Website: http://anne-pottinger.com/

Specialty: Writing SEO oriented articles for web clients

Rates: 50 per 500 word article/blog post

Not just writing, but writing well is my passion. I write seo-optimized articles that drive search engine traffic to your site.

My specialty is providing freelance writing, web content writing, and article writing services that work.

Over the years I have learned an immense amount about research and I believe I have developed the resources and expertise to research all my writing projects thoroughly before committing any words to print.

Website: www.writesyntax.com

Specialty: Web content, blog posts, ebooks, ad copy, press releases

Rates: .20 cents – 1.00 per word based on type of project.

I offer a variety of web content services, ranging from ghostblogging, ghosting ebooks and articles, to drafting press releases and sales letters for clients.

Pricing can vary based on the type of project and the estimated time invested to complete it successfully.

Further examples of my writing can be seen on BigGirlBranding.com, including several guest posts I’ve written in the past. Please note the humorous and slightly irreverent tone of the content there does not always reflect the type of content provided to my clients.

I have a very versatile “voice” and am able to adapt style of writing to suit most needs.

Examples of ebooks written can be emailed upon request, as well as past sales letters and press releases.

Thanks so much for reading and I look forward to potentially working with you in the future!

Warm regards,
Cori Padgett

Name (Full Name or Company Name): Jennifer Mattern

Your Website: http://FreeOnlineCourses.info

Compensation: $10 per 75-100 word post ($.10+ per word depending on description length)

This blog serves as a directory of free online courses. I need someone familiar with WordPress who can add language learning course profiles to the site.

The process is this:

1. You’ll be granted access to the WordPress admin area where you can create new posts.

2. You can use previous posts as templates.

3. Just enter the course name, school / organization, subject matter area, and link the course.

4. Then add a brief description of what the course offers / teaches. That should be between 75 and 100 words, making the per-word rate for these posts $.10 per word (or slightly higher). While you can’t use course descriptions from the course sites word-for-word, you may model the descriptions after ones I’ve already written for courses from the same site or school if applicable. You are NOT expected to actually take and review the courses. These are just descriptions.

This is for one course description in your subject area per week. We’ll discuss the regular day of the week for your posts via email, and I’ll send you links to the first few courses you should add so you’ll get a better idea of what I’m looking for.

Email me at info@freeonlinecourses.info if you’re interested. I’ll be recruiting an additional blogger or two in the near future for other course subjects, so if languages aren’t your thing, keep and eye on this marketplace for leads on other sections of that blog.

NOTE: All payments will be made via Paypal in USD. Please don’t apply unless you can accept Paypal payments.

• Overflow Work Can Lead to Additional Hours
• 5 Freelance Faux Pas to Avoid
• Saying When
• Got a Place to Flee from Home Office Distractions?
• No Time to Blog? You Can’t Afford Not To
• SEO Love — What is SEO Copywriting Really About?
• 5 Ways to Start a Freelance Business Right Now
• Use it or Lose it! 5 Tips on How to Keep Your Blogging Regular
• Freelance Writing Business Tax Tips: 4 Things You Can do to Make Filing Your Taxes Easier
• My Short-Lived Experiment with Demand Studios

1. People already know what you said. One of the worst reasons you could delete a blog post is regretting your words after you publish. First of all, if you’re going to bother with regret, after publishing is too late. Think before you post. Once it’s out there in feed readers, email inboxes, etc., there’s no going back. People have seen what you’ve said anyway, and you do nothing but make yourself look like either a hypocrite or someone with something to hide. If you’ve changed your mind, edit the post and say so (strikethrough the previous information for example, but don’t hide things). If you realize you screwed up, then edit the post and own up to it. Apologize if it’s necessary, and just move on. It’s far more respectable.
2. Nothing on the Web is ever completely deleted. It doesn’t matter that you deleted the post from your blog. It’s still probably cached in search engines. It was probably in feed readers. It might be in the Internet Archive for all you know. It’s very likely in the email box of some subscribers (anyone can subscribe to your feed via email and have a permanent record of your post, whether or not you personally enable email subscriptions). Again, you just look like you have something to hide, and you never know when it could come back and bite you on the ass (all it takes is for one reader to call you out on it for a simple deletion to turn into major drama for you — not worth it).
3. Your blog posts show your progression. It’s okay to change your mind over time. We all learn new things and have new experiences that might influence our opinions on an issue. That doesn’t mean you should go back and delete old posts sharing old opinions because you’re afraid you look hypocritical. Instead take it as an opportunity to connect with your readers. Let them get to know you better by sharing your thought process. What made you change your mind? You’ll have more positive influence by justifying what you’re telling readers than by simply flip-flopping. Don’t understimate people’s memories. Just because you delete a post, it doesn’t mean your readers don’t remember the views you shared.

