Freelance writing:
Posted by paul novak on July 13, 2010 at 6:42 am
As of this evening I have written approximately 32,500 words about electrical lights. You would think after a word count like that, that every possibly meaningful thing you could say about lights would have been said. Well, you’d be mostly right. I have relearned the meaning of peripheral content in a big way these last four months, and can say with some authority that I could probably write a novel about dryer lint if the need arose. Note that I did not say it would be a good novel; just that I could write it. It would be readable, and not just page after page of line filling fluff and over-descriptive text meant to fill space until I could hit save and walk away for some much needed mental recuperation. Every thousand-plus word article I’ve put together is an original and well researched piece, just as the client has specified. And amazingly enough, given the subject, some of them are actually pretty damn good. Monkeys and Shakespeare sure, but I need all the credit I can get.
And that’s what happens when you write web content professionally. Companies and private enterprises putting their presence on the web are eager to build their ranking and authority and as the hired gun, the Freelancer is the person they turn to when they need the content to make that happen. The only problem is, with some subjects it quickly becomes apparent that what you thought was going to be a gravy gig is in reality going to push your creative abilities to the limit. Sure I admire those folks who can write fiction so imaginative and attention grabbing that I have to finish the story before I can stop to feed myself. But if you really want to see if they’re any good, let em try churning out 20,000 words about socks, or doggy chew toys, or door knobs. Then my friends, you’ll see what creativity is all about!
It’s irksome to an extent, because some people seem to feel that writing web content like this is not “real writing”. Granted there are a lot of characters out there who could care less how their copy reads, or whether it’s original or not as long as someone pays a couple bucks for it, but there are more of us who do care. Sure a subject might be boring enough to induce a mild catatonic state, but damnit it has to be written properly, meaning it’s informative, reads well, and is properly structured and proofread. Just because you’re not writing the next New York Times best seller is no reason to write like crap, especially when your goals involve gaining clients who tend to pay more than three cents per word.
Oh it’s real writing all right. Although all those folks on E-Lance working out of India and Pakistan are getting away with selling content that would make a dyslexic look eloquent, it doesn’t mean that web content writing is cheap and doesn’t need to be good. When was the last time you saw a well ranked website that had content a third grader would be embarrassed to own up to? Not too often I’ll bet. And they don’t get those rankings or traffic because they paid someone five dollars a pop for 800 word articles. They got there because they paid good rates for good content.
The worst part about it is that many of the people doing the hiring seem to think that because they can get someone to write for peanuts, that EVERYONE should accept the same kind of rates. I’ve bitten my tongue more than once when a proposal I deliberately kept below normal sane rates was replied to with a complaint about the price. When you go back and look at the work that they have paid for, you have to wonder what in the world they could possibly be thinking. I mean they’ve obviously paid a non native English speaker to put together some horrible content, which implies they paid next to nothing for it, and then they come to you wanting something better yet they expect to pay the same price? That’s like buying a used VW and realizing its crap, then going to the Porsche dealer and expecting to get the same deal. It’s ridiculous.
It’s very hard to refrain from shooting off a reply along the lines of, “As long as you refuse to pay for quality you’ll keep getting the crap you already have,” but I do. After all, if I’m hungry enough to occasionally write for less than a lot of folks and they still think it’s too high, then the problem is not with me and I’m not interested in cluing them in. I’m fairly certain I can put together a few words just a little bit better than a Pakistani with a translator program, and my current clients have expressed nothing but positive approval. If they’re looking to pay slave wages but expect artisan quality, they came to the wrong person.
I’m beginning to become of the opinion that the perception of web content writers as being less than “real writers” stems not from any honest misconceptions, but rather a refusal to accept that writing for the web is no less difficult than it is for print. In fact, writing for the web is in my opinion oftentimes harder. After all, does a newspaper column have to appeal to search engine algorithms as well as readers? Does it have to contain a certain keyword or phrase at a certain density? Are there any concerns that your hyperlink might not be anchored in the right text? Of course not.
No, the problem is that too many people have the false perception that because you’re writing for online publication, the value of the written word is somehow less than for writing in the “real world”. Which is a pity because the truly astute online entrepreneurs realize that quality words are the most valuable asset they have when it comes to profiting online.
