The trend in Online Marketing is….Offline Marketing?

More and more each day I see Internet marketers talking about offline marketing. From forum posts to newsletters to blogs, offline marketing is hot business. If you’re a Warrior forum member, you know that a lot of time and attention has been spent lately on using online marketing skills to help businesses locally. The dark shadows of the dot com bubble burst in the 90s have finally faded and business owners are realizing that they need to be online, even if they are in small metropolitan areas. Think about it this way….when you’re looking for information about something, where is the first place you look? If you’re like a lot of people, your answer is online. And the businesses in your local area need to be there as well.

Even if you don’t consider yourself to be an Internet marketing expert, you might as well be compared to others in your local community. Your ability to create a blog, run an autoresponder list, participate on forums and submit articles to directories is light years ahead of what business owners know about the web.

I live in a teeny tiny town, and was the “main event” at a chamber of commerce meet and greet because I knew how to create and maintain a blog. I got more business cards than I knew what to do with. Imagine what you could do if you live in a large metropolitan area.

How often have you looked to the local community to get writing work? This is a perfect time to try tapping into local markets. Smart business owners know that when the economy isn’t great it’s time to start cranking up the advertising. And you could be just the person to help them with that.

There are many different ways you could help offline businesses with their online presence, but here’s a simple start. For a fee, you could set up a blog and drive traffic so they’ll be ranked #1 for “Fresno Flower Shop” or something to that effect. Add an autoresponder opt in form, and a five part course on something related to the business. Charge a maintenance fee for monthly posts and then communicate with the client on monthly basis so you can coordinate with their current specials, coupons or promotions.

It will take some prep work, and some sales skills, but it’s a great way to branch out and think outside the laptop!

June 19, 2008 | Filed Under Making Money, Marketing | 8 Comments 

Bartering Your Professional Skills

by Sandi Valentine

When I started working at home as a writer a year ago, I had virtually no other web based skills. I knew less than nothing about SEO, Wordpress, niche websites, or Internet Marketing. It was like walking into a different world and not knowing how to speak the language. However, a close friend had told me that webmasters were in need of content, and would pay good money for it. I just had to learn how to put this fact to work to my advantage.

 

I began by putting up a post on the Warrior Forum, stating that I was a new content writer and wanted to offer my services. I set my rates low, and explained to customers that I needed to get some testimonials under my site and build a website. After that, rates would be going up. Literally, within five minutes, my inbox was full of messages from webmasters and marketers, offering to help me set up my own business. Up until that day, I was doubtful about being able to work from home. Afterwards, however, I never looked back.

 

Since then, I’ve bartered my writing skills for graphics, software, Wordpress plugins, and four websites. I’ve also been able to get technical support, coding, and marketing advice. Generally, all it takes to put your writing skills to work is taking the time to ask – there’s almost always someone with the skill you need who is willing to exchange their time for yours. Simply put up a polite post on any marketing forum, explaining what skills you have and what you’re in need of, and you’ll soon have more help than you know what to do with!

****

Sandi is the owner of Valentine Content Creation. She blogs about balancing working at home and family at From Diapers to Deadlines.


June 12, 2008 | Filed Under Making Money, Techniques and Tips, Resources, Organization, Marketing | 3 Comments 

Social Marketing Services that You Can Offer

Social marketing, or using social networking sites to create traffic and buzz, is currently one of the hottest topics in the Internet marketing world. Social marketing offers some unique benefits over search engine optimization and pay per click marketing. Social marketing is free, it provides marketers with direct contact with their target market and it creates credibility.

This is all well and good to know, but you may be wondering what this has to do with your writing career. The reason I bring it up is because there are groups of people hungry for social marketing services. And fortunately for us writers, this falls nicely into our areas of expertise.

While there are dozens of social marketing sites out there, there are two that have risen from the pack in terms of their effectiveness when it comes to driving traffic. Squidoo lenses and Hub Pages are both based on the same principles - simple sites based on a few keywords or a particular topic.

The beauty of these sites is that they are mainly based on content. Sure, there are a few bells and whistles that you may need to learn to make these sites, but the learning curve is fairly low. With a little practice, you’ll have an instant service that you can offer to your clients, old and new.

Get started by registering for each site at www.squidoo.com and www.hubpages.com. Registration is free, and you can get going with each type of site in a matter of minutes. Play around with the features and check out some of the most popular lenses and pages to get some ideas.

Then create some sample lenses and pages that you can show to clients. Consider setting up a sales page for your new social marketing services, and then let your previous customers know about your new skills. When you get an order for an ebook or a set of articles, let your client know that you also offer custom Squidoo lenses and Hubpages. In just a matter of time you’ll be the go-to guy or gal for social marketing.

June 3, 2008 | Filed Under Making Money, Marketing | 6 Comments 

Getting Started with Article Marketing

Now that you know how important article marketing is, it’s time to get started with some of your own article marketing!

