to learn about various topics without spending money. Other popular subjects are weight loss, food, money, and in therecent enonomic slump, finance and alternative methods of earning. 

Therefore if you have the hits, advertisers are likely to come. Even the visit records generated by counters works as a proof.

SITES THAT HOST YOUR BLOGS

www.blogger.com,

www.wordpress.org,

www.blogspot.com,

www.soulcast.com

Technorati Tags: blog, content, Traffic