Essays Assistance » creative

22 Questions to Ask Before You Write a Single Word

Essays — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:49:51 +0000

To write successful copy, you need to know as much as you can. It goes beyond reading background materials, reviewing old marketing pieces and doing some cursory research on the Web.

You need to get inside peoples’ heads.

Start with your clients. They know their business and their customers better than you do. (If they don’t, they should. You can help them learn more.)

How? Use a marketing/creative brief to get the information you need to ace the copywriting (and marketing) assignment. (A marketing/creative brief is a tool used by ad agencies and corporate marketing and creative departments.)

Following is a marketing/creative brief adapted from one I used during my stint at a Seattle ad agency. Even though I now work solo, I still use it today.

(Begin form)

Marketing/Creative Brief

(Note: Designed for B2B; much of this brief is also applicable to B2C.)

Good input is key to a successful project, campaign, or marketing program. This marketing/creative brief is designed to elicit good input. But it takes thorough and thoughtful answers on your part. Please answer the following questions carefully.

1. What is the description of the piece(s)? (Ad, Web site, brochure, radio script, direct mail, etc.)

2. What is the marketing focus? (What products or services are we telling about?)

3. What is the communications problem that the piece(s) must solve? (Awareness, positioning or repositioning, product introduction, category introduction, etc.)

4. Who is the audience? (Demographics, title, function, responsibility, etc.)

5. What is their point of view about the product, service, category?

6. Who is the secondary audience(s), if any?

7. What business problems or issues does the product(s)/service(s) solve for the audience(s)? (Efficiency issues, profitability issues, operations issues, technology issues, etc.)

8. What effect do we want the piece(s) to have on the target audience(s)? (Purchase, phone call, visit Web site, request more information, increase their awareness, etc.)

9. What can we offer to achieve the desired response? (Demos, situation evaluation, sales collateral, personal visit, white paper, etc.)

10. What is the single essential message we must tell the target audience(s) to achieve the desired effect? (Be as concise as possible.)

11. What evidence is there to support our claims? (Features and benefits, testimonials, case studies, etc.)

12. Can anyone else make a similar promise?

13. Are there any technology issues to address? (Compatibility, operating systems, hardware requirements, etc.)

14. What specific industry issues must be addressed? (Trends, etc.)

15. Are there any industry, product or competitive issues to be avoided?

16. What tone should the piece employ? (Hardhitting/serious, educational/informative, humorous, etc.)

17. What do you like about your current piece(s)? (Look and feel, tone, messaging, functionality, etc.)

18. What don’t you like about your current piece(s)? (Look and feel, tone, messaging, functionality, etc.)

19. What overall impressions (look and feel, etc.) would you like the piece(s) to make?

20. Will this piece(s) be used with any other pieces? (proposals, collateral, letters, etc.)

21. How will the piece(s) be used (online, leave behind, trade shows, mailed, etc.) and at what point in the sales cycle?

22. Any other comments?

(End form)

Admittedly, getting clients to answer these questions isn’t always easy.

That’s why it’s best to be flexible with the use of a marketing/creative brief. You can ask the client to fill it out. You can use it to interview the client. You can fill it out yourself for the client’s review. Any sort of collaborative approach works well.

In the end, stress to your clients that if they want more clicks, more leads and more sales, they need to actively participate in the input process.

One you have all the information you need, you’re ready to write a winner.

Why You Need a 3-Tiered Strategy For Article Submission

Essays — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:00:30 +0000

You’ve heard a lot about how much writing articles can do for your internet marketing strategy. You now understand how writing articles can help position you as an expert in your field, gain valuable targed traffic for your web site, and quickly multiple your site’s text links.

Now you have convinced yourself to take the plunge into article marketing and you have a few articles all lined up and ready to submit — and you are overwhelmed by the sheer volume and variety of article directories available. It is easy to simply go with the big dogs and forget the rest, but that is a big mistake. You really need to have a 3-tiered article submission strategy. Select a couple of the big dogs, but also add some medium-sized directories and some smaller, newer directories to your list for regular submission as well. There are several reasons why this strategy can be much more effective in the long run than targeting the large directories alone.

The mega-directories carry a big punch in terms of link power and recognition. You can almost watch the reader numbers climb on your articles. But because they are so big they also get a large volume of submissions every day and your articles very quickly move from the top page of the directories new submissions list and even from the top page of the topic listing.

