Here is the reason, I have been neglecting this blog: My true passion is sustainability and I want to foster solutions that actually pay to be green.

Solar Hot Water is one of these solutions. At least in Australia. Through extensive government support, a solar hot water system pays for itself in 5 years (on average). So over the lifetime of a system, buyers have up to an additional $12,000 available.

At the same time, 60,000kg of CO2 emissions are avoided.

Why do so few people go for it? The biggest block is the upfront cost. So we have put together a package where there is no upfront cost, instead the system is paid for out of the electricity savings.

We also streamlined the quoting process into a 5 minute online questionnaire, so that users do not pay for expensive salespeople, that are not really necessary.

Currently, we are serving the Sunshine Coast in Australia, but will expand soon.

For all details, see SolarPay.com.au

I have just listened to the teleseminar with Mark Joyner and Richard Webster that was the gift for entering the BeTheNextBestsellingauthor competition.

Two extremely successful people and so different. Mark has written a whole book in one day. Richard writes 2,000 words a day without fail. Over the last 20 years that has resulted in 95 books.

What is true for both though is absolute focus and commitment. No excuses, but following their plan to the letter.

The Hare Writer

So if you are a hare and love running off at the speed of light. There is nothing wrong with that (as long as your body can take it). You just need to stay committed until you are done. If you remember the story of the hare and the turtle you know that the hare went to have a sleep in the middle of the race. Do not succumb to that danger.

The Turtle Writer

It does not matter how little time you have, just keep plugging away each day. Set a goals, stay consistent and you will reach your vision. The danger here might be that you do not see progress quickly and give up. Richard said that he sees every chapter as an accomplishment that he celebrates.

What’s Needed to Win Each Way

The teleseminar was about speed writing. And the main lesson I learned was about preparation. There are different phases in the whole writing process.

1. Idea
2. Structure
3. Research
4. Writing
5. Editing

The advice was to separate the phases and not be distracted by anything while you actually write. It might be commonsense to you, but to me it was quite revealing. I would often agonize about a report for weeks, only to write it in a day.

I always thought that this was because I was a slow writer. Now I know it is because I mixed the different phases while attempting to write

I know that I plan and structure best when being away from my computer (ideally walking in the National Park). But I do not use it often enough. It feels more serious to sit in front of the computer, when in fact I could be more effective away from it to perform the other stages before the actual writing.

Being a Productive Writer

Having said that, the actual writing is what brings in the Dollars in the end. So that is why Richard has his goal of 2,000 words a day. He does not say: “I have to come up with ideas for 2 hours a day.” It is the actual output in words that is the goal.

I love blogs. Why? Because I feel like I am always on the edge of what is new and exciting.

I used to bookmark lots of websites. I have a whole stack of freelance writing links, but I never return to them. It is just too time consuming. And then you do not even know how to find the new things.

With blogs, it is so different, I just add them to my feed reader and get the latest news right to my desktop, in real time (or close to it).

The only negative is that it is very easy to add a feed and much more difficult to take a feed out. Not technically, but just knowing which ones to kick out. You tend to know the good ones that keep coming up with great content, but the boring ones stay under the radar and clutter the feed reader.

I have not used it yet, but Google Feed Reader (which I am using) has a star system. I guess I need to star great posts and at the end of each month, I’ll just delete the feeds from the reader that do not have any starred item.

You can check the freelance writing links that I have included in my feed reader.

What is one of the worst enemies of effective writing?

For me it is distraction and doing things that are not productive, such as wading through emails to get rid of the spam, or surfing the Internet without clear purpose.

The only strategy for the Internet I have to offer is to set a goal and a timeframe for any Internet research. It helps me sometimes…

However, with the Spam, I am using a tool called SpamArrest.

The statistics on the right show what Spam Arrest has achieved for me in the last 4.5 months. Over 80% spam!

Let’s just say that you need 3 seconds for each spam email to identify it as such and delete it.

