Interesting words that makes you intelligent:

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.

Marissa Mayer testimony before the senate on the future of online journalism:

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.

How to get paid for your work / find work:

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.

Creating writing is an art:

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.

Men or Women who writes better:

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

Why did I choose copywriting?

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.

Reach the gaming world for copywriting:

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 😛

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!

Copywriting offers on bulk emails – we hate it

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.

Making money by suing people:

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.

Spicing up your copy:

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.