Chronicle Your Life: It Could Lead to a Novel

Dear Diary/My Life

As many young girls do, I kept a diary that I wrote in every single night before going to bed. Making my nightly diary entry was something that I really looked forward to as bedtime approached.

I had received one of those 5-year diaries as a holiday present at around age 12, and was immediately hooked on the idea of writing down my private thoughts and feelings. I especially liked that my diary had a lock on it to keep prying eyes from reading my most intimate feelings that I was not always comfortable sharing with others.

To be sure, there was not much room to write the days events in such a diary. That didn't sour my enthusiasm to make an entry however. I enjoyed the challenge of condensing the detailing of my day. After making the present day's entry,I would read the entries I had made previous years. I found it kinda "neat" to read them and remember what I was doing and how I felt on that same day, in different years. I even discovered times I had detailed an event thinking that what had happened was the end of the world, only to be reading it a year or so later, and realizing I was no longer even bothered by it.

I fell out of the habit of keeping a diary for a while when I became an adult and started to make my way in the world outside the walls of my bedroom, family home, and high school. I came back to it soon enough though with the grown up version of a teenagers dairy, the journal. Through the years, I have found that keeping a journal has served many purposes for me. I have recorded events that I never wanted to forget exactly how wonderful I felt when they happened. Journaling has helped me to sort out my feelings and work through some of the darkest times in my life as well. My journals could even lead to a novel or several: one day. Yours could too.

You might not think that your life is interesting enough that anyone else would want to read about it, much less buy a book inspired by your life. However, people find first-hand accounts of common and not-so-common situations of living, quite intriguing reads. Sometimes mere curiosity draws people to such personal chronicles,while others want to know they are not alone in having certain life experiences. For some writers there would be no greater accomplishment than if something they have lived through might offer someone else hope as they face a similar circumstance in their life. Perhaps your journal or multiple journals, could lead to a book that offers understanding and hope to someone who really needs it.

Whether your personal journal ever results in a publication for writer creds: and money, there is good reason to consider keeping one. A journal records happy times you want to remember always. Journaling can be therapeutic and even help you to know, understand, and love yourself more. A journal can be a keepsake, a legacy of you that generations of your family can read and know the person, and the times they lived in of the person who wrote it-You!

Include photographs with your journal entries whenever possible, to add pictorial documentation that will aid you in keenly recalling or better illustrating for others, those memories later.



Author: Julie Morris. Freelance writer and blogger, all rights reserved. Visit my website: http://thewritestation.yolasite.com/ Contact me: twsstaff@yahoo.com

Twitter Attack No Treat for Tweeters.

Hackers hit Twitter (a popular social networking site) with what  Co-founder: Biz Stone, describes as a ‘denial of service"’ attack that disabled the site for a couple of hours this morning with users continuing to experience intermittent problems accessing their twitter pages several hours later. This CNN article discusses the attack on the Twitter site further.

I was finally able to log into my twitter account @ 1; 30 pm. EST. Hopefully this means the gargantuan hacker-traffic attack of 8-6-09 is over and we can all happily get back to some sweet tweeting!

Social Media and Marketing Continued

In a previous post on social media, I mentioned several applications that most of us are familiar with through using them ourselves or by having heard about them. This is a continuation in my series on social media and the effectiveness of marketing your business through social media. I hope readers will find the information presented useful in helping them to take advantage of the social media applications they are using just as the top online moneymakers are now doing.

Turning your Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter account into a successful marketing machine is not difficult at all. Keeping the following tips in mind can help transform basic online socializing platforms into mega-successful traffic, income, and profit generators. I have condensed things a bit here by only mentioning 3 of the many popular social interactive sites available to users online today. Insert the name(s) of the social media applications that you use if they differ from the ones I have listed. The principles for using them to your advantage in business marketing remain the same nonetheless.

Ø Let the popularity of top social media applications do the work of finding traffic for you. Make sure that you set your profile or updates page to ‘public’ so that the larger flows of traffic to these sites can find you. Keeping it private will mean that you will have to find and invite people to visit your pages, which can be time-consuming and slow to show positive returns for your efforts.

Ø If you are using your social account for promoting yourself, your business, or business programs, be careful about posting negative opinions without some substantial information to back it up, or stuff you would be embarrassed for strangers to know about you. You will find that posting some personal things like having attended a concert or what you had for dinner will bring visitors and a lot of times followers to your social pages. You never know what seemingly mundane activities or subjects may spark someone else’s interest until you post something about it and gain traffic from it. Just temper such personal postings with common sense. Remember that once you post something in cyberspace it can exist forever.

Ø Do not use your social media applications to hard sell your business interests. No one responds very well to such tactics. Include links to articles, web tools, and sites that are likely to be of interest to your target audiences. Space these between your regular updates on your business products, services, etc.

Ø Learn how to create intriguing headlines and short sentences that really grab people’s attention. Space for communicating with others is typically limited in these social media applications so make the best use of the space that is available to you.

Ø Shortening links to your websites, blog entries, or articles you have posted online will give you more room for expressing why someone should want to click on the link(s) provided on your profile or updates pages. Many people use http://www.tinyurl.com/ for this purpose and I have used it myself.

By following these tips, you can supercharge the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns using various social media platforms with less effort and time. Did you find this article helpful? Please share your comments.

In the next in this series on social media and social media marketing, we will be looking into synchronizing your site, blog, and forum RSS feeds and updates for greater visibility and productivity, and blog and forum postings for creating web presence and for branding and marketing your business products, services, and programs.

Author: Julie Morris. Freelance writer and blogger, all rights reserved. Visit my website: http://thewritestation.yolasite.com/ Contact me: twsstaff@yahoo.com

Streamline Multiple Inbox Messages for Greater Productivity

Keeping track of more than one inbox and updates to your Facebook, twitter, or other social accounts can cut into your time and productivity. Consolidating multiple accounts into a single condensed message that arrives to your main email account’s inbox can save you lots of time and can help you focus on getting more work done. You will not lose minutes logging in and out of each of the other email clients you have only to find the inboxes empty or filled with junk mail. Save time and increase your productivity by scheduling a short synopsis of the messages contained in each of your email accounts to arrive in a single email note to your main email account.

Nutshellmail makes this simple and supports most email clients such as: Yahoo, Gmail, MSN Live, Hotmail, and others and can grab updates form your social network sites like: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc to include in the single message sent to your main email account per the schedule you set. Learn more about streamlining the time you spend trying to keep track of messages and updates from multiple email and social network accounts so that you can be more productive online by visiting NutShellMail.

Promote Your Blog + Get More Readers

Beginning Series on Social Media and Social Media Marketing

This is the first in a series of articles on social media and channeling the power of social media into massively effective marketing campaigns. Many of us are already using popular and highly trafficked social applications like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Plaxo, Linkedin, and others to connect with family, friends, and colleagues. Then there are the zillions of blogs, bulletin boards, weblogs, vlogs, podcasts, forums, and niche sites that exist in cyberspace to enable people from around the world to socialize and communicate with one another on small and mass levels. Let us not forget communication tools like Skype, MSN Live, Yahoo Chat, IGoogle, and other instant messaging applications that also allow people plenty of online socializing opportunities as well.

