One of the most difficult tasks for the person who is in need of the services of a high quality author is determining just who can do the work. Being capable is one thing, being available to do the work is another thing.
There are several things that you, the hiring party, can do to ensure that you find a capable and available author:
1. Does the author have experience? Importantly, is he or she able to write on the proposed topic? A good author will have samples of his or her work readily available for your perusal. Do not assume that all of the author's work is posted online; sometimes "we" authors hold our best work back from the public due to fears of piracy or because of third party confidentiality.
2. If the author is to cover a topic outside of their areas of expertise are you willing to pay extra for the research the author may need to do in order to accomplish the task?
3. Is the author available to work on your project now or is he or she presently busy with other assignments? How tight is your deadline? Can you work with the author's schedule or is your schedule not flexible? Would you consider using the same author at a future date for a different project if no agreement can be made to do the current project?
4. Does the author have references? Can you get a person's name and phone number and contact them about their work?
5. How much does the author expect to be paid? Does the author list on his or her website a pricing structure? Can you get an ironclad estimate? What payment methods are expected?
6. Is the author writing as a ghostwriter or do you want the author to use his or her name and submit the articles to article directories for links back to your site?
As an author, before I accept any assignment I prefer to discuss over the telephone details of what the hiring party wants, what I can do for this person, and attempt to get a better feel for the job. I do not hard sell my work; if someone is interested in my capabilities then we move forward. If not, we both move on.
Many people feel uncertain when dealing with copywriters. Like any artform, writing is subjective; instead of black and white, most business owners and marketing managers see indistinguishable shades of grey. But copywriting possesses one key element that most other forms of art don't – a commercial imperative.
Because the copywriter's audience is driven by the realities of the business market, so too is the copywriter. Although the good ones love to write, they don't necessarily love to write about toilet paper and real-estate. Copywriters – in particular website copywriters – write because it's their job. And like any job, copywriting has very defined objectives and parameters which determine how the copywriter works, and the kind of material they produce.
So, if you need black and white, this is where you'll find it.
There are two primary commercial realities for a website copywriter. Understand these realities, and you'll understand the writer. Ignore them, and your job will take longer, be more frustrating, be less engaging, and earn you less money.
REALITY 1 – READER-FRIENDLY AND SEARCH-ENGINE-FRIENDLY
A website copywriter needs to adhere to certain guidelines to ensure your website is both reader-friendly and search-engine-friendly. This is black and white.
Because most websites rely on search engines for their traffic, your website copywriter has to write for two broad audiences: human and computer. This introduces a number of complexities because, quite often, these audiences want different things.
For instance, with humans, less is generally more. But with computers, more is more. Humans need to understand, so the fewer words the better. Search engines, on the other hand, are programmed to think that anything important enough to be ranked highly has to have a lot of words. A website copywriter must balance these conflicting requirements. Your copywriter will work faster and more efficiently if you don't demand too few words or too many.
TIP: If your site needs both humans and search engines, try not to set your heart on less than 100 words per page or more than 300 words. Generally speaking, somewhere in the middle is a nice compromise for both audiences.
And it's not just the number of words used that's important. Humans tend not to like repeated words, whereas search engines do. Humans will understand from your heading what it is you do, and if it's relevant. Mention it once, and they'll generally remember. Search engines are not so smart. They need to be told again and again. This is how they figure out how relevant your site is.
TIP: Don't ask your website copywriter to be a minimalist. The search engines won't like it. By the same token, don't ask them to simply jam every page full of hundreds of your primary keyword phrases, because your human readers won't like that (in fact, neither will the search engines). The trick is to expect each page to repeat one or two primary keyword phrases 5-10 times.
TIP: Remember, balancing human and computer requirements is time consuming. Try to have a clear understanding of the objective of each page before your writer starts. You'll get a much better product with fewer time consuming iterations.
REALITY 2 – BENEFITS, AUDIENCES, PRODUCTS, SERVICES, FEATURES
A website copywriter deals in benefits, audiences, products, services, and features. This is black and white.
These things may be painfully obvious to you, but they won't be to your copywriter. And although a good copywriter will be able to draw them out of you, they won't be able to accurately and comprehensively identify them alone.
