In the latest ruling FTC is going behind bloggers who write endorsing a product but never reveal how much they paid to review / endorse the product. Many people think most of the reviews online are natural they are not as the FTC points out. People just review products or product sites by taking money.
There are many influential writers whose words are taken pretty seriously. So if a blogger writes about a product people actually believe it and buy them. Now the new ruling by FTC clearly says all bloggers who write endorsing a product much disclose how much payment they took for it.
Guy kawaski when ever he writes about a car release he gets free ride for a week or even a month with all expenses paid. You can read his blog for more information.
Social media has taken a long stride and is now an important part of advertising online. Even Google has planned to include twitter updates in its search results same way it does to digg or other social bookmarking tools.

Check the washington post - posting on the new FTC rule: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/05/AR2009100503620.html
Lot of consumers have complained with lack of transparency when it comes to online reviews i hope this new rule will bring more disclosures.

Labels: copywriting

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Creative writing implies a type of imaginative writing that is distinctly different from other types of writing like technical writing, scientific writing, or information-driven writing. Creative writing includes story-telling, fiction, poetry, memoirs or biography, lyrics, stage and screenplays and all literary works that entail original thinking.

A person must have a natural aptitude to write creatively creative writing cannot be taught within a classroom. The natural talents for creative writing a person might have - can perhaps be developed through teaching to make him or her realize his or her full potential in the art. Creative writing, like painting or composing music, calls for a fair degree of individual initiative, opinion-making prowess, and innate sensitivity.

For those keen on developing creative writing skills can search the Internet for creative writing websites as an effective way to gain insight into the craft. Many creative writing websites offer facilities for writers to post works that will be read and enjoyed by others, and where feedback can also be obtained to further improve one's skills.

Creative writing courses are gaining in popularity and widely available in various formats. They are more intended for the talented writer looking to polish his or her skills. True creative writing may not be talent that can be learnt, but these courses are able to tap the inner creativity even in beginners.

Many budding creative writers want to opt for creative writing as a career. Creative writing can equip a writer with the skills to develop into a freelance writer, web content writer, a ghost writer of columns and books or use the creative writing skills to enter professions like public relations, advertising, print media editing. You can build a career with a newspaper or a website. You can write articles, stories, reviews, etc. for these mediums.

There are many online jobs that you can apply for and become a successful copywriter. If you love traveling and writing down what you see and experience for others to read, then the best creative writing job for you is travel writing. You can write for magazines, travel websites, newspapers, etc. and take the readers on a conducted tour to the places with your creative writing.

Copywriting, however, is a term generally used when referring to writing for advertisements, brochures, sales promotion materials, press releases etc. Copywriting must be so arresting as to make the prospective customers to sit up and spend time to know what is there in it for him or her.

Once you have decided to write a sales promotion or marketing piece, you must be clear in your mind what you want to convey and how you want to present that information. You should spell out the benefits of the products or services, create attention-grabbing headlines and easy to read copy matter. The rules may vary in copy writing for brochures, radio, TV or the Internet, though the basics may be the same. Whether you're selling a product or service, a Web site copy writing means content that attracts attention, engages the reader and provides quality information.

Writing copy for the Websites is certainly different as usage of appropriate keywords is critically important for search engine optimization (SEO). Today's search engines accord priority for quality content, key word density and number of incoming links and words used in those links. SEO copywriting today is dependent on your ability to craft quality content so compelling and at the same time so readily readable that others will link back to you.

Labels: copywriting, creative writing

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How to improve your English for online copywriting:

Having good English skills is essential to become a quality copywriter. A good copywriter will have good grammatical skills. Here I would like to highlight few points that can improve your English. I take into mind that you already come from a decent English background. This is article is for people who are already good in English and want to improve their SEO copywriting and copywriting skills.

1. A primary source for good English. More you read better you get in copywriting. You should make reading has a habit. Utilize every possible chance you get to read English. If you are using regular internet browse other quality news sites and go through the latest news. Read the news don't just read the headlines. Take local English newspapers and read the information from them. Don't hesitate to read when you eat, lie down on bed, listening to music, watching tv etc. Even dont ignore bathrooms its good place to relax and read. My point, make sure you use all possible ways to improve your English. Making reading a habit can push you a long way forward in copywriting.
2. Writing: Reading helps but writing helps more. When you write something it stays in your mind for a long time. You get a chance to recollect better if you write. So when you read something try to put that into writing it helps. When you write get help for proof reading. If you have a teacher or someone who can assist tell them to proof read and see if there are potential mistakes. People are more than happy to read than write so you can find a lot of people who can read and fix mistakes.
3. Study Grammar: Grammar plays an important role in copywriting. If you don’t have good grammatical skills you will fail in your copywriting goals. So improve your grammar and tenses by reading more about grammar in English.
4. Practice: Practice makes a man perfect. We all know this and have come across this some part in our life. More you practice better you become so don't hesitate to make mistakes. The more you make mistakes better you get chance to correct yourself. Once you practice, make mistakes and fix them you will become good in English. I personally write lots of articles, before I never used to be a quality writer now I improved and people recognize me as a good writer only because of my experience in this field.
5. Experts advice: Go through lots of copywriting and SEO copywriting related blogs and get tips from there. There are good blogs out there than can help your copywriting skills by a long way. I personally go through 10 SEO copywriting / copywriting blogs through feeds and most of them are very informative. You get creative when you get tips from others.
   

I can list more but the important ones are already in list.

Labels: copywriting, SEO copywriting

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Is there any limit on the number of contents you post in a blog? Well I personally write a lot of contents in my office and some of my colleagues ask me to provide 4 or 5 contents for a blog per day. Most of them are SEOs or technical people who are not fully aware of the way search engines. I tell them to not just post too many information every day but concentrate on the quality of contents too. Blog posting is not just about writing and posting for the sake of search engines. You need to be focused more on users. If you do a posting make sure its interesting. If you get contents written it's the due to of the SEO blog poster to make it interesting for their audience. Copywriters like me can only write contents. We don't have enough time in our hands to think of innovative ways to improve the quality of the blog posting.
Our SEO guys have ton of time in their hands, I tell them to make sure they add nice images, videos, make the content more attractive by adding good formatting etc. Adding 5 postings are not going to work if each of them is attractive and well written. Search engines like that too they don't just like contents, they like quality. They measure quality by the number of backlinks that comes into a blog posting. SO if your blog postings cannot attract links or quality visitors then you are not doing something right. It's important you know what is right and what is wrong for your website.
I tell me seniors in my office to train the SEOs better so that they understand the important of each content rather than ask me lots of contents every day.
There is nothing wrong in adding too many contents to blogs but in user point of view make sure it works for you. If you adding contents just to make sure you fill up the pages and add up more pages for search engine indexing you are on the wrong track. Make sure you remember quality always when posting contents. Even if its one content if its taken care for quality then its more than enough.
Excess contents never hurt same way it doesn't help too. So you decide whether you add contents for users or for search engines.

Labels: copywriting

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If you see great copywriters are actually good time managers. If you want to be successful you need to know how you manage your time. Time management is everywhere. It's not just copywriting but all industry looks for time management and good time management needs to have good copywriting skills.
We should always look for better ways to manage time available to us. Many of you might be doing writing as a part-time job. We at Contempo give away work to many copywriters who are freelancers we have seen many of them deliver their articles delayed. It's mostly because either your profile is already hectic and you are trying to find time to write or you are not managing your time properly. If you see online they suggest many different ways to manage your time I am not going to be too contradictory. Here are my thoughts on being more efficient by good time management.
1. Maintain a list.
Do you know what you will be doing the following day before going to bed? Well of course we cannot predict future but at least if you are working in a office you know you need to work the next day and then you have lunch and travelling, meeting etc. Just note it down and then try to break down your copywriting work into timing it should work for you.
2. Production time.
You know better than anyone else when you are more productive and when you are less. So utilize the most productive time to as much work as possible. For me I am usually lazy first thing in the morning and get more active later part of the day I am sure you will have the something similar.
3. Importance:
Urgent and ordinary they call in our local police. Usually they have different files once says urgent and other ordinary. If you have a leader or manager above you or if you want to deliver to a client make sure which ones are urgent and which ones can go in regular time. Make sure you do the urgent ones first and the ordinary ones later.
4. Use tools:
If you have cell phones you will have calendar, alarm clock in it. Make use of it set alerts, set appointments. Make sure you have a deadline for writing and when the clock ticks you should have completed your copy. If you are sitting before a computer your computer clock is an effective time management tool. When I write my copies I always see the clock time to see how much time I have utilized effectively.
According to Wikipedia
Fourth generation of time management is being efficient and proactive using tools places goals and roles as the controlling element of the system and favors importance over urgency.
Time management in copywriting is important use if effectively to become a good copywriter.