The Internet has Granted Media Access to Everyone

Traditional or broadcast media remains primarily a restricted medium with access reserved mostly for industry professionals with a few exceptions. Social media on the other hand is an open-access medium that allows almost everyone with an internet connection to generate web content and to share that content with small or large audiences, locally, internationally, and as most of us know-globally! You do not have to have professional associations, media-related degrees, or a huge bankroll to participate in social media. Most social applications are free to use and basic spelling and grammar skills or a quality program that checks for mistakes before publishing to the web, is all one really needs to begin building an audience of readers The more skills that you have the more you can take advantage of all that this platform known as social media offers

Well-informed entrepreneurs have found these online social media applications to be great sources for excellent business advertising and branding with little or no costs to them and requiring barely any effort at all besides catchy headlines and some carefully chosen words. We will be exploring social media business marketing, branding, and other concepts involved in utilizing the power of social media successfully in other articles in this series.

I would love to read your thoughts or any additional information and knowledge that you could share with readers about social media and social media marketing.

Fourth of July Humor

Just a few jokes to yuck it up with this weekend. Please share your clean fun jokes.

Q. Why did Paul Revere ride a horse to warn the British were coming?

A. The horse was too heavy to carry.

Q. Mix a small curly haired dog with a patriot and what do you have?

A. You have a Yankee poodle.

Q. What would you get if you mixed cattle feed and George Washington?

A. You would get the fodder of our country.

Q. Early settlers were much like ants because why?

A. They too lived in colonies.

Q. What might Thomas Jefferson’s favorite dessert have been?

A. Monti-jello

Q. What would you get if you mixed America’s national bird with snoopy?

A. You would get a bald beagle.

Q. What would you get if you mixed a tepee with a colonial wig?

A. you would get a powdered wigwam.

Q. What did the man say to his friend as they were parting ways after their visit to the Statue of Liberty?

A. Stay in torch buddy.

Q. What was the name of the ghost that haunted King George the III?

A. The Spirit of 76

Q. What is red, white, blue, and green?

A. Uncle Sam suffering from seasickness.

Happy Fourth of July 2009

Many people will be having cookouts with family and friends, attending parades and festivals, and watching night skies illuminated by colorful fireworks this Fourth of July. This is a time to celebrate and have fun, but it is also acknowledge and offer our deepest thanks for the sacrifices that our military men and women make on behalf of protecting the liberties the rest of us take for granted far too often. Have a safe and fantastic 4^th of July!!!

Your Brain on Autopilot

Here is a brain thing that occurs on autopilot and it sure surprised this skeptic!

How it happens

• Sit in a chair and lift your right leg to a comfortable level. You do not have to raise your leg very high, just enough for your foot to clear the floor.

• Now, begin rotating your right foot in a clockwise-circular motion, and at the same time with your right hand, sketch an invisible number 6 in the air.

When you do this, your brain will automatically tell your foot to move in the opposite direction (counter-clockwise.) After a few tries you may be able to activate the manual switch in your brain and counteract this autopilot activity. Then again, maybe you will not be able to. I know that in 10 tries my foot still moved counter-clockwise when I drew the 6 in the air with my right hand, although my foot was initially moving in a clockwise direction. Try it and see what happens when you do.

Chat Forum Undergoes Name Change 6-25-09

I made note of the name change to the chat forum in the chat index. However, I wanted to let all of you know about it. Some readers might have previously visited the single entry under "chat" and may not look there to see the updated information I placed there this morning.

To save you from having to click on chat (found on the side bar) to read about the name change to the chat forum, below is the message I posted there.

Updated Information 6-25-09: The chat forum has a new name. It is now the NetBiz Network. The url for the forum has not changed as of yet, due to the number of places I will have to update with this information before considering a change to the URL. When and if I do decide that changing the url is necessary, I will let everyone know about that change here.
Nothing else about the forum has or will change. Writers, internet entrepreneurs/marketers, and all those interested in working and making money online utilizing the powerful technology of the internet are welcomed and invited to share information about working online/ business opportunities/ and how to be successful at making money online.

Happy Fathers Day Wishes

Happy Fathers Day to all the good fathers in the world! Your presence in your child's life and being a positive role model for your children really does matter, and is something that will stay with your child for his/her lifetime.

Target Searches for Better Results

You are too busy to be wasting time scrolling through long pages containing only general listings results for the search queries you make. Target your searches to gain better results and significantly reduce the inclusion of tons of generalized listings on the results page that offer you little in respect to the information and resources that you are searching for.

You can target your searches and save yourself loads of time and the tedium of having to weed through volumes of garbage to find the true treasures in the mix, using specific keywords, and keyword phrases in the search window.

For instance if you are a writer looking for writing jobs you might consider using the following terms to mark your searches to experience better returns for your search queries.

• Authors
• Article writer
• Article writing
• Article submit
• Paid articles
• Ghostwrite
• Paid to write
• Writer
• Writers marketplace
• Writer forum
• Buy/Sell articles and content
• Freelancing
• Freelance writing work
• Writing and translation jobs
• Work for freelance writers


If you want to find the best online places to help promote yourself and your business, targeting your searches will help tremendously to provide you with more useful information and links to follow than general searches produce.

Determine where the people who are most likely to be interested in receiving information about and buying the products and services that your business offers congregate in large numbers. Forums, blogs, discussion groups, and social sites are excellent places to find eager consumers.

If you have a work from home or online business opportunity that you want to get more exposure for consider trying these terms to target your searches to narrow results down to the best places for you to promote your work or business opportunity through.

• Wahm
• Work from home
• Work from home jobs
• Work from home business opportunity
• Online business opportunity
• Online jobs
• Online services
• Online business listing
• Webmasters
• Webmaster forums
• Online business advertising
• Free classified ads


Sometimes even when searching the web with a couple of different keywords you can keep seeing the same results appearing on the results pages the search engine you are using presents to you. Click on your tools tab and clear your browsing history and cookie files, and then try searching with a new keyword. You might also find it helpful to use the search suggestions that search engines like Google and Yahoo often recommend in a box that opens below the search box as you are typing your query. Switching to another search engine may also provide you with different results.

If you have a niche business opportunity or services to offer use a keyword, keywords, or keyword phrases specific to your businesses niche to get better results from your search queries.

Increase your productivity and find exactly what you are looking for more successfull by targeting your searches.

Proofing Your Work for Comma Usage Errors

I confess- I am addicted to commas! I have to proof my work carefully because I often add commas to my sentences unconsciously. Thus, I often use them without any regard for whether they are really needed or proper.

I cannot rely on my word program grammar checker alone to catch these punctuation mistakes for me either. Just as it is not wise to rely solely on the spell-checking feature of your document program to find misspelled words, it is not wise to assume that the grammar check feature will uncover every instance of improper grammar usage in your article or document.

Use the spelling and grammar usage checking features of your document program for sure. Yet, you will need to proof your work yourself as well to ensure it is free of errors before you send it someone else to view.

Here are two good tutorials on the proper use of commas put out by the English department at Purdue University to help you in proofing your work. Proofing for Commas, and Further Comma Use Rules.

As easy to understand as the information presented in these tutorials is, I cannot say that it will stop me from placing unnecessary commas in my work. I guess I will have to take a one-day-at-a-time approach to resolving my problem of overusing commas like people with other addictions do.

Proof, Proof, and Proof Some More!

The importance of proofing your work before sending it out to clients, or displaying it somewhere for other people to read cannot be overstated. It can sometimes be difficult to proof and edit your own work. The following tips may help you to better proof your work to ensure that it is error free.

