People who have worked in the Internet content business will tell you that web content is quite different than the offline content that we have been reading and writing. Online content is a lot more to the point, crisper and has a very ‘today’ language. As a content writer, it is necessary for us to evolve. Here are three tips that would make the content that you write a lot more ‘today’ and ‘Internet ready’

Stop Using High Currency Words

High Currency words are the bane of content writing. There are few content writers that understand the complete meaning of these words, the client more or less passes it off as a ‘content thing’, and there are very few situations today that justify the use of a high currency word. Therefore, it is suggested that you refrain from using high currency words. Writing content is not about showing off word skills; it is about providing information and making things easier for people to understand. Therefore, high currency words and archaic words are strictly a no-no today.
However, not using high currency words does not mean dumbing down an article. As a content writer, and a content writer who is followed, you could do your part of educating people about newer, better words. Therefore, as a content writer, you should create a fine balance between doing away with high currency, archaic words and using newer, correct phrases and sentences.

Use Active Sentences

Passive sentences are great and good – but only if you are writing for one of those wordcount centric jobs. Passive sentences have long been the bane of content writers and the very business of content writing. There are chances that most of the times when a client or an editor says that they couldn’t ‘get anything of interest’ in the article, it means that the content writer wrote the article in passive form.

Using active sentences will definitely and automatically increase the quality of the article. The article will become crisper and more to the point. The number of words may decrease, in fact, they will increase drastically, but that’s a small price to pay for great content, and the experienced content writer won’t think much about typing out an extra hundred words to describe a concept in the article.

Get More Concepts

Concepts are very important to the subject. The more the concepts, the better the article becomes. Therefore, it is important for a content writer to research more on the article and the subject, which will give them more fodder to write their article on. The best way to research and get ideas for products is looking for it via the search engines, and yes, you will get information about certain things on Wikipedia. We know that it is not quite stylish, but Wikipedia does at least give out some information, which you can use to search further.
These are the three tips that you should follow to make your online content crisper.

Ezine Articles is the behemoth of search engine optimization. Whether you are a newbie or a veteran in the freelance writing business, you will have, at some time or the other, written something for a client who wants to upload the articles on Ezinearticles, or have come across this site when you wanted to know the top article directories in the world. Ezinearticles is a name to reckon with, and it still consistently stands somewhere in the top three spot when it comes to the top article directories.

This website has been the bread and butter of many a content writer, and any self-respecting blogger would have wanted to their backlinks on the website, which could be got only through submitting their articles to the website, which would allow reference links. The entire thing would be a bit hectic for a single person website, like the TFR, where the content writer would need to write an article for the website, and a different article for Ezinearticles. But all that is a thing of the past, with Ezine opening its article directory for bloggers who post original content on their blogs, with the Ezine Articles WordPress plugin. Here are three simple reasons why we love the Ezine Articles WordPress plugin, which works only if you run a Self Hosting blog, which means you should have a domain name and hosting space.

Self SEO, here we come!

If you ever read any of good books that told you about SEO – again, nobody can teach you SEO, because it is not a science – they would have told you that the best SEO tool is articles in an article directory, which was easier said and done. The article directory market is highly competitive, and with the controversies that content on the website faces, these websites take almost every day, proactive steps to stop duplicate content on their websites.

This created a scenario where a typical blogger would finally end up with stumps of flesh instead of fingers because of the incessant typing that they’d require for writing articles for their blogs, and at least three article directories. But with the plugin, you can submit your original articles on Ezine. So, all you are doing is giving them your content – which exists on your blog anyway – and you get all the SEO expertise that they provide. This bids good news for the Spartan Blogger, as they can now just write content that they do anyway and they get a huge haul up in their SEO.

It Works

We see quite a few plugins that promise the moon but let you out in the cold. The Ezinearticles WordPress plugin is not like that. It is simple to use, and there’s a validation button as well as a submit button. When you upload an article – through your website – on Ezinearticles and click on the validate button, they give you reasons as to why your article won’t be allowed. You do the tweaks needed and voila, your article is already in the submission queue!

Ezinearticles charges you nothing

Believe us when we tell you that if Ezinearticles had charged something like ten dollars for this plugin, even the most tightfisted blogger would have forked it out – provided they know how big the site is/was on the SEO scenario. So, it comes as a pleasant surprise that the website is not charging you a single penny for this plugin. In this way, you have to put in zero extra amount or resources. You are writing the articles for your website anyway, and they are just being submitted on Ezinearticles too.