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Motivation comes in different ways for different people. It's not the same for 2 different people. There might be some similarities like listening music when you write can make you some people write more. Well here is some stuff that motivates me to write.
a. My primary motivation to write comes directly from my girl I like. More I think about her while writing more I write. She is a major inspiration for me during my writing. Sometimes you can get into small challenges with your lovable girl and you want to impress her by doing something she likes. In most cases I bet with my close friend that she needs to give me some chocolate or some gift if I write this much information. And I write to win it and impress her. Yes that's my best motivation.
b. Eating: I write more when I am not full but not thinking about eating. Feeling hungry makes me lazy, while eating more makes me sleepy. So I tend to make sure I don't feel hungry or lethargic while I write.
c. Deadlines and targets: This is an important motivation you need to be clear what you will achieve that day. If you want to write 5 articles make sure you write all 5 that day itself. This is another way of motivating yourself. If you fall short you will feel guilty of falling short. So make sure you keep targets and deadlines while writing. It helps me when I write my copies.
d. Extreme helps: If you feel writing and enjoying that day make sure you write more. It helps me I have had days where I have continuously written non-stop for more than 7 hours. Its because I enjoyed copywriting for that day. So it's easy and very fruitful to stay on extremes. Once you are done with the contents I am sure you will feel proud of you that day. Also sometimes you can over work and save a day or two in writing. So at times extreme helps. If you are motivated stay motivated as long as possible.
e. Music: Listening music helps me. It's not just listening music even watching online videos or videos in TVs helps. I do that since I have a separate cabin I listen to music or watch TV when I write and I don't feel that I am writing at all. It all looks so easy.
f. Avoiding distractions: Avoiding distractions is the best motivation for me. I tend to write more on Sundays sitting alone in office than on week days where I have lots of distractions. If you are same like me make sure you have a place which doesn't distract you. Sometimes distractions lead to fewer creativenesses. You cannot think peacefully if you are disturbed.

Labels: copywriting

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If you run a good blog or website there are ways you can write your way to good advertising. Advertising doesn't stop with AdSense or other contextual advertising. You can actually use affiliate programs as an effective way to get paid. There are lots of affiliate programs in internet that pays out very decently.

If it's not an external affiliate program you can set up your own commissioning program with clickbank. If you have well writing skills you can go a long way in marketing your affiliate products. Affiliate products are same like retailing or reselling. If you buy bulk from a merchant and send it on retail then it's definitely not wrong. Affiliate works the same way. There are some good product site owners who provide quality buttons and banners that you can add in your sales copy or the articles you promote.

Good place to start is click bank one of the most renounced programs. We have commission junction in look which also gives good returns. We have Amazon who used to pay its affiliates handsomely. They still do it just sign up with Amazon and I am sure you can get good Business from them. If you write well then i am sure you can learn the art of marketing online and make good money out of it. We run blogs they pay us handsomely just by running AdSense or affiliate programs. But remember don't ever cross the limit most of the search engines including Google don't like excessive affiliate links on a page. So stay in your limit concentrate more on content and quality and the money will flow automatically.

The fastest way to make money selling affiliate products is to think about the forums, lists, and discussion groups you already belong to. What are the questions being asked? Is there a problem that people need a solution for? What are the hot topics?

Content is king and will always be that way. So remember if you can write content you can do a great job.

Labels: copywriting

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Copywriting is a wonderful art I recommend everyone who does cold calling, spam emails to stop promoting themselves. It's not the best way to do it. I don't want to mention the names of the spammers. Here is couple of emails we got.
"Located in an elite business centre in New Delhi, India, we are a professionally managed Content Writing Company specializing in online copywriting and optimized content writing. Over the years we are successful in building reputation for us as a quality content management solution provider meeting high quality standards and executing all projects as per specified deadline.
We have a team of unmatched copywriters holding years of expertise in writing impressively for varied business sectors with a key knowledge of online content writing and keyword rich writing.
Our Credibility
- We can deliver articles within 24 hours
- We offer quality content writing services at your affordable price for as low as $1
- Our team is efficient enough to handle outsourced bulk articles jobs and delivery within the specified deadline.
- We have separate team to handle US and UK projects.
- We have enriched knowledge of keyword rich content writing.
- We pass each article to various duplicate content checker software and article checker software.
- To test our expertise, we can provide with sample writing too for free on any topic as asked by"
"I am contacting you to offer my services as an SEO content writer.
I am an experienced web content writer who provides professional SEO content at reasonable rates.
The following are my rates:
$25 per article for orders of 9 articles or less
$23 per article for orders of 10 articles or more
$20 per article for orders of 20 articles or more
You will have full rights to the articles so please feel free to mark up my rates to your customers.
To see my samples, learn more about my services, and more, please go to my website at
I can be contacted via email at . Thank you for your time and I look forward to helping you with your
content needs."

Labels: copywriting

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In my opinion no, I never recommend rewriting stories it's not the best way to prove your online presence. I have seen on numerous occasions that people get caught and end up embarrassed for rewriting other's work. When you want to write something you need to say it from your hands. It's ok to citate some good resources but rewriting a story and claiming to be yours look silly. There is a huge industry that thrives on this. It's called Para-phrasing, Especially in SEO industry it's pretty common to Para phrase. But is it a good strategy? I recommend staying away from it unless you are completely out of resources.
If you rewrite something make sure you add some of your own story to it. Or combine multiple resources together so that it doesn't look as if you took it from a single place. Most people tend to ignore rewriting but if you keep stealing from the same source and rewriting its obvious they might get pissed off. One of my friends was regular to a news site most of his website contents were rewritten from the news site source. Once he got a cease and desist letter from the news site to take down the whole site. He was forced to do to avoid legal battle with the news giant. All his work and the money he spent to rewrite the article got wasted.
There has been some claim that copyright does not hold on rewritten articles and you can actually get away with your article if you are sued, then again why get into all these problems when you can actually write articles from information available online totally for free.

Labels: copywriting

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How to you target in writing? Well it's a tricky question targeting is to first know who your audience are whether it's a lot of people or a single person or whether it's for the employees of a company etc.

Single person can be something like thesis document submitted to get best marks from your teacher, a love letter you write to your loved one etc.

Lot of people is what we write all the time. We usually write an article either to a certain set of audience or to a big audience regardless of the topic. Say for example I write an article or footwear i knew my audience would be the people who are looking for information on the footwear details i write. The writing was crafted to that audience and written in a way as to be palatable to the majority of readers.

You need to know a lot about your audience before your write. Writing is an art good articles come out only by better understanding of your audience.

If you're writing a sales letter, you'd need a lot more information. Understand that when successful copywriters make up a person to write to, we're not just making up crap out of thin air. The person's name is drawn out of a hate, but s/he is built upon actual target data.
There are dedicated writers who write only for specific Businesses and they stick to that Business for years. They are in my opinion the best writers on the web. When you know a Business well you can become an advisor or a company rep just by your writing. More you write better your comfort level and you will be in a better position to address your client's concerns.
Most of the time articles are meant to be for end users than experts, there are technical articles which are meant for experts but most of the time an article should be simple and straight forward well understood by end users.