Medium-sized directories don’t pack as big a punch as the mega, but their text link value is still strong and they usually have a solid reader base. They have been around long enough to build a loyal audience and clientele. However because they are not as big their submission volume is lower than the mega so your articles retain top billing longer — and becoming a top article or top author may be an attainable goal for the part-timer.

Small and/or new directories usually don’t offer nearly the level of power of their larger brethren, but a quick study will reveal whether or not the directory is regularly maintained and promoted — and you know that will mean the link power currently exists and will grow in the near future. Also with new and small directories you can easily achieve top author status and your articles will stay at the top of the ranking longer — they may well pass directly from “new” status to “top” status which rarely if ever happens at a mega directory.

That is my current strategy for article submission and I hope you found it helpful.

The Secret To Writing Success

Essays — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:53:51 +0000

I have a friend who has enjoyed a long successful career as a published novelist. More than once we took part in the same panel at a writer’s conference. Whenever it came time to field questions from the audience I came to expect — actually anticipate — that some bright-eyed, eager novice would direct a particular question at my friend. It wasn’t so much the question that I anticipated as her answer.

The question would always be some variation of “What is the secret to your success?” We all knew it would happen and we would always sit back and let my friend handle it. Not only because she was the most successful among us, but because she had the best answer.

My friend would always play to the audience. She’d lean forward conspiratorially, check to make sure the doors were closed, and swear the audience to secrecy. Then she’d repeat the question and pause for a few dramatic heartbeats and answer: “The BIC Method!”

Those of us in on the secret would begin to grin at this point, but it wasn’t until she explained the BIC method that the other writers would get the joke. You see BIC stands very simply for Butt In Chair.

Yes, her writing success is that simple. Placing her bottom on the chair in front of her computer and writing every day — whether or not she was in the mood, whether or not she was motivated, whether or not she was inspired, and whether or not she had a paid writing gig.

Regular writing improves the quality of your writing by giving you the chance to hone your skills and experiment with new methods. Writing regularly also generates greater quantity — in two ways. First, obviously simply disciplining yourself to generate two or four or ten pages a day will quickly add up in quantity, but the more disciplined you become about this regular production the easier it will be to achieve your minimum and you can keep step up your daily goal accordingly.

Improving the quality of your writing and generating more writing projects gives you that much more to market to the reading and publishing public and therefore increases your chances of writing success.

It really is that simple and it really isn’t a secret. Most successful writers know the BIC method is key to their success.

Of course some of those eager-beaver beginners don’t want to believe in the BIC method because it actually involves work and discipline. They’d rather believe it was as simple as dreaming up a catchy pseudonym. But if you have become a writer because you love it then the BIC method is the best possible news. Simply keep on doing what you love and you can make your dreams come true.

The secret to writing faster and with more focus — Writing in your sleep!

Essays — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:58:11 +0000

One of the most powerful tools in my creative arsenal is what I call unconscious creativity.

No, I do not ask someone to brain me with a hammer and I don’t even need to be actually unconscious. This is when I simply allow my unconscious to do all the heavy lifting for me creatively. It is the use of this method that has allowed me to write quickly when working as a newspaper reporter and to generate several books while also working a demanding full-time job and going to school.

This method falls back on the age-old advice to “sleep on a problem”. Have you ever been worried about a decision or struggled to remember something important before bedtime only to wake up the next morning with the answer sharp and clear in your mind as if it was a gift from the gods? It is a gift of sort, but no outside agency delivered it to you. The answer was supplied to you by your greatest creative ally-your subconscious.

Unconscious creativity uses the power of the unconscious mind. The simplest technique is incubation, where after thinking about the challenge consciously for some time, it is put to one side and left for a while. Often a solution will pop into your mind unbidden, as your mind continues to work on the problem below your level of awareness.

The human brain is a beautiful, highly-functional instrument and yet we utilize so little of its power. Our unconscious does amazing things for us. It helps with our daily coordination needed for useful tasks such as walking, eating, breathing, driving. It stores memories for us, it keeps a check on those things that are truly important to us (our values), it reminds us what we believe. Most of the time it does these things (and a myriad more) without us even having to consciously think about it – that’s why it’s called the unconscious, by the way!

However, it does something even more wonderful: it is able to sift and sort vast quantities of data (things we have seen, heard, said, felt, smelt, tasted) and recognize patterns and generate ways of responding. It sometimes does this in wonderfully creative ways. We often overlook the potential of our unconscious mind and instead let it worry about such trivia as our dental hygienist’s name and whether or not we remembered to buy peanut butter. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Using the unconscious as a creative tool is very simple.