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Posted by paul novak on June 26, 2010 at 6:59 pm
The last couple weeks have been pretty heavy on the monetary aspect of blogging and writing for me so I figure, what better topic for a post? As well as the ComLuv contest which has consumed a good deal of my time and now suggests giving valuable free advertising to its sponsors in exchange for contest points, I have received a few questions regarding monetizing a blog and how to go about doing it. I empathize with those who are somewhat reluctant or intimidated by the prospect of actually using their blog to create income. It can seem at first glance like a daunting task, as if there is some secret or special method to doing it successfully. The truth is a whole lot different, and I think that after you read what I’m about to show you in the next couple days you’ll not only no longer be hesitant, but eager to give it a shot.
The most fundamental fact first
One of the most important things you must have before you even begin to entertain monetizing your blog is traffic. No matter if it is Adsense or ClickBank, if you don’t have a decent volume of traffic, your sales if any are going to be dismal. Part of the reason for needing traffic is of course just plain exposure for the products you’ll be promoting. Programs like Adsense work best when there is a high volume of visitors to present the ads to, and it is the click through rates that are going to matter most.
Some people will tell you to go ahead and get some affiliate ads posted to your site before you even get it launched, which is fine really. I’ve done it myself. Just don’t expect to see much happen with them if anything. The rationale behind putting up ads from the start is that visitors may be put off by your suddenly adding advertisements to your blog when before it was free of them. The refutation to this rationale is this; if you have good content and you are providing a valued resource to your visitors, they aren’t going to care very much if you include some ads later. As long as your ads are placed with some common sense and don’t conflict with your content, visitors will likely not care that you now have some ads. How many good sites have you avoided because they have ads? Exactly.
My opinion on the matter is that your time is better spent working on your content and building your audience before spending any time on setting up for advertisements. That way, when you do monetize your site, you’ll be better able to test and evaluate whatever advertising strategy you decide to use because you’ll have an audience response to use when gauging results.
What really makes traffic so important
The other reason traffic is so vital is the most important part of the picture. While you can sign up for an affiliate program like ClickBank and make a little money with little effort, to get the really good money that comes from true sponsors you need to have a good amount of traffic in order to prove to them that your promotion is worth paying for. For small blogs and niche’s you should expect to have approximately 300-500 visits a day before anyone is going to be willing to pay you real money to promote their products. The more traffic you have, the more interested advertisers will be in securing your services.
Think of it this way. How much people charge for advertising on their site is highly variable and dependent upon their traffic volume. There really are no set rates. If you have quality traffic and over 3-5,000 visits a month, averages could be $25.00 for a simple text link in a post or carried in a sidebar for a month, or $150.00- $500.00 for a 450 word post promoting a product. A small 200×200 button in your sidebar could fetch $100.00 per month, while a large banner ad at the top of your site could fetch $300.00 a month, while an all out permalinked promotion complete with endorsement and reviews could net you as high as $2,000 if you have some really good traffic. The key is having the traffic that makes asking these prices credible.
There is no easy money, just smart money
Kind of drives home just why so many people seem completely obsessed with getting anybody and everybody to visit their site doesn’t it? So before you decide to begin seriously monetizing your blog, first take the time to get it well ranked and pulling in steady traffic. This takes time and is probably not what most folks want to hear, but it goes back to the very basics of being successful no matter what you are doing. The only way you’ll enjoy lasting success is by putting in the effort.
This subject deserves a great deal more than just one post so I am going to break it up into a few installments. Next post, I will be explaining a little bit about approaching potential advertisers and how to go about promoting them. Till then I invite your comments. I’m always interested in hearing how other folks go about putting their content to work.
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Posted by paul novak on June 11, 2010 at 6:42 pm
I know in my last post I said I was going to continue with the subject of Demand Studios and its effect on freelance writing, but when I sat down to work on it I realized that I was just not interested in the subject enough to merit doing a worthwhile analysis. My own opinion is that the work a writer chooses to accept is entirely up to them and painting any potential income stream with a broad brush is counterproductive. Rather than sit here and tell people how great a job is, or how terrible, I much prefer to simply put information out there along with my own experiences, and let others make their own judgments. I cannot tell you what to write, who to write for, or what will be best for you, because I don’t know you. Each writer’s situation and goals are different and the best choices can only be made by the writer and not someone with an axe to grind or unrelated experience. Writing for Demand may be a horrible experience for one person, while a great experience for another. It’s all dependent on the individual. Nuff said.