1. After you have written or typed your piece, click on your tools menu and run a spelling and grammar check if you have those tools available to you. Correct any highlighted mistakes. Do not depend on these program tools only in proofing your work. It will skip over words spelled correctly, but words you may not have intended to use in your sentence. The show will go on rain ore shine. That sentence does not make sense although there are no errors in spelling. The show will go on rain or shine. This second sentence makes sense. There are many other instances of words having close spellings and very different meanings that spelling tools may miss.


2. Read your document through to get a sense of how it sounds (reads.) Does your document have a natural and sequential flow to it? It helps to get a trusted friend or editor to read your work for you as it can often be hard for writers to separate how their brains say it should read, and how it would actually sound to readers. You can do this on your own. Only you may have to put it away and come back to it several different times to make sure it reads well.


3. Now go through your document again one sentence at a time, reading each sentence aloud and making any changes to your sentences that you think are necessary.


4. After you have done a sentence-by-sentence check of your document, it is time to read your entire document again. Why should you do all of this reading and re-reading? Because, you want to make sure that your written works are as free from errors as possible. Your works are representative of your writing skill. You do not want easily correctable mistakes to shout to readers, “Hey, look at me, I cannot spell or use grammar properly.”


5. Save and close your document and do something else for a while. For how long is up to you. Many writers will set aside their completed works for a day before going back to them again for one final reading When you have cleared your head from your previous proofreading of your document, open it for a final reading to make sure it reads exactly as you want it to.

I hope you found this article on proofreading your work helpful. We will be discussing other mechanics in writing in future articles.

Here is a Bright Idea

Would you like to add a free or paid forum to your website? How about a guestbook, web polls, surveys, mini-surveys, a visitor counter, a contact form, Q&A page, or newsletters? Perhaps you would like your website visitors to help you build a strong link list. Maybe you could use an ad manager to help track your numerous advertising campaigns. Sparklit has it all!

This is where I created the NetWrite Chat Forum, and I have used several of their other products with good results.

Place Free Online Classified Ads

You can place your business and other ads here free. Ads will run for seven days.

Read more about the great advertising opportunity this could be for your business promoting. The fact that it is free is not too shabby either. See: ClassifiedsforFree

Unlimited Free Email Contact and Order Forms

Increase your website's performance with these remotely hosted, free, and secure, email contact and order forms.

Visit CreatingOnline to learn more

Free Traffic Exchange Club

Get some free traffic for your site and play the fun Traffic Roundup game to earn more free hits. Each cow you catch, nets you 10 free hits.


Head on over to Traffic Roundup for your free membership

Professional Directory for Freelance Writers launched

Writers: Submit your free listing in the new Professional Directory of Freelance Writers. Most writers spend a bulk of their time looking for writing jobs. With a Free or Paid listing in this directory, you can gain more exposure and help employers find you to offer writing work to you.

Employers looking for qualified writers for their writing projects can save themselves a lot of time and hassle by looking through the author pages of listed writers in this professional freelance writer’s directory to find writers whose qualifications meet their business writing needs.


Writers can submit their information for listing in the directory, and employers can browse the directory to look for qualified professional writers by visiting Find/Hire Writers, the professional freelance writers’ directory.

The Website Dance with Search Engines and Visitors

The overall design of your website can make a difference in how well it catches the attention of search engines spiders to crawl your site, and whether visitors will be so captivated by what they see, that they want to see more. You only have seconds to accomplish both of these tasks.

Search engine spiders move at warp speed as they rapidly gather information about sites to produce results for search users. They will only pick up those sites along the way that have the proper designing in place. Meta tags are your website’s calling cards. Search bots “see” these first and use these tags to quickly determine, whether your site should be crawled or skipped over. Each page of your website needs a Meta tag, and their titles should be short and relevant to the content displayed on the pages they represent.

Navigation is important as well. It should be easy to move around the pages in your website. Be careful of frames and codes that can block search engines from crawling, your entire site. You can research further which website designs and specific codes search engines have the highest difficulty with, and make sure your website does not utilize these. You can also find help on ways to work around these issues if they need to be on your site so that they will not send search engines running to competing websites.

First time visitors and even returning visitors want to see a website with intriguing designs to them, compelling content to read, and interactive features they can utilize. They will make up their minds about whether your website offers this to them rather quickly. If your website does not inform, entertain, and otherwise flatter and grab the attention of visitors, people will choose to move on to another website. Do not underestimate the power of people telling their friends, family, and co-workers about your website either. Word spreads faster than a roving search bot, and can be your downfall if your website makes a weak presentation. Make your website is one that has the necessary elements to draw people in, and that people will be more likely to share with others.
I hope that you find much success in this massive online business world

Happy Memorial Day to One and All!

Happy Memorial Day!

I hope that you have all had a wonderful and safe weekend and Memorial Day!!

My heartfelt thanks goes out to the many men and women hero's of our armed forces and their families who make such great sacrifices in the name of Freedom. Thank You!!!

GOD BLESS THE USA

Do You Know This Word?

Do You Know this Word?

Do you what the meaning of "nostrum" is? It is a breed of dog It is a remedy that is questionable It means you need to do a booger check It is an acronym used for certain scuba gear It is a type of dish I have no idea! Current Results

Did you like this vocabulary exercise? Would you like to see more of them here? Please share your comments:)

Professional Assoc. for Writers

The Editorial Freelancers Association is a professional association for freelancers whose members represent a diverse range in professions, including writers. You can learn more about this professional association for freelance writers and other freelancers, membership fees, benefits, events and more
Here

I am posting this for writers who might be interested in joining a nationally recognized association for freelance writers. I am not suggesting however, that membership in this or any other professional association for writers is mandatory. Certainly, certifications, degrees, and association affiliations could be worthwhile to many writers. I do not belong to any as of yet, and have not found that to be a hindrance to me in securing an abundance of net writing jobs.

The 3 Primary Keys to Quality SEO

Although there is an overabundance of different search engine optimizing techniques and strategies available for webmasters to take advantage of: the 3 primary components of quality SEO are, content, keywords, and links.

This is especially useful information for the somewhat newer webmaster to know. These three main keys to search engine optimizing your website, free articles, blog and forum posting, email marketing, business promoting, and online advertising campaigns with, will get you solidly on the road to online business success. Later you can spend the time necessary for researching and learning about more advanced seo techniques and strategies.

You are likely to see “Content is King” or similar statements inferring the same message mentioned in scores of SEO related articles and on numerous websites, blogs, forums, and online social networks where webmasters are found. There are many reasons that the virtue of content is, held to such a high degree that it warrants repeated mentions in so many different net locales.

The form and substance of the content that you choose to place on your website has a significant influence in how much attraction it generates for search engines and site visitors. If your content is not enough to lure search engines to index the pages of your website, search users will not be able to find your business website using search assist. You might luck out get picked up by a lone roving search bot or two, but can you afford to rely on the slim possibility of that happening for the success of your business? Good content is necessary in your online business advertising, email marketing, in the blog and forum posts you make to drive traffic to your site, and when promoting your business through free article submissions.

Content falls flat of course if it is not properly infused with the keywords and phrases that search engines, search users, and traffic coming to your website from other destinations expect that a business such as yours to have. If the content on your site has little if any relation to what your company sells or offers to the public, you can expect them all to move on real quick. Diligent research is necessary for rooting out the keywords and phrases that should be in use on your website and in all your online business-promoting activities.