That comes to a total of 15 hours that I have saved through this tool.

What does it do?

All emails are checked against a database to see whether you know the sender. If you do, you get the email.

Any sender that is not in your database, receives an email by Spam Arrest, requesting confirmation that they are a real human. Once they do that, any future emails are delivered instantly. The others never even reach you.

Another great feature is that you can set it up in such a way that when you send out an email, the person you send it to is automatically added to the database. That way, they do not have to authenticate themselves.

The Drawbacks

There are two:

It takes a bit of time to set up. You have to import your existing emails into the online tool, you have to change some of your email settings to integrate it all. Takes between 30 and 60 minutes all up. But once that is done, you are free from Spam.

If you are subscribed to any lists where you receive automated emails, you need to authenticate the sending email addresses manually. Usually the list owners will not receive replies to what they send out, so they will not authenticate themselves.

That takes a bit of checking in the beginning. You always have access to the last 7 days of spam messages. I went through them daily for a few weeks, just to make sure that nothing was in there that I wanted.

What to do

They have a free 30 day trial, but if you do not think this is for you, it is probably not worth spending the time to set it all up. If you do go ahead, here are the steps:

1. Sign up to the free trial
2. Write your personal message that will be sent out to request the authentication
3. Import your current addresses into the Spam Arrest database
4. Add any domains that you always want to receive emails from (e.g. facebook)
5. If you are using Outlook, at your new Spam Arrest email account
6. Change the smtp server for your existing email to smtp.spamarrest.com to allow automatic authentication for people you send emails to.

Optionally, you can customize the challenge page, but I think that costs extra.

In the beginning checking the spam messages takes a bit of time (but not more than it does currently), but then comes the day when this writing tool frees you of that.

One last point, they have an hourly limit of how many emails you can receive, but when you ask support, they can lift this limit. They have a great support team, really quick to help out.

Georganna at Writer’s Edge just posted some suggestions on how to overcome writers block. She got them from a film I have not seen yet, but it might be good to watch it.

View her post here:
www.writers-edge.info

It also got me thinking about something I use:
Do something else.

When I am stuck in one area of my work, I leave it be and do something else.

Now there is a negative side to this, sometimes the something else is not really productive (and then I feel bad and am even more blocked).

But when there are multiple projects where I can do some useful work, it is a great way to free any block.

And another realisation I had is that the time of day is absolutely essential. I am a morning person and I get far more done in the morning than any other time of day.

I know others who are night owls. I think it is best to follow the body and work whenever it is ready to function well.

Thanks for this stimulating post Georganna.

“Learn to write” might seem like kind of a superfluous section. After all, if you want to start a freelance writing career, then obviously you already know at least a bit about how to write. Still, all of us can use tips that can help us to learn to write in order to further our careers that much more.

Different writing styles are required for different writing markets, something that making a living writing for the Internet has demonstrated very clearly to me.

Writing for the Internet is not like writing for newspapers or magazines, and it is certainly not like the creative writing that most of us, as writers, hope that we will one day be able to earn money doing.

Tricks and Tips

There are different tricks and tips that need to be remembered whenever you attempt to get on your keyboard and create content that will be of interest to web surfers and therefore web developers, and the whole process can get even more involved when you throw in different web building strategies such as search engine optimization.

There are also the pitfalls such as writer’s block. I get stuck with it and appreciate any input on how you overcome writers block.

Helpful Information

In this section, we will look at different places where you can find helpful information when it comes to creating content that does well on the Internet. I am hoping that this site will become your main reference point. I have learned a lot about my own Internet writing style through the example of other writers, and I think that the broader your knowledge base and sources on this subject are, the better.

Online Creative Writing Courses

I think we will also use this section to dig up information about online creative writing courses. I have mentioned in other articles that a lot of writers seem to think that education in writing is somehow counter productive, but I strongly disagree.

