On Managing Projects and Issuing Invoices

Freelance writing requires commitment, discipline and a lot of hard work. To work more productively, writers can rely on a platform for efficient Freelance Project Management. It helps save time, energy, resources and most of all -- money! This platform is perfect for those who often work on collaborative projects and need input from several team workers.


Last October, I finally set up shop and decided to go full-time on freelance Web writing. I signed up for several revenue stream sites for writers and renewed contracts with a few publishers. I didn't have exact financial goals, but I knew I wanted to earn a decent amount of money from the Web. So I toiled and pecked on my keyboard for hours, writing short how-to articles and publishing them on several sites.

Finally, the money started to roll in sometime November. I realized that freelancers are like dentists - the more you drill (or fill), the more you bill. I have learned to manage my time well and push myself to write more every week.  Hopefully in the future I'll be able to collaborative projects that pay more.  Recently I discovered a system that can help writers with Freelance Project Management.  It's a handy platform that saves freelance writers a lot of time, energy and money. I could've used Mavenlink at the time I was working on a collaborative project for a software company.

Mavenlink is focused on helping businesses, freelancers and clients work together more efficiently on a project.  It makes the project process run smoothly by enabling everyone involved to collaborate using just one platform.  Mavenlink offers a lot of benefits for both clients and freelancers, thus its membership fee is definitely worth it and beneficial in the long run. What more, you also get 1% savings per transaction if you are subscribed to Mavenlink. Through this PayPal Discount, you can save $100 for every $10,000 billed.

3 Ways to Help People Remember What You've Written

by Barb Sawyers

With the constant onslaught of information, it's getting more difficult for people to remember everything they've read. That's why it's so important for writers to aid their recall. To do this, help readers deposit your information into their memory bank, add some strong glue and offer some cues to help them retrieve the information later.

Deposit into the memory bank

- Make sure your communication offers value and relevance. That's how the brain prioritizes memory deposits.
- Revise your writing until it's easy to understand, using your target readers' terms, not the jargon of your business or profession.
- Give people a context in which to remember. Tell them, for example, they will want to remember this information the next time they go to write an important email to a prospect.
- Focus on what's important and avoid the clutter.
- Organize your information, guiding your readers with numbers, bullet points, categories, acronyms, subheads or other devices.

- Use a strong visual to reinforce what you want readers to remember.
- Link what they already know to your new information.
- Create a catchy slogan.
- Persuade your readers to repeat your most important message out loud.
- State your main point in the introduction, then repeat it in the body and conclusion.
- Ask the readers to apply what they've learned by completing a practical exercise.
- Tell stories, anecdotes or jokes that play on emotions or connect different points.
- Rhyme. Who can forget: In August 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue?

Retrieval cues

- Follow up with communication that repeats the images and other cues you provided originally.
- Use emotional prompts. "I'm scared. Now what did Oprah tell me to do when that happens?"
- Or look to problem-solving cues. When people encounter the problem you can solve, they will dip into the memory and retrieve your solution.

Now repeat after me, loudly: "I will help my readers deposit information into their memory banks, add glue to keep it there and give them some retrieval cues to pull it out."

Or maybe you should just say, "Woo, glue and cue."

http://www.stickycommunication.ca
http://barbsawyers.wordpress.com

Barb Sawyers writes articles, newsletters, announcements, scripts and other communication that are read and remembered. With a masters in journalism and more than 25 years' experience, Barb has enabled many corporations, small businesses, government agencies and nonprofits to communicate more effectively.

She's working on an e-book called The First 25 Words.

A member of IABC/Toronto, Barb is past chair of the Alliance of Independent Practitioners, a large group of independent communicators.

Discount Coupons and Freebies for Writers

Don't we all love good deals and free stuff? I found some coupons and freebies that writers might like. All these are legit and do not come with hidden fees.

Enjoy!

NewspaperArchive.com
NewspaperARCHIVE.com, the largest historical newspaper database online, contains tens of millions of newspaper pages from 1759 to present. The archive is fully searchable by keyword and date, making it easy for customers to explore historical content



Coupon valid until 03/03/2010

Magazines.com
Over 1,500 magazine subscriptions at the lowest publisher-authorized prices online.



