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An online freelance writing career is a dream for many people these days. They assimilate the dream of working from home with time freedom giving them a lifestyle they have always dreamed off. Even though this dream can very well become true for some, for most freelancers it never will.
The problem is that most freelance writers become slaves to themselves by taking on available work until they experience a mental breakdown.

This happened to me too and hopefully by reading this article, it won’t happen to you. The number one priority for running any online or offline business should always be your health to you. Without your health, you will be hard put to work at all and earn an income.

Online businesses often have us work until the wee hours of the morning without regards to a healthy diet and exercise. We are happily working away on the keyboard all the while forgetting to move and feed ourselves.

This can have some serious implications to your health and I had to experience this first hand. Working smart opposed to working hard should therefore always be your main goal.

When you first start out in the writing industry you will first need to learn to brand yourself and build an online presence. Once people start to take notice of you and your business, it will be much easier to earn a living online. The beginning is always the hardest part of any business and it will take some time to run a proper profit. But with a bit of persistence from you and passion for your future, you too can make this happen.

The lifestyle as a freelance writer can be quite amazing. This doesn’t mean you have to earn a top income either. It is more to do with time freedom while being able to pay all your bills and have some spare cash at the end of each month.

You can venture into many different markets, such as travel writing, blogging, article writing, technical writing and much more. Each of these markets has its own stipulations in regards to pay rates and opportunities. The easiest way to break into any of these markets is via a writing job site. Once you have your first client, you just build on this while slowly building your portfolio as well.

Freelance writing is a great way to build an online career by being your own boss. But you alone have the powers to make this happen, so what are you waiting for?

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Having your personal blog and website are currently the standard modems through which you can communicate with a widespread reader today. They are essential means by which you actually announce yourself to the world now! Open up your mind, and with the freedom of speech as your bestowed birthright, you will be ready to interact with others. So, go ahead and start your own online community, forum or blog. Explore the inner recesses of your mind and shell-out your interests, passions and motivations. The truth is, in this ever-amazing world there is no end to exploration, and that you can just drink a drop of that vast ocean. Blogging or online communicating gives you the chance to extend your opinion, though it could just get you heading in a way where you could just find yourself thirsty for more!

After starting your very own online community or blog you could even bank on an e-bulletin i.e., launch your own e-zine with your articles, feedback, observations and later, maybe even your very own e-book. You can even start with smaller things which need less time regulation, such as reviews and reports on books, movies, music or incidents. You can take a look in listings and offer your publications in the form of booklets, tip sheets, and reports. You can even work on providing appropriate links and footage as additional information to other work already completed, which needs further sprucing up! So there! Just open up and there will be no end of developing worthwhile communication.

Some of the rules that gurus of communication have set for effective face-to-face conversations also work with online communication though, but applications require less charm! It’s indeed important to show your genuine interest in the person at the other end so that your inention is understood. Else you can forget to be taken seriously while trying to establish effective communication online. Create your blog or whatever, targeting your intended audience, keeping their interests in mind. Keep yourself scrupulously updated regarding the latest advancements in the area you are dealing with too, as you don’t want to be caught out with another person knowing a lot more than you do.

Remember that whatever you reveal online is your 1st-hand identity to others and will make them come back and check you out and get to know you. So make it easy for them to find information about you and what the issues that you are dealing with. Initially, you need to establish your reputation as a good and motivating writer. So, you will need to have loads of readily available free articles, reports, and materials for people to read. Staying relevant to the issue is very important too, so do not go into detail with lots of things altogether. Step by step is the key.

Of course, a very crucial recommendation for becoming a popular writer is to maintain consistency and fluency in elaborations. When you are genuinely interested in the pursuit of a particular subject, your regularity not only feeds you with lots of information and also keeps your readers at pace with you, but the internet is full of bright and upcoming notions and thinking. If you don’t stay charged up you will quickly lose your reader circle. So keep it up and at a steady pace.

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Writing your own sales letters will save you time and money. This is copywriting for the internet, and I have found that if you can learn this well enough to sell your own products and services, you will make more profit and be able to have complete control over your online business.

The most important thing to remember is that you can learn to do your own web sales copy if you have some sales letter to follow as examples. This does not mean to copy anyone else’s work, but it is a good way to get an idea of what you are striving for with your copywriting. Take a look at products and services you have purchased online, and see what parts of the sales copy convinced and persuaded you to spend money with them.

