Writing Job Resource

Where to Host Your Author’s Website: 3 Free Options

Ann Olson — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 00:35:50 +0000

As Alyssa Ast mentioned in her recent post about SEO optimization, your own personal “author’s website” can immediately increase your exposure to potential clients–and if you want to diversify (and make more money), that’s good for business. If you’re just starting out, however, this may not be financially feasible. In my next post I’ll discuss cheap, affordable options for hosting your author’s website, but today we’ll discuss free hosting options.

Why Choose Free Hosting?

If you’re just starting your trek into freelance writing, you may not have enough money to buy quality hosting for your website–and that’s okay. For right now, or until you make a “comfortable nest egg”, going free can help get your services on the web, increasing your exposure to potential clients. As you make more money, then you can consider more high quality options for your website.

There is one limitation, however: you won’t own your own domain (such as www.mywritingwebsite.com) unless you purchase it, and may be forced to use a subdomain, which may look unprofessional to some clients. Luckily, domain names run cheap–some even as low as $1.99. It’s a good service to invest in, even if you can’t afford website hosting.

Free Hosting Options

So what are the best free hosting options for writers? Here are my top 3 choices:

1. Blogger. Although Bloggeris a blogging platform, many writers opt its service to host their website due to its flexibility and simplicity. Visually, it may not be the most professional-looking blogging platform to choose, but all of its controls are virtually idiot-proof–even complete blogging novices can create a completely customized website in less than an hour. “I love the ease of use of Blogger for people like me that aren’t so very code savvy,” says Kathy Foust, a freelance writer. “I also like the fact that it’s so affordable.”

Better yet, the look of the site can be easily customized using premade templates (google “Blogger templates” to gain access to thousands of free templates).

2. WordPress. Like Blogger, WordPress is fairly easy to use, and even allows people to create individual pages and widgets to display specific types of content. Although WordPress is strictly a blogging platform, many writers favor it because of its flexibility and the ability to tweak certain sections without having to know computer code.

“I love the flexibility of WordPress,” shares Tara Clapper, who uses WordPress for her writing website TaraWrites.com,” It’s simple to change a theme and tweak things. Since so many people know how to utilize WordPress, I have several friends and colleagues always willing to help me troubleshoot, too.”

Adds Kelly Spies, founder of Suburban Wife Life: “I like that wordpress can be bridged with ecommerce, forum and gallery software. It also easily integrates with social media media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.”

3. Weebly. Although WordPress does use widgets to an extent, Weebly takes it to another level, allowing people to create pages just by dragging widgets into its interface. Advanced users can also customize the HTML and CSS of each webpage, making it an accessible, easy-to-use platform for both novices and experienced web users.

“Even those of us who know script can benefit from the ease-of-use Weebly offers,” says Lyn Lomasi, who uses Weebly for her website, ArticleWriterforHire.com. “I like the fact that if I need to add something in a hurry, I can opt to use the quick drag-and-drop templates. I stay busy, so simple and quick features are essential to my day.”

Now here’s my question for freelancers: Do you use a free service to host your website? If so, what do you use? (Personally, I use WordPress and love it!)

SEED.com: 4 Steps to Getting Your Articles Accepted

Ann Olson — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 06:26:14 +0000

SEED.com is arguably one of the best-paying writing websites on the Internet, with payments for articles easily falling into the $25 to $300 range. It’s also one of hardest to write for, according to writers who submitted articles to their site in 2009 and 2010.

Unlike other writing websites, SEED.com’s approval process is, safe to say, mysterious. Although numerous writers (me included!) have had some articles approved there, SEED.com has never explained what writers should specifically do in order to increase their acceptance rate on the site.

But there are ways to get your articles accepted on SEED.com–perfectly honest, very-non-time-consuming ways, I might add.

1. Make sure your article meets SEED.com’s contributor guidelines. Obviously, the article shouldn’t contain any spelling or grammatical errors, shouldn’t contain advertisements or promotions, and cannot self-promote your work. Unless the assignments asks for it, it shouldn’t be in the first person. You cannot submit previously published content to SEED.com. It has to be original content.