I’d rather mention a bit about SEO and traffic building. At least there I can find something more productive and perhaps useful for readers to take away from this post.
As you can probably tell, I’ve put little SEO practices to use in running this blog. Writingfourmylife.com* is not a professional portal, and my goal isn’t related to conversions. I’ve decided however to begin incorporating SEO into running this thing and figured a few tips for others considering improving their blogs search engine referred traffic would probably make for some good blogger Karma.
Most bloggers put little thought into SEO unless they are concerned with ROI and conversions. Given that there is so much material out there related to SEO already, learning about it can be an extremely daunting task for the more casual blogger. Any search on SEO is going to return massive numbers of pages, most devoted to selling you something, and others full of information that is either just not very useful or so weighed down with jargon and geek speak that average folks give up after a few minutes of reading. Wouldn’t you rather just get some basic straightforward info and some advice on how to use it? Sure you would, so here goes.
First and foremost
Sign up for Google analytics and get the code embedded in your site. Unless you have excellent access to all your stats, you’ll never be able to tell if anything you are doing is making a difference. Google Analytics will tell you great things like where your visitors are coming from, how long they stay, and how many came from organic sources. If you are going to do some SEO work on your site, Analytics will make the job much easier.
Keywords
The backbone of most SEO tactics, keywords are probably the most important and basic part of building search engine referrals or “organic traffic”. Specific keywords and keyword phrases relate to the interests of those inputting search terms into a search engine. So George is looking for “wooden Widgets”, types it into Google and voila, nine million page results pop up for him to look through. If you have a page about Wooden Widgets, then you’re all set right? Not really. Where you rank in those nine million results is the holy grail of SEO, and if you come up anywhere beyond the third page of search engine results, chances are your page will never be found by George. So what do you do?
For starters, spend some time thinking about your sites focus. This will determine in large part your keyword choices. If you are focused on Wooden Widgets, then you want your keywords to demonstrate that. The next thing, and perhaps hardest part, is finding the keywords that are most likely to be typed into a search engine by the average George, aren’t already used to death by nine million other pages, and properly using them in your pages.
First, understand that most searches are done in phrases and not on a single word. Instead of “Widgets”, the Georges of the world are looking for “Cheap Wooden Widgets”, or “The Best Wooden Widgets”. Since Wooden Widgets has nine million results showing, that means if you choose that phrase, you’ll be competing with those nine million. Not a good prospect. Try to narrow your focus to work with less saturated terms that have less competition instead. Your best bet here is to use a tool like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find keyword terms that have the best chances of driving traffic to your site.
First do a Google search on the terms you’re thinking of using and note the return results. Terms with the highest returns are the most “popular”. Then plug those terms into the Google tool and note the suggested terms and their results. I prefer to work with the results that show steady trending and moderate competition. Keep in mind that the real value in tools like this is not in having keyword phrases suggested for you, but in showing you how terms and their results relate to your chosen focus. This allows you to use some creativity to devise your own terms which can help you avoid competition yet still improve your standing in search results.
Placement
Where your chosen keywords appear in your pages is also important. The commonly accepted practice is to have them appear in your title, headers (the title in your content on the page) first sentence, in the middle of the body of your content and in the closing. At the very least, make sure the title of your blog posts includes your keywords and that the body has them at least twice as well. An important aside is to remember that repeating these keywords over and over will not improve their effectiveness. You do not want your keyword use to affect the quality of your content, and search engines long ago learned to disregard keyword saturated pages. Instead, use your keywords as I suggested, and use variations of them in the body of your content. So if you are using “Killer Wooden Widgets”, feel free to occasionally use “exceptional widgets”, “these wooden widgets”, “Fantasmaorgasmic Widgets” in your core content as well as killer wooden widgets. You get the idea.
As usual I have gotten long winded, but I hope that if you’ve made it this far, you also take the time t try these simple basics out when you go back and work on your own blog. I plan on showing in a month or two what focusing on SEO has done for Writingfourmylife.com* and it would be great if a few of you were able to come back and show your results as well. Good luck folks.