There is a lot to be said for a continued desire to learn to write in a more effective manner, and there are plenty of materials out there to help you do so. In fact there are probably more online creative writing courses out there than there are practical web related ones, which is absolutely acceptable to me because I am more interested in the practical side of things.

Synthesis Through Ongoing Learning

Of course you might be gifted enough to create a synthesis between your creative writing abilities and the things you learn about writing for the Internet. In that case, you stand to gain an awful lot as long as you know where to look for opportunities and how to go about landing clients!

With this site, we are trying to fill the gap I have found in different online writing resources, namely how to go about making a living writing online.

The Internet offers thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of different ways for freelance writers to make money, most of them neglected by print materials and even online freelance writing resources.

How does online writing differ from writing offline?

One huge area where a lot of work can be found is in article writing for Internet sites. If you want to get a piece of this big pie, it’s important to understand how online writing differs from writing offline for newspapers and magazines.

In this section, we will deal with the technicalities of writing online. The tips in these pages will help you to evaluate where your writing skill is at in the context of the online market, and we can help you to hone your writing skill where it might lack the sharp edge you’ll need if you want to do well.

As you start your online writing business, you’ll find that website writing differs in almost every area from writing for a magazine or a newspaper. We will highlight the differences in areas from basic writing principles such as paragraph writing (yes, you will need to know how to write a paragraph all over again!) to more technically involved concepts, such as SEO copy writing and using keyword writing to create great website content.

Various ways to make money writing online

Freelance writing on the Internet means that you will have the opportunity to write a very wide range of materials you can make money with blog writing, earn it through website content writing or newsletter article writing, and in some cases you might even find that you can use your creative online writing skills to make a buck or two.

It’s all part of the vast arena of printed material that is on the Internet, and a good understanding of how to bring words together to make up what website developers are looking for will take you a long way, financially speaking.

Traps and Tips

Our plan in this section is twofold. First, as we mention above we want to take your through the basic foundation on which you can build your success, through tips such as how to write an article that developers, audiences, and search engines will love.

When you are engaged in website content writing, though, there are also traps that you need to avoid. We are going to cover some common mistakes in the articles on these pages, including bad SEO copy writing, bad keyword writing, and above all, the importance of avoiding plagiarism.

Lots of people assume that since it’s the Internet, it doesn’t really matter, but using bad practices can cost you a lot of money, particularly if the word gets out!

It is my goal that having read the online writing tips found in this section, you can apply them in your business and have a lot more success when it comes to landing jobs both on bidding sites and beyond. Remember that one of the keys to success is not being afraid to show what you know, so once you synthesize the information in these pages don’t be afraid to throw the terms around!

Many people have at one time or another considered writing for a living. Especially anyone who has received praise for their written work.

Unfortunately for most of us, writing for a living does not necessarily mean that we will get to be as creative or prosaic as we would like to be, and this is very clear once you start looking for jobs on the Internet. In this article, we will take a look at why it is important to differentiate your writing career from your writing hobby, and how to do so.

I will starve for my art!

This is the rally cry for many a writer; they refuse to compromise their work or “demean” themselves by agreeing to write pieces which fail to meet their standards of what writing should be. In other words, they are more the type to sit down and write a poem than a 500 word piece on Condominiums in Toronto.

The good news for those types of writers is that they can indeed expect to starve for their art. For every success story in the writing world who slaved away for years before getting noticed, there are a thousand who continue to starve because they were or are just too stubborn to treat a writing career as a business instead of a hobby.

Either that, or they were stuck at non-career jobs for most of their lives, receiving manuscript after manuscript back from publishers who just are not interested in their work.

If you want to make writing your career, you are going to have to work

For most of us, writing for a living means divorcing ourselves from what we would like to write and writing what other people want us to.

My big desire is to write about sports; I love sports and I can write very good biographies on athletes, summaries of games and events, even books on rules and regulations. The problem is the sports writing market is competitive and there are many writers with better connections than myself.

I could just say I am willing to serve at restaurants until that golden opportunity comes by, but having done so I know that it is much more preferable to focus on the writing part of my career and take jobs that I have a little less interest in.

