Learn to Copywrite

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In today’s economy, an increasing number of businesses are finding themselves in financial distress. Downsizing has become a household word, and unemployment rates are on the rise. Finding another job is not easy for some people who become displaced. The internet provides an outlet for some to find work. There are several different ways offered to make money from home online, but the number of scams on the web is phenomenal. Listed below are three legitimate ways to make money from home.

Selling items on internet auction sites is the first legitimate option. Almost everyone has some items around the house that are just taking up space. Often, this old junk has a lot of value to collectors who are always looking for just these items. Selling them on online auction sites can generate quite a bit of money. Some people have discovered the art of buying merchandise at wholesale prices and reselling it at online auctions. This can be a good way to make money online. Locating a company that offers guaranteed drop shipping can help, because a person doesn’t have to buy the item until after it is sold. Care must be used when choosing a drop shipper, however, as once an item is listed and sold at auction, the seller is bound by law to deliver.

A second legitimate way to make money at home is data entry/copywriting. A fairly large number of companies are outsourcing a lot of their data entry jobs because they are finding it cheaper than maintaining a full time employee to do this work. Writing articles for internet websites and SEO is another job that is given to people working from home more than in house employees. Both data entry and copywriting jobs are usually handled on a contract basis per project. Many employers will, however, find someone who does good work at a reasonable cost and use them extensively. Resources exist online to let people view and bid for these positions on a freelance basis. The winning bidder is not always the one with the lowest price. Quality of work and timeline are two critical factors that employers look at.

Affiliate marketing, MLM, is a third legitimate method of online work. The pitfalls associated with trying to get into an affiliate marketing program are many. The number of programs offered that turn out to be scams and pyramid schemes is extremely high. The good news is that some of these positions are legitimate. One test of legitimacy is whether you are asked to market a product primarily and the affiliate program secondarily, or is the entire focus on promoting the affiliate marketing program. If there is no tangible product marketing involved, it is almost definitely a scam. Avon, Blair, and a few other companies have grown huge using affiliate marketing methods. These are household names, so the work is real.

More and more people are finding themselves looking for ways to make money from home online. Some are just looking to supplement their income. Others are looking to replace an existing or recently lost job. Internet auctions, freelance data entry/copywriting, and affiliate marketing programs are three legitimate ways to do so.

Paul Jesse
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/three-legitimate-ways-to-make-money-from-home-online-717745.html

My boyfriend is a professional photographer and I am a recent college grad who does freelance copycopywriting. We both are well-versed in CS3/CS4, he has image editing skills, does on location shoots, portrait and event photography (clubs/parties, birthdays, baptisms; etc.). I’ve had articles published, know how to do complete media packages (script writing, editing, shooting; etc.), copyediting and writing (i contribute to a blog and a local online magazine). The job market is so terrible that we’ve both been like "let’s start our own shit!".

Any suggestions? Thanks
Sounds like you could do an online periodical, but that would take years to get going most likely. You could build websites for people, like photo album websites, or wedding video websites. But the main thing is to listen to people. Successful business is all about supplying a need. If you hear someone saying, "I wish there was a sight that…" or "Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a place that…" you just might get your business idea from a random conversation, or one you overhear. A lot of the as sold on TV businesses just start with someone being annoyed by something, such as a blanket that falls off of them (Snuggie) or having to cut things laboriously (slapchop) anyway you get the idea.

When she stepped on the scale a warning message popped out which read, “One at a time please!”

So goes a local community joke from my childhood days. And it definitely beats those, “Your mama is so fat …” jokes. At least, in my book.

Why? Because the statement is “showing” and not “telling”.

You get the ‘fat’ joke because I didn’t just tell you that she was fat, but show you instead. And those “your mama is so fat” jokes give away the punch line at the beginning anyway.

But this idea of “showing and not telling” is not just about joke telling-or joke showing-it’s one of the fundamental ‘rules’ of fiction writing that you should also apply to your copywriting.

copywriting is always more emotionally powerful and engaging when you give specific details about the emotions that you felt, rather than listing those emotions. Whenever you give the details you allow the reader to build their own mental pictures which are more interesting than you can ever tell.

Since we are talking about showing, then some examples should help here:

Telling: I felt mentally and physically drained.