2. Visit the website where the assignment will be published, if accepted. SEED.com typically publishes accepted content on AOL-owned websites (they own SEED.com!). Find the site where it will be published and study it. You want to study the style, length and the unique-isms of the content featured on this site. Take your time. Definitely take notes. SEED.com is more likely to accept articles that look like content that they already publish on AOL-owned websites, such as Gadling.com or WoW.com.

3. Cut out the passive talk. SEED.com isn’t Wikipedia; don’t except to see long, drawn-out articles published on any of its sites. Take some time to read over your article, cut out the fluff, re-read it, and cut out some more. Get rid of any passive verbs, if possible. If you’re not sure how to reduce “passive talk”, read my recent article about how to eliminate passive writing. It was originally written for Demand Studios writers, but also applies to SEED.com writers.

4. Get a proofreader. Sometimes you can miss mistakes, misrepresent information or make the article otherwise difficult to read. Here’s where a good proofreader comes in. He or she can point out the mistakes, inconsistencies, and other issues that could make your article rejectable. I prefer to use writers with some editing experience. You can use anyone you like, provided they know a thing or two about writing.

My advice: Keep on writing–eventually, you should get an article accepted by SEED.com. Learn from your mistakes, write excellent content, and keep on submitting. It took me only three tries. For some people, it can take more time.

Why Bloggers Should Care About Water (A Post in Behalf of Blog Action Day 2010)

Ann Olson — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 07:39:08 +0000

This post is in behalf of Blog Action Day 2010, an annual event which aims to bring global awareness to issues impacting our world.

My 15-year-old cat, Sephy, has not gone a day without fresh water. Every day his water bowl is emptied and filled with fresh, cool drinking water to drink at his leisure. It’s usually gone within a day, if not less.

But nearly 900 million people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water–something which my cat, a domesticated animal, receives each and every day.

Clean water isn’t a common concern for most of us. If you currently live in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia or any other first world country, you’ve probably never been exposed to dirty, bacteria-contaminated water. Even people who are considered impoverished in these countries can still gain access to clean water.

But people who live in second or third world countries, such as Africa, don’t have what the United Nations calls “a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life.”

The Impact of Dirty Water

The impact of contaminated water on people, children and even entire countries is, to put it lightly, devastating. According to CharityWater.org, 42,000 people die each week from drinking unsafe water. 90 percent of them are children under the age of 5.

Left unpurified, water can host a variety of potentially dangerous organisms, such as salmonella, E.coli, cholera and hepatitis A. In healthy people, these organisms can make them very, very sick–but they’ll survive with adequate medical care and hydration.

People who live in areas with unsafe drinking water rarely do not have access to hospitals or clinics that can provide the same level of care. Left untreated, these organisms can cause harm, resulting in kidney damage, liver failure, and eventually death.

But its impact affects far more than the health of children or adults. In Africa, women carry the burden of collecting water for their family, which can be contaminated. They often miss school and work in lieu of collecting life’s most essential need–clean water–in order to just survive.

They also face the risk of being attacked, harassed or sexually assaulted while collecting water for their family, a risk no woman should have to face.

If only they had access to clean, non-contaminated drinking water…imagine how much free time they would have to pursue other activities. They could go to work everyday, for instance. They could devote their time to getting a good education. They could create products or services that can help them make more money.

And that can help them–and their community–get out of poverty and live more fulfilling, healthy lives.

So What Can I Do?

You know the impact. Now find out what you can do to ensure everybody has access to clean drinking water:

1. Raise awareness. This blog post is in honor of Blog Action Day 2010. They wanted bloggers, just like you and me, to raise awareness. And so I am. But I want you to join me. I encourage you to blog about this issue and tell your friends to do the same. The more awareness we can bring, the better.

2. Donate to CharityWater.org. They use your money to bring clean drinking water to communities that desperately need it. You can donate a buck or a thousand bucks. It’s your choice. But every dollar matters.

