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

That is why you can have this blog. All you need to do is convince me that you have the stamina to keep it going.

What’s the benefit for you?

1. Attract Clients
2. Connect with the Writer Community
3. Build Passive Income

It does take work. When I started with this blog, I had a partner (Marshall) who did all the writing. After a great start and posts that excited our readers, he fell off the planet. So I kept things going as best I could. But without a freelance writer who lives and breathes this everyday, the authenticity is missing.

Your Profile

You might be an established freelance writer. If you are successfully bidding for jobs on bidding sites, all the better. (This was the main focus of Marshall’s writing and I have developed a tool that aggregates writing job offers from 446 different websites.)

If you are just starting out, it can be really useful to chronicle your experience, so that others can benefit from that.

What is important is persistence and patience. It would be ideal if you write 3-4 posts a week (that is not a condition on giving this blog away, it is just my experience in getting a blog buzzing). You can expect it to take a few months before the visitor stream is large enough to start monetizing.

What you Get

You get a site that has been up and running for 7 months. Google PageRank is 4, Alexa Rank is 669,481, Technorati Authority is 17. If these numbers do not mean anything to you, don’t worry.

The more important thing is that there are currently between 20 and 30 visitors on the site per day.

It is not that much in itself, but 70% of those visitors come from organic search engine traffic. By increasing the frequency and quality of posts, visitors will increase quickly.

You get 67 already written (and linked to) pages (most of them were written in the first 2 months).

If you do not know much about blogging and how to use that to promote yourself, I’ll show you how to get a course about it for free. And I’ll pass on a great ebook that taught me a lot about making the most of the Internet.

How much is it?

I can imagine two options:

1. You get the database of the blog posts, the customized theme and we transfer the domain name to you. You then need to set up Wordpress (free) on a host of your choice. (You will probably need a webmaster/programmer to help with that).
   If you decide to go that way, I do not want any money.
2. You use the existing installation of Wordpress on my host. I’ll just give you your username and password and you are off. If you decide on that, you need to pay the ongoing costs I have. ($10/year for the domain name, $100/year for the hosting) and you pay my webmaster directly for any updates or changes you want done.

Either way, I’ll continue to host the job aggregator for free and you can offer the job overview on the site as a service to your visitors.

Next steps

If you are interested or have any other questions, get in touch. Before we do the final transfer, I probably want you to write for a month, so that you know you enjoy it. You are absolutely free to write whatever you want, it just has to fit with the theme of furthering or building a freelance writing career. After the initial month, you can decide which of the two options is better for you and it is yours, no strings attached.

Why am I doing this?

I have learned that focus brings better results in life. This website does not fit into my vision and goals and distracts me from what I really want. At the same time I know that it is a great start for someone whose vision it fits. Also, I have put so much time and money into it, it would be sad to see this potential just be wasted.

I look forward to hearing from you.

They were 4 sessions lasting 5 hours each.

I don’t know how Mark kept up with it (probably something to  do with Simpleology!), but here’s what’s really cool:

Each and every minute of these calls was recorded!

Can you imagine? 20 hours of the man some call “the Tiger Woods of Internet entrepreneurialism” answering every question imaginable - and you get to be a fly on the wall!

To get access to all 20 hours of these recordings, all you have to do is purchase the “Simpleology Bestseller Blueprint.”

Funny, huh? These recordings are a bonus on top of something even more amazing.

Here’s the skinny, though: because of this new addition the price of the Blueprint is going up to $1,497 in a week, but you can get it at the old price now.

I highly recommend it - not only does it cover everything you’ll need to know on the road from “no book” to “#1 bestselling author of …”, but it also teaches you more about “launching” a product of any type than just about anything on the market.

This is a mission critical weapon on your business arsenal: Simpleology Bestseller Blueprint

The Truth

OK, this is me talking now. Everything before was the pre-written sales hype from Mark Joyner. I put it in, because he is a great marketer and it seems to work.

The truth is that I have not seen the Bestseller Blueprint, so I cannot say for sure whether it is that great. However, I have seen a lot of his other work and am absolutely wrapped. Once you are past the initial sales hype, Mark is a very smart and down to earth guy. He has the uncanny ability to simplify complex things.

So if you are planning to write a bestseller one day (or have already written it), I know that this is one of the best ways to get it happening. Sure, you still have to put in the work, but every step will be laid out for you.