Links are important as well. Building quality links, anchor links, backlinks, (internal and external links) for your website will help raise its page rank in search engines. Furthermore, they help visitors to navigate through your website easier, and to provide them with appealing redirects to more information of interest to them. All of this combined creates compelling reasons for search engines to crawl and index the pages of your website, and for visitors to read your entire website with a higher potential for them to become new customers. Links plucked at random from cyberspace are more harmful than useful for webmasters.

We will dig deeper into how to accomplish these important tasks along with many others like Meta tags, html code, sitemaps, traffic generators, search submit, etc, for the success of your online business, in separate articles you will find in the database for webmasters.

About: Knowledge Database for Webmasters

Many of the wonderful people who purchase articles and other content from professional freelance writers like me, are also webmasters needing information and resources to help them build and promote their online business sites. I have learned quite a bit about seo, traffic generating, internet marketing, and business promoting over the years as a webmaster myself since 2003. I have read volumes of material covering these subjects through the years and have tested many of the techniques and strategies they suggested.

The results of my many years of putting them to the test has allowed me to build a list of effective search engine optimizing techniques, high traffic generating tips and tools, captivating internet marketing strategies, and powerful business promoting methods.
I will share the knowledge I have gained in all my time as a webmaster and working online for you to benefit from by addressing each of these subjects in various articles.

Please be patient as I build this knowledge database for webmasters. I will add informative articles to it as quickly as possible so that you can reap the benefits of all that I have learned from my years of research and testing.

I wanted to mention to new readers that since the NetWrite blog also has a chat forum, which presents information and resources for webmasters, that I will be splitting articles and links to further research and tools for webmasters between this blog and the NetBiz Network Forum.

There is a two-fold purpose for me doing this. It helps to avoid duplicating content. It also provides webmasters who find their way to the forum before discovering this blog access to resources on the forum and a link back (top left of forum page)to this blog for more resources. I would suggest visiting both of them often in order to find all the information and resources contained in each of these knowledge databases for webmasters.

As I have said before, if you have information and knowledge to pass along to other readers, please do, using the comment box, or you can mail your comments and suggestions for future articles to me.

The Marketing Power of an Opt-In List

Your online business can soar to new heights with a powerful opt-in list. You can build one gargantuan opt-in list and then duplicate that same winning formula to build multiple big and profitable opt-in lists for your business. Why are opt-in lists such a powerfully effective marketing tool for business owners?

An opt-in list by its very name tells you that this is a list populated by people who OPT to place their names on your business list to receive information about your products and services and offers from your company to purchase those products and services. They do this because they have a high interest in the products and services that your business offers. You can easily deduce that people with a higher interest in the products and services that you sell are more likely to make purchases from your business. You could spend a great deal of your time trying to convince “cold contacts” as to why they should want to buy a product or service from you and not get the same high sales response from them.

Building a large opt-in list may take you awhile the first time around as you become more familiar with the best methods there are for building them. In fact, there are numerous ways to build solid opt-in lists. For the most part though, none of them is as complicated as those who would like to sell you their opt-in list building services would like you to believe. We will explore some of the best ways for you to build a powerfully effective opt-in list for your business in subsequent articles.

However, here is one to give you a start on building an opt-in list for higher sales and profits. Have a contest that rewards a winner with a prize. People love getting free stuff! You can either offer one of your products as a prize, or purchase a low-cost branded business promotional item to offer as a prize. Create a form to place on your website that allows people to enter your contest easily and conveniently. ( All Forms lets you create forms to use for this purpose at no cost. Web Address: http://allforms.mailjol.net/ ) When someone uses the form on your website to enter the contest your business is sponsoring, this person is also opting to receive future offers from you. These forms are essentially an opt-in list that provides you with the information needed for future marketing campaigns. Now how easy is that?

I hope you found this article helpful and will come back to read additional articles on opt-in lists, and building them with ease.

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This Writer Has Had Enough With A Particular Writing Jobs Board

What you are about to read here about what I consider to be absolutely the worst place for online writers and content seekers alike, is strictly my own opinion.

The write jobs bidding board site that I cannot stand is that one that tells article buyers to get freelancers. Which from pursuing post after post for over two years now, I guess means an open invitation for content seekers to lowball writers with measly offers of compensation for writing articles for them? Like $1.00- $2.00 for a 500 word article! The fact that there are writers from another region of the world more than happy to accept such exploitation of their writing talents and labors does not help the situation either.

Two and half years ago, I sent a message to this job board’s owner to explain my frustration and disappointment that they allowed such practices. I received a reply back from them after a couple of weeks, in which they said that they were working on correcting these issues so that writers would be presented with projects offering just compensation, for their services only. The board owners assured me that content seekers who continued to make outrageous job projects like $30 for 50/ 800 word articles would find themselves banned from the site. Yeah right. In my inbox, this morning was another list from them of writing jobs created by content seekers offering next to nothing for quite a lot of work.

I am a rather patient person and that is why I have given them so long to change their ways before parting with them for good. I have no respect for the company running this board and continuing to allow these unfair practices to writers. I have even less respect for the content seekers guilty of these practices, which are the outright exploitation of the writers there, no matter how willing some of them may be. It would serve these underhanded content seekers to get poor quality content to match their unbelievably poor pay rates. I have to say that there are ethical content seekers in the mix who do offer writers respectable amounts of pay. However, the ones with little if any apparent ethics literally bury those who are willing to offer writers due compensation for their written works.

At the time, that I made contact with the company behind this job board to let them know of my dissatisfaction with the dismal substance of the writing jobs being offered there, I expressed a concern for new writers who might think they had to accept such low pay to get a start in online writing. I still have that concern today.

Although you may have to start out on a lower paying scale for writing an article that say I do now with the experience I have as a ten-plus online freelance writer. That does not mean you have to accept $2.50 for a 500-word article, because you are a new writer without any writing credentials to show a client. You may have to do a few of these 500 word articles for $5 each, but no lower than that. Only agree to do a few of them to give a client a chance to evaluate your writing skills.

It is wonderful that there are people out there who are willing to give new writers a chance to prove themselves. The opportunity to get our feet wet as new online writers is why many of us are willing to take a little less pay for our writing work in the beginning. Just be careful not to sell yourself and your writing skill too short. Luckily, the decent people who buy articles and other content from writers respect the work that we do, and are willing to pay a decent amount for our writing services. They may ask for a lower fee during an initial evaluation phase of receiving content from a brand new writer. However, they will typically offer to increase your pay after you write a few articles for them.

If the person or company that you are dealing with only wants you to keep writing articles indefinitely on a low pay scale, politely tell them you have taken on new clients and cannot continue providing content for them. I say politely, because we should all be careful about the bridges we burn behind us. I also unequivocally say that you should move on if you do not see higher pay in it for you within a reasonable period and number of produced articles. There are plenty of respectable content buyers out there more than willing to pay professional freelance writers fair wages for their services. To them I say “Thank You!” I really appreciate the clients that make it possible for me to afford to do the writing work that I love so much.

I only made a real-close association to the actual name of this shoddy writing job board at the start of this article to protect myself from possible litigation. I am sure many of you have heard of this place or can figure out its name anyway. Have you had an experience with them similar to mine? Alternatively, have you had a positive experience with them that you would like to share with readers? Click on the comments tab to leave your comments if the comment box is not already open.

