p2w2 blog » Writing

Letting Go of the Words – An overview

Iswarya — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:20:12 +0000

I recently created a presentation that gave an overview about the book Letting Go of the Words by Janice Redish. It is an extremely useful book that focuses writing good web content and creating user-friendly web pages.

The presentation covers the following topics:

1. Why it is important to learn to write good web content

2. How to communicate with the visitors effectively

3. How to focus on the essential messages that need to be conveyed

4. Designing web pages for easy use

5. Copywriting and tuning up your sentences

6. Effective Use of Illustrations

7. How to write good Press Releases

Please check out the presentation here at SlideShare. Hope you find it useful!

Hire a ghostwriter. Drive traffic to your blog.

Chaitanya — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 05:24:25 +0000

Setting up a blog is a five-minute job. It takes nothing from you… and gives you nothing. It’s like buying gym. It does not matter if you have it. But it does if you work out. Updating your blog is like working out. It does not matter if you have a blog. It does if you update it.

Updating your blog is important because it lets you talk to people often and on topics relevant to you and your business. The other reason is because search engines drive more traffic to blogs that are frequently updated. Not to stale blogs. You tell search engines that your material is fresh by updating it regularly.

I wish updating a blog is as easy as writing this. (sigh) It’s not. If you want to keep your blog updated, you have to have discipline… to publish regularly. If you don’t have time to write, you could hire a ghostwriter. (Huh! Let me rephrase that…”delegate.”) Delegate to those who have competence and time.

I will write more about how to hire a ghostwriter, dos and don’ts etc. But for now, if you decide to hire a ghostwriter, p2w2 is a great place to begin. Because we help you make it easy to find the right ghostwriter for you and we give you tools that will help you collaborate with your ghostwriter.

Have a successful blog and a successful business.

How to Become a Ghostwriter?

Chaitanya — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:21:30 +0000

Ghostwriting is a great opportunity. You can research and learn what you like and earn as you do that! How cool is THAT!

I have been ghostwriting for about a year now. I had fun and learnt about internet marketing, electronics and real estate. Strangely, ALL the topics helped me in my career and life and of course in earning a living!

If you want to ghostwrite, you can. Do you want to know how to become a ghostwriter?

It’s easier than becoming a ghost and then becoming a writer! You can find a lot of projects on P2W2 (when we go live). But before that, you must understand buyers’ (potential employers’) decision-making process when they hire a ghostwriter and acquire the skills that they look for. That’s all you need.

Most buyers apply the following criteria to hire a ghostwriter. The ghostwriter must:

1. Be able to express their message in their preferred tone and style
2. Have the ability to research the Internet to figure out the content that must be written
3. Have the domain knowledge (i.e. understand their business/topic)
4. Be able to write good English
5. Be affordable (not necessarily a low price tag)

The most important criterion is that you must be able to write in the style and tone that they would like to convey the message. If you want to have multiple clients, you must be able to write in various styles. At the least, you must be able to write well in the style that you are comfortable with. (Check out this video). The good part is, if you have decent English, you will be able to change your tone to suit buyers’ needs.

Second, buyers hire ghostwriters either because they don’t have the time and/or the writing skill. Using your skill and time, they want to achieve their goals – like writing a book, market their company etc. You must convince them that you can provide what they want. And the best way to do that is to provide appropriate samples. Not a rant about your skills but good samples. So, pick the best of your work and display it in the samples section of your profile. Make sure you don’t violate intellectual property rights of your past clients.

Third, have patience to develop ‘domain competence.’ If someone asks you to write on a medical topic, can you do a good job? If you can’t, don’t bid on such projects because the buyer anyway won’t select you because you don’t understand the topic. As a result, your project win-ratio will fall and buyers filter out your bid. So, have the patience to develop the competence and bid on the project that you understand and can deliver.

Next, you must be able to write good English. Most people forget basic grammar and punctuation. If your writing has grammatical and punctuation errors, buyers won’t accept your material. Thankfully, you can learn good English at Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab. Check it out.

I will talk more about pricing and bidding techniques so you can have a successful career as a P2W2 professional. so those are all the criteria buyers look at.

If you want to become a ghostwriter, you must have what it takes. If you don’t, even if you land a project, that won’t help you in the long run because it is just a matter of time that the buyer will give you negative feedback and others will know about it. So it’s better to get what it takes and be the ghostwriter that you want to be!

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