Labels: copywriting

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Press releases are one of the most important parts of any online Business. Good press releases help you get good publicity. Not everyone can write press releases we need to have expert knowledge and multiple years of experience to get well written press releases. Also writing for internet everyone should have good knowledge of internet if you don’t know how internet works and you want to write for an online Business then you will fail. Before writing good press releases we need to first understand the way internet works.
Press releases are one of the most important places people look to find out about your company. You need to make sure your message is honed and perfectly suitable to the people who want to know about your company.

Important reasons for Press release optimization:

• You can create better longer visibility for your Organization
• Announce functions, parties, important meetings about your Organization.
• Tell an inspiring story that could help your organization.
• You have the ability to prove to people why they need to select you
• It will improve your market presence profit margin faster.
• Publicity is one of the most important factors for better improvement in Business. Without proper publicity you will fail.
  

Labels: copywriting

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Proof reading is one of the most important aspects when it comes to getting quality and clear copies. Proof reading has been into existence for a very long time. Proof reading can also be compared to copy editing but not similar. Proof reading scripts mostly has typographical errors that can be induced by man or by a typing machine. Olden days we didn’t have computers so we need to rely on typewriters that don’t have dictionary suggestions and proof reading had to be done manually. But nowadays if you use MS word most of the spelling errors can be fixed automatically. Proofreading consists of text review on a computerized version or on hard copy on paper for typing errors or formatting errors. Many modern proofreaders are also required to take on some light copy-editing duties, such as checking for grammar and consistency issues. Many copy editors have a university degree, often in journalism, English, or communications.

Labels: copywriting

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Copywriting is everywhere. Its not just in writing copies for websites or for journals or blogs. Everyday emails you write especially mails which are meant to be formal requires copywriting skills. A person who is good at communicating with his email is always the best. In recent weeks some email subject lines hit my inbox that I found disconcerting. These emails were from marketers. "Sorry, we've got to let you go." That's a panic-inducing subject line and even though I don't have a job (I'm self-employed) it was still panic-inducing rather that curiosity-arousing. "URGENT DEADLINE" was another panic-inducing subject line because I'm a copywriter and usually have a few client projects going on at once so a subject line like that isn't particularly calming. "I love you." I didn't like that subject line at all because it's clear it was gimmicky and my reaction was, "Um, hello, I don’t even know you." Plus it would've been weird if one of my daughters had been looking over my shoulder when it arrived. So the takeaway from this is to focus on making the reader curious and intrigued when composing a subject line, rather than turned off or panic-y.

Bottom line copywriting is a basic skill that everyone should have. Email copywriting is an interesting subject. Will blog about it more in future.

Labels: copywriting

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Interesting article on research by Stanford students about Wikipedia

An interesting article on research by Stanford students about Wikipedia. How is work created, assigned, and completed on large-scale,crowd-powered systems like Wikipedia? And what design principles might enable these federated on line systems to be more effective? This paper reports on a qualitative study of work and task practices on Wikipedia. Despite the avail-
ability of tag-based community-wide task assignment mechanisms, informants reported that self-directed goals, within-topic expertise, and fortuitous discovery are more frequently
used than community-tagged tasks. We examine how Wiki-pedia editors organize their actions and the actions of other participants, and what implications this has for understand-
ing, and building tools for, crowd-powered systems, or any web site where the main force of production comes from a crowd of online participants. From these observations and
insights, we developed WikiTasks, a tool that integrates with Wikipedia and supports both grassroots creation of site-wide tasks and self-selection of personal tasks, accepted from this
larger pool of community tasks.

Read / download the article here:

Labels: copywriting

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Submitting your article to article directories is the best way to get back links and traffics. This is a time-tested method. These article directories will provide sufficient amount of back links and traffics to your sites.

While it's one of the most effective methods, there's one big problem. Submitting articles to a few hundreds of article directories is extremely time consuming and boring.

With our service, we will submit your articles to 360 Article Directories. Below are some of the article directories that your article will be submitted to:

High PR Article Directory
www.articlecity.com
www.easyarticles.com
www.ezinearticles.com
www.articledashboard.com
www.goarticles.com
www.ezinefinder.com
www.ideamarketers.com

Alternatively, if you find it difficult to write your own article, we provide article writing services too:
We will write an article with the information provided and then we will submit that article to all 360 article directories. Rest assure that the article is of high quality. We have a few professional writers working for us. Article is at least 400 words.

Benefits:
1) Hundreds of one way backlinks to your site.
2) Targeted traffics
(www.ezinearticles.com has an Alexa ranking of 360! Some of these article directories are authority sites, so your article tends to rank easily)
3) Most important of all - Unique IPs One-Way links. None of the links are from the same IPs!

Bonus:
We will also post your set of articles to 60 MU Wordpress blogs. These blogs are all on unique IPs. These will give you another 120 backlinks!

Payment:
Paypal

Price:
$12 (Article Submission)
$16 (Article Writing + Article Submission)


If you are interested, I will get back to you on payment detail and the article format to provide for article submission.

I suggest stay away from it. What's the point in submitting in 1000s of article directories duplicating your whole stuff. It doesn't make any sense. Search engine don't like excess duplication how can you assume to get any benefit from duplicated articles. From my personal experience Google devalues all the duplicates if it finds more than 4 copies of the same article. So virtually its waste of time submitting to all these article sites.

Labels: copywriting

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1. Their portfolio. Gives you a feel of their writing, can show you their field of expertise.
2. Their overall website. Can they sell themselves to you? If they can, chances are they know how to write copy that sells.
3. Find out how they work. Some copywriters shows prospects the process of working with them.
4. Their clients. Could also tell you how much they charge. Big names often require big money.
5. One specific thing you should look for is whether they are comfortable writing about your topics. with basic topics like celebrities, yoga, child-rearing, there are innumerable people willing to write for you... but if you have something slightly technical, then you have to make sure that the writer you are considering can handle your task. in other words, almost any writer can write about basic topics, but only a few can tackle technical/mechanical/financial/legal ones.
6. They should have the capability to think out of the box, i.e.,they should be innovative and also have the ability to present it logically. Secondly, they always should think like a laymen or consumer. This is a basic rule and should not be ignored as you can easily make your idea popular and liked by all with the help of this. Thirdly, they should know the liking of the client as to how he wants to see the product or service.
7. If you are looking for quality then you must find someone who can offer you a quality guarantee as most copywriters will charge you for the work done irrespective of whether it is useful to you or not. You may end up losing your money if you can't find someone who can definitely give you copy that is worthwhile. If someone is offering you a quality guarantee or your money back (you can't use the copy if you ask for a refund), then that means that the copywriter has the confidence to offer you quality. At most times, it won't be good to ask for refunds if a professional copywriter has wasted a lot of time writing a sales letter for your target audience.
Last but not the least, all you can do is pay 50 % advance to the copywriter so if it doesn't work out, at least you don't lose the whole amount. You could pay up like the rest 50% at the first revision. Sale copywriting is an art and a science and not every one can write copy that sells. Writing copy that sells is indeed something very important and very few copywriters are really great at it.

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juxtaposition - To place two ideas side by side.
The author used juxtaposition to contrast an idea of love with jealousy.

debauchery - Immoral, corrupt, or indulgent.
The church frowns against acts of debauchery.

Tantamount - Equivalent to an idea or object.
In not replying to the RSVP, it was tantamount in saying that you couldn't make it to the wedding.

Plight - A predicament or danger.
The work done by the soup kitchen seeks to solve the hunger plight of the homeless.

Inundate - To overwhelm
Amazon.com was inundated with calls around the Christmas season.

Clandestine - To do something in secret, perhaps with hidden aims.
The clandestine acts of the Freemason Society are well guarded among members.

Facetious - Playful humor.
I was being facetious when I mentioned that you look fat in that dress.

Conundrum - A riddle or difficult problem.
The energy crisis conundrum has the attention of scientists all around the world.

Amorous - To display love or affection.
The amorous atmosphere of the honeymoon was accented with rose petals and soft music.