TIP: Before you engage a website copywriter, make a list of what you do, who you do it for, and what benefits it gives them. Your job will cost more if your brief consists of one line, "I want to increase sales!"
When it comes down to it, a good website is written around benefits. Customers are only interested in how you can benefit them. This means benefits are the website copywriter's inspiration. By the end of the project, you'll be sick and tired of hearing your copywriter ask, "But what are the benefits of that to your customer?" You'll definitely thank them for asking though.
TIP: Don't confuse features with benefits. A feature is what you do or how you do it. A benefit is what advantage that brings to the customer. Your list should make a clear distinction between the two. This will save your copywriter a LOT of time, and save you a lot of money. Most importantly, it will MAKE you a lot of money because your website will engage your customer.
Website copywriting is an artform. But because it's an artform with a commercial foundation, it can be understood by anyone in business. And when you understand the commercial realities of the copywriter, the greys of the artform will begin to seem more like the familiar black and white of the nine-to-five. Then, and only then, will you be able to make the most of your website copywriter.
We've all heard it, the famous phrase, 'content is king'. Well if content is king then how the heck can we go about increasing the number of content we are able to utilize. I mean we've all been there, feverishly writing article after article to use for submissions and posting to our sites and the more we write the less enthusiastic we start to become about create a successful online business. So, how can we get around the one thing that all internet marketers hate doing?
PLR Content To The Rescue
If you haven't heard about PLR(private label rights) content then it's basically this – content that you can take and use as your own to submit to article directories, on your site, in an email series or any other method where content necessary.
In Search Of PLR Content
So where is it? Where can you go to find a whole bunch content to use as your own? Well, there are many services out there that offer quality content that members are free to use in which ever way they deem appropriate. Of course the option of taking content from the many article directories out there is possible, however there is one thing that limits this method and that is the fact you are required to add in the author box that comes attached to the article you are wanting to use.
This means their link will also have to appear on your page, intern sucking out Google Page Rank that would normally filter through to the other pages on your site. The other disadvantage is the fact that hundreds if not thousands of other marketers out there would be doing the exact same thing. Having the same page on your site as thousands of other people makes it incredibly hard to rank in the search engines. <
So What's The Other Option?
The other option would be to pay for your PLR content. There are many services that offer content to their members. This usually means you'll have to share the content with a limited amount of people. Only members will have access to the content, however there are some things you need to look out for.
Firstly how many people will have access to the same content as you? If the service you are looking at requires you to share their content with a thousand other members, then what's the point? You may as well go out and grab content from article directories.
Secondly work out how much you'll be paying per article. If a membership costs $100 and in that member ship you're going to have access to two hundred articles that would mean the cost per article is going to be $0.50. Therefore a membership that offered 400 articles would make the cost per article half of that.
First, if you are looking for a persuasive speech topic, you must know that the more controversial the speech topics, are the more response you will get from your audiences.
The topic sentence has to be short, declarative sentence that states the central idea of your speech. Your persuasion speech topics should zero in on one main idea rather than focusing on entirely different areas.
If you are looking for science related speech topics, there's plenty of those in the science forums. It is relatively easy to join forums. A visual presentation is sure to bring your informative speech topics to a whole new level of interest.
Choosing a persuasive speech topic for your presentation is not an easy task. Introduce the topic with a statement of fact and support that statement with the main points of your speech. Write a purpose statement by stating the goal and topic for a speech and specifying the method to be used in developing the speech. This means you will have to research your topic and work your sources into your speech and outline.
The more controversial your persuasive speech topic, the harder challenge your creating for yourself, and the more you'll learn. Interest the listeners in the topic, purpose, and issues of the speech. Developing a topic and identifying the purpose of a speech will aid in the organization and direction of the overall performance. You will get enthusiastic applause...perhaps even a standing ovation, every time you speak if you develop informative speech topics which are slightly controversial in nature!
If you should emphasize both the positive and negative characteristics of your topic in order to provide a well-balanced speech, you will definitely make your speech more interesting! So, the idea here is to first pick a topic and then list down the positive and negative characteristics of your topic. It will stimulate your mind in more ways than you can imagine, and could easily spawn dozens of speech topic ideas.
