E-zine Articles

There’s a new thing in Ezinearticles right now. They have a new template for sending articles on their site. I’ve been using the old method and have yet to try the new one. What fascinates me about E-zine is its power to make wonders with your seach engine rankings. In the same way, it also does wonders with branding your company or service. 

I wrote for somebody whom I didn’t know is an expert for the product he is promoting. I have no right to complain but I really wasn’t comfortable about the topic he gave. I’ve never used a moisturizer in my whole life and it took me a bottle of night cream to understand how it can do wonders to my skin.

However, I pushed harder because my client for no reason seemed to be supportive of me. I found out some techniques on how to succeed in this site. One is to make your topic sound like you’re about to give very valuable tips that have something to do with your product or service. Example: The Best Moisturizing Effects from a Dead Sea Mineral Facial Skin Cleanser. It’s also important that you put two links on the resource box. One link can be a link to your web site while the other one can be to your blog.

And oh one thing more. Don’t ever ever spam.

Elance.Com and Others

I read a post in one of the freelance writing blogs I usually follow. The author discussed about the usual experiences one can get out of freelance sites. The blog post can be read below.

This reminds me of my first time in GetaFreelancer.com. I tried to bid just for a couple times, trying to find a good catch from a dozen employers. I realized there’s no room for me to elbow in. A lot of people are bidding and most of them have three stars to five stars for reviews. Then it hit me. I don’t want to be rated this way. What if my employer just happens to be a perfectionist, one who doesn’t stop his daily dose of nitpicks? Would I even care for the stars? Of course not, I love myself too much that I won’t allow it to mess up my peace of mind.

The author/writer of the said post had another decision. She opted to choose carefully. Good for her cause she really intends to look for a client in that site. As for me, I would seek for better alternatives. I lost count of the number of projects that I bid on and didn’t win. In fact, I didn’t pursue that long for me to have my first win.

That’s fine with me but just for the heck of it, please do read this post:

Elance Lessons: Bidding Selectively

I talked recently about the gamble I took on bidding on freelance writing jobs on Elance. I’ve only been using the site for three months but it seems that I’m a bit of gambler that way because I’ve not just rolled the dice but I just had to also learn about folding ‘em and knowing when to walk away. I’ve learned some things this month that will change the way I bid on Elance in the future.

A few times in my writing career so far, I’ve had to walk away from clients because of various reasons such as not being suitable for their project, personality conflicts, finding their demands unrealistic, payment problems, and finding the pay to be unworthy of the effort required. I don’t take ending relationships lightly but I am trying to remember that as a self-employed individual I get the benefit of deciding what I want to work on and of deciding who I want to work with. With Elance, this can get tricky. Why? The feedback mechanism. Once you accept a job, the buyer can have a big impact on your reputation so my new advice to myself is to be sure I really want to do the job before bidding.

Elance Feedback Scores

Part of the big appeal to buyers on Elance is the ability to get detailed history about providers. They can see how many projects you’ve worked on, what categories those projects are in, how much it costs the buyer to do business with you and they can see what others thought of your work. So, this means that as a provider on this job bidding site, you want stellar reviews from clients. I’ve already taken a few lower paying jobs that would help me build a positive reputation on the site but because my stats are still low due to being new to the site, one bad review could ruin all my hard work. I’ve seen a writer friend of mine have stellar reviews with five stars and a single bad review from a difficult buyer has made her score plummet.

Due to recent events, I’ve learned that if I want to use this freelance job bidding site, I have to be very choosy about providers I deal with, otherwise a bad review could ruin my ability to make money. I’m currently crossing my fingers that a buyer I’ve just dealt with won’t hit 2 stars out of five because I’ve had to bow out of a project.

Bowing Out Of Elance Projects

This week I’ve come to the realisation that a project I’ve been working on is just not profitable and no longer enjoyable. I expected about 3-4 hours of work so priced it out accordingly. The project subject looked like an enjoyable one and one a topic I have a lot of experience in. The description made it appear like it would be easy money and good for my portfolio. I made two mistakes, though.

