Making Money - Inspired to Write

Giveaway for $100 in Google Ads

February 16, 2013 By Julie McElroy 8 Comments

If you’re the owner of a new website, a growing business, or a published author, it’s likely that you’ve heard of search advertising, also known as search engine marketing (SEM), or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Essentially, those little ads you see when you do a Google search, is part of an ad campaign.

Search advertising is an effective way to reach the people performing specific searches—including the specific people your business is looking for. Don’t miss out on this opportunity.

Search Engine Marketing Gap (Photo: Intersection Consulting)

Most likely you have also heard of Google Adwords. Essentially, Google Adwords makes setting up an ad campaign fairly straight-forward and easy to set-up.

Maybe you are a freelance writer, or have a new book out that you want to get out on the Internet.But, you might be wondering, could it actually work for your particular goals?

Why Use Google Adwords?

It’s effective, fast, easy, and flexible: Google is the most popular search engine with over 2 billion searches everyday. More people using Google means more of your target audience will see your ads. You can get your AdWords campaign up and running quickly. No need to be a webmaster or highly technical with easy set up. You always have complete control to change, pause, or end your ad campaign anytime.

Target locally: AdWords lets you be incredibly specific when it comes to targeting your ads. You can select from countries, territories, regions and cities when placing your ad. You can choose a point on the map and specify a radius around it where your ads will appear, and even exclude certain areas within your selected locations. Growing, local businesses can make sure Google AdWords Localization they’re reaching their regional audience.

There’s no risk: You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and is directed to your website—no strings attached!

As a web owner and freelance writer, I know how important it is to grow my business. In the past, I have gained a few new clients based on advertising alone. Sometimes you have to invest a little bit of money in order to grow your business. Google Adwords can walk you through this same process and get your campaigns going to advertise your business/service/book/website.

The Adwords Giveaway

Now that I have piqued your interest, I want to give 10 business owners a chance to win $100 in free Google Adwords*. In order to participate, please like me fan page on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and comment below as to why or how Adwords could help your business. I will randomly draw 10 winners.

Fine Print:

* To earn $100, you must spend $25.

Once I randomly draw the winners, I will email you with the code.

I am also running the contest on my travel blog, for an increased opportunity to win.

Remember, follow me fan page, Twitter, and comment below to be eligible!

HURRY!!! The contest will end at 10 p.m MST on February 21st. Good luck!

Filed Under: Advertising, Internet Marketing, Making Money, Web Traffic Tagged With: advertising, giveaway, google adwords, marketing, PPC, Search engine marketing

Where to Find Freelance Writing Jobs (Infographic)

February 13, 2013 By Julie McElroy 5 Comments

Many people ask me where I find writing jobs. All over the place. Some resources are better than others, and once I find a few good clients, I do not look as often. But I have dry spells and clients come and go. So I have to hit the Internet again looking for new work.

I found this infographic from FreelanceWriting.com and thought I would share it with my readers. Personally, I do not use all of these websites. For instance, I rarely use the bidding sites since I believe most of the jobs are not worth my time and pay very little. However, I know some writers have had good luck with the bidding sites with a lot of persistence and time.

I hope you find this useful and discover new resources for freelance writing jobs!

Freelance Writing Jobs

Filed Under: Freelance, Making Money, Writing Tagged With: Freelance Writing Jobs, writing jobs

The “Pay” Changes for Writers on Suite 101

January 11, 2013 By Julie McElroy 14 Comments

Okay, here’s a well-known secret. I started my online writing career on a content farm. Yes, I did. Suite 101. Of course, back then I was not aware of the term, “content farm.” I just thought it was exciting that I would have the opportunity to publish my work for a little bit of money. And it was a little bit. However since I began writing for them, many things have changed and the revenue has gotten progressively worse.

When I began this budding online writing career, I decided to focus all my writing on Suite 101 on travel articles. This is where my passion was and still is. The format was revenue share and each month, I would make a few dollars. It was passive income and even with only 30 articles at the time, I made about $15 a month. Not much, I know. But I enjoyed it and the articles did not take me very long.