Promotional Tools for Writers, Content Buyers, and Webmasters

Hi Everyone!

At some point in the very near future, I will be publishing a list of promotional tools here on the blog for content buyers, webmasters, and writers to use. However, I wanted to alert first-time visitors to this blog who have not yet made it over to the NetWrite Chat Forum,(now NetBiz Network) to the promoting tools waiting there for them. You can find them here. I of course invite you to join our chat community too.

Are Free Articles Worth a Writers Time?

Is writing and submitting free articles online a good idea for writers? It certainly can be for several reasons.

Writers can write on the subjects that they know or feel most passionate about. Writing about familiar subjects generally makes it easier for a writer to generate several articles a week for distributing to free article directories.

Some of you might be thinking, “Yeah, but I won’t make any money off of free articles.” You do not make any up-front fees for the free articles that you create and display for others to see online. However, that is only a narrow view of what submitting free articles can mean for freelance writers, and especially net writers.

The broader picture here is that by submitting free articles, you can create a strong online presence for yourself as a freelance writer, promote your writing services and website, and gain increasing numbers of devoted followers. Accomplishing all of this through article creation, which should be a breeze for most writers, is a bigger payoff than receiving $5-$20 for an article would be, if you really think about it.

Establishing oneself online is a priority for internet and other writers. Producing free articles for web distribution is a very effective means for doing that. Each of your articles will include your bio (read submission guidelines for any restrictions on length) and a link to your website or blog, to help drive more traffic to them. You can also choose to provide contact information such as an email address so that folks interested in contacting you for your writing services, can do so.

The more articles that you write and place online, the wider your audience of dedicated readers can become. This can help you to build an extensive fan customer base of people eager to purchase your books and other works.

Writing and submitting free articles to online article databases is simple and has many benefits for net writers, and other freelance writers wanting to get the word out about their writing talents, and for securing more of the writing gigs that pay us well for what we love to do. Write!

I will be supplying the names and links to the free article directories that I use for submitting free articles to in a future post. Did you find this article helpful? Please share your thoughts on this subject of free articles and writers, with all of us.

Happy Mother's Day 2009

Happy Mother's Day to all you Moms out there!!!

I hope that you have a wonderful day surrounded by those you love and give so much of yourself to.

The Advantages to Hiring Professional Freelance Writers

There are many advantages to relying upon a professional freelance writer to provide you with dynamic content for your business.

1. Professional freelance writers have the expertise to create vibrant articles and content for use in a variety of business purposes.

2. Choosing to outsource your businesses content needs to professional freelance writers is an important step in managing your time and resources well for success.

3. The dynamic content for your business website that a professional freelance writer can skillfully put together for you will boost its page ranking assigned by search engines.

4. Search engine optimized articles and content is highly attractive to the search robots that crawl websites for indexing. Most professional freelance writers who write articles and content for the web have a great deal of experience with SEO.

5. Business websites that provide visitors with educational, enlightening, entertaining, and engaging webpage content, articles, and interactive features, have higher traffic streaming to them and higher conversions of traffic into customers. A professional freelance writer can provide you and your business with the content materials needed to make this happen.

6. Professional freelance writers create persuasive and cleverly worded articles and advertising materials that can be powerful call-to-action incentives for drawing in new customers for your business.

7. Well-researched articles and other content materials can help you to foster strong business relationships with your customers. Professional freelance writers have honed their researching skills in order to be successful in the very competitive realm of freelance writing.

8. Highly interactive and interesting newsletters created by professional freelance writers can help businesses to grow multiple customer bases and to build profitable opt-in lists.

9. Outsourcing to a professional freelance writer is more affordable than delegating the task of constructing various polished content materials for your business to an employee.

10. You can grow your business and encourage more sales and profits through the premium writing services that professional freelance writers can offer to business owners.

There you have it. Ten compelling reasons to consider contracting with a professional freelance writer, or several writers to provide you and your business with superior content to help you accomplish your goals of great success in business. Take advantage of all that professional freelance writers have to offer by enlisting their aid in helping to raise your business to new heights today. ((I am always accepting new clients and have a team of writers ready to work with me on larger writing projects. Send your content requests to the writers at The Write Station, via our email address. twsstaff@yahoo.com ))

Freelance Writers and Blogs

Having your own blog, or even several blogs, offers many advantages to freelance writers. However, they can also be detrimental to a freelance writing career if you are not careful. What are some of the advantages to having your own blog, or blogging as a guest in other blogs frequently?

•They can help freelance writers to create and maintain a powerful internet presence.

• Blogs can help freelance writers to display their writing talents to the world and to establish themselves as experts on the subjects they blog about.

•An RSS Feed from your blog can help build readership.

• Your blog can be used to market and sell your e-books and writing services to readers.

•You can point prospective clients to your blog(s) to view your writing style on various subjects when they request samples of your writing.

•With your own blog, you have more creative writing freedom than when you are writing articles and other content for clients.

• Blogging as a guest in other blogs helps build recognition of your name, skills, and knowledge as a freelance writer on different subjects among a broader audience, and you can link your comments back to your own blog, to generate more traffic for your blog.

• Your blog can create an extra stream of income for you and there are blogs that will pay you for making dally, weekly, or monthly blog entries on a wide variety of subjects, for even more income potential.

What are some of the disadvantages to a blog and blogging, which can be detrimental to a freelance writing career?

• Blogging on controversial subjects could be a turn off to some prospective clients.

• Once you have blogged about something, it will be permanently available for others to see. Even deleting blog posts and comments will not ensure that search engines have not already cached them for displaying in search result windows.

•When promoting yourself as a freelance writer through a blog you have to check and then double and triple-check every sentence for proper grammar usage and spelling, to make sure it is free from errors. Someone who has a blog for fun or as a hobby might get away with sloppy blog postings, with freelance writers on the other hand, polished copy, even in blogs, is an expectation you must accept and meet for success as a writer.

•When you blog as a guest in other blogs that permit or write their own questionable content, you run the risk of readers associating you with those blogs and the negative or offensive content they contain. You should read blogs thoroughly before sending entries to blog owners for posting, or leaving comments to them, in order to make sure they best represent you as a freelance writer, and the image of yourself that you want to project to the world.

• Keeping up with a single blog so that you are providing readers with a constant flow of fresh and interesting content to view is not easy. Add multiple blogs to the mix can make it even harder to maintain blogs readers will be enticed into visiting often.

•Some blog entries might be better turned into full-blown articles, and put up for sale to earn you money, rather than used as posts for your blog. Although, it is possible to use snippets from blog posts to enhance articles you write and offer for sale.

• Promoting your blog to increase readership can require a lot of your time and effort.

Overall, I think blogs are great tools for freelance writers to present their writing skills to clients and others in the favorable light that the popularity of blogs presents. It also gives writers another outlet for expressing the creativity that drives them as writers. I would only caution writers to be sure that they want others to see and read something that they have written before permanently placing it into cyber-space for all time to come.