Capitulate - To surrender or give up.
The choice to capitulate was considered when I noticed my mother wouldn't let me leave the dinner table without eating the broccoli.

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Chairman Kerry, Ranking Member Ensign, and members of the Subcommittee.
Thank you for inviting me to contribute to this discussion. My name is Marissa Mayer, and I work as vice
President of Search and User Experience at Google. I manage Google's efforts in search -- including Web
Search and Google News -- and I also guide user interaction design across Google's products. In addition, I
Co-chair the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. In both roles, I've
Reflected on the intersections of journalism and technology and I will speak to that this afternoon.
In my testimony today, I would like to cover three main points:
First, I'd like to discuss how Web search acts as a conduit for journalism by connecting individuals to the
News stories they are seeking.
Second, I'll address our commitment to create economic opportunity for publishers and to provide tools to
Create more engaging presentations of their content.
And finally, I'll talk about how the very structure of the Web itself represents some challenges to, but also
Opportunities for, the future of journalism.
Search: a conduit for online publishing
Every day, millions of people search the Web for relevant answers to their questions. In response, search
Engines strive to connect each user with the right results, and those results can come in any number of
Different forms: a Web page, an image, a video, a map, or a news story – something of particular relevance
To today's hearing. In each of those cases, search engines play the role of connecting users with high-quality
Content -- often journalistic -- ultimately sending traffic to the publisher's Website. Google is one such search
Engine that people use to find answers online.
Another service we offer is Google News, our specialized service that's designed specifically for users who
are looking for news articles. Stories on Google News are selected and ranked by computers based on the
Freshness, location, relevance, and diversity of their content. As a result, these stories are sorted without
Regard to political viewpoint or ideology, and users can choose from a wide variety of perspectives on any
Given story. We offer links to several articles covering a topic so that users can choose to read the story
From the publishers and sources they prefer.
Both Google search and Google News connect users to answers and information as quickly as possible. We
Show people just enough information to invite them to read more -- the headline, a line or two of text, and a
Link to the news publisher's Website. A user clicks on the headline of interest and is taken directly to the site
that published the story.
Together, Google News and Google search provide a valuable free service to online newspapers specifically
by sending interested readers to their sites at a rate of more than 1 billion clicks per month. Newspapers use
that Web traffic to increase their readership and generate additional revenue.
2
In terms of publications appearing in search indexes, we believe they have the right to control their content.
That's why we allow site owners to choose whether or not Google can index their sites. Using what's
called a “robots.txt” file, which has been an industry standard for many years, a publisher can block its Web
content from any search engine's crawl. As a result, that site will not show up in Web search results.
Effective use of "robots.txt" and other metatags gives publishers control over how their content is searched at
a number of levels by allowing publishers to restrict: search across the entire site, individual directories,
pages of a specific type, or individual pages only. So, while we think inclusion in a search engine can drive a
lot of beneficial traffic, our policy first and foremost is to respect the wishes of content owners.
Creating economic opportunity for publishers
Because our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful,
high-quality content is incredibly important to Google. Our most basic goal is to connect users with highquality
and reliable information. Credible, factual, trustworthy content -- that is, journalism -- is critical to the
millions of users who search for news stories on Google.
Google connects Internet users to journalists' work while at the same time helping journalists generate
income to support their work, and providing tools to make news more compelling to readers and viewers.
Most importantly from an economic perspective, once readers arrive at publication sites, our Google
AdSense advertising platform helps publishers generate revenue from their content. By providing relevant
ads and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, Google AdSense creates billions of
dollars in annual revenue for publishers. In fact, in 2008, that figure exceeded $5 billion in revenue for
AdSense publishers. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for
advertisers and publishers. We recently launched interest-based advertising, which we believe will be
particularly helpful to publishers as it takes into account each individual user's interests in the hopes of
making advertisements even more relevant.
In addition to providing revenue opportunities, Google also offers many tools for sharing information that are
being used by newspapers. For example, the Los Angeles Times Website last year followed the path of
Southern California wildfires using Google Maps at the site. Google Image Search brings the Life
Magazine photo archive to light for a whole new generation of readers. National Geographic and The
Holocaust Memorial Museum have created interactive educational content layers in Google Earth. And
NASA has partnered with us to allow anyone to virtually travel the stars in Google Sky. Our Web
technologies are powerful information tools, and we hope to continue to empower content creation through
them.
The structure of the Web and its impact on publishers
The structure of the Web itself requires the presentation of news in a way that's fundamentally different from
its offline predecessor. The Web has caused some parts of the news to be presented more easily and
effectively. For example, Web pages can link to voluminous supporting materials without worrying about
column inches. In addition, the always-on, always-updating nature of the Web means that real-time news
updates can appear throughout the day without being tied to print production deadlines. However, other
aspects are more challenging, particularly in regard to how users arrive at a news story, and how authority
on a particular topic is established. I'd like to offer a few observations on what I call the "atomic unit of
consumption" for online news, the prospect of creating living stories online, as well as a few simple steps
online publishers can take to keep readers engaged.
The atomic unit of consumption
The atomic unit of consumption for existing media is almost always disrupted by emerging media. For
example, digital music caused consumers to think about their purchases as individual songs rather than as
full albums. Digital and on-demand video has caused people to view variable-length clips when it is
convenient for them, rather than fixed-length programs on a fixed broadcast schedule. Similarly, the structure
of the Web has caused the atomic unit of consumption for news to migrate from the full newspaper to the
individual article. As with music and video, many people still consume physical newspapers in their original
full-length format. But with online news, a reader is much more likely to arrive at a single article. While these
individual articles could be accessed from a newspaper's homepage, readers often click directly to a
particular article via a search engine or another Website.
Changing the basic unit of content consumption is a challenge, but also an opportunity. Treating the article
as the atomic unit of consumption online has several powerful consequences. When producing an article for
online news, the publisher must assume that a reader may be viewing this article on its own, independent of
the rest of the publication. To make an article effective in a standalone setting requires providing sufficient
context for first-time readers, while clearly calling out the latest information for those following a story over
time. It also requires a different approach to monetization: each individual article should be self-sustaining.
These types of changes will require innovation and experimentation in how news is delivered online, and
how advertising can support it.
The living story
The Web by definition changes and updates constantly throughout the day. Because of its ability to operate
in real-time, it offers an opportunity for news publishers to publish on changing and evolving stories as they
happen. Web addresses (known as URLs -- uniform resource locators such as http://www.google.com) were
designed to refer to unique pieces of content, and those URLs were intended to persist over time. Today, in
online news, publishers frequently publish several articles on the same topic, sometimes with identical or
closely related content, each at their own URL. The result is parallel Web pages that compete against each
other in terms of authority, and in terms of placement in links and search results.
Consider instead how the authoritativeness of news articles might grow if an evolving story were published
under a permanent, single URL as a living, changing, updating entity. We see this practice today in
Wikipedia's entries and in the topic pages at NYTimes.com. The result is a single authoritative page with a
consistent reference point that gains clout and a following of users over time.
Keeping users engaged
A much smaller but important factor for online newspapers to consider in today's digital age is the
fundamental design and presentation of their content. Publishers should not discount the simple and
effective navigational elements the Web can offer. When a reader finishes an article online, it is the
publication's responsibility to answer the reader who asks, "What should I do next?" Click on a related article
or advertisement? Post a comment? Read earlier stories on the topic? Much like Amazon.com suggests
related products and YouTube makes it easy to play another video, publications should provide obvious and
engaging next steps for users. Today, there are still many publications that don't fully take advantage of the
numerous tools that keep their readers engaged and on their site.
Conclusion
Chairman Kerry, Ranking Member Ensign, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for having me here
today to participate in this important discussion.
Preserving robust and independent journalism at the national and local levels is an important goal for the
United States. Google is doing its part by driving significant traffic to online news publishers, by helping them
generate revenue through advertising, and by providing tools and platforms enabling them to reach millions
of people.
There are certainly many challenges to face in adapting the long tradition of journalism to the online world. I
am hopeful, though, that innovation will help preserve journalism and its vital function in our society.

