We want to help you become familiar with writing for the Internet. Especially if you are serious about establishing a freelance writing career.

There probably is no better opportunity for freelance writers in the world than the Internet. In fact there are those who suggest that e-newspapers and e-zines will someday, perhaps very soon, replace printed materials.

That may be so, but the Internet still has a long way to go before it reaches what can truly be called a professional calibre of writing.

The more writers are interested in truly bringing value to the information that can be found on the Internet the better. That means that my focus is on those writing for the Internet with commitment and skill. I want to make sure they know how to apply it.

Right now a quick look around the Internet will demonstrate that there are a lot (and I do mean a LOT) of snake oil salesmen. In fact I think the Internet is the true Final Frontier; people can create a whole new reputation and then use that to manipulate others to their advantage in all areas, and that includes writing.

Many sites out there claim the ability to help you start a freelance writing career, but how many actually succeed? Most of the sites I have been to are really no more than arenas for aspiring writers to posture and judge; as far as practical information that leads to cash in your hand, they are pretty much useless.

With that in mind, I have made a list of some things to look for when it comes to a site that claims to help one write for the Internet.

1. Are there facts and figures?
   The problem with the Internet is that anyone can claim to be someone they are not, and it can be pretty hard to tell if a site’s claims are legitimate or not.
   One thing I look for in a site that claims to have first-hand knowledge about making a living writing are facts and figures. What kind of money does the developer make a month? Where does he or she find jobs? Writers are an elusive bunch, and that isn’t just online; there are plenty of books out there that claim to be great writing resources, but just don’t offer any solid information.
2. Are there obvious mistakes?
   One website I really enjoy is www.stevepavlina.com. He is straightforward and I have referred people to him a couple of times on this website.
   I do take what he says with a grain of salt though, and here’s why: in an article on blogging for money, he claims to make $1000 a day off of his website. He then goes on to say that he only ever does the website as a part time job; in other words, he still retains a job outside of the Internet. Now it could be that Steve loves his land job so much that he does it for the fun, but I do tend to question anyone who makes $30,000 a month but still works another job. Crazy or embellishing, take your pick.
3. Grammar and spelling.
   Every writer knows that there are going to be some mistakes when it comes to grammar and spelling in any piece, no matter how hard you check. All of us have tunnel vision when it comes to our own work, so a few mistakes here and there shouldn’t turn you off totally when it comes to a site.
   If there are constant mistakes throughout all the pages on the site, though, ones that go way beyond simple typos, the odds are pretty good that the site is not a very good resource when it comes to writing for the Internet.

Those are just a few of the things I recommend looking at when you find a potential resource about writing for the Internet. Even on sites where you find some of the flaws I listed above, you will probably be able to glean some useful bits of information. Just make sure to be careful about taking everything they say as Gospel truth!

At the very foundation of an Internet writing business lies an understanding of keyword writing. It is one of the very first terms that I ever came across in relation to writing for the Internet; in fact I heard the word keyword long before I had heard of SEO.

Of course, just because I heard something doesn’t mean that I understood it. I did understand that it was important and that obviously these were words that were to be used in the articles I was to write, but beyond that I didn’t really have a clue as to what keyword writing was. Thanks to a couple years in the business and with the help of resource materials such as my trusty SEO for Dummies book and websites such as www.selfseo.com, I have come a long way in my understanding of keyword writing and how to go about using it effectively. While those references I mentioned will prove helpful, like many of the resources I have consulted while growing my business I found them lacking in some areas, areas that I ended up filling in myself.

Besides the obvious, what are keywords?

If you have ever gone to a search engine to look for information, you will have typed a phrase or a keyword into the query box and then received a couple thousand pages which contain those keywords. Those results are the pages that are indexed by the search engines as being relevant to the keyword or phrase. They are ranked according to secret algorithms that try to show the most relevant and useful sites first.

Here’s a pretty relevant example. Let’s say you want to make money writing online, or you are interested in starting a freelance writing career. Well, you will probably type those exact phrases into the query section of a search engine (or just click the links), and hopefully this site will appear somewhere within the top results. The reason is, my partner Alexander Kohl has carefully researched several dozen keywords that people use most often when it comes to freelance writing, and has told me I have to use them if we want to get visitors.