BTW, someone remind me to do a search on Wooden Widgets next week. Of course, you can always hire someone to handle this sort of work for you, like me for instance.
Update: 20 hours after putting this post up, I am on the first page of Google Search for “wooden Widgets” .
Your results may vary;)
Jun 11, 2010 … I know in my last post I said I was going to continue with the subject of Demand Studios and its effect on freelance writing, but when I sat …
writingfourmylife.com/…/wooden-widgets-exceptional-widgets-and-fantasmaorgasmic-widgets/ – 20 hours ago
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Posted by paul novak on February 16, 2010 at 7:13 pm
I’m telling you, the American dollar must not be in as dire of straights as we’re being led to believe by the big brained economists of the world. Judging by the prices offered for freelance writing jobs, fifteen cents must be able to feed a family of four for three days in a third world country somewhere. How else can a writer from India offer to put together thirty articles of eight hundred to twelve hundred words for two or three dollars each? If you have any experience with writing for hire, you know how ridiculous this really is. If you break it down into hourly pay and just the actual act of writing, even going as low as twenty minutes per article, you’re looking at working for six dollars an hour. Not exactly a stellar incentive to get those keys flying.
I’ve been seeing some pretty outlandish attempts at justifying these sorts of rates. Companies seeking writers for hire often offer five dollars an article and tout it as some great above average deal, then add a little claim in the job description that their current writers can churn out content in five to eight minutes per piece. Yeah right, and I’m almost finished with my fiftieth novel of the month. Sure, I can pump out some copy in that kind of time frame. I can also promise you, that it will be some of the most generic, poorly structured, fluffy pieces of crap I’ve ever written. Don’t even think of expecting anything informative or actionable.
It doesn’t matter that putting a time frame on writing for hire isn’t an exacting process. There is research, formatting, rewrites, editing, and all the rest that’s required to factor into the equation. Writing for hire isn’t just being given a subject then having the words magically fly from your fingertips. The information doesn’t just appear in the writers mind. The words don’t correct their own typos. They don’t line themselves up into proper grammar and put themselves into the most clever of combinations. They don’t jump into the proper format and adhere to a set keyword density. A writer does that, and it’s work.
It’s telling that just as commonplace as the pitiful job offers, are the requests that writers be natural English speakers. Well hell, let me guess. Someone hired a guy from Pakistan at two dollars an article to write his web stores content, and ended up with a web site full of “we are being very happy to having helped you”. What did he expect? Shakespear?
I recently received a request to review a website. It seems the owner had viewed my website, and took the chance of contacting me for advice. He was not happy with how his sites content was done, and had already paid for the content and construction. So I checked it out for him. (Which I did at no charge btw, I’m nice like that sometimes)
I found a nice template set up that had some of the most atrocious grammar I’ve ever seen. Comprehension of the English language was nowhere in sight. Misspellings and grammatical errors were rampant. The saddest part was that the site is geared towards commercial investment, with the goal of picking up management and investment contracts in the five and six digit figure range. No professional in his right mind would have considered giving that firm a chance with his money after viewing that site. After a little investigation prompted by a strong suspicion, I found that lo and behold, the writer was from the Philippines. What a surprise.
When I first started offering my writing services, I knew better than to make proposals to any of the individuals seeking to pay these outlandishly low rates. They are doing themselves and the writers a serious disservice, and it’s obvious they are not serious about whatever project it is they are involved in. Despite this, I still find myself on the receiving end of rejections quite often, just like every other writer out there. What dismays me are the reasons given for this rejection.
Eight times out of ten, I will receive a rejection that praises my writing. The latest I received called it “the best”, which I assume means the best out of all the proffered offers. It also stated that I was just too expensive which I simply cannot agree with. I’m good at what I do, that’s why I’m here. I target the exact middle of a price range, and most times I am low balling myself as it is. I’m a bargain.
When these individuals are paying for content, and are wondering why their visitors don’t come back, why their product doesn’t move, why their site isn’t gaining organic links, why no one takes them seriously, maybe it’s because they are getting exactly what they paid for.
The problem is not that I am too expensive. I’m cheaper to hire than most. The problem is that I am not willing to short change myself just so I can pick up a job or two. I’ll leave that to the writers with starving children in India.
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