excess voice: nick usborne's blog

About Self-Esteem

I just added an article about self-esteem to my Freelance Writing Success site.

Why? Because I think self-esteem has a lot to do with the success or otherwise of freelancers.

Whether a writer or a designer, a freelancer is totally dependent on his or her own internal motivation.

We are “our business”. The health and success of our business depends on the fire we keep burning inside ourselves.

When we are performing at less than our best, our business suffers. When we’re on fire and racing ahead...our business leaps forward.

And a key part of what drives us, what stokes the fire, is our sense of self-esteem.

Read my article...

Monday Copywriting Tip #44: Dealing with Multiple Deadlines

Whether you are employed or a freelancer, deadlines are a fact of life. Each writing assignment comes with a deadline.

It comes with the territory and most of us are pretty good at meeting deadlines. But what happens if you start the week with three projects on the go, and all three are due on Friday afternoon?

Clearly you can’t write all three concurrently. So you plan on completing one by Tuesday, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday. And you have an extra day built in to deal with the unexpected.

Remember, Friday is the deadline for all three. Once you have completed the first job on Tuesday, what do you do? Do you send it to your client on Wednesday morning and get a few brownie points for delivering early?

I don’t do that. And here’s why. If you deliver that job on Wednesday morning, you run the risk of the client coming back to you a few hours later with a bunch of revisions.

All of a sudden your schedule for the week is blown, because you still have three jobs on the go.

When I am working with concurrent jobs I do one job at a time, but don’t deliver the work until the agreed deadline. That way I can be sure of keeping my schedule running smoothly.

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More web copywriting tips: I have now collected many of my “Monday Morning” copywriting tips, plus tips from other places, and put them together on my site.

http://www.excessvoice.com/web-copywriting-tips.htm

Web Copywriting Tips

I have just added a new web copywriting tips area to my Excess Voice site. What you’ll see is just the beginning. I have plenty more tips to add. Some I have compiled from my tips in this blog, others were published elsewhere, and others still are simply short tips I have written but never published elsewhere.

There are tips there for copywriters, content writers, SEO writers and freelancers.

Web Copywriting Tips

Networkaholics Revealed

I have just added a new review to my Freelance Writing Success site.

The full title of the ebook I have reviewed is a bit of a mouthful:
Networkaholics Revealed!
True Confessions From People Who Networked Their Way to Success (And How You Can Do The Same)

Yes, it could have been called, "How to get ahead in business by networking". But weird as it may sound, all this "revealing" and "confessing" in the tile will likely result in more sales. (I know, You and I wouldn't fall for that kind of language. Just everyone else.)

I digress.

It's actually a very useful book, mainly because it includes interviews with 48 people who all point to networking as a major factor in their own success.

Read my review here...

Monday Copywriting Tip #43: Save That Online Sale

If you study your server logs, you'll already know how many people nearly buy something, nearly sign up, nearly register.

The percentage of people who nearly do what you want them to do on your site is scary. After all, you must have got a lot of things right to get them to that page. And then poof!..You've lost them.

Here's something simple you can try. Just beneath the final call to action, add a line that says something like, "Any Questions? If you have any questions you would like answered before [whatever the action is]..." And then direct them to call you, send you an email, click for instant online help...or whatever else works for you.

The point is, if you manage to salvage some extra sales or registrations, you not only increase your immediate conversion rates, but also secure a happy customer who will hopefully return time and time again.
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Download a copy of my new guide, "Writing for the Internet #1" . Yours free when you sign up for the Excess Voice Newsletter.

Review: Secrets of Writing for the Internet

I have just uploaded my review of another course by the American Writers and Artists Institute.

This one is about writing for the web. It's big, just squeezing into a three inch ring binder, plus some CD interviews.

Coming as it does from the folks at AWAI, it is very heavily slanted towards the use of direct marketing principles online.

So, as you would expect, it is an excellent guide to writing web pages, emails and newsletters that drive immediate clicks and results. And for many sites and emails, it would do no harm at all to apply some learning from this course and improve on conversion rates.