A natural tie-in for ghostwriters, copywriters and content writers is to write articles to promote their services. The more your name is linked with “writer for hire” or other similar keywords the more your name will show up when people are searching for writers. Plus, if a potential client searches for your name and sees published articles all over the ‘net, they’ll be very impressed. Since most content writers are ghostwriters, our bylines are few and far between. You can create your own with article marketing.

Article marketing can also help you promote your blog. If you write about writing-related topics or have a blog on a completely different topic, you can use article marketing to promote that blog as well.

To get started, brainstorm a few topics that you’d like to write about just off of the top of your head. After you have the slant or message of your article, cruise by a keyword research tool like Wordtracker and find some keywords that relate to your topic. The key is to have a good message in your article, but also use popular keywords in the title so you’ll get some good search engine results.

Write a set of five to ten articles, submit them to some search engines and you’ll have instant traffic!

February 18, 2008 | Filed Under Marketing | 2 Comments 

Why is Article Marketing so important?

If you’ve ever wondered how those articles you are writing for clients are being used, then you need to learn about article marketing. The content you are creating is probably being used in one of two ways: as onsite content or as a form of marketing. Marketing a website through articles is one of the cheapest ways to get traffic. The only time it requires is the time it takes to write the articles and distribute them to article directories.

Since you know how to write an article, article marketing is one of the easiest “cross-over” internet marketing skills that you can use to build your own streams of income apart from ghostwriting. At Sell Your Writing Online, we emphasize building passive income through personal projects while maintaining a freelance writing business - and article marketing is a big part of the picture!

Article marketing gives a boost to your website for two specific reasons. I’m not an SEO guru, but to the best of my understanding the articles give you traffic by:

-sending people to your website through your link at the end of your article

and

- building a one-way “backlink” to your website

The second part really isn’t as important as some people believe it to be. The quality of your backlinks and the quality of your article are much more important. Submitting a good article to a handful of good article directories will be much better for your traffic than sending a subpar article to thousands.

I chuckle to myself when I see listings for services that submit your articles to thousands of directories. What the people who use these services are failing to see is that the more their article is out there on the web, the more it looks like spam.

Hundreds of instances of the same exact article are going to get labeled “duplicate content.” And search engines penalize duplicate content - so it’s best to keep your submissions narrowed and focused. Backlinks are good, but quality backlinks are better.

Since massive submission will get you nowhere in a hurry, the focus turns to the quality of the article and how well it “pre-sells” the link at the bottom. The more people are interested in what you’ve written about - the more they’ll click through and want to see what’s on the other side. More clicks create more traffic and more opportunity to make money from your website.

As a writer, you’ll be able to put the power of article marketing into action very quickly. You already know the hardest part…you know how to write a quality, pre-selling article. You just need to figure out what you’d like to promote, brainstorm a few article title ideas and then you’re off and running with your own passive income stream.

February 10, 2008 | Filed Under Marketing | 2 Comments 

Finding Your Niche as a Web Content Writer

Depending on where you are coming from with your writing career, you may not have the luxury to pick a niche. You may be motivated to take any and all jobs that come your way (within reason). But as soon as you can, it’s a good idea to find a niche and stick with it.

Finding your niche as a writer makes your job easier for several reasons. First, you can streamline your jobs so that your work flows more easily. If you know that are focused on writing articles, then you can work on writing great articles. The same goes for ebooks or blog posts.

You can also market yourself better as “The Parenting Writer” or “The Finance Writer.” When someone needs to have content written on a specific topic, you’ll be the first person they think of. This can help you get more projects and more new clients. This will also help you reduce the amount of research that you need to complete for each project. If you know the topic well, you may not have to do any research at all.

Finding your niche can mean that you target your projects on a specific type of project (like ebooks or reports), or that you create a client list that needs content on a specific subject. I know one writer who has developed a steady stream of business just writing e-mail autoresponder messages. She has branded herself as the go-to person for quality e-mail messages.

Narrowing your focus as a writer and finding your niche doesn’t mean that you won’t get requests for other subjects or other types of content. Once someone likes your writing, they may want you to write all of their content, whether or not it’s part of your niche. But it can help you market yourself better and help you stand out among other web content writers.

For more on marketing and web writing, check out Sell Your Writing Online

January 21, 2008 | Filed Under Marketing | 6 Comments 

Wow! What a way to show off your samples!

I can’t remember how I ran across this writer or his article directory, but I had to share his unique idea for sharing samples. He has used an article directory program to create his own directory showcasing his work.

Although I’m sure it was quite a bit of work, I think it could be a great idea. Instead of trying to find samples that are appropriate for a particular job, your potential client can look up the articles that deal with their topic to see how well you know that topic.

The only suggestion I’d make to the writer are to include contact info on the article directory itself. I bookmarked this link a while ago, and I know I found it from his resume page. But now it’s later, I can’t remember who he is, how to contact him or what his resume page URL is.

Are there any good sleuths out there who would like to track down this guy for me?

January 16, 2008 | Filed Under Organization, Marketing | 3 Comments 

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