That way I make money and hone my skills, and there is always the potential to have that dream job come floating in.

Get rid of the dreamy ideal

It’s fine to love your work and to want to be successful writing for a living, but you don’t have to overdo it. Many writers, whether in their profiles on bidding sites or on their own pages, will include phrases such as “writing is my life, and nothing is more important to me” in order to show how committed they are.

Unfortunately this approach just will not work for the practical writer.

The big reason is that this kind of statement really turns off potential employers. Again, you have to remember that this is business, not a hobby any longer. A web site developer who wants content written about the best diet plans does not care if you can use hundred dollar words and thousand dollar phrases in your article; she wants to see easy to read, informative content on her subject which Internet readers will grab on to.

In order to find jobs writing on the Internet and really anywhere else, it’s important to assume that editors and web developers are already aware that inside of every writer there are hundreds of stories waiting to come out. Leave that out of your pitch, and instead focus on what you will do for them.

They have practical jobs that they need filled and are willing to pay for, and they are looking for a practical writer to do them. Writing for a living is much different than writing as a hobby, and you will find that success will come once you develop a much more hard-nosed approach to the whole business.

by Karen Putz
(Chicago)

My first foray into a steady freelance job happened in the spring of 2007. I was casually browsing through the writing jobs listed at Craigslist. I responded to a job ad, sent in my resume and didn’t give it another thought.

A few days later, I signed a contract with a company that produces web content. I churn out several articles a month for this company.

I responded to more job ads on Craigslist and snagged another job, this time writing copy for a real estate company. That quickly fizzled as I handed in my first copy while running out the door to pick up a kid. I submitted copy with a mistake on it. Poof! The job was gone.

Then I received another freelance opportunity via email–a new website was forming and they liked my personal blog. Would I come and write for them? I said sure. The blogging job turned into another opportunity with bigger articles for the website. Bigger articles translated into bigger pay.

I’m still slowly trying my hand at other freelance opportunities, but I’m not at the point where I can consider this a full-time job just yet. The pay is not quite there.

I’m just happy that I have my foot in the freelancing door.

While I have gained the bulk of my freelance writing jobs through bidding, there are more avenues for writing projects out there, beyond just bidding sites. In fact, the whole purpose of this site is to help you to see the potential in that underused and under publicized marketplace.

If you are uncomfortable with the idea of bidding for jobs for whatever reason, then it’s useful to know about alternative freelance writing markets. In this section, we will take a look at other places where you can look for a freelance writing assignment; I break them down below to give you a brief overview of what other opportunities you can expect in the writers market.

Offline writing opportunities

The most well publicized, and therefore the most competitive, jobs in the freelance writing market are those in the print media. Trade magazines and newspapers are the places where most aspiring writers go to get their start, and this can be deadly competitive, and often the wages are not too great either! Still, there are a huge number of potential markets for your writing, and you do have the ability to apply for positions that cater to your strengths.

The person to get into contact with for these freelance writing jobs is the editor of the newspaper or magazine you want to write for. This is usually done by way of a query letter; we will go into those a bit more in a further article. The most important part of the process is patience; you will often hear nothing at all, and it might be some time before you can get your shot!

Becoming a web content writer

Wait a second; I bet you are thinking I said that we wouldn’t be talking about online writing jobs in this section, right? Well, not exactly. What we aren’t talking about is gaining a freelance job through a bidding site, but there are a lot more ways to get a job as a web content writer other than through winning a bid, and I have made some good money doing them.

The web content writer’s market is not yet so saturated that everyone who has developed a website can easily find a good writer. There are plenty of people out there who can’t write at all, and then there are those who prefer to cut and paste, who just disappear, and who can’t seem to keep a deadline.

For this reason, most web site developers are constantly watching for opportunities to hire web content writers in the freelance writing market, and in this section I will point out some ways you can get them to approach you without having to go through a bidding process.