Showing: My legs could barely hold up my body as I crawled unto the sofa. I tried to cry myself to sleep but the tears came without the sleep.

In the telling example, you have a mental understanding of my situation but you cannot share in my feelings. In the showing case, you are made a part of the scene because you are invited to feel what I feel. You are drawn into the action making the writing more engaging and compelling.

Showing involves using action, speech and thoughts to dramatize or illustrate what you are feeling or doing. This involves more than using all kinds of adjectives and describing every detail whether these details are useful or not. You don’t want to overwhelm your readers with mountains of details but select only those specifics that matter.

Consider the following example:

Case 1: I’ll never forget the way I felt when I made my first online sale. I was elated!

Here I’m simply telling you how I felt without creating in you the same feeling that I felt. This results in the narrative falling flat on its face.

Case 2: If I were to outlive Methuselah, I’ll never forget how totally elated I was after making my first online sale. I was so overjoyed that I thought my heart would burst. I told my wife, friends and anyone who came within earshot of me.

I’ve added some extra details that have just expanded the telling without giving you any reason to feel my joy and elation. You learn nothing new and I took you through a longer passage which is punishment to the reader.

Case 3: It was 2:30 a.m. and a strange time to be checking my email. But there it was-the notification for my first online sale. I ran all way upstairs and awoke my wife. “I did it! I did it!” She warned me that if I didn’t calm down the noise would awake the kids in the next room. But as far as I was concerned, no one in the family should be sleeping at a time like this. I was now an official internet marketer.

This time I don’t have to tell you that I was elated about making my first online sale because the specific details I’ve shared show the depth of my emotion.

By the way, here is how I started that sales letter from which I made this first sale …

Dear Friend,

I think that I stopped breathing for a moment! I felt a rush of adrenaline. You’ll guess much like striking gold.

I looked at my web stats page for about 5 minutes. Just couldn’t believe what they revealed. There had to be some mistake. But no … this turned out to be one of the best kept traffic secrets on the Internet. I was getting FREE traffic by doing absolutely nothing!

Yes, my stats were not fooling me at all!

(And that letter did a whopping 15% conversion. I analyzed the letter here.)

Another way in which you may tell too much is by using adverbs after “he said”, “he replied” such as: “she said bitterly”; “he replied angrily”. You should let the dialogue itself show the speaker’s manner or condition. Also be careful of overloading your conversations with explanatory verbs: “he corrected”, “she congratulated.”

It’s often said that rules are made to be broken and in no other discipline is this truer than copywriting. copywriters hate any writing rules, and if they know any they’ll deliberately break them just to anger grammarians.

Ahh! I just told you something that I should have shown.

But this illustrates a point-there are exceptions to the “show, don’t tell rule”. The whole point is that it helps your scene to become more dramatic and if you continually do this then nothing will stand out. It would be like highlighting every word in a letter.

Telling can be used as a short cut to the real meaty part of the story. Also if you have already given the details previously you don’t want to repeat the same “showing” all over again when retelling the scene.

Also, showing requires more words and can make your sales letter unnecessarily long. So the less important elements of your story can be told and the more important elements shown. In essence, don’t overdo the showing.

Sometimes telling is the best way to go.

Consider: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”. -The Bible

I couldn’t think of a more powerful way to open the most popular non-fiction book in the world.

Whenever I read the sales letters of the old master of copywriting I can immediately see how they used the rule of “show, don’t tell.”

You should too.

Ray L. Edwards
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/how-to-avoid-tattletale-copywriting-701320.html

Hello,

I am a successful freelance copywriter for the web. I specialize in writing
words that sell online. Over the past two years I have helped many Webpreneurs
and Affiliate / Internet Marketers in creating content for websites, landing pages,
squeeze pages and seo articles that have doubled or even tripled their online
incomes…

I was wondering if it’s worth creating a guide which will entail in depth
steps that I use in my business, which any one can learn and follow
to creating killer web copy that converts and gets Top Placement on
Google…

What do you think? Is there any need for a step-by-step guide to
creating web copy that sells? Thanks for the feedback!

I think I would be interested in something like that. I’m a web developer by education and a consumer electronics expert by trade. www.installheroes.com

is there anywhere online that you can put your song lyrics in and pay to have them copy written instead of mailing them out?