Labels: copywriting

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First step to success is to impress people with your articles you need to make sure people are happy with your articles. If your article is impressive and people are convinced i am sure they will buy your article:

Just for promotion purpose you need to give away free articles to senior content writers i am sure they will do a free review and will give you their feedback.

Post your articles and ideas in leading forums like digitalpoint forum i am sure you will get good response when people notice it. I got many freelancing orders by posting in forums.

Be honest in your Business everyone likes honesty if you are honest business with come to you. If you write an article for someone sell it to them don't sell to anyone else it spoils your dignity if the original buyer notices your cheating he will try to bad mouth about you.

Run PPC or use SEO to promote your website. Website is a good promotion strategy.

How do you find topics for your article sets that will sell?

Choosing hot popular topics, or evergreen topics like weight loss, is the key to success when writing and selling PLR content. How do you find these topics? Look at what's in the news. Look at what the bestsellers are on amazon.com. See what the most active auctions are on ebay.com. Scan lifestyle and fashion magazines for popular topics. Visit the websites of the same magazines and scan their back issues to get a feel for what topics are popular at what time of year.

Take into consideration how long it will take you to write the articles. If it's a topic you know well and don't have to research, it may take you as little as four hours to write the ten articles. On the hand if you are not familiar with the topic and have to do quite a bit of research, it may take several days to write them.

Labels: copywriting, SEO copywriting

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If you are good in copywriting you should know ways to impress people with your writing. If you want some creative writing ideas and enjoy fiction, you might want to try your hand at some short stories. Even if you can think of an idea that you think is dumb, use it and write. If it doesn't work out, it won’t be so bad because it was only a short story and didn't take you a long time . You might find that the dumb idea you came up with turned into a wonderful story.

For some good ideas, search around you. Watch those around you. Try to listen to their conversations. If it's interesting, maybe you could write about it? Pick a place you are familiar with, maybe at school, work, or a favorite destination and build a story around it. You could use one room in a building you know well and create a whole story about it. Try using the people you meet and know as your characters, or only use their situations. It is your choice.

What about your dreams? If you dream often and can remember your dreams, think about how you could make a story out of them . If you have odd dreams and love to write fantasy or sci-fi, this could be great for you. You could write down your dream word for word and then add to it. Or, you could just use one idea from it. Maybe a character, idea, or small event will pop into your head because of a dream you remember .

Think about all the different events that happen to you and what has happened to you in the past in your life. If you keep a diary or journal, read through it and see if you can find some ideas. If you don’t keep a journal, start keeping a journal for more ideas later on . It is a wonderful . Think about the funniest or most interesting thing that has ever happened to you and capture it into a story. If you think your life is full of drama, maybe it is full of enough drama to make an interesting dramatic story.

If you ever run out of creative writing ideas, all you have to do is look around. Give yourself some time and you will think of something. Even if you start an idea that you don't really like, you could think of a better one in the process. Even if you already have an idea, when new ones comes to mind , jot them down for future stories and projects. You will thank yourself. Whatever you decide, just keep writing.

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Well a silly question J . When you ask me it really doesn't matter who writes. I have seen some of the best male writers as well as some of the best female writers. Writing is an art, writing efficiently needs some skills not everyone possess those skills. In our company we had an employee who was very creative in writing she brought out some of the best articles we ever published on our website. Similarly we had an other guy in our office who wrote great articles.

Basically copywriting is more for women it's a delicate job you need to take lot of care and be patient to get best output. Penn library has a wonderful list of famous female writers. I was very impressed to see this list it’s a must see. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/

Controversial it may sound. A telegraph article which took a census few years ago said male authors fared much better than female authors.

"The company asked its 5,000 employees to name their favorite five books written since 1982, when Waterstone's opened its first store. The resulting list of the top 100 favorites is dominated by male authors.

The list features the cream, both male and female, of the modern, international literary world, from Umberto Eco and Bill Bryson to Robert Harris and Ian McEwan; from Margaret Atwood and Jung Chang to Zadie Smith and Zoe Heller. But male authors outnumber female writers by a staggering 66 to 27."

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1548451/Men-dominate-Waterstones-favourite-100.html

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A self confession  I started doing copywriting because? Well nothing I don't have any specific reason for it. My primary aim is to make money by doing some job that pays me well. I thought of all the stories I write in my exam papers when I wrote about world history and all those stuff. I got huge personal inspiration when I started writing. People liked my writing style sometimes I write stories that are so crazy I even got prizes for them. This is a very strange world. It doesn't know how to reward people they like you when you really crazy, sometimes this world likes you when you are very smart. It's a very different world. This world appreciated me when I started writing. My first essay was for an online journal and it got lots of reviews. Later I was hired to write for few blogs and most of the articles I wrong for them were successful.

I later joined Search Engine Genie as a copywriter here they pay me well in Indian standards and I am stuck to this job for more than 2 years. I enjoy doing SEO copywriting because of the diversity in writing behind it. SEO Copywriting is very unique it improves your writing style you tend to keep multiple things in mind when you are writing copies. My TL will give me certain set of keywords and some references and I need to keep everything in mind when I write my contents.

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It's a simple method to make money writing copy for the gaming market that exists out there.

1) Search through Google for the following terms: MMOG, MMORPG, RTS, FPS etc. These terms are as follow: MMOG -> Massive Multiplayer Online Game; or; MMORPG -> Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game; RTS stands for Real Time Strategy and FPS stands for First Person Shooter.

2) Then do a quick scan over the next several pages for sites like these:
top50.onrpg.com , mmorpglist.com etc. You are basically looking for any sites that would be a list or blogs that write about several games and have links to the actual websites.

3) Once you have compiled a thorough list of these sites that list all these online games, then go through them and list every official website. This will take some time but these are your leads.

4) Create your own site or have a sub-domain affiliated with a site you own and create a portfolio-type site. This is what these website/company owners would like to see.

*** You may think copywriting doesn't exist in these markets, but they do. These sites depend on good content that is written for their games. Often the first page of a browser-based/Online game is the most essential part and many game owners have absolutely no idea on how to present their games to potential people that would like to play it.

5) Go to your leads and start contacting the owners of these sites and ask if they would like to consider keeping you in mind for future or current work. Make sure you have AIM, MSN and YIM since these people usually communicate via these instant messengers. Some owners will require that you talk to them and for that you need XFire, Teamspeak or Ventrillo. These VoIP systems are easy to use and to speak to people. In the gaming world people use it to communicate all the time.

That is the easy 5 step plan to get some work in the gaming world.

"What about the actual copywriting?" you may ask.

Well the easiest jobs to find will be people that purchase browser-based or online games. Alternatively you approach the people in your leads. There are dozens of sites that have the worst copy on their main page. If someone is creative enough, and you can use words to tell a story and intrigue people enough to be able to sign up for the game, then that is all you need.

Some owners will be starting out and have no capital outlay and others would have a fair bit.

Your portfolio is important here. If you can provide great examples of how you can write and how you could take a normal game with (crappy) copy and turn it into a beautiful swan with fairies and monsters all rolled into one, then you will have a winner. That was just me talking :P

Your imagination is the greatest key here. You cannot sell to gamers like you would do on a normal internet marketing type of product page. It simply won't work.

An example is this....

I had a browser-based game once called Kingdom of Shadows. I needed something great to get people to sign up.

I rotated the copy on the website at least 3 times and every time it changed, more people signed up.

As an example I found one of Out spark’s games that you can see here:

mmozone.com/secret-of-the-solstice.html

Does that page inspire someone to play the game? Sure anime fans would... but a lot of people including me, need that extra bit more in order to make us sign up. That is where the gamer copywriter comes in. Your task is to take that page and make it seem more interesting with words as an example.

If you could get one or two companies like that under your belt, then you will start to see a whole world that will be open to you.

There are tons of opportunities available out there in the entertainment industry. You just have to look!