Your headline is your most important element in your sales letter. Write as many as you can before deciding on the one you will use as your main headline. Professional copywriters have been known to write as many as one hundred headlines before choosing the winning one to promote their product.

Try to have fun with this, instead of seeing it as a chore. Write some silly headlines, rewrite ones using a different word order, and take a break before sitting down to write more. All of this will result in the best possible headline for your web sales copy.

Use the best of the ones you did not choose as your winning headline as your sub-headlines. You will want to space them out throughout the rest of your copy. Sub-headlines are important because they engage the reader and keep them reading further down the page. The longer someone stays on your page, the more likely they are to purchase.

Under each sub-headline, make a list of bulleted points that explain the features and the benefits of what you product or service has to offer. The best way to explain the difference between a feature and a benefit is that features are what something is and benefits are what something does. For example, a drill is a piece of equipment used in building and repairing homes and buildings. The hole made by the drill is the benefit. People buy benefits, not features. Keep this in mind when writing your sales copy.

You will also want to include testimonials in your sales letter. If you are new, ask people you know to review your product or service and give you their honest opinion to use as a testimonial. This is the best way to get started. Over time you can replace your testimonials with ones you receive from your clients and purchasers. You can also use quotes from famous people, as they are related to your product, without having to get permission.

Writing your own web sales copy is one of the most valuable skills you will ever learn and will make you a sought after copywriter.

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I use this method all the time to write web content, but whatever you need to write, use this outline writing method to easily create an article or essay, or to simply help blast through writer’s block.

All you need is a pen, a plain piece of paper and a few minutes.

If you are like most people, writing web content is about as high on your can’t-wait-to-do-it list as getting a tooth pulled, but it doesn’t have to be as intimidating as it might seem.

Let’s look at two things that might be preventing you from writing - motivation, or lack of it, and not knowing what to write about.

Okay, the first one: Motivation. Call upon the god of motivating phrases, Nike - “JUST DO IT!” And the second one: Not knowing what to write about. You do know what to write about, it’s just getting it down on paper that is freezing your thought process; or the fear that people might not think that you know what you’re talking about. It’s time to put away that fear because you can write, and it all starts with an outline.

Outline Writing
The easiest way to get your creative writing juices flowing is to just grab that piece of paper and follow along! We are going to write your outline right now.

1. Write your topic in the center of the paper and circle it.
2. Let your thoughts roam - write the first word you think of at the top right of the circle, at about the 1 o’clock position. Underline it so the line connects to the circle.
3. If another unrelated thought comes to mind repeat number 2 in about the next o’clock position.
4. If you have a thought that is related then write it next to the related item, underline it so that the lines join and start a branch.
5. Try and keep your thoughts to one word items.
6. Keep going around the circle, branching out thoughts until your paper is full, or you are out of thoughts.
7. If earlier thoughts are related to later ones then join them up with a dotted line or some other form of connector that helps you see their relationship.
8. If you have different colored pens use them for different thoughts, or to emphasize some more than others.
9. Do not censor your thoughts - let them run free.
10. Add some doodles if you like. You don’t have to be an artist to doodle.

You have now created your first mind map while outline writing at the same time. Easy wasn’t it? From your mind map your branches contain the pointers that you will use to create your web page article or other copy.

You may find that you have so much information that you can now take each branch and create a new mind map, and thus new content for another article.

Create mind maps not only to help you with outline writing but for any topic you want to recall later. So, now that you have created your outline, it’s time to get writing!

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Copywriting for the Internet is the process of creating copy for online use, and there are a few copywriting tips for beginners to think about.

Copywriting is big business and a vital part of Internet marketing. Without clean, compelling, original content, your online marketing can suffer dramatically.

What is copywriting, in the online sense? What benefits does it offer? Let’s look at the topic in detail.

Online copywriting serves the same purpose as traditional copywriting. That is, to promote goods, services or programs through the creation of informational content (i.e. the written word). In essence, copywriting is the creation of content for use in websites, blogs and more. Without the correct copy, your customers, clients and chance visitors will have no idea who you are, what your company is about, and most importantly, why they need what you have to sell.

Online copywriting must follow several guidelines in order to be successful. Any content written for the Internet must be:

1. Clean: Correct grammar, spelling and punctuation must be used. In addition, content should be formatted in a manner that is easy to read, and flows logically from one point to the next.

