Internet writing is not as easy as it first appears. Writers who write articles for the internet have to keep some things in mind. It is essential for you to realize that you have 5-7 seconds to capture the attention of readers, otherwise they will move on. The internet, being the way it is, enables readers to go on and look for other articles and information from other sites. In this article I will be discussing some of the key areas that one has to look into when writing for the web.

Similar to all other forms of writing, the headline of a page or blog post is the most important. It either makes or breaks a reader’s interest - if readers like the headline they will carry on reading, otherwise they will just click onto something else. Don’t try to be cute when it comes to headlines and never use funny phrases, especially if they are confusing. You should write a headline that people can associate with, something that fits the topic you are writing in. Use key words such as love, anger, mistakes and truth. These words, when used properly, can actually be effective in grabbing the attention of prospective readers.

As you are writing for the internet, you should keep in mind the effect search engines may have on the site you are writing on. Be careful of the topic you are writing about. Try and write something that is popular and try and place key words in your article. This really helps when people search for keywords in search engines such as Google and Alta Vista; thus people can locate your article quicker if they have chosen those specific keywords. Use words that you know people will use when they search for something on the internet. Let us say you are writing a post on ‘food’, make sure that the headline has something about food as well as in your first paragraph. Use this word innovatively in your article so that it blends in, and does not become too repetitive.

Be very careful in the arrangement of paragraphs. Your first paragraph must be able to expand on the interest that you have generated in the reader. Try not to change the topic and cram too many ideas into the first paragraph. Try and keep your language simple and your writing fluid. Add more interesting facts that your theme demands. Once you know that the reader cannot leave your article and go away, then experiment with it.

Let us say you have started with a keyword ‘sea food’, do not just rush into a topic of continental food in the first paragraph itself. Be like the tour guide and take your reader on a journey of delicacies that sea food has to offer. Similar to the beginning, the ending has to be crisp and original. This will persuade the reader to come back for more articles from you and you in turn will have someone who will prefer to read your articles, rather than those of others.

You should learn to be specific and focused. You will find that the best article writing comes when you are handling one main issue, problem or desire without losing direction and jumping around. For example, you want to write about dog training, then it will be better for you to focus on one critical problem within dog training, and not try to write everything that you know about dog training in a few hundred words. It will just make your article appear confusing. Keep these points in mind, and you will find internet writing all so easy and interesting.

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I spend a fair amount of time with my children’s school helping out when I can. I was recently asked to talk to my son’s class as part of a “bring your parent in so the little brats darlings can grill them” exercise.

“What job do you do?” was one of several eager questions thrown at me to which I foolishly replied “I write for a living.” Immediately, there were moans and groans, the spotty oik with the earring exclaimed “BORING!” and Ms F, the young school teacher with the ink not quite dry on her PGCE, suddenly took a closer interest in me which was not a bad thing.

My son looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him having fed his school chums on stories of Dad jumping out of planes, landing in a greenhouse in Holland and shooting a monkey with a grenade launcher while liberating the Falklands single handed. Right now I was blowing these myths out of the water and ruining his promo work by telling his mates I was something really boring like a “writer”?

“Better think of something quick sunshine,” I thought to myself, “the natives are distinctly restless!”

In a flash I asked the question:

“Who can tell me what makes a sentence ?”

Nothing but very blank looks including from teacher who was wrapped up in “Units of Sense” methodology for brainwashing educating the little darlings.

I suddenly remembered the Darth Vader line when Luke Skywalker is on his bombing run attacking the Death Star in Star Wars - “I have you now!”

Of course I know what a sentence is !

I’m a professional writer and in any event, I’d looked it up the Friday before while waiting the mandatory hour with others, variously bored and wonder eyed parents as my eldest daughter attended gymnastics class.

Ask yourself if you know what constitutes a sentence?

If you have arrived at the “It starts with a capital and ends with a full stop” stage, congratulations, me too!

Take this example:

“Walk don’t run.”

A phrase we have all heard at some point from school or seen at the swimming pool, but the question is does this constitute a sentence?

The answer to my surprise is, “No!”

Without looking it up ask yourself what a sentence must include to be considered a sentence?

My understanding is there must be three elements for a string of words to be considered a sentence:

1. a subject;
2. a finite verb; and
3. make complete sense.

Fail one of these requirements and you do not have a sentence.

A subject is easy, it is a “thing” or the object upon which the sentence will pivot so for instance:

“ERH is a great provider of written content.”

“The table is strong.”

“Your car is very shiny.”

“My house is very cosy and quiet.”

The words in bold are the subjects.

The verbs are fairly simple to pick up on - the “doing words”.