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From time to time we get emails from copywriters who are trying to sell their service through bulk, unsolicited emails. We get these type of emails once every week. I am personally against bulk emails. If you are good in copywriting you should already have good business then why spam people with your emails. Most individuals or companies feel people who send bulk emails as spammers and we are no exception. We do feel the same way so I recommend stop sending bulk emails to us.

Some sample copywriting offers we get:
"I am contacting you to offer my services as an SEO content writer.
I am an experienced web content writer who provides
professional SEO content at reasonable rates.
The following are my rates:
$25 per article for orders of 9 articles or less
$23 per article for orders of 10 articles or more
$20 per article for orders of 20 articles or more
You will have full rights to the articles so please feel free to mark
up my rates to your customers."
"I am writing specifically to explore business association with you since there is a lot of synergy between your offerings and our services. Web Designs is a website development and Internet Marketing company. I want to explore the prospect whether Web Designs can become your backend partner and service all copywriting, SEO, and/or Internet Marketing needs of your clients."

"Please consider this query to be an introduction to my freelance copywriting services. Because your firm demands quality SEO, reputation management, and public relations content, you should know that my resume includes a five-year, mid-level stay at an iconic Madison Avenue ad agency where I had contributed to multi-genre campaigns for clients such as General Mills, Wendy's, and Toyota. Today, I provide a small group of clients with consistently high quality copywriting to satisfy a broad spectrum of business needs."

"I'm writing to offer the services of a professional writer. I know how difficult it is to find a writer online, someone that will provide quality, accurate information. As an SEO company, I'm certain you require a variety of writing. Leave it to me! I know what you're thinking, why should I hire her? Not only do I have extensive experience in SEO writing, I also recently have written for various blogs, worked on large-scale web content, composed press releases for government agencies and completed various editing projects including editing articles, essays, cover letters, resumes, thesis papers and book manuscripts. Ultimately, I have written in nearly every popular niche on the web, and also others unheard of! Unique, professional writing is imperative for any business, no matter the niche. This is something both you and your clients pride your business on! The bottom line is this; I'm experienced, good and can guarantee quality work.

NCAs for copywriters

There are some clients who insist Non-Competitive agreement from us when we write for them. They are basically looking for us to sign an agreement so that in case we stop working with them in future we will not write for another client in same industry. These type of NCAs are pretty genuine if one client benefits from your writing and they start doing well in search engines as well as get good response from their website visitors and later stop working with you and you do the same to a competitor, this will hurt the other client's Business. I perfectly agree for an Non-competitive agreement to be signed in case the copywriter decides to work with a different client in same industry.

Adding non-competition would be a good idea as a future safeguard without any specific intent at present. Not to say this makes it any better, but wondering if we might be seeing more of it? Really not sure on this, but just thinking aloud this might be a development of a cautious market?

Though NCAs are new NDAs had been there for a long time especially for copywriters because they write for a company and at times learn trade secrets and proprietary information of the company.

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I had one of my friends who wanted to do this. He wanted to start a website register with US copyright office for all the contents on his website and later sue anyone who copies his contents for potential plagiarism. He has already discussed this issue with an attorney and the attorney has agreed to operate with him to claim statutory damages for content theft.

Do you think this works? Well in my opinion it might work but it all depends on where the content plagiarism website is operating from. We have some of our web pages copyrighted in US and since we are in a popular SEO industry there are many low lives who want to steal our content and claim it to be their own. Most of these thieves are from third world countries like India. Its difficult to get hold of them they never respond to emails or phone calls only solution for us is to contact them to their hosting company. Even if we do that still we can only make them remove our contents. We cannot sue them because of weak laws in countries like India. You can do even the worst crime and still get away with it in India. Plagiarism is not a major offence there, countries like Russia, China too don’t have strong laws to fight internet content theft.

The only way suing a website for content theft can be done is when the individual or Business operates from US itself. In US copyright violations are taken pretty seriously and I am sure if sued you can get a little bit of monetary damages.

If you think like my friend of doing Business by suing people then you are actually joking. Internet is huge and there are new websites coming online every day. I am sure you need to find better ways to make money.

Labels: copywriting

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Well, every now and then I change my tactics and put some spices in my copy. I'd like to tell you little bit more about the ones I use the most.

Here goes...

The spices I am talking about are what we all know as figures of speech. Their usage in text could trigger all sorts of different emotions depending on the way you use them of course.

So, here are the ones I would like to recommend to you:

The metaphor
----------------
a metaphor describes a subject as being equal to an object of a kind despite their differences

example:
Life is like a box of chocolates

The simile
------------
similes allow the two ideas to remain distinct in spite of their similarities

example:
Mike runs as fast a bullet

The oxymoron
----------------
oxymorons are expressions called contradiction in terms

example:
the lecture was clearly confusing

The synecdoche
------------------
part of something referring to the whole

example:
I'm all years

Do you guys use figures of speech in your copy?

Feel free to share your experience and thoughts.

Labels: copywriting

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Most online business and offline quality Businesses today trademark their brand name or product name etc. But the common question asked can anyone trademark a single word generic word like seminar , training, class, college etc?

As per the rule of US trademark office you cannot trademark too common generic words. There are instances where people claim they have copyrighted a common single word. In most cases it will be fake you need to verify those claims I am sure you will see those are actually bogus claims.

In online Business there are lots of occasions where people get worried whether a keyword in their domain name if trademarked can be used in their domain names. First of all if you want to advertise for keywords like best or buy it's a problem. Best and buy are just common words you can advertise them or use them in your domain names like you can buy a domain bestforbuy.com. But for Bestbuy is a trademarked brand you cannot use that in a domain or advertise for that word. For example you cannot have the domain name bestbuyproducts.com I would consider this trademark violation and if the trademark owner disputes you can be fined. Even you can't advertise for best buy related keywords.

Labels: copywriting

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We get lot of offers from clients and potential clients for bulk content. They are looking for cheap keyword content and they are not worried about the quality of the content. Some clients are looking for keyword rich contents though the content quality is bad. So is it a good strategy? Quantity or quality which one matters?

Quantity over quality

Quantity is always relative and mostly used in context of your website. If you run a large website with 1000s of products which you need to get it populated, write descriptions, write reviews yes quantity matters here. You need unique information for good search engine rankings and i am sure you would have in from less quality contents. These contents are not meant to be link worth. They are there just as a spider food and its not something you have that you can boost about.

Quality over quantity:

Quality matters much more than quantity especially for quality content sites made to impress users and to be made link worthy. You need quality contents when people read your content you need to make it look pleasant and attractive rather than making it sound junk and boring. Quality attracts natural back links and good quality repeated users to your website. This is the long term strategy for a successful online marketing campaign.

Overall quality and quantity depends completely on the context of your website. At times both work well together so if you are building a quality website you need to take care of both quality and quantity in a perfect threshold limit.

Labels: copywriting

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A content management system is a software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don't have to.

Joomla: Joomla is currently the best and leading content management system that will help you to build great content rich websites with ease. Joomla is an open source software means you get it totally for free from www.joomla.com , It is currently the best and most easy to use software it have got various awards for best performing CMS.

Drupal: Drupal is an other quality CMS that helps to easily publish , manage and organize variety of contents including blogs, content sites etc. You can use Drupal to build :

• Community web portals
• Discussion sites
• Corporate web sites
• Intranet applications
• Personal web sites or blogs
• Aficionado sites
• E-commerce applications
• Resource directories
• Social Networking sites
  

Umberco: If you use .net hosting you can go for Umberco a friendly CMS which again is easy to use and comes with a load of great features.

Labels: copywriting

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If you see most of the sites do not need the best content available, because of ROI .

While it is true that great content will get you links and get you ranking, over time, that does not mean that is the route to success for most sites.

If you are looking for great, original writing, I've seen writers produce as little as 100 words per day on complex subjects, so that a 300-word article took 3 days and a 1000-word article took 10 days to produce. For a top-quality American writer you are going to be paying $5000 per month and higher. That means a top quality 1000-word article could cost you $2500, or $2.50 per word (or more), and that is reasonable. This is the high end of the scale.