2. Compelling: Your content must be informative and compelling. This means that you must be able to garner the interest of your reader and hold it through the entire piece of copy. To do this, you must combine accurate information with correct writing style.

3. Original: Above all, your copy must be fresh and original. Consumers know when they have read a particular piece of copy previously; using someone else’s words (that have been used elsewhere on the Internet) can be a problem. In addition, search engines frown on duplicate content; this can result in your website being banned from search engine listings.

Beyond these three rules, there are other rules regarding copywriting. Many rules are dependent on the use of your writing. For instance, if you are creating content for SEO purposes, you will have to attain correct keyword use and density throughout the entire piece. This can be problematic for many writers, but especially for anyone new to the online writing game, however if you keep these few copywriting tips in mind you can start on the right track.

Creating optimum content through copywriting can have a huge benefit for any online concern. It has the power to attract search engine spiders (for better search rankings) as well as the power to generate new customers and repeat business. By creating clean, compelling, original copy, you are helping to ensure a profitable future.

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Truth be told, with the advent of blogs and the easy access for obtaining websites, it seems that everyone has the ability to write website text…but sometimes people lack the “ability” to write effective, fluid website text.

Speaking specifically about business or company websites, it appears that there are more and more grammar and spelling errors within website content. Having careless website text will give off an unprofessional impression to prospective customers, as it would make it look like your company doesn’t care about quality or how your message comes across to others.

Most mistakes that arise and are prevalent in website content aren’t simply spelling errors (although with the luxury of the spell check feature, it boggles the mind how this still occurs). Many textual errors are based in a lackadaisical approach to creating the content. While reading professional websites for various careers such as lawyers, doctors, car dealerships, and so forth, you can get the feeling that some of them just want to get the information out, no matter how it reads.

When creating text for your company website, you have to keep in mind your audience: the potential customer. Many times, your site is the first impression for an individual of your company. Can you afford to confuse a reader or leave a bad taste in their mouth by having complicated, imprecise written communication or error-laden copy?

With so many choices for customers on the Web, don’t prohibit your value right off the bat with vague calls to action or sloppy grammar. It doesn’t matter that your website has the clearest pictures, the most stylish logo, or the fanciest Flash design if what you’re marketing (i.e., your service or brand) isn’t communicated competently.

The solution to improving your site content is to take time to draft out your text, write down ideas and goals with consideration, and proofread your copy writing after you finish. Don’t underestimate your potential customers; they can tell if you’re website is aiming to provide a valuable service or is simply out to make a quick dollar by the tone and quality of your writing.

If possible, have someone else within your company read over your site’s copy and allow them to give their impression of its style and accuracy. For those within an industry where you feel your company’s writing or editing skills aren’t up to snuff, it might be best hire a professional to help finalize your website text. Even authors, novelists, and journalists need an editor for their writing. Utilize the sources available to your company to sharpen up your website’s written content. It will pay off in the end.

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A few weeks ago, I was explaining to “Linda” why I couldn”t accept her invitation to a networking event. “I”ve just gotten really busy and I need to invest time in marketing,” I explained. “Of course you”re probably at a stage where your marketing takes care of itself.”

“Actually I”m having a slow month,” Linda admitted. “So I”m working on my yard instead of hiring a lawn service.”

Many of my clients are like Linda. They’re working for themselves, but they still think like employees. They don’t realize they have the power to increase their income, not just reduce expenses.

So what can you do when nobody’s knocking on the door and the phone isn’t ringing? My own answer comes from advice I received a long time ago: “Become your own best client.”

Linda had become her own best client — of a lawn service. Not bad, except that she”s a copywriter who specializes in health care marketing. Linda needs to hire herself for her professional skills and leave the lawnmower, rake and pruning shears to someone else.

That’s the best part of being a businessperson. During slow times, you hire yourself. For example I write new sales letters for my info product. I revise sales letters I wrote two years ago (because I’ve learned a lot since then). I create new products and programs.

So I wanted to tell Linda, “During slow times, create an information product to sell to your website visitors. Then you can write copy for your product.

“The possibilities are infinite. Depending on your talents and interests, you can also design websites for your product, develop pay-per-click campaigns, create teleseminars to promote your product, write 10 articles to deliver traffic to your site, or…”

If she”s not the Internet type, Linda could begin creating live workshops to present in her own city. She could create booklets to sell in hard copy form.

