Freelance Writers - Five Reasons Why You Need A Website

By Sharon Hurley Hall

These days, if you're starting a career as a freelance writer, it's no longer enough to ring up a few editors and distribute a few business cards. Most of the people who want to hire you will ask if you have a website. If the answer is 'no', you could lose out on some valuable sources of income. Here are five reasons why you should have a web presence.

1. Developing the brand of you

As a writer, your name is your brand. People will like or hate your stuff, trust or distrust your opinions. Either way, they'll have positive or negative feelings every time they see an article with your name on it. So your job is to build editors' and readers' trust in that brand.

2. Writing is your business - you need to treat it like one

Every reputable business has a website that showcases its products and services. You should too. How else are people going to know what you have to offer? A website allows your potential clients the luxury of accessing your information in their own time. You should include a resume, references, services (types of writing), samples of work, links to where you're published on the net.

3. Efficiency

A website is a time saving way of showcasing your past and current work (an online portfolio or selection of clips). You can point editors to it as well - a time saver for you and them. No longer do you have to spend time selecting and printing your best work. Instead, upload examples to your site and link to other places where your work has been published.

4. Make your passion work for you

Some of the writing you do will be for love rather than money, but that's no reason why you can't make it work for you. Upload your short stories, poetry, novel chapters and so on to show how creative you are.

5. Skills development

If you do the web development yourself, you'll also be gaining another valuable skill. The discipline of editing your material for a website will be invaluable when you're trying to get a commission to write 40 web articles for a pittance (we all have to start somewhere).

So what are you waiting for? Get your stuff on the net and start building the brand of you.

Sharon Hurley Hall is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor. Sharon worked in publishing for 18 years, writing articles and editing and designing books and magazines. She has also lectured on journalism. For more information or to contact Sharon, visit doublehdesign.com. Read more of Sharon's writing at her blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sharon_Hurley_Hall

writing, brand development, freelance writing

Freelance Writers - Five Reasons Why You Need A Website

Freelance Writers - Five Reasons Why You Need A Website
By Sharon Hurley Hall

These days, if you're starting a career as a freelance writer, it's no longer enough to ring up a few editors and distribute a few business cards. Most of the people who want to hire you will ask if you have a website. If the answer is 'no', you could lose out on some valuable sources of income. Here are five reasons why you should have a web presence.

1. Developing the brand of you

As a writer, your name is your brand. People will like or hate your stuff, trust or distrust your opinions. Either way, they'll have positive or negative feelings every time they see an article with your name on it. So your job is to build editors' and readers' trust in that brand.

2. Writing is your business - you need to treat it like one

Every reputable business has a website that showcases its products and services. You should too. How else are people going to know what you have to offer? A website allows your potential clients the luxury of accessing your information in their own time. You should include a resume, references, services (types of writing), samples of work, links to where you're published on the net.

3. Efficiency

A website is a time saving way of showcasing your past and current work (an online portfolio or selection of clips). You can point editors to it as well - a time saver for you and them. No longer do you have to spend time selecting and printing your best work. Instead, upload examples to your site and link to other places where your work has been published.

4. Make your passion work for you

Some of the writing you do will be for love rather than money, but that's no reason why you can't make it work for you. Upload your short stories, poetry, novel chapters and so on to show how creative you are.

5. Skills development

If you do the web development yourself, you'll also be gaining another valuable skill. The discipline of editing your material for a website will be invaluable when you're trying to get a commission to write 40 web articles for a pittance (we all have to start somewhere).

So what are you waiting for? Get your stuff on the net and start building the brand of you.

Sharon Hurley Hall is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and editor. Sharon worked in publishing for 18 years, writing articles and editing and designing books and magazines. She has also lectured on journalism. For more information or to contact Sharon, visit doublehdesign.com. Read more of Sharon's writing at her blog

Page Rank - Hitting the Top

I tell a lot of people that inside links count. Refer pages, from inside your website count. At www.inspiredauthor.com I have several pages with only an internal link menu (static) linked to other pages in the site - no off site links. The archive has 1000 pages in it. Most of the pages on this site have PR2 and PR3. Now, that shouldn't give them PR3, because there are not enough links. But you need to remember that the pages are all linked from similar keyword pages, and similar topics. They are also attached to the main page with a higher PR.

I have also been on a PR8 page that was nothing more than a form. However, several thousand pages linked to that form, even though only a few dozen people had access to the actual form.

Take a look at your blogger dashboard. I am sure that you haven't built up more than 100 000 links to your dashboard, but it has PR7 or PR8. That is because of the inside links.

