Review - Slyvisions

What's this? A review? That's right, I found a site out there that has some useful information about SEO writing, and just about everything else, so I thought I'd tell you about it.

Slyvisions is more than just a blog about SEO copywriting. It's basically an all-in-one information center that tells you how to do just about anything online. It's full of useful online tips to help you get started with a career in writing, run a successful blog or launch your own website.

Slyvisions also has a lot of useful tools that make running a blog or a website, or writing articles, a lot easier. It is updated daily with a new post that usually contains something beginners do not know, but definitely should. The focus is slightly more on webmasters and blogging, but if you poke around you can find a lot of useful stuff on how to make money writing.

What's more is that if you have a blog or a website, and you hurry up and go there, you can get a free backlink to your site if you review Slyvisions.

This is one really helpful site - check it out!

5 SEO writing tips

I've been doing this for a while, and I've come up with a few things that makes SEO writing go a little smoother.

1. Do your research

What ever you're writing about, the best thing to do is go to the client's site and see what they are about. Read the "About Us" section, as well as anything on the products and services they offer. If no site is available, look up the relevant topics. Even if you think you know a lot about them, seeing what other people have to say can give you ideas.

2. 500 words, 5 ideas

There is no hard and fast rule in SEO writing, but I find the easiest way to start is to count off 5 distinct points about the topic, and write five 100 word paragraphs. Think how many times you need to use the keyword, and figure out a few ways to use it. Try to use none of them more than twice.

3. When in doubt, repeat yourself.

There is only so much you can say about "New Mexico Plumbing Service". The thing to remember on the web is that content is king. In SEO writing, we are usually dealing with quantity, rather than quality. While the text must all read well and be informative, nobody is going to mind if you make the same point twice from two different angles.

4. Talk about the products

SEO writing is all about selling, so tell people what they are buying! Mention an example, pretend you are a catalog, and be specific. Details can fill up word count, and still be informative.

5. Keywords at beginning and end

As far as possible, try to begin and end your article with the keyword. This is generally the preferred style, and it will show your client that you know what you are doing. Keep the keyword as close to the beginning of sentences, paragraphs and headings as you can to improve the article's keyword proximity score.

SEO writing

Transparency Update

Hi guys.

Since this is a project blog, I thought I would give a quick (non keyword-optimized) update on how the first week has gone.

Subscriptions

According to FeedBurner, my feed now has 4 subscribers! So thanks Mom, and the other 3 people who have subscribed!

Adsense

In case you didn't notice, I have 9 Google ads on my page. Blogger is the worst place to make money blogging, because you can't put keyword META tags on your page, which are the most important things search engines look for. Nevertheless my advertising campaign as brought in a princely sum of $2.69 in advertising and referral revenue (the Firefox link). - Thanks Dave, Scott, Greg and my tens of loyal readers for your support!

New additions

I have done a lot of work on WriteNonsense, most of it behind the scenes. My feed is not brought to you by feedburner, and you will see lots of cool Feedburner gadgets coming soon. You can subscribe to my blog via email now, and you can search my site using Technorati. My recent post drew in over 120 visitors thanks to my association with Technorati. Soon you will be able to view my posts through half a dozen such forums.

Plans for the future

As my knowledge of blogging grows, it becomes apparent how much of a newbie I am. To address this, my web developer friend is going to help to re-design and fully optimize this blog. This might include a move, but I hope to avoid this.

Thank you to everyone who has read this page so far!

Much love
blog update

How To Write SEO Articles

A lot of people ask me what exactly goes into SEO articles. There are a few things you need know about how to write SEO articles:


What are SEO articles?

An SEO article is usually around 500 words, and contains a certain keyword, repeated a certain number of times. These keywords are what site owners think users will type into search engines like Google. If you are looking for a place to rent in Southern California for example, the keyword you might type in would be "rental home Southern California". This can be difficult to use in a proper sentence.

How do you keyword optimize effectively?

A general rule with SEO articles is that search engines don't like keywords that are broken by other words, but don't notice if they are broken by punctuation. So you could use the keyword above like this: "Looking for a rental home? Southern California has many..." and presto - it reads perfectly!

What is keyword density?

Keyword density is a measure of how often a keyword appears in SEO articles. If the article is 500 words long and the keyword appears 10 times, the keyword density is 2%. Depending on many different factors, I know that Google likes keyword densities around 2%, but this could go as high as 8%. Too many keywords and your article looks "funny" to Google, while too little means it could be overlooked.

What is keyword proximity?