3. Sign the petition. Pledge your support for continued action by the UN to deliver clean drinking water to the poorest, hardest-hit communities around the world. You can do so online here.

4. Tweet or Share. You can tweet this article, your own article about drinking water awareness, or any other article that brings awareness to this issue. Alternatively, you can share it with your friends on Facebook. This is another excellent way to spread the word.

Let’s save lives by raising awareness and donating our money to this very important issue. I encourage you to blog, tweet or share this post. I also encourage you to blog, tweet or share any post you think will help spread the word about this global problem. Nearly 40,000 people die each week from drinking contaminated water, and that’s 40,000 too many.

Tutorial: How to SEO Your Article’s Images

Ann Olson — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 17:22:25 +0000

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t just limited to smart, keyword-oriented content. Your links, headings and even your images are major players in your search engine ranking, for instance.

Today we’re going to discuss the importance of making your images SEO-friendly: why it’s important, the results it can produce, and how you can do it…in less than 5 minutes a day.

Why You Should SEO Your Images

If you’re beginning to understand the mechanics of SEO, you already know that writing good, focused content is an excellent way to get good search engine rankings. But it isn’t always enough. If you’re aiming for a popular keyphrase, chances are you’re going to deal with competition. This competition knows SEO inside and out, and knows how to get those page 1 rankings.

Using alternative methods, such as making your images SEO-friendly, can increase the likelihood of beating their rankings, however.

Images that have been SEO optimized for Google Image Search under the search term ‘SEO Images’. (Google.com)

The Results

According to Dosh Dosh, many people (no specific estimate given) use Google Image Search to find images on any sort of topic, ranging from the obscure (dog hair sweaters, anyone?) to the painfully common (cars, bikinis, etc.).

The most relevant image results–say, the images that appear on page 1 or 2–see the most visitors, which can passively add hundreds or thousands of new visitors to your web page every day.

This is why you rarely come across content lacking images. It’s a quick, painless way to add more SEO candy to your article, earning you more passive page views that won’t make your content look keyword stuffed to its gills. Because the SEO isn’t actually visible with your content (it’s in the HTML instead), it allows you to focus on creating more dynamic, tightly-focused content.

So, to recap:

To get higher rankings, you need alternative ways to SEO. SEO’ing your image is one way to do it.
Not only will SEO-friendly images increase your article’s ranking, it also directs more traffic to your image. In some cases, it can also significantly increase traffic to your web page.

How to SEO Your Images

Unlike content optimization, optimizing your images takes up minimal time. On average, it takes me 2 minutes to completely optimize an image for a web page or article. It shouldn’t take you too long to do it either.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Change the file name of your image to a keyphrase related to your content. For example, let’s say I downloaded a picture of Diet Coke® named “DCoke134.jpg”. Unfortunately, nobody is going to search for that in Google Images. Instead, change it to a phrase that people are more likely to search for, such as “DietCokeImage.jpg” or “DietCokeCan.jpg”.

2. Add another related keyword or phrase to your alt text. This is located inside your IMG SRC tag when you post an image using HTML. I try to keep it identical to my image name if possible. Here’s the fancy HTML for it:

alt=”Drinking diet coke cans are great!”>

Alternatively, WordPress allows people to insert text into the alt text without having to mess with the actual HTML. You’ll see this when you upload an image to your WordPress post or media library:

Simply insert your keyphrases in the box next to “Alternate Text” and hit “Insert into Post!”.

SEO Images Made Simple

Now that we’ve covered the basics of image optimization, let’s go over how to do it.

How to SEO Your Image

Add an image (or more) to every web page or article you post, if possible.

Keyword/phrase optimize the file name of the image.

Keyword/phrase optimize the alt text in the image’s HTML.

Although it isn’t a guarantee, it can immediately increase web traffic to your article…simply through a minute or two of easy-peasy SEO image optimization.