On the other hand, a good writer from, say, The Philippines (3rd largest English speaking country in The World), can write 1800 words per day on travel guide type stuff at a cost of about $1000 per month. That would be about 40,000 words per month, or a cost of about $0.025 per word (which is the minimum you can expect to pay for simple but original content).

There is thus a range of cost per word of 100-to-1, between the best American made writings on complex subjects and that which can be obtained by offshore outsourcing on rather simple subjects.

If you have a legal site, the best source for content is likely to be an attorney, likewise, the best content for a health related site is probably going to be produced by a medical doctor.

But I can hire a law student in The Philippines to write my legal content for 1/100 of the price, and I can hire a med student to write my health content at the same savings ratio. So what if my content is judged to be only 80% of the quality that you got from hiring an attorney to do your content at 100 times the price. Your site cost you $100,000 and mine cost me $1000. For my $99,000 savings, I'm just going to allocate that to links for my site. Which site will rank higher? Which site will make more money?

Everything is a compromise. I want to build a race car, but how fast it will go depends largely on how much I can spend to make it go fast. Do I spend $5000 on an engine that will produce 600 horses or $25,000 on one that will produce 650 horses? You don't have to be #1 to be in the money. It all comes down to ROI.

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500 words, 300, 250 1000 so which is the right size for writing an article. Article writing is an art size of the article really doesn’t matter if you are a good writer and can make people keep reading your stuff. You can make an article longer by few changes and you can make it short by some modifications. It all depends on your writing skills and people’s interest towards your article.

To make an article longer you can: broaden your topic (sometimes).use examples. say the same thing multiple times in different ways, add quotes from other sources

To make an article shorter you can:-make your topic more specific (sometimes)-say things simply in a few words-cover the topic in less detail-forget the fluff, get straight to the point
When you write an article for a client it depends on their requirements some clients prefer long articles of 1000 words some prefer short around 250 words it depends on their requirements. But writing for your own blog or website its different story personally I recommend keeping the article around 250 to 400 words its ideal for all readers most internet readers like short articles than long ones. Shorter are sometimes worthless, longer can be boring unless you are expert in a field and keep proper grammar and punctuation.

I would say basic rule of thumb is just to say what needs to be said in a way people can understand it. Repeating the same thing or over simplifying is something that can lengthen a post without really giving it any value.

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Protecting your hard written ebook from duplication and illegal distribution is a major problem. There is near to nothing you can do to stop this but there are steps you can take to slow down this process.

Based on my experience with this I can list out some ideas ( It may or may not work ) :

1. Whether its in html of PDF format disable right click when you setup up the ebook. This prevents a huge bunch of non-web savvy crowd from copying your content.

2. If it's a PDF file you can set it up to make sure printing or selecting and copying is disabled ( remember this might be a nuisance for genuine users ) .

3. Make sure your Ebook is copyrighted most countries have tough copyright laws and you can use it against them if any citizens of those countries copy.

4. You can make all PDF pages watermarked another effective way to prevent reproduction or copying of your e-book.

5. Make sure you add a disclaimer on the footer of the PDF e-book that unauthorized reproduction of this e-book will be prosecuted

6. Make sure you identify whom your buyers are, just by filtering out bad buyers and catering to genuine buyers you can prevent a lot of theft.

7. Add some extra benefits for genuine buyers like free life time updates, free goodies if they buy from your site etc.

8. Make sure you brand your e-book even after illegal distribution still your name or website name will be highlighted.

9. Give the buyer a username and password to a secure are that allows them to download the book and get to the bonus area. You can also create a tracking to track number of logins and downloads per user.

10. You can use products that will restrict one license per system or per website or per user. If they try to install in a different system it wont work there.
Just my 2 cents.

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Apart for writing for a living or freelancing for websites there are many other ways to make money by writing:

1. If you are aware of SEO, you can start a website write article for your own website optimize and promote them.

2. You can run a shopping cart on your website write unique description of the product and write quality reviews I am sure making product pages unique will help you get quality rankings and traffic.

3. You can write a review about a product or just basic information and make money through affiliate programs. There are some quality SEOs/copywriters who many a lot of money through affiliate programs. Ebay, Amazon and other big sites are genuine and provide good affiliate programs with high earning potential.

4. Write an E-book if you are good in writing an e-book on the topic you are good at I am sure selling it will get you some nice and easy income. But putting together an ebook is not easy and it takes a lot of effort on your part.

5. Writing blogs is one of the best income ideas in recent days you can write a blog and build a community and once you have decent traffic you can put up some contextual ads like Google adsense or something similar and I am sure this has good income potential. There are bloggers who make 1000s of dollars a month from Adsense alone.

6. Software you outsource to others to create, but toss up your sales content, auto responder content, articles, seo stuffs, etc yourself can bring passive income too. For some people it becomes million dollar enterprises.

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Heres the scam.............

1. Client advertising for writer to write articles and will not pay until completion. (this is normal on Elance)

2. Writer delivers the articles

3 Client refuses to pay saying they have been copied and proves it by showing the article directories they are on.

4. Writer says sorry but does not know how, but accepts that there is a copy of them on the net

5. Client shows how annoyed he is and gets abusive.

6. End of story - Writer does not get paid and gives it up as a bad loss. The writer cannot use them again as they are on the web already.

Ok here is what has actually happened........

1. In the first place, the client want these articles for the directories in particular Ezine.

2. As soon as they get the articles from the writer (within minutes) they have them posted on Ezine by a made up named author. The linkback in the article is to a website that they are probably being paid for to do it.

So as you can see they get all the articles they want for free. I have noticed particularly here on DP that the clients are asking more and more to see the articles before payment.

Suggested solutions.............

NEVER give out your articles before payment unless you know the client.

I would also suggest that all writers should not be working for less than 1 cent word which is already too low. Again clients are taking advantage and expecting work for as low as 500 words for $1 - I think we should all work together to stop this nonsense. I know there are countries which have a 3rd world economy but this is still exploitation by anyone's standard.

These lance sites are producing this kind of practice and in my opinion should be accountable. I know some people will say if it does not suit then don't go there, but that is not a long term answer. What a lot of clients think is that they are getting cheap articles when in fact their articles are useless for the purpose they were purchased, seo! - If not written correctly, Google will actually penalize the content.

Ok a lot thrown out there - what are your thoughts?

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There are various ways people will voluntarily review your website and there are ways you can make people review your products or tools or contents of your website:

1. You can offer some gifts or freebies or even run a simple contests to make people review your website. Remember though this is a good tactic some search engines consider this paid reviews and might not give full recognition.

2. You can give a small product for a major product sale if a customer takes some additional time to review the products they buy from your website. It has worked for us before.

3. You can hire your own copywriter and review your own products looks a bit shady but it works of course its your site no one will notice it.

4. Some people will naturally review the product if they don't have to login and submit their review avoid login for people who wants to review. non-registered people have to have their reviews approved before they go live its safe can avoid negative reviews and in fact stop a lot of spam.

5. You can even send our requests or call your customers and tell them to write a review on what they feel about the products they purchased from your site this is very much ethical but remember to get neutral or even bad reviews.

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Is there a limit on the number of words used especially on new articles created for blogs, I recommend don't limit your posts except to eliminate unnecessary words. This is important whether you write 100 words or 1000 words. Remove words or phrases that won't change the meaning of the sentence. Instead of "I didn't eat anything at all" you can say "I didn't eat anything,"

There is a problem where people think even posts with 500 words don't have quality. Theyre meaningless when you take other factors in. Steve Pavlina's blog has very long posts with some terrible titles ('motivation') but he's generating 10k/day+ - there are people with fully optimized sites that generate a few pennies a day at best. Like every other reply said: Focus on content or hire somebody that will.

What is the approximate keyword density I must maintain for each of my posts?
I've always heard 3- but I personally can't reach that without making the article almost unreadable and spammy. At least 1 is ok.

Are the keywords in my domain name hugely important? (Can't find any good domain names on my niche)
Technically it has a big impact on your rank but is it important? probably not as much as a brandable/easy to type and remember domain.