1. I didn’t take into account the fact that the buyer was new and probably not real familiar with Elance policies. As a provider, I now realise that I should look for history with a buyer before I accept a project. Other providers can leave feedback too!
2. I didn’t notice at first that the buyer, who invited me to bid on their project, didn’t specify the project as escrow. That meant I was taking a financial risk by doing the project and would have to just hope they’d pay me.

Reading Reviews of Buyers

So, as much as I know how valuable reviews of my services are, I’m now going to seriously consider the feedback scores and history of the buyers I deal with before bidding and accepting a job.

• Do they have feedback scores that are positive?
• What kind of feedback have they left for other providers they’ve dealt with?
• And, does the project have an Escrow symbol?

Here’s what happened to me recently, prompting this blog post:
Almost a month after a particular job, a project was still on my to-do list. The buyer didn’t seem satisfied and has requested multiple rewrites. I understand the client has a vision for the finished product and it’s a ghostwriting project so they should feel my writing style fits their voice but for some reason we’ve had trouble effectively communicating. This isn’t something that typically happens to me with clients but I need to realise that not everyone is suited to work together and not everyone will love my writing style the first time I try to turn their vision into a written product.

This buyer isn’t very quick to respond so this was dragging out well beyond the anticipated project scope and creating scheduling difficulties for me. So, because it didn’t look like it’d end any time soon or end well so I finally decided to cut my losses and discount the project rate so I can bow out and move on. Hopefully my efforts will make this just ‘go away’ and hopefully the buyer chooses to ignore the feedback feature on the site. I did remark in my updated terms that we would choose to NOT leave negative feedback for one another. If they do, I’ll be sure to defend myself in the hopes it doesn’t hurt my ability to attract future buyers. I feel comfortable that I have made more than reasonable efforts to deliver what my bid was for but at this point if I have no desire to read over and revise my words again. I’ve definitely lost money and sadly, I’ve lost passion for the project. Passion is an essential ingredient for great writing ( in my humble opinion).

Things can go wrong even if you do your due diligence and investigate up front but I now know that I’ll be a little more careful in future and hope that translates into a positive experience with this bidding site.

Instead of just feeling bad that I had a difficult experience and lost money, instead I’ll take my own advice and learn from the experience. As I always say, “If you can’t earn from it, make sure you learn from it.”

Source: http://danaprince.blogspot.com/

The Power of Great Content on Social Media Marketing

When you write a product review for a client’s affiliate site, you need to do away with the soft sell part. Instead you focus on the benefits. You have to appear credible to these affiliates and it’s important that they approve of what you write.

When we say, social media marketing, it’s a different story. Remember that the focus of marketers for using social media tools is primarily on branding. Sure, it may take a long time to happen but once its effects take on, you’ll realize how it’s worth the effort. Why should social media be part of your marketing mix of methods. One it’s because it’s a trend that has great significance to creating an image for your company. In the same way, you have to produce content that fits the scenario created by social media marketing tools.

Blogging and video marketing still demands write-ups to back them up. When you produce a product video and post it in YouTube, it will entail two things, for you to market the video and market the product that’s on the video. In this case, submitting articles to ezine and other article directory sites will do the job of informing your targeted audience about your product and showing them your video through a link on the resource box.

I’ve been told by a former boss that there’ll be a time when articles and writing will be wiped out in the world of Internet marketing because of the domination of article spinners. I’d like to get back to that dumb ass boss that by the word “spinning” it means somebody has to come up with original articles to spin. 

A marketer can’t do anythign without copy, no matter how many syndicated contents will he be getting from all the article sites. He’s limp without doing copy. Tha’s the same thing with social media marketing.

You can’t do blogs, even hub pages and squiddoo lenses without the right copy for so long. Have you ever heard of a web site that prospered without any great content provider?