Page rank is also not first level only. Second level will also effect your PR. Obviously, www.inspiredauthor.com proves that 1000 links from similar keywords, to a level 5 depth, will equal PR3 when the stats say that you need 3000 - 4000 links to achieve this. All intersting, as www.inspiredauthor.com is just a landing page. The home page of the site is www.inspiredauthor.com/v3/blog

So, the important thing to remember is that linking from one post inside your blog to another of a similar topic, will also work toward increasing your PageRank.

Now, if you get a couple of PR8 pages hidden deep in your blog or your page, can you link your home page to them and increase the PR of your homepage? Yes - because search engines cannot think. They cannot understand words or language - they just do what they are told.

Page Rank the Easy Way

There is an easy/cheap way to increase your page rank, but it will take a year or two. The best plan is to submit to every directory possible. Eventually, most of those blog directories will increase in rank, as they do, their PR value will increase.

Submit a link and it is submitted forever. Directories do not work like search engiens. They do not dump old sites, and wait to see who resubmits. This means that if you submit your blog to a site with a PR0 and in 2 years that site has a PR8, you will benefit from that PR.

While your site will not be directly linked from the PR8 page, there is still value to being listed on that site.

One tip about paying for links to increase PR- once you get the benfits, you can stop paying for the link.

Page Rank - Buying Directory Links

I spent most of today linking to directories. I did use one service that submitted my site to 250 PR3 and PR4 sites, but I am not sure yet if it is a scam. I will bet $30 against that. 250 links in 10 minutes is a good deal. But, most sites demand a link-back - I'll let you know if I received any value for my money.

There is a trick to paying for links. Remember that Google ranks Pages not Websites.

The price of some directories is $50, others are $500. I've even seen a few at $1000. The problem is, you want to see the PR ranking of the page your website will appear on. That doesn't mean the category page - but the actual page your site will appear on. In many cases, directories with a PR8 on the home page have a PR0 (zero) on the category pages.

This means you are paying your $50 for nothing. There are hundreds of directories with a PR0 that will let you rank free. I've heard the argument both ways - that the home page PR will help - and that it won't. The fact is, Google tell their secrets.

Is it worth paying for a link on a page with a PR6? Yes, that PR will increase the PR rank of your site - but make sure that your site 'does' have a PR6 on the page you are linking too.

Do not loose heart. It takes time to build links. A website/blog needs about 3000 inbound links from PR3- to achieve a PR4 or a PR5. This is time consuming, and can take several months to see the fruits of your labour.

The best plan of attack is to submit one single blog - with your other blogs linking to it. That will save money, and help you get ranked.

PageRank: Link Words

In the last article I linked you to a website that talked about pagerank. Part 2 of that article also talked about internal linkes. A lot of bloggers and web owners never think of putting links inside their website to their home page (to increase its web rank). You may also want to make 'promo blogs' These are blog posts that you actively build inbound links to - from inside your site - and from other articles/posts.

You never know which page will reach a PR5 and pull the rest of the pages up with it.

But - not all links are created equal. A link exchange from a page with nothing on it but a big lists of links is useless, and if that page has nothing to do with your topic, then you can actually damage your page rank.

However, if the first page uses Heading titles every 100 - 150 words, with a keword in them ...say MAKE ME MONEY... and the keyword in the article that is being linked is MAKE ME MONEY...we want to link this to a page with a URL, title, sub titles (as many as possible) called MAKE ME MONEY. And better, we want that page to link to other pages called MAKE ME MONEY on your site and off your site.

Now - I heard several of you scream 'how do I control links off my site' - I can't make people create pages for me.

Why not? In Diva networking, we are going to do just that. We are going to get everyone who wants to participate to pick a keyword. Let's say that five of us write an article on MAKE MONEY BLOGGING. Each of us can title the URLS - MAKE MONEY BLOGGING. Each of us can have a H1 title with MAKE MONEY BLOGGING. Each of us can link to our friend's articles called MAKE MONEY BLOGGING.

Now - we have one article in our blog with the title MAKE MONEY BLOGGING, and it has 5 outbound links in it. And, 5 people have articles with links to our site.

Only 5 links? Does that really matter? YES. Because these are 5 links that google will pay attention to.

Now, here is where you can get creative. You can write another 5 posts an spread them through your network, each with MAKE MONEY BLOGGING, and each linking back to that one page. You can even put 2 or 3 links in each of those posts.

Now, you have the original 5 inbound links.... you have 10 blogs x 5 posts x 3 links = another 150 inbound links to that page. So, after a few weeks (months) that page has a PR4.