I built up my articles and started making a little more. Then, things changed for the worse.

Google Changes the Playing Field

Bye-Bye Money (Credit: Images_of_Money)

Back in early 2011, the dreaded Google Panda update changed the online content scene with the swipe of its paw. Google insisted that Suite 101 and many other websites were just gathering poorly written content to impress the mega search engine. Google was not impressed.

Soon the term “content farm” was known across the land. And Suite 101 was a victim in this massacre. And they suffered, which means the revenue suffered, and writers were pissed.

My earnings significantly dropped to the point it seemed futile to even write for them anymore. In addition, by 2011 I already started my freelance career and was making far more money writing articles for other clients – non-content farm type web owners.

Until I started by own travel blog, I would still feel the urge to publish travel articles on Suite. I recently revisited this site to see if there was any great new advancements in pay. Not so much.

The Current Suite 101 Pay Model

Since Panda and the subsequent Google shenanigans, Suite has continuously tried to impress Google with major changes on the site. Suite 101 was screaming, “We are not a content farm! Look at our quality writers!” Yet while trying to impress Google and present itself in the best light, revenue suffered for the writers. Ridiculously.

Fast forward. Currently, you get paid on a point system. Yep, points. Oh, those points translate to money, but very little. How do you get points, you ask? Reach, quality, and engagement.

What does that mean?

Essentially, the powers to be at Suite decide if your content is worthy of points based on three factors (plus a little secret magical formula mixed in).

General Reach - how many people are looking at your articles.
Engagement - do readers stay on your article awhile, bounce rate, comments, etc.
Overall Quality - you are writing for real readers, not search engines (this I agree with).

They take all of these factors and tally up a score. This number tells you how much you will in turn get paid. Never mind if you have 20 articles or 200, pay is entirely based on this score. Yep. Until you reach a score of 10 (I assume out of 100), you get paid $1 a month. That’s it folks. Then, you move up to $10 a month. Woo Hoo! And the pay goes up in increments.

I am sure you are aware, but people don’t tend to dwell on articles very long on the Internet. (Are you still here?) Very different from print. Especially, easy reading, like say,… TRAVEL. Unless you are writing complex do-it-yourself, step by step articles, people are gonna bounce. And guess what? That means you do not get a high score. And that means, no money for you. Well, besides that dollar.

It is amazing writers still think this is a good idea. To write for free for someone else. Is your time not valuable? As a writer, I would like to get paid for the work I put in. Period. Unless I am generating really crappy work, I deserve to get paid. Don’t you think? Suite 101 doesn’t seem to think so.

I realize there are occasions I may write for free – on my own website, as a blog guest post, a non-profit, etc. But I wouldn’t spend hours creating articles for another website that is supposed to be an income source. A content farm.

For now, my articles remain on Suite 101, but I imagine I will start taking them down and publishing them somewhere else. Somewhere where they will pay me for my writing.

I’d love to hear different sides of this. Please feel free to comment.

Suite 101 Relationship

Filed Under: Article Writing, Making Money, suite 101, Writing Tagged With: content farms, paid writing gigs, revenue sharing, suite 101, writing online

Cultivating an Email List for your Blog

October 10, 2012 By Lindsey Harper Mac 1 Comment

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Lindsay. Please read more about Lindsay in the footer.

E-mail Marketing

No matter where you look, every blog is in desperate need of one thing: readership. Readers are the difference between a successful blog and a blog that falls flat on its face. One of the best ways to increase readership is through email marketing.

Now, you might ask the silly question, “But isn’t email marketing being replaced by social media and other forms of ‘advanced’ communication?” Well, there’s no easy to put this, so absolutely not. In fact, over 140 billion emails have been sent everyday in 2012 alone. This indicates that email is not only alive and well, but it is still a major means of communication.

The bottom line is that you started a blog because you had something meaningful to say, and you had confidence you could say it well. All you’re really doing with email marketing is translating that message into an email that drives up your readership. Sounds easy, right? Well, it is kind of easy in the sense that the concept is easy to grasp.