You can get the Ezine Articles WordPress plugin by searching for ‘Ezine’ in the plugin directory.

Content Writing has been around for a long time. It’s not as if the Internet started, and they made a new profession called content writing. Content writing has been around since the time the first newspaper, the first magazine, and the first website came up. Search Engine Optimization is quite new, as it began with the Internet, but it is just an enhancement of advertising and marketing. Now, these two professions are working related to each other, and many companies even consider content writing to be a part of the SEO department.

However, a content writer is not a search engine optimizer and a SEO is not a content writer – at least for the most part of it. Many content writers think of learning SEO (though you cannot, because there is no University that offers a degree course in SEO), while SEO think of learning how to ‘write’, often ending up in disastrous results. Here are three aspects that the content writer should know about SEO, if they are aspiring to learn SEO.

Eighty Percent of SEO is Off Page

If you have been writing for a while, you’d know that there’s off page SEO and on page SEO. Though the terms seem quite scientific and complicated, off page just means the SEO tricks that are related on the site as a whole, which may be actually implemented on other sites, and on page SEO means SEO tricks that are implemented on a particular article, page and therefore, to the entire website. So, aspects like Link Building, Link Exchange, posting on Forums, etc., are off page, while adding a perfect number of keywords into an article is on page SEO.

You are better off Not Doing SEO

Activities like Link Building, Link Exchange and even Forum Posting to a certain extent require no writing skills, and a content writer would be wasting their time doing this for a client, unless they really, really want to become a digital marketing behemoth and charge per hour for their SEO services. Basically, Link Building and Link Exchange can be done by any guy who can compose an e-mail and has learnt how to ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’. These aspects should be delegated to a data entry professional. The client will save money, and you will be able to perform in your core capacities – that of writing.

SEO is not a Science.

Funnily, there are several people online who sell thousands of e-books, and even have people sign up for courses for SEO, but it is not a science, or even an art. So, if you are thinking that doing this set course of actions will give you the same reaction by Google and other search engines, you are wrong. If this does happen to you, you can only grin and bear it and try again. You have something better to do than that – write and earn.

Content writing, like any business and profession has its superstars. These individuals are the ones who get assignments in a jiffy, every application that they put up are gobbled up immediately, and they basically lead quite a financially enhanced life. If you think that these guys are the ones who were born with a silver spoon, you are sorely mistaken. Yes, they do have some advantages and skills, but they are nothing that you can garner up, or something that you cannot do. Here are the three tips that will make you a content writer superstar.

Make Article Titles

I have never ceased wondering how someone who terms themselves a content writer cannot come up with a title on their own. I can understand when the SEO department comes up with the titles, because they need to stuff some keywords into the titles, but I do not understand how a content writer can say that ‘it’d be difficult to make titles’. If a content writer cannot come up with a title, I wonder how they would be able to write 500 word articles on the subject. However, my wonderment aside, making titles from given keywords is not just easy, it is also free. You can always use your ‘SEO title making skills’ as a leverage at the bargaining stage, and if you are wondering how to make an SEO’d title, fear not, it’s not as difficult as it sounds.

Legend (because till date there’s not a single University or educational institution that tells you the science behind SEO. They tell you how to SEO, but it never tells you why SEO does what it does) has it that SEO likes titles like ‘How to’, ‘Why’, “What is’, ‘Three Tips, ‘Five Tips, ‘Ten Tips’, etc. And well, this is not SEO, this is common logic and sense. Like how we made up an interesting title for our school and college compositions.

Another tool that you can use to make titles is the free Google Keyword Tracker tool, which provides you with keywords that are relevant to a particular subject. You can have a look at the keyword it throws out, and then come up with a title that is relevant to any of the keywords. If you want to go the full way, you can always try WordTracker, which is supposedly the best keyword tool in the world, and is used by at least one Article Directory.

Use Language as a Tool to Put Forth Your Ideas

I still remember that I could not measure the distance that our eyes rolled up when a content writer in our midst told us that he uses ‘high currency’ words because they are the mark of a good content writer. Our suggestion would be not to use obsolete words, because they make the article seem verbose, and makes the reader pay undue attention to the language used, and not the concept that the writer wishes to put across.