Crossword Puzzle for Writers

If you are a fan of crossword puzzles, you are welcome to "copy and paste" this one into your word or document program, and them print it out and have fun! I am sorry that all the rows are not lining up perfectly...maybe I can do better next time. LOL

D A O W N E D I T O R T H S W T R
Y Z E A N L U Y R A B S G T X P O
J R M R M A N Y E P B I K O J I A
I K A J E Q G H A J O N Q H I R B
M L N J Q V R W D A O O D R N C H
O S N F M H I I E H K G S O T S O
S Y E J D Y N E R S P A E W N U X
C M P U A K P X W S M T I C E N J
R R E T I R W T E N Q O T O G A F
I C K N X J C J Y A W R L R A M D
P R O H T U A U A F F P A E H H F
T A N T A G O N I S T H Y H Q V Z
T Q S C R E E N P B D X O R S V Z
V V C X Y H S I L B U P R E X X C
Y Y Q K Y O S N V S N O V U Z Z L
Q S I L L U S T R A T I O N P S K
B C S T O R Y B O A R D M S L L P

Hero
Review
Illustration
Royalties
Agent
Manuscript
Screen
Antagonist
Net Writer
Script
Author
Penname
Storyboard
Book
Protagonist
TV
Editor
Publish
Fans
Reader

Research-Reference Sites for Writers

Net writers and other writers need quality resources where they can find researched and catalogued information and facts on various subjects to aid them in creating high quality, and polished written works. I am providing in this post links to some of the sites I use to find reliable information and reference materials when I am conducting research on subjects I am not very familiar with, to get a better understanding of them before I begin writing about them.

It should already be understood what the intended use for these sites is, but just in case there is any doubt, let me put it to you in clear terms here and now. These researched and catalogued sites provide information and facts that writers can glean further understanding from on a wide variety of subjects they want to write about but are not well versed in themselves. The information and facts that you find through such useful sites are not there for you to copy or copy and paste into the documents that you are working on. That would be stealing and an infringement on the copyright laws protecting the original authors of the materials found on research and reference sites.

Now that we have gotten the legal and ethical use of the many online research sites writers can use to familiarize themselves with a huge array of subjects out of the way, here are the five research sites that I use the most, in random order. I will admit though that I use numbers (1 and 5) more frequently than the rest of those on my list. Yep, you will have to keep reading or scroll down, to find out what the two research sites I use most are.




!. http://www.about.com/ Scores of articles on many different subjects found here.

2. http://www.ehow.com/ Many articles on a vast array of subjects in a how-to format

3. http://www.howstuffworks.com/ Plenty of useful articles various subjects outlining how that stuff works

4. http://www.webmd.com/ Useful informational articles on medical conditions, treatments, medicines and side effects, and health tips

5. http://www.wikipedia.com/ Find informational user-developed articles on almost every subject you can imagine, and even some you have never thought of


If you know of some more useful research-reference sites writers may want to visit to look for reliable reference materials to help them in their writing, please share them in this thread Thanks.

What Content Can Do for You

Julie Morris, April 2009, All rights reserved.

*This is available in PowerPoint Presentation format, and as a movie file (with music) for viewing in Windows Media Player. Contact me for Usage License Pricing. Attn. Julie:twsstaff@yahoo.com

How to Write Your Movie Script

You have a great idea for a movie that is sure to be a hit. Now you just need to write the script for your movie so that you can pitch it to the movers and shakers in the movie industry that can get it onto the big screen. The pointers outlined below following will help you to write a professional and polished movie script that has a better chance of a reading by industry execs, than the chance of a toss into the nearest garbage can.

Before You Sit Down to Write Your Movie Script

An idea or concept for a movie idea is fantastic; however, you need to take care of some preliminary work before you actually sit down to the work of writing your movie script.

• Brainstorm and flesh out all of the details involved in your idea so that you have a solid foundation of understanding about what you want to convey with your movie, the genre your movie will fall under, and where to go with your movie idea from this point.
•Research the genre that best matches the type of story your movie depicts, and learn the rules of writing, and script writing for that specific genre.
•If, your story takes place in locations and settings that you are not familiar with or your characters speak a foreign language, research these details so that you have the information you need to create strong storylines, characters, and dialogue throughout your story.
•Develop an outline so that you can follow and track characters and scenes as you create them to make sure you have not forgotten important elements for your story.
◦You can divide your outline into three sections. The first is the opening, in which you introduce the hero, the dilemma the hero needs to conquer, as well as introducing the story’s antagonist, and supporting characters. The second section is where you give the story’s protagonist a centralized positioning to the dilemma faced in the story. Here is where you also heighten a sense of anxiety and hopelessness towards successfully conquering the dilemma. In the third section, the hero enters amidst great anxiety and hopelessness to an intense confrontation to which he or she must triumph over for closure to the story’s dilemma.

Now you are ready to get down to the writing of your script. Follow these guidelines to writing a movie script to industry standards.


Industry Standard for Movie Script Formatting

•Font: Courier
•Size: 12 pt.
•Spacing: Single
•Page Numbers: Do not start numbering your pages until the second page of your script
•Header: Do not place on the cover or first page of your script. Starting on the second page of your script, right-justify the header and include script title, and page number within the header
• Cover Page: Centered, No Header and No Page Number, Script Title, Author’s Name, and Copyright Info, Hit Enter-Once, Justify Left, Input Author Contact Information
•Script Opening: Use-Fade In
•Script Ending: Use-Fade Out
•Script Voice: Present Tense
•Setting/Scene Labeling: Use-INT for indoor settings and EXT for outdoor settings. Include a description of where and what time of day scene action and character dialogue takes place. An indoor setting/scene label could look like this. INT. Kitchen- Early Morning //or// EXT. Driveway- Sunset.
• Character Dialogue: Hit tab button 4 times and type the name of the character before hitting return, and then hitting the tab button again three times, which you will then be ready for typing in the dialogue. ◦Attempt to keep all dialogue within the width span of two tabs however if it spills over into another page, end the previous page with Continued on Next Page, and Open the next page with: Continued.◦ Whenever you make references to speaking characters in your script, their names should be in all CAPS.

Julie Morris, Freelance writer. The Write Station LLC, 2009. All rights reserved. Contact author about this article.

A Little Boy Dreams of a Successful Writing Career

Sometimes we write the jokes and sometimes jokes are written about writers.

Once upon a time, a boy dreamed about becoming a famous writer one day with lots of devoted readers.

He shared his dream with his teacher and she asked him what he intended to write about.

His reply to her, “I want to write about things the entire world will be reading and that will tug at their emotions so hard that they will cry, scream, bang their heads, and maybe even upend a table, or toss a laptop across the room in response to reading something I wrote.”


Did this boy grow up and live out his dream to be a famous writer?

You decide. He now spends his days writing computer and web error messages for Microsoft.

Writer Trivia Quiz 1

Get ready to challenge your brain by taking this:

Writers Trivia Quiz 1.

Questions:

1. A scribe is another name for this.
2. Unlike at Cheers where everybody knows your name, yours might be an enigma as of a result of using this.
3. Good writers can earn lots of these.
4. Doing this means, others will be able to read your works.
5. Every writer experiences some of this before success.
6. Name this great research tool for writers.
7. You may have hundreds of them but they always seem to go on strike when you need them.
8. Writers dread this condition as it impedes the creative process.
9. A digital volume is another name for this.
10. Shorter word derived from the term: Internet and is ½ the name of this blog.
11. This activity has documented events throughout the ages and continues today.
12. This is one popular online banking/payment-processing center.
13. This is an act of stealing the works of another writer.
14. This online program detects stolen works.
15. This genre in writing embraces fabricated stories.
16. This writer gets in touch with his or her younger-self by writing these.
17. Books with ghoulish tales to tell can be located in the spooky section of bookstores also known as this.
18. Truthful and factual accounts (along with varying amounts of creative licensing) about people, places, and events are what these written works consist of.
19. This online term says that a writer selling their written works and writing services is one of these.
20. Who to thank or blame, for this fun or lame, writers quiz.

