Writing

If you remember, the majority of people (i.e., 68%) need to see your sales message more than once before they even think about going ahead. This is applicable to every market.

But, Does Following Up Really Get Results?

While most people understand the concept that using a smart autoresponder saves a lot of time by putting one’s business on autopilot.

Become Relentless Like a Collection Agent!

After a prospect asks for more information on your offer via your autoresponder, it can automatically deliver your series of pre-written follow-up email messages in preset intervals.

By creating a sense of urgency (such as by making your offer time-sensitive), your follow-ups can help reinforce that urgency in subsequent mailings and add weight to your offer!

Your follow-ups can nudge prospects into action!

Plus, by adding an extra incentive with each mailing, your offer becomes more valuable and more difficult to ignore.

These additional bonuses can simply be comprised of special reports, articles, ebooks, freeware, reviews or even courses delivered incrementally via smart autoresponders.

Write Effective, Sales-Generating Emails

Writing an effective, response-generating email ad, whether it’s a small, six-line ad or a full-length “solo” ad, is not as hard as it seems. It really needs to follow six simple steps:

One-Time, Low, Low, Introductory Rate
 by: Pamela White

Each week day brings a pack of mail from banks offering me and mine low introductory rates that are meant to pull us in and commit ourselves, right before the rates go up.

Writers face similar ‘bait and switch’ techniques when applying for writing opportunities. Last month I was contacted by a website owner who was looking for a writer experienced in producing e-zines. I submitted samples, wrote several emails, and had two evenings of instant messaging before she agreed to try me on, but with one caveat. She offered me a one-time, low, low introductory rate.

Only the rate wasn’t in my favor.

She asked me to write only four short articles and said that she would start with that low, low rate for me. After I had proven my worth, she would double that rate for the second issues, then bring it up to fair market for the third.

I researched and wrote, answered several emails, and even rewrote some of her own writings for her. She asked for a list of ideas for the next three issues. I complied with a list of 30 ideas. Her answering email said, “Is this all?”

One of the most common blunders by those using article marketing to distribute free reprint articles is to include periods after domain names at the end of sentences. Surely those authors who have made this blunder realize that if that period gets included in the URL, the link will lead to a 404 error or “Page Not Found” message any time a visitor clicks on your link from any web site that used your articles. Publishers complicate things by not visiting links included in author resource boxes and failing to correct the address error in the URL once they do notice it.

To be fair to publishers, it is often difficult to edit within some content management systems and it simply takes too much time to make those changes. To be fair to article authors, we certainly ought to be able to use correct punctuation in our writing, even if it does cause problems with automated link creation in CMS (Content Management System) tools. To be fair to CMS programmers, writing exceptions into the software on CMS sytsems to remove that period leads to incomplete and truncated filenames along with other complex unintended consequences.

Your initial freelance writing assignments are the best way to present yourself to your client for repeated work. If you provide for them a good product, at a good price, they are likely to come back time and time again. The goal of any career, particularly as a freelancer, is to have steady business. Instead of continually needing new clients or another job to fill your day, why not utilize repeat business? When you make the most of your freelancing time you are helping yourself to gain more business and maintain that which you already have.

For many people getting that first job is the key to success. It is the hardest part of working because more and more people want quality providers and want to use someone who is proven and worth the risk. You cannot get these jobs if you are new. But look at it another way. When you do get to that point, it is important to make the most out of all assignments so that you get return business from that client. This could be any number of things, but should always focus on maintaining a strong working relationship with the client. Providing them with good work, timely work, and listening and meeting their needs will have them coming back to you time and time again.

Benefits of Submitting Articles - 10 Reasons Why Free May Bring in the Bucks
 by: Marie Gervacio

Websites, Bloggers, Ezine Publishers all need content. All business need exposure and advertising. Writing artilcles to share your expertise with others can benefit in a number of ways even if you offer your articles freely.

1. Brand Yourself. You will brand your website, business and yourself . Make sure you include your name, business name, credentials, web site address and e-mail address in your resource box.

2. Gain credibility. You will become know as an expert on the topics you write about. Get an edge on your competion with a boost in credibilty.

3. Free advertising. This will broaden your advertising efforts in addition to yur normal advertising budget.

4. Get Published All Over The Web. Multiple visiting publishers to need free content for their websites, ezines, blogs and more.

5. Get Published in Offline Content. Some publishers may put your content in ebooks and so your advertising can multiply further.

6. Gain Trust. If when people read your article they like it, they will be more likely to buy your product or service increasing your profits.