7 Handy Tips for Freelancers From IFD10

Ann Olson — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:34:41 +0000

It’s been over a week since International Freelancers Day (IFD10) ended–and now it’s time to put their advice into action. If you haven’t already, check out IFD10′s free replays of all 24 seminars. Even if some of the seminars don’t apply to freelance writing, the advice is literally invaluable to any freelancer, regardless of your specific profession.
So what did IFD10 teach you? Here are 7 important tips for freelancers, straight from the speakers of IFD10:
1. If you haven’t already, get a blog. According to statistics, websites with blogs get 55 percent more visitors compared to websites that do not. Websites with blogs also increase their inbound link rate by 97 percent.
2. Allow people to message you directly to request a service (or quote) through Facebook. This eliminates the need to open up Outlook and compose an email to you, the provider. It’s a better way of getting more clients.
3. To foster growth for your freelance business, it’s important to have three different types of people within your network. This includes connectors (people who know a lot of other people), mavens (an expert in a niche) and salesmen (peopel focused on the selling part of a product).
4. Make a MIT (most important things) list. Write down four MITs you need to focus on the night before. Tell a friend about your MITs and have that person follow up with you at the end of the day to see if you completed these MITs. It creates accountability, which encourages you to fit the MITs into your schedule.
5. Maximize your interruptions. Pull out a piece of paper and put the person’s (whoever interrupts you the most) name on it, listing what you need to discuss with this person. Add to the list as the week progresses. After you reach four or more topics to discuss, schedule a meeting and discuss these topics. It saves time and minimizes your interruptions during the day, making you more productive.
6. Say thank you every day to anyone who has taught you something or helped you out.
7. Reimagine your content. If you write a series of blog posts, combine it into a free e-book. If you receive a customer testimonial, why not turn it into a blog post? Reimagine your content; don’t recycle old ideas.
So what did you learn from IFD10?

Are You Attending International Freelancers Day? Here’s Why You Should

Ann Olson — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:05:09 +0000

Have you heard about International Freelancers Day? Do you know it’s happening this Friday, September 24?
In case you’re out of the loop, here’s why this event is invaluable to freelancers: it’s free, completely online, and allows you first hand access to the 25 biggest players in social media, online marketing, SEO and blogging.
You may recognize some of these names. Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, Copyblogger founder Brian Clark and Michael Martine (of Remarkablogger) will all be speaking at this conference, and will undoubtedly have some very interesting information to share about SEO and blogging.
You can also access what they have to say after the conference is over–registrants get full access to these exclusive videos after September 25 (when the International Freelancers Day conference ends). Cool, huh?
If you’re a freelancer, a search engine optimizer or a blogger, I highly encourage you to sign up for this two day event. I’m going to attend. You can too–for free. But you can only attend if you sign up. If you don’t…well, you’re missing out.
If you still don’t want to attend, here’s some good news: I will be taking notes from each major session and posting them here exclusively on Writing Job Resource. I will be posting them here on Monday, September 27, so watch out for that. Happy conferencing!

When Should Writers Publish Halloween Articles?

Ann Olson — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:35:32 +0000

For experienced SEO writers, we all know what Halloween means: publish as much Halloween content as you possibly can. According to Google Adwords, there are over 11,000,000 searches done on Halloween-related content every month on average–and this doesn’t take into account the months when Halloween searches spike.
Let’s take a look at this chart:

Last year, searches for Halloween-related content spiked by 15 times above the average search rate around the end of October. That’s 15 times more than the 11,000,000 searches on Halloween content done during an average month. That’s a lot of searching. And that’s a lot of page views for websites who have their Halloween content up well in advance.
Here are some more interesting statistics for SEO writers: 25 to 50 percent of these searches involved shopping. 10 to 25 percent involved entertainment. Searches for local content only took up a small portion of these searches, or about 0 to 10 percent. (source: Google Insights)

Halloween Articles: What SEO Writers Should Target

Considering these statistics, and these statistics don’t vary a lot from year to year, what should SEO writers focus on?