How well do you think you did on this quiz? Check your answers against those answers provided below.

Answers:

(1. A writer )(2. A penname) (3. Awards, reviews, accolades, and money)
( 4. Publishing ) (5. Rejection) (6. Wikipedia)
(7. Pens )(8. Writers block )(9. E-book )
(10. Net) (11. Writing)(12. PayPal)
(13. Plagiarism)(14. CopyScape)(15. Fiction)
(16. Children’s books)(17. Horror)(18. Nonfiction)
(19. A Content Provider)(20. Your NetWrite Blog administrator (Julie) and her co-conspirators.

The NetWrite Chat Forum

Visit our chat forum to connect with other NetWrite members and guests.

Chat Now

UPDATED INFORMATION: 6-25-09

The chat forum has a new name. It is now the NetBiz Network. The URL for the forum has not changed as of yet, due to the number of places I will have to update with this information before changing the URL When and if I do decide a change for the url is necessary, I will update everyone about the change here.

Nothing else about the forum has or will change. Writers, internet entrepreneurs/marketers, and all those interested in working and making money online are welcomed and invited to share information about working online/ business opportunities/ and how to be successful at making money online.

The "Lingo" of Net Writing: Part Three

Telecommuting: refers to working from home, while traveling, or outside the office.

Telecommuter: is someone who works exclusively from home, from a mobile station, or away from an office.

Usage Rights: refers to a type of license a writer may grant someone else in using the writers’ written works on webpage’s, in newsletters, and elsewhere, without making any changes to the piece and properly citing the writer as the author of the piece.

Unique Rights: refers to another type of license that writers may grant to others in using the written works they produce. This differs from usage rights, and is also known as, “full rights” licensing. This means, that a writer grants permission for the use of their works, as is, changed to a users preferences, without having to credit the writer, and a user may even claim the work as their own. Writers also agree to not to sell these full rights more than once, or to display works, whose full rights have been transferred to another, anywhere else, so that duplicating of content does not occur.

Unique Article: refers to an article that has 100% original and unique wording created by a writer, and not information copied from somewhere else and then pasted into the body of an article.

Unique Content: is the same as unique articles in that they must be a 100% original and unique. However, it spans the entire spectrum of writer-produced works, not just articles.

Julie M. 2009, twsstaff@yahoo.com, all rights reserved.

I hope that you have found the series: The "Lingo" of Net Writing, informative and useful. I will share new ones with you whenever I come across them and certainly, if readers have any, please share them with the rest of us here. Thank You.

My Dear Fellow Writers:

Do any of you other writers suffer from a chronic condition like me of writing in the passive tense, in every other sentence (according to that annoying paperclip dude in WORD, anyway.)

If you used to, but found a way to overcome your tendency to write passively so much, could you share some tips with me? Please!

How many of you have tried to revise your sentence in hopes of appeasing the little bugger, only to say “screw you, know-it-all proper grammar freak ” several sentences later? Maybe I am the only one who has ever behaved in such an irrational manner. (Can you believe that I had to re-do this sentence because HE said my first attempt was a split infinitive?!) I chose to use 2 punctuation marks there and ignore his warning that I should not, so “up yours” WORD program grammar coach!

I guess when you put your dukes, ready to throw down with a program icon intended to keep your grammar usage and spelling in check: it is a clear sign of a very long day of writing. Could be insanity too I suppose. I am choosing to go with too much writing for one day though. My possible insanity is my prerogative to call “writers exhaustion” instead. If you are nuts too, by all means, give it whatever name floats your boat.

I started out with this post in all seriousness and rational thought….How did I fall into the crazy zone?

If you do have some suggestions that may help me to curb my tendency to write passive sentences, I sure would appreciate you sharing them with me here. (Wow, the paperclip remained silent on this sentence!) I guess that is my cue to stop while I am ahead. Thank You and Good Night!

The "Lingo" of Net Writing...Part Two

Here are some more terms commonly used in net writing.

DL: refers to the deadline of when a writing assignment is due.

Escrow: refers to the placement of payment funds into an account where they are (held) until a project is completed, and may include other terms such as, hold until buyer is satisfied with completed project.

FFA: refers to free for all, which indicates that parts of projects are fully open for claiming by writers on job boards without a maximum number of project part claims (per writer) restrictions.

Freelancer: refers to writer who works independently from the companies or institutions they provide writing services for

FIFTC: refers to a fairness policy for writers in place on many job boards of “first in, first to claim” posted jobs.

Job board: refers to any number of places where writers find writing jobs online. Such as websites, forums, blogs, ezines, classified ad sites, social networks, etc.

Keyword: refers to the key word or phrase that online searchers are most likely to use when looking for an article or other information related to the subject of the content a writer crafts.

Keyword density: This is a ratio of how many times a specific keyword or phrase, should appear in an article for seo purposes, while maintaining a natural flow for readers.

MB: refers to message board. These are often where you find the full details of listed writing jobs and can make bids, or ask for clarifications from the buyer prior to bidding.

Master Resell Rights: there are several definitions given for master resell rights and no one seems to be able to agree on any one in particular. This is because master resale rights cover a wide variety of products and branded services. For writers, you are the master of your works. Others cannot take your works, change them, or share or sell them without your permission, which you agree to grant through either the sale or transfer of your master rights to someone else.

Payout: refers to how much, when, and through what payment provider compensation for your completed works will occur.

Plagiarism: refers to copying, pasting, or in any other fashion using the works of another without the express permission to do so, and representing them as your own. This is a major NO-NO- in writing. Writers should hold themselves up to the highest ethical standards in all their writing and business practices.

PLR: refers to private label rights.

PLR Articles: refers to the private label a writer owns and can choose to sell on the articles he or she writes.

PM: refers to a private message

PMB: refers to the private message board found on some writing job sites, in which some details of a project are (hidden ) from public view, with access opened only for logged-in writers.

Project: this refers to the content that a buyer is requesting and typically includes buyer specifications on what the buyer is expecting the finished product to look like.

Service Provider: this is just an Internet fancy-smancy name for a writer who is in the business of writing and selling their written works.

Seo: refers to search engine optimizing of content to attract the attention and favor of search engines.

Snail Pay: refers to paychecks that come to you the old-fashioned and slower way of the United States Postal Service.

Specs: these are the requirements that a content buyer states in the description of the writing job they are outsourcing.

Julie M. 2009. twsstaff@yahoo.com, all rights reserved.

I will share more of the terms common in net writing in part three of this series. Do you have a few of your own to share? Leave them in the comment box so that we can all learn what they are and what they mean. Thanks!

Fun Brain Games

Research studies show that "challenging" your brain regularly through learning about new things, picking up new words or languages, and even through playing games, can keep your brain healthier and functioning at it's optimal best, for longer as you get older.

I like the free and fun brain games found here: http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/ . My favorite game is Reversi. I usually visit this site a couple times a week. It is not "goofing off" when it is providing my brain with exercise is it? LOL

Note: Skip taking the I.Q Test, which has a box to click to take the test on the lower, left or right side of some game pages. That is unless you want to waste time navigating through 15 pages of offers just to get your score. Hmmm... perhaps that really is a test of one's I.Q after all!