Spend some time consciously thinking about your writing task or challenge. What are the parameters of the project? What are the special requirements? What ideas do you have already? What specific questions do you need to work on further? Sometimes even spending some time jotting down the ideas you have is a good idea. Don’t work on shaping or organizing them. Just record them on paper or computer file. You may not even need them later, but the process of recording them can be a helpful way to prepare your subconscious for its task.

Then forget about it! That’s right. Move on with your life and consciously think about something else. Revise another project. Read something for education or pleasure.

The incubation time varies according to your creative personality and of course the size of the project at hand. I’ve found a few days usually works best although even giving myself a few hours can be beneficial. Doing something physical is often helpful during the incubation period and sometimes this is the only time I really get my gardening or housework accomplished!

When I am working on a novel I allow my subconscious to work scene by scene through the book and often when I sit down at the computer I find the words just flow throw me as the scene plays itself in my head almost like a movie. I have heard of several authors who are able to program their dreams so they are literally writing in their sleep. Dreams can be as vivid as a painting, as resonant as music, and as symbolic as poetry. Using this method I can often write a scene a day (sometimes in less than an hour) which is fairly decent progress while simultaneously working full-time and maintaining a life.

While it is often frightening to think about trusting something as important as the writing project of your heart to your subconscious, it might help to remember that your brain is a muscle of sorts. Your unconscious mind controls many muscle functions for you all the time (try thinking about the way that you walk while you actually walk. I always trip when I think too much about the action of walking and yet I don’t trip when I’m not thinking about it.)

The same is true for great athletes. They talk about being in the zone. The zone is simply the place where they can act and react without consciously thinking about what needs to be done. The body and unconscious mind handle all the details. Thinking too hard can actually interfere with the zone and this is true of writing as well. Interestingly, a recent study of professional and amateur golfers showed that the amateur golfers had significantly more conscious activity when playing a shot than did the professionals. I would bet something similar would result if experienced and novice writers were studied.

So give unconscious creativity a try and see how far it takes you. Simply program your subconscious and then leave it alone to incubate for a while. It may take some time to find the method of tapping into your subconscious after your incubation period. For some freewriting or journaling serve to unlock the fruits of your unconscious labor. Usually, I sit myself down and begin the task at hand. It is often slow-going at first but I force myself forward and at some point my subconscious kicks in and the words start flowing and the keyboard starts clicking away.

Best of luck with your writing!

I just quit my last paying writing gig…and you should too!

Essays — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:21:54 +0000

I just quit my last paying writing gig…and you should too!

I just quit my last paying writing gig. Why? Because I make more money giving my writing away. Yes, that’s right. I make more money giving my writing away than I did selling my articles and columns. In fact I’m making more money writing part-time for free than I did in any of my full-time paid writing jobs and that includes advances and royalties from the publication of three novels. I have been writing professionally for two decades and I never thought I’d make more by writing for free but I am.

But that’s not even the best part — and I know you experienced writers will understand why this is better than money — I can write whatever I want. I pick my topic and my slant. If I want to be funny or irreverent then I can be funny or irreverent. If I want to melancholy or maudlin then I can be melancholy or maudlin. It just doesn’t matter because I’m writing to suit myself! I am my own boss and my own editor — and I’m making money off my writing.

How? I write for the internet. I have been doing so since 1999 and earning money during the entire time. I have written freelance and under contract for a number of internet publications and ventures as well as publishing my own work.

At first I considered my personal internet writing just something to satisfy my creative urge as I transitioned from full-time writing to full-time teaching, but then I noticed something curious — I was making money.

Today, after a lot of work and study I have discovered the right mix that works well for me — and I decided it just doesn’t pay to keep the writing contract any more. The time I used to satisfy the contract can be far more enjoyably and profitably spent writing on the internet.

What internet venues am I using?

~ Ezines and Newsletters

~ Blogs and RSS feeds

~ Web Sites

~ Articles

How do I make money with these efforts?

~ Selling advertising space in my ezines

~ Selling text links on my web sites and blogs

~ Posting pay-per-click ads on my web sites and blogs

~ Promoting affiliate programs on my web sites and blogs as well as in my ezines and newsletters

It really is not a difficult or complicated business model and one any competent writer, or anyone with the ability to string a decent sentence together, could replicate or modify to suit their purpose. I am a writer not a business person, but I know this is working for me and that it could work for you, too.

Now go out there and give your writing away!