1. Halloween shopping or entertainment articles. As you can see, shopping and entertainment tend to get the most searches. If you’re trying to amass thousands of page views, all you have to do is write search engine optimized articles that fit into these categories. Right?

Well, if it was that easy everyone would be writing Halloween articles. Generally speaking, however, these categories are your best bet, although you’ll want to narrow the focus of your article to specific search terms that are popular yet don’t have a lot of competition.

Again, that’s easier said than done. I hear articles on Lindsay Lohan jail costumes ought to be really popular this year.

2. Get those articles published early, when searches for Halloween content start spiking. Look at the chart–do you see where the line begins to rise? It starts halfway through July. SEO writers know if they want to capitalize on page views during a holiday, getting those articles out before the searches really start to spike is important for getting the articles indexed.
The faster the articles get indexed on Google, the easier it is to maintain your rank (hint: that means more page views). Get your articles published before the competition does.

Now, whatever you do, do not–and I mean DO NOT–wait until October to publish your Halloween articles. Even if your article is SEO’d to its gills, your article will be facing a lot of stiff competition, reducing the likelihood your article will even get indexed, nevertheless get a nice, high ranking on pretty ol’ Google.
It can take at least a month for an article to get established on Google, so you need to publish these articles at least two months in advance.

SEO Writers: How to Increase Your $$$ This Halloween

Now that you know what sells during Halloween, let’s figure out how to sell it. Here are a couple of suggestions:

Submit Halloween niche articles to websites which pay per view. I recommend Associated Content, and to a lesser extent, Bukisa. Better yet, you can submit an article to Associated Content, slightly rewrite the article, and submit it to Bukisa to double your earnings.

Submit Halloween niche articles to websites which allow you to sell your articles. Constant-Content (CC) is your best bet here. Daily Article also allows you to sell articles, but it isn’t nearly as popular as CC. CC has an added bonus: customers (usually the ones who are not SEO-savvy) will be buying Halloween articles right up until October 31st, so you can continue to submit these articles up until the deadline.

Start promoting your writing services on marketing forums, job boards and other websites where your potential customers usually congregate. Mention specifically you write Halloween content and post a few samples. ??? Profit! Again, expect these customers to purchase Halloween articles right up until the deadline.

OK, now it’s your turn. SEO writers: has Halloween yielded you good earnings? Why or why not?

4 Things Writers Don’t Know about Domain Names

Ann Olson — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:36:13 +0000

Many writers agree: if you want to have a successful business, you need a website. Not only does this increase brand awareness with potential clients, a website–if designed and promoted the right way–can propel you as an expert in your given niche, leading to more writing and money-making opportunities.

But behind every successful “writer’s website” is an equally as successful domain name. Unfortunately, most writers make this their last priority, when it really should be their first.

Here are four things you probably don’t know about domain names:

1. Keywords matter. If you’re not concerned about increasing organic traffic to your website, this isn’t a concern. But if you’re using your website as a way for clients to find you, keywords are essential. But why?

Think of it this way. Most of your organic traffic is going to come from search engine (mostly Google) queries. Including relevant keywords that relate to your website, such as writing or SEO, makes your website more SEO-friendly. Potential clients are more likely to type in keywords related to the work they’re requesting, such as “high quality SEO articles”, into Google. Unless they’re already aware of your online presence, they’ll rarely type your name into the search bar.

So how can you incorporate this into your domain name? Simple–incorporate the keywords into your domain name with other unique keywords that are related to your website.

For example, WritingJobResource.com primarily provides content about getting–and finding–writing jobs online and offline. “Writing” and “Job” are the main keywords here, with “Resource” being the unique keyword. Alternatively, you can combine these keywords with your name (for example, OlsonSEOContent.com or AnnOlsonWriting.com).

2. The domain name’s suffix can kill traffic. .com’s are arguably the most popular domain name suffix–unfortunately, many people assume it is the only domain name suffix available.