Expand Your Vocabulary Every Day

Your brain is a muscle-give it some fun daily exercise, while expanding your vocabulary.

Click the link below for a new daily word that also includes a definition of the word, provided by Dictionary.Com. If the feed does not automatically refresh on its own, just hit your computers refresh button located at the top of your screen.

https://www.dictionary.com/

Check This for Writing Jobs

Checking various job boards for writing projects daily, is an all too familiar task for many writers. You have to look for them and then go after them if you want to earn enough to turn your writing into a full-fledged career, or work from home job.

Over time, you may be able to build a list of clients that request content from you on a regular basis, and earn the bulk of your pay for your writing services from them. I started my own writing company about 5 years ago and I have "ongoing" and new clients that come to me for my writing services.

I still maintain memberships in a few sites for writers, as well as check job boards for writers on slow days or weeks, when my schedule is open for writing gigs, separate from the writing I do for my personal clients.

Anyhoo, I thought I would pass along this link to a site for writers to find writing gigs. There you will also find many useful tools for writers. You may want to bookmark this website so you do not have to search for it when making the rounds looking for writing work. Good Luck, Hope You Catch Some Writing Gigs Today!

Copy and Paste the link below into a new window, or bookmark us before clicking on the link so that you can easily find your way back here.

http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/

The "Lingo" of Net Writing

As with most industries, the writing industry employs the use of common and some not-so-common terms in defining different aspects within the scope of the writing profession. Although you may find many of these terms throughout the various fields in writing, a few of them are "unique" to the specific writing fields where their names and definitions are created and used.

Below are eight terms that you will see frequently as a net writer. I have included definitions of those terms for the benefit of newcomers to net writing.


Bidder: refers to a writer who makes a “bid” to a posted job, stating price and estimated completion time, on job boards where writers receive projects based on bid(s) accepted by buyers.

Buyer: refers to the buyer of content. On some boards, you may see “project creator or job poster” which also means the individual or company intending to buy completed works from a writer they have contracted with to produce the content.

Commission Scale: This is how your pay breaks down on many writing job boards. Typical it is a 65/35 pay- split between writer and job board provider for completed work, with 65% going to the writer. . There are writing job boards offering the writer greater than 65% compensation for the works they produce.

Content: refers to articles, documents, images, presentations, and other works writers produce.

Content Provider: This is a name given to writers offering their writing services to buyers.

Copyright: This is a law that protects a writer’s work from being copied, or used without permission, or without proper citing of the true author, by others.

Copyscape: refers to an online resource for checking content to ensure that it is not copied, copyrighted, or duplicated material.

Copywriter: refers to a writer who writes copy for advertisements, press releases, and website mainframes.

Julie M. 2009. twsstaff@yahoo.com, all rights reserved.

There are more terms to know and understand in the net writing industry. New terms crop up on a regular basis too. I will continue sharing even more of the lingo in net writing that I have run across in my ten years writing for the net, and any new ones that pop-up as well in future posts.

Laws that Protect the Rights of Writers and Their Works

When you are a creator of any kind, it is important to know exactly how to protect your ideas and your work, and how the laws connected to these protections apply. Inventors apply for patents, and artists of any kind, including writers, get their work copyrighted. Copyrighting is the protection that applies to your words, preventing others from using them without your permission, and imposing a legal penalty if others use your work in their name.

The good news about copyright is that it happens automatically. Anything you write, from love notes to grocery lists are technically copyrighted, although you would probably get laughed out of court if you tried to sue someone for copying your grocery list. You do not have to draw a little c with a circle at the bottom of your page, or notify anyone, or pay anyone to have your work protected under copyright.

For some people, the concern that someone might steal your work, and then claim that you, not they, are violating copyright law is present, or you may wish to have the option to file a lawsuit for use of your work. If this is the case, you will want to register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office. That will help you protect your work in a public way, and will be eligible for statutory damages and legal fees in the case of successful litigation.

Some writers, though, do not feel the need to retain a copyright to their work. There are many writers, usually freelance, known as “ghost writers”, who write works for others, usually allowing the other person to list their own name as the author of the piece. In normal cases, this would be a violation of copyright law because the “author” is putting their name on a work that you created. This is made legal by selling the rights to the piece.

Different levels of rights can be sold. Use rights allow your work to be reproduced as long as it remains unchanged and your name remains on the piece. Master resell rights allow you to resell the piece that you buy from a writer, and to also sell the resale rights to others. This is a right that is sometimes included in Private Label Rights, or PLR. There is no one definition of PLR because the rights sold vary. Check the contract to be sure what rights you are getting.

In general, PLR may or may not include the rights to resell the piece, resell the resale rights, change the content, and claim the content as your own. In the freelance industry, most people will require full rights, meaning that you sell every right to your piece, including the copyright. In some cases you even lose the right to use the piece as a clip to show potential customers, so make sure that you read the contract carefully to be sure, and to ask questions if any terms do not make sense to you.

Please keep in mind that the “poor man’s copyright”, which means mailing your manuscript to yourself, is not legally sound and does not count as registration. The law is there to help protect you and your work so that you can continue to do what you love. Write on, secure in the knowledge that your work is protected, and learn to sell your work with a full understanding of the rights that you sell with it.

Is Freelance Writing for You?

The field of freelance writing is exciting, but it can also be difficult at times. Like when the inevitable “dry spells” inherent in this industry hit and finding writing gigs is harder. If you plan for these times when writing jobs become leaner, you should be able to ride them out and still pay your bills! Having multiple sources from which you get writing gigs from is a good way to plan for those times when there are less writing assignments available. However, you need to be asking yourself some questions to find out if freelancing is the right choice in career for you before worrying about having enough sources to get writing jobs from to buffer you through dry periods.

● Do you enjoy working alone? If you would miss the camaraderie of working alongside others, freelance writing is not the right choice for you. Aside from interviewing people for some of your writing assignments, as a freelance writer you will be working on your own most of the time.

● Are you a detail-orientated person, who can also follow instructions and guidelines given to you in written form? For the most part, you will receive job descriptions and specifications from clients via fax, email, and instant messaging. You may be able to speak to some clients by phone, though not always. This is an important question to think about because if you need to have a supervisor present to guide you as you work, freelance writing is NOT for you.

●Can you handle the pressure of working under tight deadlines? Clients have deadlines they must meet themselves, and require freelance writers to produce content for them within a specific amount of time in order to meet those deadlines. For some writing assignments, you may have months to complete the project, while the requested turn- around time for other projects may only be a few days to a week.

●Are you organized and can you schedule blocks of uninterrupted time weekly for writing? Organization and scheduling are very important for the following reasons. So that you know what a particular project entails, when it is due, approximately how long it will take you to complete it, and whether you have scheduled yourself enough writing time to get it done to the clients’ specifications, and for delivery to them on time.

●Can you accept the up,-and-down, and even spurts of little freelance writing jobs available for the taking? This is just how the freelance writing jobs ball bounces at times. Freelance writing is quite competitive and many job boards are a FTCFTG or a first to claim, first to get the jobs scenario for writers.

Really asking yourself these questions and answering them honestly, will help you in figuring out whether freelance writing is truly the “right” career choice for you.

After you have given this some careful thought, perhaps I will see you around the freelance writing job boards.

A writing career was definitely the best choice for me. I love to write…I live to write…Getting paid to do it, is just icing on the cake for me.

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