Taking our initial example of “Walk don’t run.” we have a capital first letter, a full stop and a verb however we have no subject and on it’s own, this string of words does not make any sense. It is not a sentence.

This week my son and his school year are taking mock SATS and it’s great to see that the educational grinder is churning out well balanced, comprehensively educated native English speakers and writers, who just like me, will have no idea what actually contitutes a sentence in the English language. That is, unless they are bored beyond belief as their eldest daughter cartwheels and somersaults around the gym.

Before we rush to blame the teachers though, ask yourself if you knew what constituted a sentence beyond the capital and full stop?

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I posted a short while ago on a commission I won for a PowerPoint presentation for a business competition and fund raising exercise that needed to be undertaken in English with foreign owners at the helm of the company.

This was Get A Freelancer or GAF as it is more commonly known by users.

I’ve used GAF for about 6 months now and it is a great source of projects to bid on in order to generate some work. You’ll find all forms of online content being requested by project providers and the entry level is as low as you will need the bar to be in order to be able to compete. If you have been following my posts here at Supaproofread but have not yet taken the plunge, here is your chance to get your hands dirty and become a professional scribbler.

GAF has a simple and straight forward registration process, you do not need a credit card and it is free to join though I do pay $12 per month to get access to juicier projects (that’s about £6). As a virgin writer you don’t need to worry about that.

Set up a PayPal account in anticipation of being paid - again simple to do and it will ease any issues with receiving funds. Just follow the hyperlink and note, you will need a credit or debit card to register but again it is free to join.

Once you have completed the registration process you need to set up your profile. You will see a lot of terms that may have absolutely no meaning to you such as SEO, Python, ASP, .NET and so on however you need not be in the least concerned about them. I set the GAF site to notify me by email of projects that I may be interested in and to do this create your profile when you register. Here’s mine:

User Profile
Username:	ERH
Name/Company:	ERH
Country:	United States
City:	Bradenton
Area of Expertise:	Web Promotion SEO Proofreading Market Research Link Building Copywriting
Average Pricing:	$20/hour
Profile:
Rating:	(9 reviews)
Member Since:	04-21-2007 10:45
Skills:	Blogger SEO Content English spoken as a 1st language
Vision:	Donate Pecunias Liberi Viarum
Keywords:

If you restrict yourself to copywriting until you have some experience launching off elsewhere this will ensure you are focused on projects that you have a decent chance of winning. Your profile once created will automatically set up an email notification that can be managed and will let you know whenever a project is filed under your criteria. Personally, I receive between 5 and 10 emails from GAF each day and I scan them every evening.

Once you are registered, your profile is established and you have Paypal set up to receive payment you are now free to bid on projects.

My advice is stick to small projects at this time and get a taste for what is expected. Bid on as many projects as you like, but without any reviews to give you a reference for potential project providers you will need to do two things and do them well.

First, you need to price yourself competitively but this does not mean you are competing with “Ms Fillipino 500 words $1 in Manilla” or “Mr Rajid I have MBA inIngrish in Madras” who will compete purely on price (and there are a lot that will). Take a look at “Western” bidders and see what the benchmark is that they are pitching at and undercut them, so for instance if you see ERH bidding $25 for 1,000 words, offer $12 as your bid (pretty much a standard new writer rate) and hope the provider is cost conscious and wants a westerner writing the copy.

The second thing to do well is to bid clearly, concisely and in a way in which it is clear to the provider that you at least sound like you know what you are talking about. Here is a sample of a bid I placed a couple of days ago on a GAF project:

“This supplements my bid for your 13 wedding articles.

Kindly note my reviews and GAF itself is a client (refer to project provider “billion” in my reviews). References are also available upon request.

I am a professional writer and have been for 2 years; kindly note I am not a part-timer looking to make a few extra bucks or speak and write English as a second language. I produce very high quality work as you can judge from my reviews; all of these clients now regularly use my services and indeed have me on retainer.

My work shall be:

1. 100% original, final drafts being Copyscape checked prior to submission to you and written by me personally;
2. On-topic, grammatically correct and free of errors - I always proof final submissions;
3. SEO optimized as you specify;
4. Delivered to agreed deadline; and
5. Written in US or UK English as you specify.

A sample is attached and further work may be viewed at:

www. supaproofread.com & blog (post as ERH)”

Use that as a template but amend as required and a word of warning, ensure your bid is relevant to the project and do not just cut & paste willy nilly; this happens all to frequently and it will make you look unprofessional.

GAF has a system for accepting bids, the formal ‘place a bid’ tabs on the project page but I tend to simply input a one line sentence along the lines of:

“This is my bid of $XXX for your project. Kindly refer to the PM for a detailed bid.”