Coupon valid until 06/21/2009

McAfee, Inc.
Protect your computer from viruses and other threats with McAfee!



Coupon valid until 07/01/2009

Free MP3 songs
Shop for music stuff at Amazon.com and get free MP3 songs.

Top 4 Types of Information Or E-Books That Sell Best Online

by Gab L Chu

Why is information the best thing to sell online? Because information is the backbone of the internet. That's the power of the internet, where information can be available and updated with click of a mouse. Speed is a given, as you are only limited by the speed of your internet connection. People from all professions and locations log on to the web to search for various types of answers to their questions. Some of the popular ones include researching data for a school project, understanding how to increase productivity at work, searching for alternative cures to their illnesses, and reviews of products. These are lucrative needs that your information products or e-books can fulfill.

The top 4 types of information that sells best online are:

1) Timely information. This is especially true for technology related topics, such as the latest software, games and their walkthroughs, latest product reviews and how to market products online.

2) Scarce info is also very valuable. A lot of information can be obtained online for free, but not all required information is there. More in depth information or specific information usually requires paid products.

3) A lot of information are readily available FREE on the internet. However, if you can re-package all these materials, re-organize them into a comprehensive, easy to read report, people will pay you for your efforts and service.

4) Teach consumers how to solve a certain problem quickly and efficiently. The common how to's deal with how to feel better or look better, and with the given speed of the internet, people are naturally more impatient and wants quick solutions.

Selling information lowers the barrier of entry into internet trading and selling. If you are an expert in a particular niche, you can put up some information products of value and sell them to internet communities. The additional advantages are plenty, such as no need to have inventory space, and low cost of shipping for CDs, or even none if product is download-able. The whole internet marketing game takes time to master, so learn from those who have been there to shorten your learning time, and avoid painful mistakes.

Gab Chu has helped hundreds of Internet Marketers create wealth from their own online information product empire using strategies to better product creation, and traffic tactic, secrets and techniques. Get $19 worth of a F-R-E-E Report by visiting Trialed and Time-tested Informative Resources at http://loveformarketing.com/imsuccess

3 Easy Tips to Help You Break Into the Hot Niche of SEO Article Writing

by Angeline Plesek


SEO article writing is one of the hottest niches for freelance writers. There are companies that understand the importance of using good SEO content to drive traffic to their websites and they are always looking for decent SEO article writers. Even in the current economic downturn, you can get SEO writing jobs if you market yourself as an SEO content writer.

Companies that look for SEO article writers look for candidates that have writing samples to show, can meet deadlines, and understand the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) and its use of keywords in SEO articles to help drive web traffic.

Yes, it's true-some SEO writing gigs pay poverty-level wages and this can work for you if your primary motivation is to just build a portfolio of samples. Some of these jobs pay from $3 an article up to around $15 an article. But...if you want to write SEO articles to make a living-there are companies that will pay decent wages for well-written content.

Here are 3 tips to help you land a gig as a successful freelance SEO article writer:

1) Study and understand search engine optimization basics. I recommend reading Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This is a resource guide that was published for webmasters, but it can help copywriters understand the importance of keywords from an overall perspective- from the back-end of a web page, to the front-end SEO content.

2) Market yourself primarily as an SEO article writer. Don't focus on other types of writing. Companies prefer to hire writers that have some basic knowledge of search engine optimization.

3) Write some sample SEO articles for your portfolio. If you don't already have SEO writing samples, they are easy enough to write. Choose three to five topics that interest you and write articles that are anywhere from 300 to 500 words each using relative keywords. Make sure you understand SEO basics and do your keyword research first.

Once you've studied the SEO basics and collect some SEO writing samples, you're ready to get a gig in the hottest freelance writing niche!

Angeline Plesek is an SEO freelance copywriter and the publisher of The Copywriter's Vault, an online information resource for copywriters and Internet marketers. To visit go to: http://www.copywriters-vault.com