To expand this, you can write free articles on MAKE MONEY BLOGGING, and say 'if you want to read another article on this go to my article MAKE MONEY BLOGGING - this can generate 20 - 20 000 more inbound links (but don't count on them all being from pages called MAKE MONEY BLOGGING)

Now - you put a link in that article to your home page - and the PR of that page pulls up the PR on your home page.

Page Rank and Inbound Links

One of the problems with people who are in the business of blogging is that they do not understand page rank. They have a vague idea that Google wants lots of inbound links. At first they generate dozens, then realize that Google counts very few of these - and stop.

Unfortunately, they do not realize that it may take several weeks - to months for Google to actually apply the pagerank to their site. If you use the Google page rank tool to test www.inspiredauthor.com's back links, you'll see about 20. If you use yahoo, you'll see 175. If you use an actual web software program that tracks, you'll see 280 for Google and 3000 for yahoo. This doesn't mean that the sites do not count them. It means that it will take time for Google to apply the page rank to my site.

One the other hand - WHERE the links come from is important. For example, if you have 2 or 3 inbound links from a PR8 site, then you'll have a PR 4 or PR5 site. But, it may take thousands of links from a PR1 - PR3 site to bring up your rank.

Why do you want to do all this work?

One - so Google AdSense will pay you more. When you check your AdSense earnings, you'll notice that at PR1 - PR2, you may only earn a few cents, even if the CPC (Cost Per Click) is $20 - $200.

Two - so your site's pageranks higher, and Google will include you in more searches. The higher you rank in searches, the more traffic your site receives. And, of course, the more traffic you receive, the more hits you get.

Inbound links are not the only aspect that effects Google page rank, but it is a good place to start.

Why Post Often

Bloggers are consistently told that they should blog daily. Most of us do not have the time to do that, even if they cross post articles between their different blogs.

What the articles do not tell new bloggers is why they should blog daily. There is a lot of competition out there. Each blogger wants readers and wants hits. Most of this traffic will come through 'pings.' Unfortunately, very few blogs rank high enough to receive hits from search engines. The only way to attract a new audience is to ping blog search engines and remain active in the blog directories.

Another way is to join blogging communities, but be careful. There are several solid blog communities that are owned by serious companies - mypace, www.squidoo.com, www.bebo.com, www.authorsconnection.com, www.communati.com, www.bloggerparty.com

Blog communities receive hundreds of thousands of hits. They usually have a higher PR than a personal blog, meaning that links from there are good for your blog's ranking.

The problem arises when new bloggers do nothing but promote 'off site' products. People in the communities want to make friends and communicate. If you don't participate, you won't benefit.

This is the same with blog communities - you'll only benefit if you remain active.

Does this take a lot of time? Maybe at first, but after a while, you can network with 20 or 30 bloggers in less than an hour.

Why Blog Daily

We wrote a course that helps bloggers learn how to make $1000 a month. Basically, this number is not high when it comes to blogging. I personally know a blogger who works part time, about 15 hours a month, and makes $1500 - That is $100 an hour.

We've been talking about increasing pagerank to get more money from Google, and to increase hits. But, we are bloggers, so the blogsphere offers us more tools than webmasters are limited to.

We can submit to search engines - every one possible. We can submit to all the manual directories like DMOZ. But, we can also list in the blog directories and ping them.

Take a look at this article on Data Recovery. It received hundreds of hits when the rest of the posts received only 50 - 100. This blog community is set up to ping automatically, but I tagged this article with technorati, stumbleupon, voted with Google's new tool, digg, delicious, etc. You can see the difference.

This article does have good content on avoiding a computer hard drive crash, so other people will link to it, but the Tagging and pinging brought hits.

How? Well - one thing you can do is to update your blog post, and re-ping it.

The secret is pinging. If you write daily, the search engines send people to your site - daily. If you write monthly then they will send people to your site monthly.

I have met many people who will pay for traffic, but they will not write blog posts daily. The thing is - if you write 2 posts a day, your blog will be pinged twice a day.

You Can Get Mega Hits on Your blog

It always amazes me how people appreaciate good writing, whether it appears on a blog, in an article, or in a novel. The thing is, anyone can write well. You can write something that receives hundreds, even thousands of views. You can write a novel that sells thousands of copies. The secret is to write something that people want to read, by writing about life.

Take a look at two blog posts I wrote that received top hits, despite the fact they are on a blog community, www.communati.com, that has hundreds of great writers on the site.

My first article received almost 500 views in less than a few hours. Within 4 hours of being written, it was on the ‘most popular list.’ Gladiolas, Dahlias, Pear Trees and The Secrets of Life . This is nothing more than a look at a quiet summer afternoon that I spent with my family, and how it touched me, and also touched my readers. The writing is not literary and flowery. There is nothing poetic about it. I just wrote it in a way that made readers look into their own lives. This is the secret of great writing, making people look at their own lives instead of forcing them to see life through your eyes.