Basically, this is how close together your keywords are - and exactly why "rental home Southern California" should not be broken by words. If it is, then a site that doesn't break this keyword up in its SEO articles will get a higher search engine ranking.

What is keyword prominence?

This is not usually a concern for people who write SEO articles. It is a measure of where in the HTML code your keywords appear, and how important these places are. The best places are in the HEAD and TITLE tags of your page - without keywords in these places most search engines won't even look at your SEO articles.

So how do you actually write SEO articles?

If you find yourself with SEO articles to write, the best thing to do is go to the client's website and look at what they actually do. Going by just the keyword can be disastrous! If you are given "Health Insurance Indiana" as a keyword, and you write about how great our health insurance is, it could be embarrassing if all the client's website does is compare quotes from health insurance companies!

I find that if you come across a point that isn't in the client's website, it's usually easier to make up something new than to research it elsewhere. If you have a 500 word article, try to come up with 5 different points about the company, relevant to the keyword. It also helps to use the keyword a few different ways, as this confuses Google's spiders into thinking that your SEO articles have a lot of information about the topic searched for. (But this is really more of my pet theory and the theory of some of my clients)

Anyway, I found a good resource for all of this kind of information. Mike Wong has a cool site about SEO marketing and such and such. He tries to sell you a lot of things, but he has piles of info for free. Check out Mike's website here.

SEO articles

Getting started with GetAFreelancer

GetAFreelancer.com is just about the best online resource to find online writing projects. This site works on a post-and-bid system whereby people who need writers post projects, and writers bid on them. It sounds easy, but it was a long time before I actually won any projects. That was because I didn't know how to find the right projects, and how to write GAF bids to make sure that the buyer picked me.

Here are step by step instructions on creating your GetAFreelancer account and winning GAF projects.

1. Create your account by clicking here or on the GAF banner.

Take your time to fill in all the fields on your profile, because buyers will look at this when deciding on writers. Put in as many relevant keywords as you can because searches will also pick these up.

2. Check out your bid limit

You only have a certain number of bids per month, so make sure you don't waste them on projects you don't understand or will not be able to complete.

3. Check your inbox:

You should start receiving relevant projects straight away. Don’t bid on everything. For example, say you see this project in your inbox:

“39 articles about Real Estate (Budget: $100-300, Posted by Andrea23 at 07/05/2007 at 10:35 EDT, Jobs: Copywriting)”

If you believe you have the skills and the time to complete this project within the time frame (would be a week or 7 days) then click "Bid on this project"

4. Make your bid count!

Always bid in the lowest range, but put your actual time frame in. The actual payment for the project will usually be negotiated privately). When you write your bid, don’t put your entire life story in the block. You need to say 2 things in as few words as possible:

· Why you would be good at the project

· “Please see the PMB”!

5. Write them a message

Go to the project again, and click on the “Post PM” button. Tell them in a few words why you would do the project well, how soon you could finish it and how much you would like per article. You should be guided by my prices as to what you should bid. The best way to win a bid is to post a relevant sample. Don’t have one? Go to a related site, look at their and write a 500 word keyword optimized “mock article” advertising something on their site. Post it and the buyer will probably get back to you within a few hours!

Just a few things you should know:

You can't post contact details without being accepted as the project bidder, but the PMB works fine for any contact you need in the beginning

You need an online payment facility to get paid from GAF. If you have a US bank account, you can use PayPal, otherwise use Moneybookers. (It's what I use and it's brilliant)

Being accepted as the project provider means that you can contact the buyer, but it costs you $5 every time you are accepted. Why? This is GAF's only real cut they take, and it allows you to rate the buyer (and they to rate you). This ensures security and guaranteed payment, because nobody is going to stiff you if they know you can let everyone else on GAF know about it. Becoming a Gold member means that you don't pay this fee.

write articles online

How I Got Started

A book I once read on writing commercially had a quote that said, "If you want to know if you could be a writer, try being anything else first." Writing isn't always fun, and it isn't always lucrative. You won't always be able to pour your heart into your unfinished novel, because you need to do writing that actually pays first. But if you find yourself hating every job you have and you are frustrated with how difficult it is to find a job with a Humanities degree, then writing might be the best way to make money and express yourself at the same time.

Armed with a degree in English and Philosophy still warm from the laser printer, I found myself in the same waitering job I had been in for nearly two years. I hate being a waiter. I hate serving customers. I hate spilling drinks, ringing up food, fighting with chefs, yelling at runners, dodging managers, holding thumbs for tips and cleaning up tourists' leftovers. I resigned in a mild huff and, after a brief period working in a book shop, I began to write part time for my local and most regular supplier of work: WerdWerks South Africa. I will post a link to their website as soon as it is up and running.