If you”re a mathematically oriented person, you might enjoy playing the numbers more than plying your trade with words. Pay-per-click programs will fit your talents.

Of course, if you actually own a lawn service, you can still create information products. Being gardening-challenged myself, I would have benefited from “Ten tips to pruning your own roses” when I lived in a house with a yard. Definitely I would have attended classes on, “How to plant a new fence-climbing vine after you”ve killed off all the other ones.”

But if you”re gifted with roses, you might be wise to hire a copywriter who”s more comfortable with words than weeds. You”ll come out ahead in the long run.

And when I apply my professional skills to my own business, I find clients seem to come, almost without effort. There”s something magic about being busy, as long as your action has purpose and direction.

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Before you get started building your landing page, you will need a number of things to a) make your offer actually have a point; and b) facilitate the creation of your landing page.

One thing you absolutely must have before you get started is an auto responder. Without any auto responder, you are tossing potential bags of money in the garbage. Rather than creating a relationship with customers and potential customers and giving yourself the opportunity to attempt future upsales — you’re allowing them to leave and never return.

In addition to an auto responder, you will need to have an actual offer that people want to buy. You may want to develop a product, such as an ebook or a piece of software. If you don’t have the skills to do either, you can always hire a professional to do it for you through a freelance site. You will then either want to sell this product and attempt to get subscribers from your thank you page or you will want to get subscribers by offering the product for free (which is what many Internet marketers now do).

Another thing you absolutely must have before you get started is a check out service. You may want to consider Google Check Out, Paypal, a Shopping Cart Service, Click Bank, Sale Flurry, or 2 Check Out. All of these services will allow you to make transactions quickly.

Another thing you must have before you get started is a set of graphics, which usually includes a graphic header, a check out button, background wallpaper, and
a half-decent picture of yourself. You can probably provide the picture of yourself, but you might want to hire a professional to do the rest.

The sales letter landing system provides a uniquely powerful system through which you can derive profit from multiple streams. This article will briefly discusses some of those different streams and how you can manipulate them.

Let’s start with the landing page itself: all traffic is sent to the landing page. From there, it will have a number of options, depending on what you have given them. Many marketers suggest that your landing page should always be an opt-in form. Others will suggest that it should simply be a sales letter.

Whether it’s a free newsletter or a product for sale, the landing page system you create should include a one time offer, which will compel them to take action subscribe, buy, etc.

Once they subscribe or buy, the landing page system you create should then re-route them to a thank you page, which opens up more means through which you can upsell. One quick way to upsell is to simply include advertisements on your thank you page for related affiliate products or for your own products. Here, again, you will want to give them a one-time offer.

Also, if you haven’t yet asked them to join your mailing list, this is where you should do it on your thank you page. Once they opt-in to your list, you now have a whole new options you can use in conjunction with the landing page system to generate revenue.

One such option is selling ad space in your newsletter or ezine. The more people you have reading your newsletter, the more you can generally charge for adspace; however, you will want to avoid overselling to your list to ensure your advertisers actually make money.

Your next option is to endorse a product as an affiliate. You can tell your subscribers how someone has just created a brilliant product and you can offer it to your subscribers through an affiliate link. You may even want to use other products you have has bonuses to give them something extra.

The last and most profitable way in which you can generate revenue through your newsletter is by creating and selling your own products to them.

It is important to note that you don’t have to use all of these means to generate revenue; however, the more you use, the more you earn in general.

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Most people have no idea how to write a landing page that converts. Instead, they slop together elements that they have seen used in other landing pages but usually do not put them together in the same way the owner of the successful landing page did.

One major problem is copy. And that’s fine. Not everyone is going to be an excellent writer never mind a copywriter. But as someone selling a product or trying to build a list, it is important that you know your strengths and weaknesses and that you either spend the time to overcome them or hire someone else to do it for you.

With copy writing, for instance, it is important to use a mix of compelling sales points with powerful psychological triggers. Most people who create a sales letter miss either one or both of those elements.

For instance, they might concentrate so much on building hype that they don’t actually explain what solution they are providing and for whom they are providing it. If I don’t have a specific problem that your product solves, why would I buy it? I wouldn’t.