Writing A Short Article Can Be As Easy As 1-2-3

Essays — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:01:58 +0000

One of the greatest obstacles many writers face when attempting to start a new project is how to format the article. I know I used to spend a great deal of my preparation and brainstorming time trying to sort out the answer to that very question. Similarly many of the writers that I work with as a writing instructor and consultant were struggling with the same issue. If you are reading this article then probably you have as well.

Writing a short article can be even more challenging because you need to stay focused and organized, however writing a short article really can be very easy if you work with a simple structure. In fact it only involves three steps:

Step One: Write a thesis statement

I know you just had an ugly flashback to freshman composition class and I apologize for springing it on you like that, but really your English teacher did know what he or she was talking about when they insisted you have a thesis sentence for your essays. A thesis is key to all successful essays and articles because it is the heart of your paper. It is simply the main point you are trying to make with your article. As the central or controlling idea, your thesis statement holds the article together. Your thesis statement is a promise to your reader &ndash “I am going to say this”. If you do not have a strong thesis you run the risk of confusing your reader or even losing the reader entirely.

In addition, your thesis also helps you as a writer because your thesis introduces your subject and what you have to say about it. Simply brainstorming a thesis can get you rolling and for short essays and articles that momentum can often be enough to carry you through.

However if you take your thesis statement to the next level it can be an even greater asset. A simple thesis is short and to the point, for example: Writing an article using the three-step process is easy. However, an expanded thesis includes not only the position statement but also some supporting reasons (I recommend using at least three) to shore up that position. So an expanded thesis becomes:

Writing an article using the three-step process is easy because it offers a format and organization that is flexible and simple, it can be adapted to a wide variety of situations and topics, and it is a proven formula.

This step is the most important of the three and key to your success. Don’t forget a good thesis defines the purpose of the article and outlines/introduces the message the writer wants to send about the subject; makes a clear point that is supported by the body of the article; and uses specific, concrete language.

Step Two: Frame Your Article

When builders “frame” a house they build a structure that will give it support, shape and a framework for outer coverings. This is essentially what you will do during this step. You have begun the process by shaping your thesis statement but now you need to add some notes on how you will expand the three supporting points you outlined in the second part of your thesis. This step does not need to take very long although time spent here may well save you time on step three.

Step Three: Write Your Article

You have now laid the foundation to quickly and easily write a short article following the keyhole strategy:

Your goal is to write a simple five-paragraph article following this structure:

~ 1st paragraph&ndashIntroduction including thesis

~ 2nd paragraph&ndashBody-Topic/supporting point 1

~ 3rd paragraph&ndashBody-Topic/supporting point 2

~ 4th paragraph&ndashBody-Topic/supporting point 3

~ 5th paragraph&ndashConclusion

Each of the three body paragraphs should expand on the points you identify in your thesis using the ideas and examples you brainstormed during step two.

This simple strategy won’t be likely to win you any writing prizes but it should enable you to quickly write a short focused informational article that you can use for many of your business needs. The optimal length for many internet articles is 450 words and this structure should help you achieve that with ease.

Package Information Creatively For Fun And Profits

Essays — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:29:08 +0000

Got knowledge? Got an enthusiastic target market? Then there’s no reason to stick to books, ebooks, audios and videos to convey your expertise. Many more creative options abound, and give you the chance to entice an unsure buyer to make an initial purchase as well as have something appealing for followup sales.

Creative packaging also gives you a significantly better shot at magazine and web publicity. Years ago, for example, I reformatted the contents of an audiotape as a 10-installment seminar on colorful postcards. Entrepreneur Magazine thought it was cute, and ran a little story about my inventive new product, “The Procrastinator’s Penpal,” with a photo and my contact information.

For each creative packaging option, I’ve provided links for resources or examples.

1. Reminder Cards

Imagine colorful, well-designed “cheat sheets” that lots of people would find it useful to refer to often, and you have a product. Years ago I repurposed a sidebar from my book Persuading on Paper into a proofreading checklist. I printed it out on one sheet of good quality paper, both sides, laminated it and included it as a component of an information product kit.

Bankers Online sells a colorful, postcard-sized reminder card on the telltale signs of bogus IDs in packs of 50 for easy reference by tellers and other bank employees. The more highly designed such items, the less temptation buyers will have to snitch your idea and duplicate it on their own. You’re best off going with a printing company that specializes in postcard production for this printing this type of card cost-effectively in large quantities.