In fact, if you look closely at the articles on this site, you will probably notice an awful lot of keyword writing taking place. Placing the right key words or phrases within pages is very important for attracting traffic.

The trick with keywords

One of the temptations with keywords is to overuse them within an article in order to get a high ranking. This trick has been tried before, and in various forms, and it appears as though search engines have caught on. Keyword stuffing is considered black hat SEO technique, and placing keywords all over a site may even result that site being banned from the search engine index.

Of course, every time word of something like that gets out, there tends to be an overreaction. When I first started writing for a living on the Internet, many clients were calling for keyword densities of 15-20%. In other words, for every 100 words I used in a piece, the key phrase had to be used between 15 and 20 times. Obviously, this made for some ridiculously written pieces, and I hated writing them. Thankfully, when Google and the other search engines changed their algorithms, they had obviously caught on. While this kind of “stuffing” wasn’t considered to be as bad as other forms, it was bad enough to get sites ranked lower after a query was performed.

The upshot of this is that keyword writing is now much less focused on the keyword and more on the end user, the human web surfer. Web site developers are looking for writers who can fit keywords naturally into an article, press release, and so on without making it look forced, and with a reasonable density (2-5%). Again, this reinforces my golden rule of SEO and writing for the Internet: don’t write for the engines, write for people!

Keyword writing today

If you want to know the honest truth, I hate keyword writing. I don’t like having to fit a word into any article at all, particularly when I feel as though the word itself shouldn’t matter, it’s the idea of the piece that counts. If you need to use the word a certain amount of times, then you should be able to do so, and if you don’t, then you shouldn’t force it.

Still, a writing career on the Internet means that you have to be able to walk that fine line between human consumption and what the spiders can read and understand. Keyword writing will probably always be around in one form or another, and I do feel glad that it has at least progressed beyond the crazy stuffing frenzies of two years ago. Until search engines begin using human editors again (which Yahoo! still does, incidentally) it’s likely that Internet writers will have to perform at least minor word gymnastics from time to time in order to make sure clients remain satisfied.

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!

If you use a bidding site or really any other method of finding an online writing job, sooner or later you are going to get a message from a potential client that says something to the effect “Congratulations, you have made it onto our short list!”.

This is kind of exciting, but you don’t have that job yet. What should you do in order to secure it? And more importantly, what shouldn’t you do? Here are some of my thoughts on some of the common proposals that a prospective client will sometimes make when it comes to negotiating the terms.

Writing a few samples

This is a very, very tricky situation, particularly for the new writer. If you look around at some other writing blogs and websites, you will probably see that the vast majority of writers discourage writing anything free of charge, particularly to land a job (Sharon Hurley Hall is particularly against this idea and has been ever since I started reading what she had to say about the business two years ago).

As usual, though, I find my practical ideas of business at odds with the ideal proposed by other writers.

While I haven’t written a sample article on spec in a long time, I am sure that doing so helped me land my first few online writing jobs. Again, I would go against the common advice in order to grow a business). Still, this won’t work for everyone, here are some quick points to consider before writing on spec:

• Don’t do it if they are asking for too many words. A spec article should only be around 350 words.
• Keep the article even if you don’t hear from the prospect ever again. Chances are you can use it as a sample and may even sell it on another project.
• Make sure that the spec article will count towards the total article number if you do land the job.

Negotiating Price

Another common theme for prospective clients who have you on a short list is the prices that you charge. I absolutely hate this, because I feel like for the most part all writers are underpaid anyway and no one should be asking them to work any cheaper.

Still, one of the problems of the business is stiff competition, and if a potential client sees your prices are higher than another bidder he or she will try and work you down a bit.

Again, your decision here will depend on where you are at with your career. If you have steady work lined up, there’s no need to dicker on your price and you can afford to be firm.

This doesn’t mean that you have to lose the job though; I have had several clients accept my price after I assure them of and proved, the quality of my work and my generally reliable timelines (unfortunately that has changed a bit since the third child, we are always sick or the computer is breaking or something).

The bottom line

As with so many decisions you will make in your attempt to find an online writing job, the decision about negotiating for that job will depend on where you are at as far as income and experience. New writers looking to break in often cannot afford the same lofty principles as those who have been doing it for a while, but taking some lumps in the beginning will mean that you can be more firm later on.