You can use this copywriting checklist when you are copywriting - or to evaluate copywriting. It is based on what works best from over 1,200 copywriting projects we have done since 1978. It will lead to significantly more response from your copywriting.
Before writing:
1. Study the company and the product/service being sold thoroughly so you have all the information you will need.
2. Research the prospects and the market to determine what benefits the prospect wants most, secondary benefits wanted, objections, and what would get him to buy now. Key: Don't guess; research.
3. Develop the main emotions you can touch with your copywriting for this project, and how you will do it. The strongest emotions are love, fear, greed, acceptance, survival, anger, and health.
4. Think like your prospect; and not like the marketer.
5. Develop the best offer(s) you can make to the prospect. Your offer includes pricing, terms, bonuses and guarantee.
At this point, you know the company and product, what the target prospect wants most, his objections, the main emotions you can touch, and you have developed a terrific offer.
Headline and start of copy:
6. Write at least 20 different headlines before choosing the best one.
Headline winners include a big, bold promise of the benefits the prospect wants most, specific figures, a guarantee, credibility enhancers, a special offer.
Legendary marketers John Caples and Claude Hopkins proved that one headline can pull 10 times the response as another headline … with no other changes in the copywriting
7. Start of copy should re-enforce the main benefit(s) of the headline, elaborate, and incorporate the secondary benefits the prospect wants most.
Body of copy:
8. Develop the prospect problem and pain points. Reinforce how these problems will remain or even get worse unless he takes action, and how your product/service is the best solution.
9. Copywriting should be first person, one-to-one, conversational.
10. List the prospects likely objections to buying, and overcome those objections.
11. Sincerely flatter the prospect if you can.
12. Get the prospect to mentally "picture and enjoy" the end-result benefits of buying.
13. Use testimonials, specifics, tests, clients, studies, success stories and memberships to add credibility and believability.
14. Be sure it is easy to read and "scan". Use sub headlines with prospect benefits, short sentences, short paragraphs.
15. If any copy is dull or boring, cut it or revise it.
16. If the flow gets slowed or stopped at any point in the copy, fix it.
17. Copywriting must be passionate, enthusiastic.
18. Create urgency to get a response now.
19. Tell the prospect what he will lose if he does not respond now.
20. Tell the prospect exactly what to do.
21. Close, Close, Close. Get action now.
We all need some confidence building from time to time. Part of feeling confident has a lot to do with how we feel about ourselves. Feeling like we can accomplish things we set out to do is important to feeling confident.
Remember that we all have talents and gifts. Whether we feel confident in these skills is very much part of thinking like a winner. Here is an easy way you can train yourself to think like a winner.
Make yourself a 'to do' list. Before you start complaining that you've tried that already in the past and it didn't work, let's go over the rules for this list. This is a list to make you feel like a winner.
It is your job to help yourself to feel as much like a winner as possible by making a list that is fun and easy to get done. I mean super easy. Ridiculously easy, even.
Here's a sample list:
1. Get out of bed.
2. Brush my teeth and comb my hair.
3. Get dressed.
4. Eat something.
5. Eat something else.
6. Walk to a car, bus or another room.
7. Smile.
8. Answer the phone. But only if it rings.
9. Put socks on...
Are you getting the idea? This isn't your average 'to do' list. This is a sort of self-conditioning list. Seeing all those check marks or seeing everything crossed off your list will make you feel like you've had a productive day. You'll gain confidence in your abilities to get things done.
If you practice this fun list making, you'll come to think of yourself as a winner. If you forget to write the list one morning, write a 'done' list at the end of the day. Just list 'got out of bed', etc. and mark them off.
As silly as this confidence building list making may seem, bear in mind that the subconscious doesn't care about what is real or imagined. All it will see is a list that has been checked off every day. Eventually, you'll notice yourself feeling more confident. You can then start adding real tasks to your list and doing them with the same 'feel good' attitude you had when you made your practice lists.
Don't add too many, to start. Camouflage the real items you want to accomplish with your stand-by easy ones. The reason you don't want to do a complete shift in list writing is that feeling good is an important element of confidence building.
Just look at someone you know to be confident. Are they down in the mouth or smiling? Allow yourself the joy of having fun with life. You'll feel like a winner!
