Content Magician, Freelance web content writers

Archive for March, 2008

Many people have come to me voicing their problems about using freelance writers and then they curiously ask me, “How in hell do you survive? I don’t think I can trust another freelance writer again – not in the very near future, anyway”. How do freelance writers survive? Gosh….I’ve never asked me the same question. I guess freelance writers like me just roll with the punches, I guess. But what I think this fellow was trying to get at was this – how to work with your freelance writer in such a way that thing get done fast, does not cost a whole truckload of money and does not zap your patience like hyperactive kids.

OK, then let me start answering this question by saying that I’ve got huge problems as a freelance writer. Being a copywriter or writer is not easy….not being a good one, anyway because here’s what a good freelance copywriter needs to do. Say, Mr. A who owns a boutique comes over to me and say, “Hey, you! You’re a freelance writer. Now, I’ll give you XXX amount of dollars and you write my copy for me in two days”.

What does a freelance writer do
If I take the project on, what I have to do is this….I have to sit down, surf the web, read materials and download stuff so that I understand the industry. I am in the freelance writing industry, not the fashion industry and if he wants me to write something powerful and believable for him, I’ve got to, first, UNDERSTAND his industry, his market, his products and find something to yap about. Whilst being a good yapper often makes a good copywriter, that’s not all there is to it. OK, so boutique was a very general type of business….now, how about fixing computers or maybe road building? I know absolutely nothing about these stuff and if given the task, I would have to dig far and deep into the industry even before I can start writing something for the client.

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by Michael Small

Good SEO copywriters earn as much as $300 an hour. And that can be a bargain! Why? Because of something called the natural text algorithm (NTA). A few years ago Google started using NTAs to spot Web pages that were written more for search engines than real people. Correction, spot and penalize such pages is a more accurate statement.

The NTAs were clunky at first and really not much of a threat. But times have changed! Today’s natural text algorithms can interpret the natural flow of written communication at the same level as a college student. The game has definitely changed. But don’t worry. This is great news for you if you learn five simple steps the pros use to get top ranking and earn the big bucks.

Step 1: List your three top keywords in order of importance and then put the list aside. If you are interested in the technical nuts and bolts, right now we are establishing the topics of content. (more…)

It’s painful… to have a website and be sitting there waiting for people to find you and consider the stuff you have to offer there. The process of waiting can be shortened with extensive search engine optimization done to the website. This process involves working some articles into the website, tweaking the META tags of each and every one of the pages, researching on the keywords related to your industry that you think your potential customers or clients will or might use to find your website, exchanging links with others in the industry and doing some social networking.

SEO is essential to every website on the Internet

Sounds like a lot of work? Well, I won’t kid you. It’s a lot of work and some people give up simply because it takes too long. But this is the way internet marketing works. If you’re expecting a magical climb towards the top, you’re in for a sordid find. SEO is good and it’s essential to every single website; and it’s a constant thing too. You don’t stop when you get to the top. There’s monitoring work to do, researching, and changing the pages and home page time and again to make sure it appears ‘active’. Spiders don’t like ‘dead’ things, you see. (more…)

Admittedly, I’ve done a lot of begging in the past. Begging for business, then begging for payment, then begging for more time. But this is business and things can get even rougher when your business is online. Ecommerce is a huge and profitable business – but only if you know how to take advantage of human emotions. One of the things that successful online business owners take advantage of is impulse purchases. We have to know which hot keys to press in the potential buyer. There are no hard and fast rules to selling successfully online so I’m not going to take you for a walk around the park and say that you’re going to be a multi-millionaire within months without having to do anything. Starting an online business if really hard work and it takes a lot of time for your online business to become an established one.

Make suggestions to the customer
This is an extremely powerful marketing tool for you as a small internet business owner and I am telling you that all those huge International websites have been using it for ages! And you can capitalize on the consumer’s weakness to make the money you deserve. If the customer was looking at a pair of pants and have purchased it, why not make a suggestion to them and say something along the lines of , “Hey, saw that you bought this really cool zebra print pants. I think you’ll really fall in love with this zebra-print purse as well”. (more…)