On the other hand, executing an email campaign effectively takes some practice, as well as some trial and error. Let’s take a look at some tips that email-marketing pioneers have and are still learning on the road to better email marketing.

Reverse engineer your campaign

In other words, start with the end in mind and work backwards. Why are you sending these emails? In the case of blog promotion, you may simply want to gain a larger readership, or you may want to promote a book or service that you offer with your blog. Whatever the case is, write it down and start planning things with your end goal in mind.

If you build it, they will come

Well, not really, but here’s the point: you need to know exactly what makes a perfect email newsletter subscriber. They share interests that your blog promotes. They are likely interested in your blog’s topics. They might even live in your local region. When you’re starting from scratch you may have to go back to some word-of-mouth basics. In other words, since you don’t have a book or physical product launch, you may simply need to ask people to check out your blog, and if they like what they see, encourage them to sign up for your newsletter. Sometimes you just have to ask. From there you’ll need to worry about delivering a stellar product (product=blog posts & newsletters).

Integrate, don’t separate, social media & email

Most companies understand that social media is a valuable tool for reaching out to customers and engaging them on their own turf. The problem is that they wrongly view social media and email marketing as separate and incompatible solutions. This couldn’t be further than the honest-to-God truth. Designing email newsletters with social media icons and “social” language throughout the newsletter shows customers that you care about trends, and you really want to reach out to them.

Send amazing emails frequently

Obviously this is easier said than done, but once you have that perfect email list together it’s time to start sending out some newsletters. Odds are, you’re not going to get this right every time, but the key to a great email campaign is in reducing the annoyance threshold of your audience.

Keep the emails relevant to your audience, concise and to the point. You may even want to consider firing off your first introductory email reminding people of who are, what you’re about – with the option of unsubscribing from your newsletter right out of the gate. It’s all down hill from there. Simply craft top shelf, relevant newsletter content with embedded social media links on a regular basis, and watch as your open rates quickly turn into click through rates.

Filed Under: blog tips, Guest Posts, Marketing Tagged With: blog tips, email, email marketing

Business Tips for Pinterest

August 31, 2012 By Steven 24 Comments

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Steven Please read more about Steven in the bio footer.

Don’t know what Pinterest is all about? Then it must have been long since you left the World Wide Web. Welcome back! Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networking sites with over 4,000% growth in the last six months. It also has an interesting engagement features ranking third with 88.3 minutes on the average per visitor after Facebook and Tumblr.

: Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While most social networking sites started as a platform for social connections and interactions, they hold several business advantages that many entrepreneurs and businesses have started taking advantage of.

Pinterest is not an exception. It allows users to organize and share digital images of interest. This could be personal or business related but whichever it is, Pinterest gets it to the world to see with an option to even re-pin them, just like the Facebook “Like” and Google “+1”.

Just like the album in your home, Pinterest offers you a tool called ‘Boards’ to hold your photos called ‘pins’. You are not limited, in any way, to the number of boards you can create. And specifically for business, I’d advise you create as many boards as the categories of your products or services just as I did with my Mixbook review site.

Is Pinterest For Everyone?

If you will ever need customers for your products, or clients for your services, then Pinterest is for you. It is good for businesses that sell products as well as it is for those that render services. For the product selling businesses, you can pin photos of your products on different boards customized according to the category of products you sell. And for the service rendering businesses, you can pin different images that highlight your work.

For instance, you can pin a screenshot of your homepage, sample of your work if you are a graphic designer or artist, photos that inspire your target audience if you are a consulting business or a freelance writer, etc. Now you get the idea; there is virtually no business that can’t have a place on Pinterest.

Pinterest Traffic Generation

Every business in cyber space is struggling for this one thing: traffic –more customers! This is what we all want, to reach more potential customers and clients, entice them with what we do or sell, bring them to our site and give them the chance to see that we have what they want. Guess what? Pinterest offers you the opportunity to achieve this.

While sharing enticing photos, you can also write descriptions to accompany your pins. However, don’t just write to express yourself to viewers, write also to give your pin some reputation in the SERPs by using your targeted keywords.