You dont even have to pay. There’s a free copyrighting site online..

http://www.myfreecopyright.com

Sir,

This is to inform you that I used yahoo since 2002 and I dont have any idea of online I can do simple and free online jobs like copywriting, data entry, simple typing, online form filling, programming, SEO and many other jobs how can I get with yahoo ?

You can only obtain legitimate work from home positions from brick and mortar companies.

You want to send your resume out to companies hiring for positions you are qualified for, but include in your resume that you have a home office and you wish to work remotely. Include how you have your home office set up and what equipment you already have in order for you to perform your job.

These jobs are just going to advertised as jobs, they would not promote them as "work at home" because they would hear from too many unqualified people

I would like some tips in where to find courses in LA related to internet, digital communications, webriting, online copycopywriting, social media… Tks!

you don’t qualify.

I want to do some online based job. Which is best job?

You can choose copywriting or data entry. Both are good.
Copy writing needs proper English without spelling and grammatical mistakes, if you can then you can choose copywriting jobs. If your English writing skills are not very inspiring, then you it is better to do data entry work.

You have to consider there is a big difference between copywriting and data entry. Copywriting jobs pay much more than what data entry jobs pay.

So, if you are weak in proper English and still want to do writing work, then you should first try to improve your English writing skills.

As an online entrepreneur, good writing skills are important to your website business. Informed webmasters know that running an online business involves a variety of written communication including, blogs, press releases, articles, newsletters and other written information.

Since proficient writing skills are crucial to the success of your business, you want to make sure that your content is grammatically correct, unique and interesting. If you lack the time or the skills to write your own website content you need to hire a ghost writer to write for you.

A ghost writer is a professional writer who is hired to write for other people. In most cases, a ghost writer’s name will not appear on their work and once that have been paid, he or she will give up the copyright to the written work.

Ghost writers are sometimes hired to write proposals, speeches, manual, novels, grants, resumes, keyword rich articles and other kinds of written work.

Before hiring a ghost writer, however, it’s important to understand a few important factors to insure that you’ll be able to find a ghost writer that is perfect for you.

The first thing you to recognize is that like doctors and lawyers, ghost writers have different specialties. For example, some ghost writers specialize in Search Engine Optimized articles, while others specialize in sales pages and copywriting. It’s important to keep in mind, therefore, that not all ghost writers are skilled in all kinds of writing. The best way to make sure that the ghost writer you’re considering can perform the job you want is to ask for writing samples of the type of writing that you would like them to produce for you. So, for example, if you are looking for a ghost writer to do copywriting for you, then you should ask to see copywriting samples. Likewise, if you want a writer to write Search Engine Optimized articles for you, then you should ask to see similar articles. You should also ask for references of past clients and then get in touch with them to inquire about the quality of the ghost writer’s work.

Additionally, you also need to check that a ghost writer doesn’t have the reputation of plagiarizing. While there is no guarantee that a writer won’t plagiarize, a good way to check this out is simply to contact the ghost writer’s former clients and discuss this issue with them.

Trust is another important factor when selecting an ideal ghost writer. It’s important that you trust the writer you choose. If something about the writer makes you feel uncomfortable or something that a ghost writer says doesn’t add up, it’s probably best that you follow your intuition and find another ghost writer to write for you.

Furthermore, to ensure the success of your writing job, you also want to hire a ghost writer who understands the vision for your project. If a writer doesn’t understand what you have in mind, don’t be afraid to look for someone else.

Lastly, the perfect ghost writer is someone who will agree to put the arrangement in writing. In fact, a ghost writer who doesn’t want to sign a contract is a sure indication of someone you don’t want to work with. There are many disreputable people who pose as professional writers on the Internet, so to be on the safe side, don’t work with a writer who is not willing to put the agreement in writing. Any writer who is worth their salt should be able to put the agreement in writing. It’s another good way to see if the writer fully understands what you’re looking for and it also serves as an additional writing sample by which you can judge the quality of the ghost writer’s work.

Finding a good ghost writer is not always easy. However, with these reminders you should be able to find a good ghost writer that’s just right for you.

Sandra Clair
http://www.articlesbase.com/writing-articles/what-to-look-for-in-the-perfect-ghost-writer-62837.html