But here's the part I like most about this course. It places a lot of attention on one of my own pet messages:

Write in a personal voice and build trust.

Maybe this doesn't sound like "hard core" direct marketing to you.

But it is.

At the heart of every piece of quality direct response writing is the drive to speak to the reader one-on-one, person to person.

Good DM depends on building trust.

Same with the web.

And this course does an excellent job of showing the way to selling with a more personal approach.

If you write for response-oriented web sites, or are an entrepreneur looking for ways to get more traffic, customers and sales, you may want to look into taking this course.

My review of Secrets of Writing for the Internet

Knock Me Down With a Feather

Knock me down with a feather. Seth Godin is talking about Google AdWords, landing pages and SEO.

This is a very interesting development, because when it comes to the web, you can normally rely on Seth to provide a very strong, very useful strategic view. Now he is applying his thinking on a more tactical level.

The subjects he writes about in his new ebook, Knock-Knock, cover familiar territory for many of us, but what Seth does is come at it all from a slightly different angle.

What do I like about it?

His emphasis on achieving clarity of purpose for your home page and site.

What is it you do...how you help visitors find what they want...how you get them to act.

And, of course, a favorite of my own...the value of writing in a human voice.

You can get your copy of "Knock-Knock, Seth Godin's Incomplete Guide to Building a Web Site that Works" here.

(Yes, I resisted the temptation to call this post “Knock-Knock me down with a Feather”.)

Writing for the Web #1 – A Guide

Since the publication of my book, Net Words, in 2002, I haven’t written anything longer than an article.

Until now. 

Today I just completed a 35-page guide to writing for the web in which I look at some of the challenges writers and copywriters face online.

What I have done is look at a few of the unique attributes of the web which make it unique. In other words, these are the aspects of writing for the web for which we have had no preparation while honing our writing skills offline.

The complete title of my guide is:

Writing for the Web #1

7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web

I’m not charging for this guide. I’m offering it as an incentive for anyone who signs up for my Excess Voice newsletter.

Already an Excess Voice subscriber? Don’t worry. In common with a few hundred million other people, I get ticked off by companies which attract new customers with all kinds of gifts and offers, but leave their older, loyal customers paying full price.

As a result, if you already receive my newsletter, I’ll be sending out a message shortly, providing a direct link to the PDF file.

If you’re not a subscriber, and would like a copy of this guide with your subscription, you can sign up here.

Monday Copywriting Tip #42: How Much Do You Earn?

Whether you are employed as a copywriter or a freelancer, you need to know what your peers are earning. You need to know if you are earning less than the average or more than the average.

If you are employed, it just makes sense to benchmark yourself against what other copywriters are earning. You need to know whether you are being under-paid, or doing just fine. You’ll know whether you should be asking for a pay increase or sitting tight.

If you work as a freelance writer, knowing the going rate for various types of jobs is essential. It’s a critical part of the bidding process. You need to know what the market thinks a particular kind of job is worth. Without knowing what the norm is, you may end up bidding either too low or too high for your next job.

Bid too high, and you’ll likely bid yourself out of the job. Bid too low and, ironically, you might also lose the job because your prospect won’t take you or your talents seriously. Bidding too low is a sure way to damage your own reputation and credibility.

You also need to take your own experience and expertise into consideration. If you are fairly new to freelance copywriting, don’t expect to be able to charge the same as another writer who has ten or fifteen years’ experience under his or her belt.

Estimating for jobs is never easy. But it is a critical part of building your business, and your first step is to know what others are charging and what your clients are comfortable paying.

Related rosource:

Read my review of Chris Marlow's 2005 Freelance Copywriter Fee & Compensation Survey

Agora Publishing: New date for Agora Model Teleseminar

I little while ago I added a post about a teleseminar being put on by Agora Publishing. I've signed up myself because I want to find out how Agora have managed to build an email list of over a million subscribers in just a few years.

Anyway, the call was originally scheduled for May 17th, but has now been put back to May 24th. If you have signed up, make a note of the date change. If you haven't, and want to discover the model behind this very successful online direct marketing company, check out my review of the Agora Publishing Model.