For example, let’s say Bob, who’s interested in cake, comes across a website called CakeisDelicious.org. A few days later he wants to visit the site again, so from memory he types in CakeisDelicous.com. Nothing shows up.

Confused, Bob assumes he typed in wrong name, and types in CakeDelicious.com. Another website shows up, but it’s not the same website. Bob becomes frustrated and decides to look for delicious cake pictures elsewhere. CakeisDelicious.org loses a potential repeat visitor in the process. The process repeats with other visitors, and eventually the traffic loss builds up.

So what’s the moral to this story? If you want repeat traffic, choose a .com and redirect the remaining suffixes of your domain name–.net, .info, .org–back to the .com. Can’t afford to buy out all of the suffixes? Stick with a .com instead; most people will assume your domain name ends in a .com by default.

3. Complicated, long or hard-to-spell words can affect traffic. Remember, spelling is not everyone’s forte–if it’s hard to remember or spell, most people won’t make that extra effort to spell your domain name correctly. For example, SEO is easy to remember, but optimization isn’t. Quiz is easier to spell than quizzical, stop is easier than restrictions, etc. Also, remember to stay away from words that have both British and American variants, such as program/programme or color/colour.

4. Hyphens are bad for traffic. Again, not everyone is going to remember your domain name has hyphens. Hyphens also require more effort to type; the average web user probably isn’t accustomed to reaching for the hyphen key by memory. Instead of Cake-is-delicious.org, aim for Cakeisdelicious.org. Writingbuddies.com is going to get more return visitors than Writing-buddies.com.

Remember, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) to increase website traffic, and strive to make it SEO-friendly and focused on your niche.

Review: Freelance Writing Online: A Guide for Beginners

Ann Olson — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:01:29 +0000

First, let’s look at the synopsis:

If you are a brand new freelance writer who is wondering just how to get started, then this is the book for you. Written by Suzanne Alicie, a professional freelance writer, this book takes you step by step to your first published piece and offers plenty of advice about the steps you need to take in order to earn a living as an online freelance writer! – taken from freelancewriteronline.info/ebooks.html

What follows is a 22 page guide on how to streamline the process from writing amateur from writing professional, based on Alicie’s own experiences as an online freelance writer. Overall, the guide is fast, jargon-free reading. Alicie simplifies the painstaking process of setting up your business before you begin looking for clients, from choosing your pen name to promoting your finished work online.

Main points covered in Freelance Writing Online: A Guide for Beginners include:

Choosing a pen name: the advantages, disadvantages and challenges of writing under a different name.

Creating a sample profile paragraph to display your writing experience and portfolio, if applicable.

The importance of diversifying your client work.

How to a build a portfolio online cheaply and professionally .

At $7.95, this e-book is cheaper than most writing e-books; unfortunately, it contains far fewer pages compared to other e-books, such as The AC Source Book. The information found in Freelance Writing Online: A Guide for Beginners is invaluable, however, especially for those not familiar with the process of becoming a online freelance writer.

WJR’s recommendation: This e-book is essential reading for people transitioning from freelance amateur to professional. Several of the points discussed in Alicie’s book are rarely discussed on writing forums and websites, but Alicie covers it succinctly, using easy-to-understand language and simple tips for quick implementation.

To learn more about Freelance Writing Online: A Guide for Beginners, visit Suzanne Alicie’s website Freelancewriteronline.info.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION

Demand Studios Tutorials: Passive Writing Analyzer

Ann Olson — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 06:47:40 +0000

Having trouble eliminating passive phrases, such as “to be”, “could be” or “had been” from your articles? Use the Aztekera “To Be” Verbs Analyzer tool to locate passive phrases, words and weak writing. This tool is completely free–just paste a sample article into the analyzer and click “Check”.

Note to Demand Studios writers: this is a must have if you’re consistently getting rewrites concerning your “passive voice”.

Aztekera “To Be” Verbs Analyzer

Happy writing!

The Passive Writing Analyzer is part of the Demand Studios Tutorials series on WJR. To see all of the articles listed in this tutorial, click here.