I had done a few private writing projects before this, but nothing that had earned me an income. I suddenly became more interested in my GetAFreeLancer account, which I had pretty much been ignoring for a year. I started bidding on internet copywriting projects and started actually winning them from time to time. After a massive battle with the entire global online banking community I managed to get cash to start flowing, and it hasn't stopped since. I will of course explain how to dodge the pitfalls of online banking in another post.

Werdwerks are always looking for new South African writers, and you can email me to find out how to get in contact with them and start writing as soon as you are ready. Otherwise I would definitely recommend GetAFreeLancer as the best place to get work online, period. I have looked at dozens of freelance writing sites and of the free ones none of them even come close. If anyone knows of a good website that is FREE, feel free to post it here with your comment. Please note I will delete all posts that include links to sites that charge for a basic membership. This blog's sole purpose is to provide free information to people who want to make money working from home without joining expensive sites.

So at the moment I write around fifteen articles a day on just about any topic you can think of. The work you can get doing internet copywriting varies tremendously, but most of it is designed to increase a website's rank on Google or any other search engine (I will go over writing techniques for SEO and blog posts in a later post). I distinguish between "full content" articles and "cheap" articles. Full content articles require research, quite a bit of work and can take around 30-60 minutes each. "Cheap" content articles are re-writes, articles of less than 500 words (which is standard) and things like small blog posts. As a general guideline I would not accept full content article work for less than $2.50 per article, or cheap articles for less than $1.50, but that is just my policy.

So there you have it: how I started to write online and make money doing it. You can do it too if you keep following my updates and use the helpful links I post on this blog. The best part is that you don't really need any qualification to write for the web. If you have ever posted on your favorite blog, had your own blog, written college or high school essays or a letter, then you can do it. Having a high speed internet connection at home is very useful, and almost essential if you want to take it seriously. If you have any questions, feel free to email me and I will see if I can answer you or point you in the right direction.

Make Money Doing What I do

What Do I Do?

Hi everyone. I'm Chase, and I started this blog to tell people like me with no IT or internet background how they can make money online by sitting at home in their pajamas. I live in South Africa, but you can do this from anywhere. It's the perfect first career for anyone who got themselves a humanities or arts degree and has no idea what to do next.

This blog's spot is WriteNonsense, and that is exactly what I do. A recent estimate claims that there are currently 150 billion domain names on the internet (excluding individual blogs or personal pages like Myspace and Facebook). While at least a third of these are porn sites, and at least half the traffic on the internet at any one time is on porn sites, that still leaves a lot of sites that need content, and a lot of people don't know how to write!

I'll tell you how to make money online by exploiting the pornography industry later, but the important thing to remember is that the internet is the most important advertising space available. The millions and millions of people online all of the time always contain at least a million or so potential buyers of just about every product. Getting these buyers onto your site can mean the difference from having a Mom & Pop store and being a retail giant who retires at 35.

Another important thing to realize is that people use Google. Just about everyone uses Google, or another search engine that works pretty much the same way. These search engines are fallible in two ways. The first is that they can be tricked, and the second is that they can be bought. Ever see the Google Paid Ads section? These ads respond to the keywords you type in. When Google looks for your keywords, it finds pages with large pieces of text (it can't tell if a picture file contains "boobs"). When it finds the keywords you entered in this text, it gives the page a point. Basically, the more points, the higher up the ranking it goes. Hopefully if the page is just what you are looking for, it will come out on top.

But we all know that doesn't happen. Pretty much every search returns a page or two who want to sell you something, and these are normally in the first five. That is because they have paid for Search Engine Optimization. I will explain the many parts of SEO in another post, but what you need to know is that companies pay money for it because it is a good way to get traffic to their site. This means that you can make money online writing pages of text for websites that are quick and easy to write - and you get paid in US Dollars.

There are a lot of different things to know about SEO, web copy writing and the associated fields. In this blog I will tell you about as many as I know about, and I invite others to give their input on how they make money by writing online. I will tell you how to get clients, what sites you can join for free that generate a lot of lucrative work, how to improve your writing style and article return time, and how to get yourself set up so that you can get paid as soon as possible. I will be posting regularly, so check back every other day or so until I get my feed up and running. I'm not going to ask you to send me money - All of this info is totally free and I will be posting it right here on WriteNonsense.blogspot.com!