And you know what, as with all his products, there is a 30 day money back guarantee. So if for any reason you do not like it, just ask for your money back and they will do it. Their customer support is amazingly fast and friendly.

That was my truth about the Simpleology Bestseller Blueprint

As you have surely noticed, Marshall has not been writing any more. I tried to fill in with useful information, but I know that it is just not the same as coming from someone who actually makes a living from freelance writing online.

Last week, a friend called and told me that she wanted to start making a living from writing. We had not seen in other in 6 months, so she did not know about this site. She is reading it at the moment and might actually start taking over and describe her experience of becoming a freelance writer.

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 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.

Get the First Rating

It will be much easier to gain further work, once you have received some ratings from clients. That is why it is not useful to worry too much about what you earn in your first few projects when you bid. Completing them and getting a rating (which are positive in most cases anyway) is far more important.

That is why our freelance writing job feed includes all bidding sites. Bid on every jobs that comes up, bid low so that you get some ratings.

Concentrate Your Ratings

Once you have a few ratings on one or two bidding sites, it might be best to concentrate on that one site (or maybe two). That way, you concentrate you ratings.

Many sites show the providers with more rating higher up in the results for the client.

Carve Out a Niche

Once you have completed a few projects, concentrate on specific topics. Why?

• Clients will trust your expertise when they see that you have done similar things before.
• You will be able to write a lot quicker with less research. That increases your hourly rate.

Marshall wrote a post that outlines why niching reduces your writing opportunities. However, there are two main approaches to making a living through writing: quantity and quality.

Think about who earns more money, the factory worker who produces widgets (quantity) or the highly specialized professor who researches atomic physics (quality).

Being a specialist will draw quality clients to you. Being a generalist makes you have to compete with low wage countries. That competition cannot be won.

Mark Joyner, Dr Joe Vitale and Frank Rumbauskas talk about how they achieved their bestseller status.

All of it is in preparation for the launch of a new training that Mark puts out, but I find that there is so much information in the pre-launch material that it is worth reading and listening to that just for that information alone. (And sometimes I can resist the temptation to buy at the end).

So if you want to listen to some of the best, register your seat for the Best-seller Prep School.

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.

1) Google Desktop

Google Desktop works very much like Google itself - except it does so on your computer. It searched (very fast) through all your documents, emails, websites that you have visited.

If you have ever used the Windows search function you know how slow that is. Google Desktop works at the speed you know from Google and it looks at all the text, not just names of files.

You can choose whether to show emails, web history or files (and what type of files). You can sort by date or relevance. And there is a thumbnail preview.

So if you ever need to search for something, Google Desktop is for you.

The concern: Google Desktop prepares an index of all your documents and files. Naturally they promise privacy, but I am not sure whether the index is kept on your computer or at Google’s servers.

2) Google Desktop Cache

It gets even better.

You know how you sometimes delete a file and then you notice that you still need it? Naturally the recycle bin is a good place to look, but if it is gone from there…

Google Desktop includes a caching function. That means that there are at least two versions of all your documents. The current one on your computer and the cached one (most probably on Google’s servers).

So even if your current document is deleted, Google Desktop will still find the cached version and you can access it. (This is also really useful, if you have deleted text out of a document and not saved it as a new version.) If you want the deleted text back, chances are you will find it in one of the Google Desktop Cached versions.

3) Cache on the Internet

That same tool also exists for Google on the Internet. But you might know that already. If I need to get the content of websites from even earlier, I use one of my favorite writing tools: The Wayback Machine

It takes snapshots of all the Internet sites at intervals. I think the frequency depends on how often the site changes.

Great tool for research.

4) Backup

As we are on the topic of old versions and backup: Do you backup? How often?

I always hated it. If I was really onto it, I would do it monthly, but usually I did not get to it until much later.

Now I use an online backup system. Each day, my new and changed files are uploaded and kept safe.

Just the feeling of doing the right thing is fantastic.

They have a free version for home users, the business version starts from $4.95.

The drawback: When you delete something from your computer, those files also get deleted in the backup system. But as I’ve shown you above, there are ways around that.

5) No More Spam

You know what, I am going to leave that for tomorrow.

So even though these are not direct writing tools, they are certainly helping me to make my life easier.

If you are after writing tools that help the style of your writing, you might want to check these 50 writing tools.