There are certainly exceptions to the rule. While I’ve very rarely deleted anything from my blogs, here are a few cases where I did, and why:

1. When I merged two writing blogs, there were some overlapping posts. They were literally copy / paste — things I’d cross-published (like a product launch announcement). So I would delete one while leaving the other. Basically I was just keeping one copy of a post rather than having two copies in the archives.
2. When SixFigureWriters.com (a group blog) became AllFreelanceWriting.com (a solo blog at the time), I removed posts from the other writers if they wanted me to. I wasn’t going to move on and profit from their posts, and some had their own writing blogs where they could put the content to use. Because it was a team effort for a jointly-run blog rather than my blog where I was hiring writers (like now), it came down to respecting author rights. That said, I don’t expect that I’d be a part of that kind of model again (not that it wasn’t a lot of fun at the time — it was).
3. There was one post on my PR blog that had to be removed because it attracted an insane amount of “undesirable” traffic. I don’t mean attracting people who disagreed with me or anything — I don’t mind that in the slightest. I mean the porn variety. For some reason links to this particular article were all over adult sites, I was getting tons of inappropriate comments to moderate, and plenty of spam to boot. It was at the point where the administrative time needed to manage issues with that one post exceeded administrative time for the rest of the blog as a whole. The post wasn’t important in any way — pretty generic for that blog as it was — so I opted to kill the piece rather than devote the time to something that was pretty much invisible to my actual readers anyway.

In most cases there are other ways to deal with things you wish you hadn’t posted. For example, if you reviewed a product positively and it was updated (and you think it’s awful), it’s okay to go back and edit your original review with a new opening or an end note saying this is an archived review of an older version and your feelings have changed. If you don’t want to do anything to promote a certain person anymore, go through your post and delete or nofollow their links instead of deleting the posts. If you simply have a “Whoops!” moment and you realize you were unintentionally offensive, just edit the post and add a quick apology and / or disclaimer to clarify what you meant.

What about you? Have you seen your favorite bloggers deleting posts? What crosses your mind when you see it happen? What would it take for you to be able to justify deleting your own posts from your blog? When does deleting blog posts cross a line?

1. Freelance Writers: 3 Tips for Taking Your Life Back
2. Top 10 Free Online Tools for Writers — As Chosen by YOU!
3. Demand Studios Health Insurance: An Objective Overview of FlexShield Benefits
4. Not Earning Enough as a Freelance Writer? You Have Only Yourself to Blame
5. 10 Costly Money Mistakes Freelancers Should Avoid
6. How to Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Freelance Writing Business
7. How Not to Hire Freelance Writers and Bloggers
8. How to Build a Web Writing Portfolio Even if You Have no Experience
9. A Real Look at Residual Income
10. Proving Your Value to Prospective Writing Clients
11. Exposing Some Myths About Blogging Pay Rates
12. Getting Started in Magazine Writing with Linda Formichelli
13. How to Lose a $7000 Freelance Writing Gig Without Even Trying
14. Freelance Writers: Why is “Work Smarter” so Difficult to Understand?
15. To Spend or Not to Spend: That’s a Damn Good Question
16. Two Free Word Count Trackers for Writers
17. Making it as a Freelance Mom
18. The Freelancer’s Quick Guide to Accounting and Bookkeeping
19. How to Get Freelance Writing Referrals Even if You’re New
20. 3 Ways to Find Those Elusive Unadvertised Freelance Writing Jobs

All Freelance Writing will be bringing you lots of new features, products, tools, and freebies in the New Year. I hope to see you then!

• Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants
• Why I’m Tired of Hearing About Sexism in Social Media (and Freelancing) (my response to the previous post)
• How to Avoid Getting Burned by Online “Freelance Writer” Scams
• On Being the Freelancer Your Clients Call in an Emergency
• Job-Bidding AmbASSador
• Should Writers Blog for Free?
• Why Your Writing Business Can Become Stagnant — and Solutions
• 7 Tips for Dealing with Distractions
• Freelance Writing can be Lonely
• The Experience of a Job Gone Wrong
• Copywriting and the Power of Attraction
• A Freelance Fairytale
• How to Make $30,000 a Year Blogging

I’ve been combing through posts for the last few days compiling this list, which is broken down into the following categories:

• Before You Become a Writer
• The Art of Writing
• Finding / Getting Writing Jobs
• Business, Management, & Finances
• Marketing / Promotion
• Portfolios
• Writing for Magazines
• Copywriting / Business Writing
• Web Content Writing
• Blogging
• Other Types of Writing (such as medical writing, technical writing, essay writing, etc.)