The second is a tutorial on saving time. I did not tell people to save time. Instead, I showed them how I save time. There is a big difference between talking about what to do and how to do. The world is full of tutorials that tell people what to do, but never gives them the tools to help them do it. How Much $$ Does Multitasking Costing You?
You’ll also notice that I made some great titles. Are titles important? Yes. They are so important that I have even returned to my blogs and changed titles. In some cases, the hits increased.

So, next time you write, don’t just put words on paper. Think about your readers. “Take care of your readers and they will take care of you.”



----------------
Visit More Learning Sites:
inspiredauthor
Get Your Book Published
Get Paid To Write
How I Built a Career

Blog Writing: Getting Started

The life of a writer appears to have many perks. The uninitiated envisions us working in our pajamas while writing fluff about far away places, beautiful people, and spectacular adventures. After chuckling, we patiently explain how many hours it can take to research an article, or the number of times an article is submitted before it sells.

We possess an intangible element, which prevents us from taking the well-worn route. A regular paycheck with benefits is attractive. I even tried it once, and almost died inside. Face it, we are not free to enjoy an easy life while others toil, writers must write.

The life of a freelance writer is burdened with unpaid bills, deadlines, and rejection letters. But, there are a few blessings outweigh the heaviest burdens, like the joy of being published in a national magazine, studying a truly fascinating topic for a client, or enjoying the spiritual journey only a writer can understand.

Still, it is nice to be paid.

The initial lack of income is where most new writers give up. They soon believe the desire to write is a prank their muse is playing on them. It doesn’t have to be this way.

View the world of freelance writing as a forest. On one side is the writer; on the other is a client willing to pay to have something written. All a writer needs to do is climb through the scrub and deadwood to find the elusive client. It isn’t hard, it just takes a different method of thinking, and a little caution.

The number of companies intent on ripping writers off is daunting. There is no way to avoid every scam. Writers sign with organizations that promise to locate work, only to find they must pay and bid against other writers. We all signed up for at least one newsletter that promised to help us earn a living, only to learn it is only a clever marketing tool to sell products.

Making a living shouldn’t be this frustrating. There are paying jobs out there. There are clients willing, even eager, to pay a professional writer. It just takes a little skill to find them.

Make a Client

This can be fun. There is only one rule, never confess what you write. Many small businesses are more than willing to pay a writer for a good press release, especially if the writer submits it to the newspaper too, but only if the business is named as author.

They will also pay you to promote on your blog. However, you need statistics. It is vital that you keep good stats, and can prove they are real. Click through rates, are an important statistic to track. This will increase the amount of money people will pay.

However, saying that you have 10 blogs, can put 3 links in a blog, and will post 5 blogs each, equaling 150 links to a main website - for $25, will attract many local businesses. Remember, as a blogger you will only write 5 posts and 'cross post' them to different blogs.

Building Revenue Generating Blogs

All bloggers will have a few core blogs, but then they will have several that are for advertising and generating revenue. Making money from a blog is not difficult, but you can branch out farther than using the online blog companies.

Look at it this way. Making 40 blogs increases the inbound links to 500. You spend more time pasting your original 5 posts, but you can earn $100 - $200. All you need is 5 - 10 clients a month, and work 20 - 50 hours in the month to make $1000.

New Google Toolbar

Have you downloaded the new Google tool bar. If not, you will probably do so after reading this post. I put the toolbar on my new system, and just copied over the old system, on my other computer. Both methods worked.

The toolbar you want is the Google Toolbar 2008

Spyware

This includes a spyware software package that cleared 271 trackers and 4 malwar from my son's computer. It also includes a free- but fairly useless version of Norton, but, take it anyway. You never know when it will route out spyware and help your computer.

Social Networking Tools

You really want it for the social networking tools. It does not have stumbleupon - yet. You still need to download that toolbar, but you can download a delicious, dig, and technorati widget. When you find a page you like, just TAG them. When you are in a network, tagging articles becomes super easy.

In fact, just copy the first few 'intro' lines from the article and paste that into the description line. It may take some time to set up, but trust me. It has already saved me time.

Blogger Resources

I also added the blogger widget, so I could find my blogs. Other widgets I included were the spell check, youtube, yahoo home page (which is my home page), Facebook, Readdit (great for research), and most important....

VOTE NOW TOOL

That is right. Google has now gotten on the WEB2.0 bandwagon and included a tool that lets users vote for a web page - in essence - effecting page rank. I am sure that it is much more advanced than it looks ( a happy/a sad smiley) but time will tell.