How to Identify Great Book Ideas and Writing Opportunities
 by: Stephen L. Nelson, CPA

The first and maybe the most important step in writing a book is coming up with a great idea for some really useful or interesting book. The great idea makes the writing fun. The great idea makes the book easier to sell to a publisher. In the end, the great idea means you’ve got a shot at making good money from your writing. Unfortunately, many new writers don’t have a clue as to how to do this. Accordingly, I offer the following tips based on the 150 or so books I’ve written and the three dozen books I’ve published:

Don’t pick something big and obvious

The first thorough book on any important topic—the last war, the current big business success, the next medical breakthrough—can be a good book that succeeds even to the point of becoming a bestseller. But I respectfully suggest that you leave the big topics to the big writers. The problem with big, well-known topics is that they are well-known. And that means, very probably, that big publishers are already talking to big authors about writing books. Sorry. But that’s the reality.

How to Write a Book in Five Easy Steps
 by: Stephen L. Nelson, CPA

Because I’ve written more than a 100 books and even been a book publisher, people regularly ask me how one writes a book. I always shrug and say it’s not that hard. But this little article attempts to provide a better answer to the question by describing the easy five-step approach that I use and that I recommend you use.

Step 1: Research Your Topic

Your first step in writing any book is to research your topic. Obviously. To begin any constructive development work on a book—that early thinking about what might make for an interesting book and that planning about what should go into a book—you need to know your topic very well.

This situation leads to a pretty interesting conclusion if you gnaw on this idea a bit. How do you know what you should research if you haven’t yet actually come up with the idea for your book.

Here’s the reality: You can’t know. You can’t practically know what you should research until you possess a pretty good idea about what you should into the book. And yet you can’t have a good idea about your book–a professional quality idea– until you have your research done. It’s another Catch-22.

SEO writing is very different from content writing, article writing, story writing and news writing. When I first realized my innate talent for writing stuff and putting thoughts into words, I was still reading Mills and Boons, and it was during this time that my romance storybooks were confiscated by my classroom teacher because I was reading in class.

Writing is a very personal thing, I discovered. Some people have the talent for writing creative stuff. Some people have the talent for writing ads. Some write excellent factual stuff. Well, I fall into the factual stuff category. The boring-writing-technical-mumbo-jumbo writing stuff. How I fit into this category, I don’t know.

Well, SEO article writing is very much like that. First, you decide what topic or keyword that you want. For instance, you’re selling decorative lamps, right? in the SEO article writing process, list down ‘decorative’ and ‘lamps’. Then think about other words that relates to ‘decorative’ and ‘lamps’?words that people use all the time to describe them. This is a very important part of SEO article writing because these are common words that your potential site visitors will use to find you.

How about ‘light’, ‘bright’, ‘pretty’, ‘lighting’?

Advertising in ezines is possibly the most effective way of generating fast sales. Ezine advertising also consumes very little of your time. However, ezine advertising does consume your money and can consume it very quickly if you’re not careful. Here are 8 things, which if you think carefully about, will ensure that ezine advertising does not cost you more than you earn.

1. Who is your target audience?

Be sure to identify this early on. Do not make the mistake of thinking that everyone will be interested in your product. Your target audience are those people who would benefit from your product or service because these are the people who are most likely to make a purchase. Advertising to a targeted audience will result in a great amount of interest and a lot of sales.

2. Which ezine should I advertise in?

Choose an ezine which is made up of subscribers who fit in with your target audience. The closer your targeted audience and the ezine subject, the more sales you will make. Also, if you are looking to advertise in a particular ezine, subscribe to it. Do some research on how often subscribers purchase from the publisher’s recommendations because this will give you a good idea of how effective it is to advertise in this particular ezine.

Overcoming Writer’s Block: Avoiding the Trap
 by: Stephen L. Nelson, CPA

I may as well just say it. Writer’s block, I’m convinced, doesn’t exist. Mostly, I think, authors use writer’s block as an excuse to explain to themselves, an editor, or a concerned spouse why the book isn’t done or the chapter hasn’t been turned in.

Writing is talking on paper. Sometimes literally. And you never hear someone say, “I can’t talk anymore. I’ve got talker’s block. There just aren’t words there that can come out.”

That said, there are several common traps that new writers especially stumble into—and these traps stop writing progress.

Size Matters

One of the easiest traps is letting the sheer size of book stop writing, as mentioned earlier. The prospect of writing 300 pages is daunting. Especially that first day you sit down. It’s easy, especially if you’re inexperienced or emotionally worn out, to collapse under the mental burden of all that work.

The mental trick, I suggest, is to not think about those sorts of numbers when you’re writing. You need to bite off reasonably sized chunks and focus your energy and anxiety on just today’s chunk.