Avoiding Writing Scams
I have been very fortunate in that I have not been taken for a ride yet however it is not for a lack of effort on the part of the unscrupulous. Writing scams abound and sooner or later you are going to encounter one.
Bidding for work on eLance and GetAFreelancer is a great source of profitable work and as you would expect, I'm frequently asked to provide samples of my work. That's nothing unusual and I'm happy to do so, however when a project provider asks for 500 words on a topic they specify as a sample, I shy away. The reasoning is simple, if 10 people bid, that is 10 articles produced and it has cost the project provider precisely - £0! If you're asked to provide a sample on a specific topic, by all means do so but keep it below 200 words unless they are going to pay you.
A friend of mine, Dawn, writes poems as a way of getting through her daily drudge working as an administrator in a retirement home. Over time she has accumulated quite a collection of very funny poems and I am in the process of editing and arranging them into some sort of order suitable for publishing. Dawn has already encountered the "vanity" publisher who for a fee will publish her work and promises worldwide exposure. Vanity publishers have their place if you wish to publish your writing for use as a commercial offering to promote your company or simply as an off-the-wall Christmas present to friends and family. In the real world, vanity publishers have very little to offer a writer in terms of editing, presentation and most of all, marketing your work. Stay away from any agent or publisher who asks for money upfront!
Your Home based business: Do you know what you are doing?
A business of your own can be extremely rewarding. There is a certain satisfaction of knowing that all of your long hours and hard work will only be benefiting “you” and not nameless, faceless executives. But, is your business benefiting you the way you want it to?
There are millions like you who own a home-based business, and everybody wants to make a future out of it, but there are some questions that one has to answer to actually pin-point where you stand.
- When you set out your business what was your vision and where do you stand today?
- Was it to find freedom from the shackles of your boss?
- Were you thinking that this sort of business has the potential for income beyond any limit?
- Was it simply to spend more time at home?
Whatever you wanted to do, have you managed to accomplish the points you set yourself? And, what is really important is that whether you are enjoying what you are doing, and whether it is something in which you stand out?
If you do not have the answers to the above question, you should contemplate and think about a few things before you begin afresh. You could try and find answers to these questions and I am sure you will know what you are doing and what you want to do.
- Do you know the priorities for your business?
- Do you enjoy the undertakings that you do?
- How does your business make profit?
Seven Business Writing Mistakes You Should Avoid
While indulging in business writing, you have to take care of some dos and don’ts. You should take special care that your writing is effective in persuading your clientele, rather than driving your client to reject your business proposal. You should also ensure that the tone in which you are writing your business proposal is on a similar level to its proposed reader. You should neither be too formal, nor become too patronizing with the reader. Most importantly, you should avoid common stylistic and grammatical mistakes such as those illustrated in memos, letters and reports. You should avoid the following seven major mistakes while indulging in business writing.
1) Do not use long sentences and paragraphs
An Italian proverb puts across this fact very well: "Think much, speak little, and write less." Shorter sentences are easier to comprehend, and the chances of your business proposal being read are more in this case. In addition, try keeping short paragraphs, restraining one idea to one paragraph, as long paragraphs bore people, in case you didn’t know already.
2) Don’t use unnecessary words
More words do not mean more knowledge. Use necessary business jargon, but do not overload your writing with adjectives. You need not always add ‘successful’ before the word business to emphasize the fact.
Creating a Good Business Blog
Blogs are a great tool for building communities, interacting through them and even marketing the services you provide - they often produce both good and bad results. If you want to gain readership from your blog, you'll have to be a bit more adventurous in the content you produce, have an easy design and market your blog.
What kills a good blog writer is their inability to address their target audience, this means that you have to be clear about the content. If you are not focused, you’ll confuse and lose readers. Grammar is the key in making your blog look professional and typos are another concern for bloggers. Even the most cautious writers have a slip here and there, and this really murders the entire blog. What separates the professional from the amateur is the length of blog post, which should be ideally not too long, but just right. The attention span of most people won't be for long, so keeping the posts short gets you a greater reader base. You also have to keep in mind that you are not just writing for a search engine, so emphasize those keywords, but keep the writing interesting as well. The mantra of getting results from your blog is to keep posting new content. Where most people fail is that they lose interest because it takes time and energy to keep a good blog going. So, keep posting and you will eventually get readers commenting the information you post.
Good Marketing Concepts Make All The Difference
Here are some web marketing concepts that make a difference. Adopting them might just pave the path to your success and of course, customer satisfaction.
Think audience and not market - Have you ever been asked by a web consultant what your market is? Is it 20-year-old college students, or 35-year-old women who hate their husbands? Alternatively, maybe the question itself is wrong. The web is not about markets at all, it is about targeted audiences. In this case, audiences need to be understood, entertained and engaged. In case your pitch doesn't do that, you are never going to establish your goal! Start treating web visitors as an audience and not as market, and in due time you will find what it takes to be triumphant on the Web.
Think people and not customers - Have you ever wondered why half the people you attract to your website (through painstaking SEO changes), hardly buy anything? It is because they have been treated more like customers than people. Yes, that's right. By people we mean two-legged creatures looking for their needs and desires to be fulfilled, by you helping them spend a little money of course.
The Importance of a Marketing Plan
For a business to be successful, it must first be successful in marketing itself. Companies who hurl ahead of others have invariably started with a marketing plan. A marketing plan should be ideally referred to by the company on a monthly basis to enable the company to operate and function smoothly, but a bi-monthly plan also helps. For small companies, the plan should cover you and business activities for a year as things do change, people leave, markets evolve, and customers come and go. Executing the plan has its challenges, but deciding what to do and how to do it, is marketing's greatest challenge.
A marketing plan cannot be achieved without getting many different people involved. No matter what your size, receiving feedback from all areas of the company, whether finance, manufacturing, personnel, or supply, you should try and involve all the members of the company in creating a long lasting and impressive idea. This is important because for your marketing plan to work, it is necessary for feedback to come from all areas of your company. The key heads of your team can provide guidance on what is realistically achievable and how one can go about achieving it, thus giving dimension to your marketing plan and making it succeed.
Winning Business
Plain Business Etiquette
I've mentioned previously that I have been spreading my wings and venturing into new areas looking for business. Primarily this has been based around the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) knowledge I've been accumulating, but it has brought home to me a reminder of my very first weeks writing for pay. Making initial approaches for work and how to handle queries and the assignment itself are probably more important than what you actually produce at this stage.
When making an initial approach for an assignment don't pussy foot around. Ask for the work; spell out your idea, or how you will deal with the subject matter and most importantly how you will manage the work and what can be expected.
Below is a real bid I made for ten articles recently:
"Hi - this supplements my bid of $60 for 10 x 400 word (min) articles. The articles will be delivered within 24 hours of receipt of instruction. They will:
1. be 100% original and Copyscape tested prior to submission;
2. in US English or British English as you specify;
3. grammatically correct and free of typos;
4. optimized with the keyword/phrase to your specification;
5. written by me - a native English speaker who splits his time between the US and UK.