Now, if they fail to sprinkle in psychological triggers, such as scientifically proven, guaranteed, and shocking, no one will feel compelled to continue reading, as the benefits will have a low or average perceived value.

In addition to these two problems, some sales letter lack coherency and direction. The copy looks amateurish and it doesn’t slowly grind forward, breaking down the visitor’s resistance to the sale and compelling him or her to buy more and more at each sales point.

Additionally, if there aren’t multiple calls to action another form of psychological trigger then a potential visitor might never feel compelled enough to pull out his or her credit card on the spot and make the purchase.

In addition to careful copy writing, there are other important things you must take into consideration when writing a landing page that converts. For instance, it is important to build a compelling case for a time-bound offer.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to invent fake deadlines and constantly revise them each week. This is a good way to guarantee your complete loss of credibility in the shortest amount of time possible.

However, when planning your copy, you will want to make sure that you constantly urge the reader to act immediately by inserting a number of calls to action, as I’ve mentioned previously.

You may want to consider using fly-ins or pop-ups to create more urgency or to make a time-bound offer. Perhaps you can use a countdown to build urgency (i.e., when someone arrives at your landing page, they have five minutes to purchase the product at the lowest price).

Now, if you’re creating a squeeze page, you might want to employ slightly different tactics. Rather than building a compelling case with multiple triggers and calls to action over the course of 1000 words, you may want to simply condense that all into a compelling headline and one paragraph of benefits.

For a completely free-to-join squeeze page, you more than likely wont have a considerable amount of resistance to joining, unless the visitor a) doesn’t see any benefits; and b) suspects that you will sell their email address to spammers.

Both of these problems are relatively easy to overcome. In your headline, simply state the exact benefits they will receive for joining as always, mixing in psychological triggers. In your first paragraph of copy, give them a compelling reason to join now (i.e., the price might go up, the list might become private, you’ll get this amazing report).

Now, to overcome the second problems, simply include a short line under your opt-in form that explains that you will not under any circumstances spam them or sell or give away their email address and name.

Michael Wright is a software developer and internet entrepreneur owning a network of domains and websites. For specialized information on sales letter creation, visit his website at http://CopywritingWealthSystem.com

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Perhaps the most important part of creating a sales letter is planning your sales letter theme. How you select your theme, of course, will all depend on how you plan to generate traffic.

If you decide to generate traffic through search engine optimization, planning your sales letter theme will entail finding phrases within your niche which have a high demand (aggregate search value) and a low supply (small amount of competing sites) and then creating multiple sales letters, each which is optimized around a different phrase.

If, on the other hand, you decide to generate traffic through pay per click (PPC) programs, such as Adwords, planning your sales letter theme will again entail tuning a number of different pages to fit the keywords you are purchasing.

This is actually where most people fail when they create a sales letter: they don’t tune it to fit a specific audience. For instance, in the case of a squeeze page for a newsletter, they might start a newsletter about toys, but they only create one sales letter and send all traffic to it. This is a big mistake.

Chances are, if you create a quality product or newsletter, it can benefit a number of people. So why not communicate the exact benefits they will derive from subscribing or buying? If, for instance, you have a newsletter about legos and toy blocks, so you group it under the loose heading of toys, a visitor who is looking specifically for information about either legos or toy blocks will click off your page if they don’t see the direct connection to the exact topic for which they were searching.

Instead, you will want to setup a page centered around legos and a page centered around toy blocks. On each page, you will want to communicate the specific benefits to joining the list for each of those groups of visitors.

Going one step further, in addition to planning your sales letter theme, if you are creating a sales letter for a newsletter, you may also want to segment your list, so you can send information specifically about legos to those who request it and information about blocks to those who request it.

Finally, another effective method employed in this landing page is the auto-updating time stamp. When a visitor sees the time stamp, they feel that the product or service was released or updated that exact day or at least that someone is maintaining it on a daily basis.

Another powerful element that makes this landing page successful are the repeated psychological triggers. “Smoking HOT products,” “insane profits,” “instant access” all of these phrases create urgency, increase perceived value, and induce action.

And there you have it: being successful with landing pages really is a repetitive process. If you follow the tips outlined and use good examples, you should have no problem constantly increasing your conversion rates.

Michael Wright is a software developer and internet entrepreneur owning a network of domains and websites. For specialized information on sales letter creation, visit his website at http://CopywritingWealthSystem.com

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