There are many words that are out of the everyday lexicon, but content writers use them randomly in their articles for no specific reasons. Content writers should understand that some words have been churned off the everyday language because there is nothing that they can be used to describe. Even a simple enough word like ‘array’ would have become obsolete unless some guy at Java thought of using it in the programming language.

Be SEO Aware

No, a content writer cannot do the SEO of a website, because eighty percent of SEO is off page and involves work that is more or less designed for a data entry operator (link building, anyone?) However, knowing what SEO is and what it does to a website will certainly increase your value in the content market. If you are not interested in SEO, you should at least read up on the subject, and should be able to hold a decent conversation with any project owner who has learnt from the countless webinars that they have read through about how SEO can change the world and how the content guy should be very good friends with SEO.

These are the three tips that shall surely pave the way to make you a content writer superstar. Comments welcome!

Working at home is quite different from working in an office, and you’d be surprised to find out how even the smallest of things make a huge difference. If you are  and are wondering how to enhance your writing skills, here are three simple tips that will definitely go a long way for you.

Go Away from Disturbance

If you are working from home, and if you have heeded to our advice, you must be having a small room for yourself by now. If you do not have one, one of the first things that you should do when you are writing is to go to a place that is more suited for you to write. Some like to write in silence, yet others cannot do anything until their computers start the music on, the quirks are numerous. The funny part is that you wouldn’t actually understand what is stopping you from writing, until it actually happens. For example, you wouldn’t know that you can write better on the terrace of your house in the early mornings, with the silence of the city around you, and the birds chirping around, until you actually do it one day.

While we cannot tell you which is the best place in your house for you to work, what we can tell you is that you should definitely go away from the children, the television and in some cases, even the kitchen, when you are about to write.

Listen to Acoustic Music

This is a suggestion that has worked for many freelancers that we know, and have worked with, but one should be a bit careful while doing this. Listening to music while working definitely peps one up and may even make one work faster and better, but it all depends on what kind of music a person is listening to. The most suggested music is acoustic music, where there is no chance of being disturbed, or having their attention span degraded with the lyrics. The music can either be soft, soothing, or can even be aggressive – it all depends on what kind of music you’d like to listen to. The only suggestion is to use acoustic music.

Stick to It

Giving up is easy, following it up and sticking to it is not. Many a times, nothing else works, but the concise knowledge that you won’t be able to pay the bills this month if you do not complete this particular assignment. Of course, we wouldn’t want the writers to come down to such a down low, but this does give us another suggestion – that to continue staring at the computer screen blankly for as many hours as you would, until you feel like completing the said assignment.

These are the three tips that we would like to give to the freelance, and 9-5 writers who are finding it a bit difficult to complete their writing assignments

Writing blocks. That word when used in the content writing business gives some really different reactions. Some people would go say that writing blocks are the diseases of the rich, others would spend hours discussing it, but not the ten minutes they’d need to research the subject, or watch a funny video on YouTube, or level up on Farmville to beat the daylights out of the writing block. There are even those who’d give you a sniggle when you say that you are experiencing the Writer’s Block. In a world of deadlines, keywords, and word counts, writing blocks seem like a legend that only the disconnected would believe. But, here’s the truth. Writing blocks exist, and they exist for a content writer as much as they do for a copywriter. And here are some tips as to how one can box out of a writing block within fifteen minutes.

Find Out When You Write Well, and then Write

The issue with people is that all of us are wired differently. Some people work well in the mornings, others do it in the afternoon, while yet others make a killing on the project part post dinner. Widely, people are known to work the best in the very early morning. If you are a morning person, we’d suggest that you have a quick shower, make that cup of coffee, before you start working. The quick shower will freshen you up and enhance your morning working experience.

Research the Subject

Writing blocks are bad news for a business because they are time wasters. Though there might be fewer ways to combat writing blocks, there are other ways in which you can make up for the time that your writing block uses up, in more constructive ways. For example, you can research about the subject that you have to write on. It is quite possible that your writing block subsides when you find out more and more, and interesting information about a certain subject. Furthermore, you can do your monthly project planning, and look out at what projects are pending and try to manage them, etc. This way, if you continue working on these supporting tasks, you might once again get back on the main task – writing.