The PM in question is the Project Management messaging service and you will find this to the right of the project provider’s name on the bidding page. Using the PM to post a detailed bid ensures a degree of privacy from other bidders in terms of the service and quality standards you are offering.

Once you’re finished move on to the next project you are interested in and away you go; if you do come across a project with ERH as a bidder… move on

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I’ve been caught on the hop with recent developments as work seems to have stepped up a gear both in terms of volume and the quality.

I’ve missed deadlines; a cardinal writing sin!

There is no-one else responsible, it’s me and frankly, I just was not prepared so immersed have I become in attracting business, dealing with existing customers and getting the job done that I have not seen the wood for the trees.

That stops today or I won’t have a business left and one step forward is pointless if it results in two steps back.

So aggressive have I become at sorting out business affairs and dealing with workload issues that the delightful little darlings, heir and spare, have been packed off to mother for the week and the phone is off the hook.

Now I’m a dab hand at getting to grips with admin and weeding out the important from the immaterial trivia that collects with your business dealings; a hangover from my days being Chief Chimp of my own outfit. This may not be the case with you and artists rarely have a sense of the importance of paper from a business perspective, so here is some TCP to help you stay on top of things before you have a mini crisis.

TCP = Time, Client & Paper

Time Management

Invest in a good diary - preferably a page a day one so you can plan your day and your week. If you can be organised and disciplined, plot out when you are going to work on each commission. Leave spaces floating in the diary for “last minute” jobs and also make sure you allocate time for performing your admin.

If you are using your technology to the full, try a contact management system; I use ACT and have done for several years. I’m a stickler for it and I never lose a telephone number or an email address. The diary function is excellent for planning purposes and reminding me of approaching deadlines or reminders to clients to pay me.

Client Management

Managing client expectations is key in my experience. I started off blogging and it becomes all too easy to start throwing in those little free extras that may not appear to take up much of your time but then you have a client that expects that treatment everytime thereafter.

Building a good reputation is essential for building a good stream of repeat business from referral and repeat commissions. Key to building a good reputation is delivering what you have agreed to deliver on time and at the right quality and price. Don’t be a salesman and promise the earth only to disappoint the client or overload yourself with an impossible delivery. Make your pitch, make it credible and deliver exactly what you promise or a little bit more if you are conscientious and time permits.

Do not be afraid to nail a client down exactly and make sure they understand what you will be providing; other extras can be added as “options” the fee for which is negotiable.

Paper Management

If you have a filing cabinet excellent, as though we allegedly live in a paperless world, dead trees still seem to congregate no matter what you do to reduce the paper burden.

There is no need to spend money on this - check out www.freecycle.org - this is a recycling website that offers anything and everything. I have two 4 drawer filing cabinets, several dozen lever arch files and a whole host of office type goodies that have cost me precisely nothing.

Get organised and don’t waste time rummaging around for bits of paper that should be put away where you can grab them when you need them eg. when a client calls asking where you have got to and can they change some of the specifications.

I allocate an hour to paperwork each week and get it over with first thing on Monday morning, the sooner the better.

You can look at managing your activity in many different ways, but TCP has for almost twenty years governed mine and it works; the simplest things most often do.

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A couple of weeks ago I posted that I was going to start experimenting with finding work in the real publishing world rather than just for online consumption. I bought a couple of books to help me, one being The Writers Handbook and the other The Freelance Writer’s Guide by Andrew Croft.

I cannot report success at this time but there has been a development.

I used the Writers Handbook to find a list of the Sunday papers and called several up with an idea for a story. The story deals with international child abduction and the treatment of children and their familes that are caught up in this increasingly common situation.

This was my very brief outline mailed and emailed to the contacts selected:

“This week the British courts will send British citizens to foreign jurisdictions for court hearings. These British citizens will have committed no crime, many will have been born here and many will have lived here for most if not all of their lives. In 1980, Britain signed an international treaty which has resulted in several thousand children being sent abroad for court hearings. Some have died as a result, many have been abused and hundreds have simply disappeared while foreign civil servants have been implicated in serious misuse of the treaty to aid their own nationals escape repercussions of their actions towards British children.

If you are interested in exploring this as a story idea for an article kindly contact me.”

I sent this out to approximately twenty newspapers and journals and had several emails back saying “Thanks but no thanks”, a couple saying “The big cheese dealing with this is on holiday” and also a lot of silence.

On Saturday evening, rather late actually, the telephone rang and in my blind ignorance I let it go to answer machine while I was playing with the sprogs.

“This is a message for Karl, we received your outline and I’d like to discuss it with you. My name is [Little Cheese Sub Editor] at The Sunday Telegraph…..”

…at which point I ripped the phone from its cradle by telekinetic power alone.

The contents of that conversation I am unable to divulge at this time but that is what I call a great start!

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