Laminated Reference Guides – .barcharts.com/

P.L.E.A.S.E. System Reminder Cards – .bankersonline.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=397

2. Posters

Posters are as popular today as they were when you were you were in college and for the same reasons &ndash they can decorate a wall and convey a message better than anything smaller. They can also serve as larger-than-life-sized reminder cards. Nearly anything amusing or educational can be made into a saleable poster.

Special poster printers can create full-color posters for you in bulk for resale, while Cafepress and Zazzle are suitable for creating posters in ultra-small quantities or on demand.

Cafepress – .cafepress.com/cp/customize/product.aspx?clear=true&no=54

Zazzle – .zazzle.com/design/

3. Puzzles

Just about any kind of puzzle you can buy ready-made, you can also commission as a puzzle containing content that you specify. That includes jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, Rubik’s cubes, mazes, word jumbles, cryptograms, etc. Sell thematic puzzles with insider clues or content one by one or in a collection.

Crossword Compiler Software – .crossword-compiler.com/

Custom Jigsaw Puzzles – .jardinpuzzles.com/jppuzpic.htm

4. Stickers

Stickers in your product line can be humorous or practical. The category includes bumper stickers, stickers intended as labels, warning stickers, name tags, promotional messages, indicators of credentials or affiliations, reward stickers for kids, business reminders and more.

Custom Made Stickers – .websticker.com/

Personalized Bumper Stickers – .timsbumperstickers.com/

These ideas just scratch the surface of the possibilities! There are at least 97 more options for creative product and service formats in which you can package and sell what you know.

5 Reasons Every Writer Needs a Web Site

Essays — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:49:44 +0000

If you are serious about your writing, in fact even if you aren’t, you need a web site. Let me repeat that — every writer needs a web site!

If you don’t believe me then here are five very good reasons why:

1. Your web site can serve as your showcase and portfolio. It can include your biography, experience, and writing credits as well as copies of your work or better yet–links to your published work. So many queries today are done electronically and it much easier to simply include an url for editors or prospective clients to visit than to try to attach copies and/or a long list of urls on various locations.

2. Your web site can be your creative outlet. Perhaps your bread-and-butter writing is in the financial field but you really enjoy writing poetry or about fly fishing. Then you can publish those pieces on your web site to receive exposure or simply to reward yourself for a job well done. Who knows, you might even find yourself with some new paying assignments in these fields!

3. You can demonstrate your expertise in your particular field or fields by demonstrating the number of articles you have written in that area as well as any experience and/or education you may offer in this field. Listing your articles or putting a selection on your site will get your name linked with various key words surrounding that topic in the search engines.

4. For writers, your name is your brand and you need to continually have your name out there and furthermore you need to have it connected with your areas of expertise. The more articles and essays you have published on the web then the more times your name gets out there for readers, clients, and editors. Owning your own web site (deannamascle.com for example) is like owning your own billboard on the internet superhighway.

5. You can earn money with your own web site and your writing even without getting paid by publications. Place Pay-Per-Click ads on your site or sign up for some affiliate programs to advertise on your site. Depending on the size of your site and the traffic you attract this may become a major new source of income for you!

I hope I’ve convinced you that a web site can be an asset to your writing career, but I must warn you that web mastering can be very addictive to us creative types. Don’t let it overtake your writing time. Start out simple and build over time so you can work out a good balance between your writing and your webmaster chores.

Energize Your Writing and Increase Your Output

Essays — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:47:38 +0000

Every writer can benefit from a study of the effectiveness of their individual writing process. You can write more and you can write better by making some adjustments in your writing strategy.

Recently one of my writer friends complained about their declining word output.

“I spend more time at the computer than I ever did before and I’m just not producing like I used to,” she griped.

After spending a day in writing conferences coaching my struggling novice writers, my response came without conscious thought on my part: “Tell me about your writing process.”

“My what?” She asked.

Ah-ha!

I regularly coach my beginning writers about how to develop their own personal writing strategy or process and as a teacher of writing I think about mine quite often, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that experienced, professional writers rarely spend time talking about this critical element.

What a mistake!

It is easy to understand why. Many of us are simply too busy writing to think too much about the actual process. We have deadlines to meet, assignments to pursue, and pitches to create. When we do spend time with other writers our interactions typically fall into three categories–seeking admiration for our success, input for our end product, or escape from writing.

Many writers also take their writing process for granted and simply follow the old adage–if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But what happens when it does break down as it did with my friend? If you don’t understand your own writing process then you can’t fix it. And just like many of the machines in your life, regular maintenance checks just might prevent a major breakdown in the future.