Music Works

From personal experience, I can say that music certainly helps people wave off from any issues that they might be facing in their professional as well as personal life. Music can also play a major part in you working off your writing block, but much would depend on what kind of music you are playing. If the music itself is disturbing you, it might not be a real good idea. Look for acoustic music, or some soothing music. I personally like Country Music when I am working, because it works out like someone is telling me a cute story while I am writing my stuff. Unfortunately, I never face a writing block while writing for TFR, so I could never tell you which article I wrote while listening to which Country singer…

These are the three tips that we would like to come up with while thinking about blocking writer’s block.

Since a major percent of freelancers are content writers, we have decided to write some content-writer centric articles. This is the beginning of many. Please give your feedback in the comment form, so we can know whether we should continue with such articles or not. To begin with, I come up with three suggestions that I’d love to give any newbie freelance writer.

#3 Read Up on Language

You thought language stopped evolving as soon as you left college? You are wrong. Language keeps on evolving and changing, for the better or for worse. Therefore, as a content writer, you should keep yourself abreast of the changes that take almost on an every month basis in writing styles. For example, using ‘he’ in a sentence that would be about generality would go through an editor without a bat of an eyelid, but today they (yeah, just like that) would look for sentences that are the language of an evolving, mature, and more importantly equality based civilization.The best way to get your daily dose of the language information is by reading current affair magazines, newspapers and of course, websites.

#2 Write About the Product

Many content writers get block assignments – where they have to write five or ten articles on a particular subject. One would be surprised to know that this also works in the calculation of whether to hire a particular freelancer or not – whether they would be able to write a number of articles on the same subject.

There are several freelancers who find it very, very difficult to write more than a couple of articles on a particular subject. The way one can change is to write things that are related, or are about the article. For example, instead of writing five fluff articles about iPhone cases, which add and provide no information, write articles that tell viewers about how to choose an iPhone case, what are the different kinds of iPhone cases available, etc. I can guarantee that if you write articles like these for clients on a consistent basis, you will definitely be able to charge more, and you will get bigger recommendations.

#1 Clients Understand Fluff

This is the most important suggestion that I’d like to give to the readers. Clients understand fluff when they see it. And if a client is okaying the articles with fluff, they either don’t care about what the writer writes, or they are paying peanuts, and know that they cannot ask for better quality. Whether you would like to continue with such a client is entirely your decision. Fluff articles are cheaper, worse, and in many cases even penalized by the search engines, but till the time all the websites and all the clients understand that fluff is killing their business, the content writers should have some due diligence and not use fluff.

Some call it an outright scam, others call it an enthusiastic dream, and yet others call it a sincere try to spread out the money. Though we do not see many of them nowadays – they were quite famous just a couple of years ago – rev share opportunities never go out of style. For those who know/remember what a revshare is, and for those who do not, here’s a brief description of revshare, and the reasons why you should not say yes to the rev share opportunity.

Rev-share, a fanciful word for revenue share, is when the client offers the freelancer a part of the pie when the pie is palatable, but with no payment or compensation at the moment. The deal is this… the client will invest the money that goes behind the domain name, the hosting, the search engine optimization, and you will provide a service – it may be web designing, it may be content writing, it might even be SEO – and both will get a part of profits when the endeavour becomes profitable, sometimes, they even say that you will get paid a part of the Adsense amount that the website makes – read when it sells off to an investor for a couple of million dollars.

Here are three reasons why you should not agree to a revshare opportunity.

You do not have time to dedicate to a free project:

A good freelancer is a busy freelancer, and a busy freelancer is a good freelancer. In such a scenario, you will not have the time to dedicate an hour or two per day for a project that is not paying you immediately. Unless there are venture capitalists banging at the door with bags of money right now, there is no guarantee that the project will become a prize winning, profit tumbling project anywhere before five years. In such a scenario, one might find it difficult to concentrate the project, and there are chances that you might drop working on it eventually – which might not be as simple as you think.If you have agreed to working on the revshare model, and even if the client is giving you other work, if you do not work on it for a while, there might be some bitterness between the client and the freelancer and that might spill into the other work. So, it is better to refuse a rev share project straight off, so that there is no space for bad blood afterwards.

Any new project needs two years of breathing space:

No website, no business becomes profitable within the first six months, unless the concept is so revolutionary that the Martians are tipping their telescopes to get a glimpse of it. Even if it is so, there will definitely be a slack period, which will be a downer for the freelancer as well as the client. Don’t ask me how that will happen, but an economist will be able to tell you why the down period happens.