While many of the articles are tailored to freelance writers, that site actually is dedicated to both freelancers and full-time writers, so no matter what type of writer you are, I hope you find something useful there.

Update Old Content – Look at your website or blog statistics, and see what some of your most popular (most visited) articles or posts are. Are any of them outdated? Could you post something new on the same subject to take advantage of the popularity? You probably can.

For example, if you’re a U.S. blogger, you may have posted about how the 2008 presidential election results could effect your industry. Have any of your predictions come true? Were you, surprisingly, proven wrong about something? If so, blog about it.

Here’s another example – let’s say you’re a webmaster in the “make money online” niche. One month, you post your earnings from a specific ad network as an example to readers, and the post is wildly popular. You could turn that into a monthly series.

Look at Similar Sites – Other sites in your niche are great resources when you need to come up with article or blog post ideas. First, look through their categories or sections. Are there entire subject areas that would fit into your site that you’re currently neglecting? If so, add it. Then look at specific articles (especially if the site highlights their most popular articles).

Do not, under any circumstances, simply take the ideas or content in those articles and re-write them into your own article. Depending on where you live, that would be considered a derivative work, and be copyright infringement. Instead, take one of these routes instead:

1. Write a post of your own responding to theirs. Link to it early on in your post. If they took a stance on an issue, you may want to explore another side of it.
2. Use that article as just the first step in the research process. Look to several other sources for more information, and write your own article or blog post on the subject matter (and keep it ethical by citing your sources if you do this).

Use Keyword Suggestion Tools – Keyword suggestion tools, like the Adwords Sandbox, can give you lists of article ideas based on keywords and what people are searching for (if they’re searching for it, they want to know more about it, so it’s a good idea to write articles on those topics).

To use the tool, enter keyword phrases related to your site. For example, if you write a blog about knitting, you could just type in knitting and have it find suggestions for you. You would get a list of related keyword phrases, as well as how often those phrases are searched for and how much advertiser competition there is for each keyword phrase.

If you typed “knitting” into the Adwords Sandbox tool, for example, you would see results including:

1. “How to knit” – An average of 110,000 searches per month with very high advertiser competition
2. “Loom knitting” – An average of 22,200 searches per month and average advertiser competition
3. “History of knitting” – An average of 2400 searches per month and high advertiser competition

While these tools can be used to choose actual niches for a site or blog, they’re also effective for choosing specific articles. Here, for example, you may decide to do an article on the history of knitting, or a how-to tutorial series for beginners to knitting. (Keep in mind though that to take advantage of high search numbers, you have to rank very well in search engines, and it’s very difficult to do that for general keyword phrases – meaning longer phrases with fewer searches may actually bring you more readers over time.)

A few other article-specific ideas you’ll find in those results for the knitting niche include: “How to Knit a Beanie,” “Sock Knitting Patterns,” and “How to Knit a Blanket.”

Never assume you have nothing left to write about. Take a fresh look and see what you’re missing, what could be improved, and most importantly what your audience actually wants to read, and you’ll always be able to find new ideas.

Books

Sure. Most bloggers won’t ever convert their blog content into a published book, but it is a possibility if you feel inclined to pursue it.

You can go several routes here. For example, you might decide to self-publish a book by combining your best blog posts. Another option would be to pitch publishers on a book closely tied to your blog content, but not using your existing posts (or editing them a good bit first).

Columns

You’re already used to writing regular resources within your niche. Why not pitch a column to your area’s newspaper or even a larger website? You may be able to get a paper to purchase print rights to existing content you’ve written, or you may decide to offer completely fresh content (especially with larger publications).

E-books

If you can turn your blog content into a book, you can also turn it into an e-book. E-books are a great way to pull together your best content, edit it to improve the flow, and then market your blog or earn a bit of income. This can be especially useful for assembling beginner-level content (for example, if you run a blog on freelance writing, you might pull content directed at beginning writers, without including posts targeting more experienced writers – a sort of “how to get started” guide).

Reprints

There are plenty of websites, e-zines, and other outlets who would be interested in re-publishing your existing content. You can use it for promotional purposes by offering it for free (with a link to your blog), or you can sell reprint rights.

Have you done any of these things to get more mileage out of your blog posts? How else can you get more from your blog?