Pins can also be shared across other social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and when coupled with the links you create with them, will feed you site with more traffic. Personally, I have been getting a couple of visitors from pins pointing to my Pinnacle Studio coupon site. So, yes, it is achievable!

Be Simple and Offer More Value

Don’t be a selfish marketer; nothing can ever replace simplicity and unquestionable value. While pinning interesting photos for your potential customers, ensure to give them more reason to follow your boards by bringing other pins that may hold some value to them but complement your products and services.

For instance, if you are an artist with photos of beautiful flowers for home décor, you can complement these by linking to other home remodeling accessories. Also, a financial blogger can link to related blogs like those on loan sources and business ideas. The key is to know that it is not always about you but the entire accessories that revolve around your field.

Pin Blog Images and Videos

There is virtually no business without a blog. We all have one even when we may still have a separate business site. Blogs are what they are – informative web logs, which is why the search bots don’t joke with them. Hence while you publish articles on your blog with relevant images, don’t forget to pin every of the images on your pinboard. This will gain your blog even more link juice while creating another source for social traffic.

Additionally, we have all forgotten that Pinterest can also accommodate videos. So why not bring those YouTube video reviews and other informative shots for your followers?

Now it is your turn, have you started using Pinterest? How do you use it for business, blog or website promotions?

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: Business, facebook, Mixbook, Pinnacle Studio, pinterest, Tumblr, twitter, youtube

Cracking Open the Door to a Writing Career

April 2, 2012 By Will 13 Comments

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Will Eifert. Please read more about Will in the footer bio.

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

Almost every hopeful writer gets the same advice: “You just have to get your foot in the door.” I used to wonder what that meant until I did it almost by accident. I’d like to share it with you, along with some tips to getting your proverbial foot in the door of the writing business.

My first “assignment” wasn’t the result of the sweat of self-marketing brochures or cold calling. I wanted to fly. Unfortunately, trying to take flight lessons while earning an EMT salary was laughable. But I wanted to fly so badly that I conjured up every possible angle on lessening the financial burden. Then it hit me. My local airport had no website.

I took a chance, figuring that a small local business would want a website but without spending big money. The owner of the company was fond of the idea, and I “sold” my writing for the first time—for flight lessons.

As I’ve begun my search for other assignments, a few strategies have stood out:

________

1. Don’t expect a big payout at first.

Face it, if you don’t have a lot of full-time experience in commercial writing, odds are you aren’t necessarily going to get much attention from large corporations right out of the gate. That shouldn’t be your goal. You need to generate samples and experience that will get you work from those companies in the future. Your first few “jobs” may be for little or no monetary compensation, considering the sources that may be most promising.

2. Find small businesses and local organizations.

Starting local is a great route towards getting a few samples in different forms of writing under your belt. For me, this was a small aircraft sales and maintenance company in small-town Oklahoma. Seek out local businesses that may be in need of advertising and marketing. Since more often than not you will be dealing with the business owner, marketing yourself can have a personal nature that will be to your advantage.

3. Blog

Find a topic that you are truly interested in and create a personal yet professional blog about it. Make the effort to post a couple of paragraphs once or twice a week. A blog gets your voice out there so that people can get to know you and, more importantly, your style of writing. Don’t underestimate the impact. I have been given staff position interviews simply because the employer was intrigued by my blog.

4. Under-promise and Over-Deliver

This piece of advice is fairly common in the writing world, but I have found that it applies even more important in the early stages. You may set out writing web copy for a small business only to discover that the business is in need of some direct-mail advertising or ad brochures. This is your chance to broaden your skills and have samples for potential jobs later on.

________

Don’t get me wrong—your writing is valuable, and you shouldn’t make it a career habit to settle for chicken feed. Commercial writing can earn you a tidy sum. You may even make a living on it someday. However, you have to start somewhere in order to make a name for yourself and have a strong portfolio to present to the clients that will shell out thousands of dollars for your work.

Lastly, don’t cave in to fear when this seems like a daunting task. Your writing career can’t be built in a day. Keep your nose to the grindstone and you will see results.