Do you think I must post less attractive topic at first and then after building some readership go on to write some solid articles?

Write 10 articles and proofread them, but don't publish. Then just have 1 publish everyday.
Most of the articles I plan to write are already covered by websites like entrepreneur.com and related. So do I stand a chance for ranking for them?

It depends how much time, money and effort you're willing to invest... most people would say 'never' but it's feasible.

Do you think I have a chance of success, now that there are already many, many, many established business news websites?

I think your chance of success is slim just because you're focusing on SEO instead of content. The many successful blogs right now began with a bored dude writing about his hobbies. You also have no leverage (or do you?), i.e., other sites/communities you own or are a part of.

If you want to win start writing than debating here I am sure you will have good success,

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Guardian a leading news paper in UK is planning to bring its contents open source due to the vast capabilities of internet.

The Guardian today launched Open Platform, a service that will allow partners to reuse guardian.co.uk content and data for free and weave it "into the fabric of the internet".

Open Platform launched with two separate content-sharing services, which will allow users to build their own applications in return for carrying Guardian advertising.

A content application programming interface (API) will smooth the way for web developers to build applications and services using Guardian content, while a Data Store will contain datasets curated by Guardian editors and open for others to use.

Emily Bell, the Guardian News & Media director of digital content, described Open Platform as a "new chapter in our history and a new foundation for the future of our journalism".

She said that Open Platform would allow Guardian content "to be woven into the fabric of the internet" as people outside the organization saw the value of adding Guardian content to their projects.

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“Was your mother a lawbreaker when she read you The Little Prince or Green Eggs and Ham?

That's the question raised Tuesday by the Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers. Paul Aitken, the group's executive director objects to the text-to-speech feature on Amazon's Kindle 2 digital-book reader. Aitken told The Wall Street Journal: "They don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

Wow. If a computer can't lawfully read a book out loud, do human beings have the right? Amazon and Aitken could not be reached for comment.

Well, mothers of America, never fear. You most certainly do have the right to privately perform copyright work, says Ben Sheffner, a copyright attorney. Sheffner, a well-known copyright advocate, says the issue of whether Amazon's Kindle infringes on intellectual property is not as cut and dry.

Amazon's technology enables a computer voice to read text aloud to owners of the Kindle 2, the next-gen version of reader.

Sheffner said it's unclear whether the text-to-speech feature could be considered a public performance. Under copyright law, if someone profits from, say, a public reading of a copyright work without authorization, they are breaking the law. Someone could argue, said Sheffner, that the Kindle's speech feature is a public performance because it enables scores of people to receive audio of a book. Sheffner added that the counter argument would be that the feature is only enabling lots of different private--and therefore legal--performances.

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School, said he doesn't see how the speech feature violates copyright law if no recorded copy of the book is created. Book publishers often license audio books separately than the text versions.

"The only right really that might be implicated is the so-called public performance," Zittrain said. "But what I want the thing to do is to read to me in the car. I don't see a copy being made so I don't see how this can be Amazon's problem."

The debate could be academic. If the book publishers don't like the feature, they can refuse to renew their licenses with Amazon in the future. And my colleague Ina Fried raised another point. Why would Kindle owners choose a computer voice when they can hear a recording of the author or a professional actor reading the book?”

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Writing online copies is not always easy. Also its difficult to find references for contents. When you find references most of them are copyrighted. So how do we find copyright free contents.

1. All contents on government sites copyright free so you can use them , rewrite , distribute them without any problems. Freedom of information act gives all users rights to use copyrighted information without any offence.

2. Find sites / blogs that offer creative commons license, creative commons gives you rights to use the content / modify / distribute with proper attribution.

3. Getting information from old book and brochures is an effective way. I'd suggest reading up on copyright law, finding some obscure texts that appear to be well beyond their copyright expiration date, and scanning them. Realistically, old tourist brochures and the like are unlikely to result in someone chasing after you. Be careful, of course, and do a bit of online research to be sure that an old book hasn't been reissued with an updated copyright. By evaluating the materials you find, you can assess the probability of a copyright issue down the road. You could probably find a very inexpensive student to scan, OCR, and proof for you. I'd also choose texts with clear, easily scan able text that are unlikely to cause OCR errors. If you buy some cheap old books, you could even cut the pages out for sheet-fed scanning.

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I am sure writing offline is completely different from writing for internet. For internet we need to consider both users as well as the search engine crawlers. Writing for search engines need to be a bit aggressive we need to make sure relevant keywords and phrases are included in our copy. Users don't look for keywords or phrases in contents they are just looking for quality information.

Compared to online readers' offline reader are much higher. So it's important to make sure our writing style for offline world is not changed. Personally I have found that my writing style in the offline word has changed somewhat. As the result of constantly thinking about succinct, keyword-driven content - as opposed to padding out articles when I used to write off-line in the 'old days' - I have to be constantly aware when I switch mediums. In many ways, writing offline has helped me to focus on sticking to the subject at hand. Now I am using more sub headings and sub titles even if I write for offline media. I got this habit mostly from writing for websites I feel this is a significant change.

There are areas I have improved writing for the web. When writing for web I need to be more aware of the keywords that need to be included in my copy, this help me to include relevant concepts when writing offline.

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People dealing with the web world often come across the statement, “Content is king”. A good content has immense important in the web world. People browse through Internet to extract information. And information on a site is the content it offers. The more useful and informative content a site has, the more popular the site will be. A website with keyword-rich content and concrete information can certainly drive targeted traffic. And the more the traffic in your site, the more is your publicity and sales.

Some of the secrets of quality content writing are:

1.Make sure that your website content is compact and understandable. Avoid writing superfluous content as it irritates the website visitors and drive them away from your site.
2.See that your content is original. Originality matters in web writing.
3.Browsers prefer glancing over an article rather than reading it thoroughly. So, it’s better to break up your content into heads and subheads, and summarize the basic content in through them.
4.Interactive language makes your content more interesting. It also helps you to reach your website audience more easily.
5.Proofreading is essential to make your website content flawless. It helps you to get rid of typo errors.

I hope that helps.

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A delicate question that needs a lot of thinking before one can answer it. I feel the speed depends on various factors. How long is a piece of string? What's the product, what's the price point, how competitive is the industry, how effective are the competitors at selling their product, what are the unique selling points of the product, are these reflected in the site, does the product have clearly defined and understandable features and benefits, is the benefit tangible, are the audience likely to be in the early or late stages of the buying cycle?

Writing for products is an other major challenge. Depends on how much information I have on the product. If I know the product by heart I could write a good sales letter in 15 minutes. If I don't know anything about the product at all, nothing of its use, purpose, USP, brand etc. I could not write it in two years.
If all of the stars were in alignment, and the wind blowing in the right direction and the tides out, it could be done in 30 minutes, if the stars aren't in alignment etc, it could take a weeks work to get the right text. I write copy all the time and the time it takes to complete really varies. Some days I am right on the mark and can crank out awesome sales copy in a couple of hours. Other days I have major writer's block and couldn't do it in 2 days.

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Writing a pitch letter is not easy being a copywriter I have tried various methods in copywriting to get the best pitch letter but I failed numerous times. But after a lot of failed attempts I was able to bring about a perfect solution for writing pitch letters

Before writing a pitch letter make sure you identify the problem people hire copywriters not just to write contents but to highlight the problems they have. So when you write a pitch letter start with the problem your client might want you to solve. Then as you proceed find a solution for the problem. The solution should come from you, you can come up with good solutions in writing when you are well aware of the industry and the copy you are writing for that industry. For different industry you need to have different ideas.

Once you get a solution you need to prove that you are trust worthy for the solution people want credibility they are not ready to listen to anyone and everyone. Also when you write a pitch letter make it look professional don't just write something like a resume you need to be formal obviously you are not applying for a job right?. Finally good pitch letters always have free stuff give away free stuff and I am sure you will get best benefit from you pitch letter. People are always obsessed of free stuff and I am sure free stuff always works.

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