Therefore, you should ask yourself whether you are ready to spend two years working on a project that is not paying you anything immediately. Also, it is essential to see whether the client is naming you in any of the documentation of the revshare business. If not, it would be a classic case of conning the freelancer out of their work and money using an elaborate and shameless scam.

You can do it yourself

Domain names are available a dime a dozen, cheap hosting space is more than available, and with WordPress and free themes, setting up a business online is not an overly difficult task. The Freelance Resource spends around $20 per month, staying afloat, with a free theme and the awesome writing skills of one freelancer. We have stayed afloat for about two years, and will soon begin looking for advertisers. And if we can do it, anyone can… so why go in for the revshare business when you can do it yourself?

You’d be surprised to know that most of the scams that befall freelancers have the same modus. All that the freelancers would require to do, to find out whether they are being targeted by a freelancer is to ask their network whether they have experienced what they are experiencing with a purported client. Because of the general competitive nature of freelancing, many are quite secretive about their clients, and this finally leads to such scams. Here are two instances that should prove to be a red flag during your interaction with the prospective client.

The Client Refuses to Pay an Advance, after you Send Work

Okay, the ball turns both sides. There are many freelancers who have stopped talking to clients after taking their money, and clients would be in their right mind not to release any money until they see work done. However, if the client is refusing to pay after you have sent a substantial amount of work, you should begin to smell a rat.

To solve this issue, you should lay down some payment rules during your initial contact with the client. Ideal would be 25%, 25% and 50% as the assignment continues – at different time frames, or in accordance to the percentage of work done.

The Client Asks You for Money

Yes, as funny as it sounds, some scammers try to do this. It can be anything. Sometimes, they will tell you that they are taking the money to ensure that you will be more committed to the work, some other times, they will tell you that they have this great concept in mind, but they need some money to rev it up, and in many cases they just tell you that it is a membership fee that you need to pay.

The thumb rule is that a freelancer should never pay a dime to any client – unless the client becomes your friend and comes up with a complete, researched, business plan that makes its way into the newspapers before it reaches you. This does not include the many ‘premium membership job portals that allow you to network and interact with prospective clients once you buy a membership on their website.

These are just the two of the many instances that come to our mind at this moment. Do you have any, please tell us in the comments section below!

Like everything else in life, there is a way to have a successful freelance career. Freelancing requires as much of dedication as holding a 9-5 would have, and even more, in some cases. Every year, you will find countless 9-5ers who leave their jobs and try their hands at freelancing, only to sheepishly take up a job after about six months. This has created an idea that most freelancers do not actually make money, but are just between jobs till they get the job that pays them right and well. This is not always true, freelancers can make as much, if not more than the 9-5ers if they pay attention to these three aspects, and then some more:

Time Your Work:

Being a freelancer does not mean that you work any less than the nine-to-fiver. In fact, you might even work more than the average office going crowd. The only respite you get is that you can decide which of your day or night hours you would like to give to the clients. There’s an old proverb that says that an hour in the morning is like two in the evening. If this holds true for you, wake up early in the morning and work before the household begins to bustle, and you might be surprised to find out that you actually put in an honest day’s work even before the day started. It is not necessary that you work your head off only in the morning. Some people work well post dinner, and as a freelancer they have the option to clack-click at their computers after everyone else has called it a day. Anyway you are comfortable; remember that you need to work those hours off.

Choose Your Clients

If you have taken note of our tips here, you will not have to scrounge for work and take up any clients and assignments that come your way. You have the privilege and comfort of choosing your work, which will have some incessant advantages – for starters, you love what you do, you have quick turnaround times, and the client loves your work – which only ends up in you being paid more and getting more work done in the typical work day.

Choosing your clients and the type of work that you do is very important, because being a freelancer can be lonesome, and you never know when you feel very depressed about a particular assignment that you do not like doing but are doing it just because the money is good.

Keep a Downtime:

Downtime is very necessary for a freelancer, whether they are workaholics or not. Every once in a while, you should just call it a day and spend some quality time with your family. This way, your clients get the message that you require a downtime, and your family gets the point that you are not just working from home, but also living at home – and everyone loves the quality time spent anyway. You do not have to do much as far as going out with your family is concerned. A day at the beach or just a stroll in the local garden, taking the kids to the zoo, all that and more are far more economical ways to spend time with your family.

These are the three tips that one should adhere to, to be a successful freelancer. If you have any more, please tell us in the comments box below.