My friend’s problem was easily identified and solved once we actually studied her writing process and writing life. Yes she was spending more time in front of the computer but she had lost a big chunk of her prewriting time due to changes in her home life. Once she understood that problem she was able to make adjustments to her schedule and she is seeing her daily word count rising back to her old levels.

So how is your writing process?

Many writers shy away from the term as it brings back fearful memories of a rigid structure forced on them in school. That is not what I want to talk about at all. Frankly, I always teach my students that there is no such as thing as the writing process.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe we each have our own individual writing process, I just don’t believe in the one-size-fits-all type strategy that many writers were force-fed. Just think about it. How could there be just one writing process–every writer I know is an individual with various strengths and weaknesses and personality traits. Every writer is wired differently from every other writer. That is one of the things that makes reading such a pleasure. It follows very logically then that every writing process should differ just as every writer differs.

Having said that I should point out that although the actual shape and form of each writing process is individual to the unique writer there are certain constants:

~ Generating ideas and choosing a focus

~ Organizing those ideas

~ Writing

~ Revising

~ Editing

The amount of time you spend on each stage of the writing process varies according to the writer and the task and this is especially true for me. Many writing tasks are so familiar to me that I spend very little time choosing a focus or organizing my ideas so I can leap write into writing. On the other hand I often generate four or more pages of fiction in about an hour at the computer because I spend a lot of time generating and organizing my ideas before I sit down.

I have spent years honing my personal writing process and know that the step I actually spend the least amount of time is writing. I have learned to let my creative juices flow and not to worry about such petty concerns as grammar, sentence structure, and word choice. I rarely waste a moment on organization or paragraphing. I just let the words flow through my fingerstips until I have emptied my budget. Then I hit save and print, tidy up my papers and set them aside.

Revision is usually the lion’s share of my writing process. It may take me two or three drafts to reorganize and shape a piece until I am willing to share it with others. Depending on how difficult and/or complex the subject then I may need to loop back through brainstorming, organizing and writing to improve my project. I may make a few minor adjustments to grammar or spelling or sentence structure, but primarily I concentrate on the larger issues of focus and development and organization.

When I am finally satisfied my article, chapter, or essay is working as a whole then I begin the actual editing process of cleaning up word choice and sentence structure and any other stray problems that have been overlooked. I usually spend only one draft on this actual process.

If you are serious about improving your writing quality and productivity then you need to spend time analyzing your personal writing process. You might be surprised by what you learn–and I know you can put the knowledge to good use.

3 Ways You Can Profit From Giving Your Writing Away

Essays — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:19:00 +0000

I recently made an important discovery that I just couldn’t wait to share. You can make money by giving your writing away. Yes, it really is true.

This isn’t some “get rich overnight” scheme or some trick to get you to lay out a bunch of money for a “turn key business”. You have to do the work yourself and it will take some time to set everything in place — but anyone with an elementary grasp of the English language can make this work!

Giving your writing away to web sites, blogs, ezines, and newsletters can really make you some serious cash on the internet and I’m not joking. I have been writing professionally for two decades and I never thought I’d make more by writing for free but I am.

In fact, I make more money giving my writing away than I did selling my articles and columns. That’s right. The truth is that I’m making more money writing part-time for free than I did in any of my full-time paid writing jobs and that includes advances and royalties from the publication of three novels.

There are three ways I profit from giving my writing away. They aren’t secrets and you can use them profitably as well:

~ Traffic for my web sites and blogs (I’ve seen traffic triple within a week from some articles)

~ Reputation building for me and my online enterprises which helps attract clients, customers, and visitors

~ Profit for my advertisers and for me through sales of my own products as well as affiliate income

And let me share one last terrific benefit of this writing business — you can write whatever you want. You aren’t dependent on some editor’s whim or assignment. You don’t need to worry about tightly focusing your work to fit within a publication’s editorial guidelines. You are in total control — you write to suit yourself in terms of topic, approach, and tone. And you’ll make more money doing that then you ever did when you tried to write for someone else. I promise!

Now go out there and give your writing away!

Essays Assistance » creative

22 Questions to Ask Before You Write a Single Word

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Why You Need a 3-Tiered Strategy For Article Submission

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The secret to writing faster and with more focus — Writing in your sleep!

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I just quit my last paying writing gig…and you should too!

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5 Reasons Every Writer Needs a Web Site

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