Online business writing – how to cash in

Currently many online writers and online business writers, feel very much like folks in a ship that is out at sea somewhere but which has run out of drinking water. The fact is that although there is so much water everywhere, getting drinking water becomes a challenge because the water is salty and probably needs some sort of purification and processing to be made drinkable.

That is exactly what led the writer to pen those famous words, “water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.”

Tremendous demand for good business writing
The growth of the net has been phenomenal. Every day new websites are launched and new blogs started. All of them without exception require the services of a writer. In many cases the site owner does the writing for themselves but quite often, when the site becomes successful, they get too busy that they cannot keep up with the writing chores. Every writer should be busy writing for these businesses and making a success out of business writing.

In many other cases, the webmasters or blog owners cannot write and require somebody to write for them from the inception of the site. All this should be music in the business writer’s ears

The other factor is that articles posted at article directories and other sites have grown in importance as a tool to drive traffic to any website or blog. Not to mention as a tool in search engine optimization. Free articles posted on the net have become a very important part of business writing.

The result is that today, we have the largest and hungriest market for business writers and indeed other writers, in history. Still many writers are finding it extremely difficult to get any online business writing work. I know because these business writers write to me and visit my blog every day.

What hinders writers from making lots of cash from business writing?
One of the biggest hindrances or obstacles standing in the way of writers securing writing assignments, is the fact that the online rate of payment is ridiculously low, more so when compared with offline writing assignments. Many writers fail to realize that the net is different and this huge market for writers is also different from the offline media houses typically paying out a minimum of $500 for an article. Read my article on this subject at http://big-online-story.blogspot.com

But even business writers who are prepared to get busy writing the volumes of articles that are required online to make good money, are still having problems securing business-writing assignments. This should not be the case. All you need to do is set up a system for attracting clients who will gladly and regularly pay for your online writing.

My system for making money from business writing
I have a system in place myself that gives me loads of writing assignments from many different clients. There is no reason why you should not do the same. One of the key tools I use is a blog. You can read my article on how to do this at http://big-online-story.blogspot.com

Here are 5 key things you need to do to generate online writing assignments from clients.

a) Specialize in a certain area of business writing
The web is a colossal jungle where it is very easy for a general business writer specializing in everything and nothing, you get lost and forgotten. The most powerful thing you can do online today is to specialize in a specific area. The smaller the niche, the better. Do not feel that you will be limiting your market. Remember that one of the wonderful things about the net is that you can profit from a tiny niche because your market on the net includes the whole planet.

In fact specialization has always been a very powerful strategy for business success whose importance has been magnified by the net. Look at it this way, the powerful sun, because it spreads its’ powerful rays everywhere reaches the earth as a warm pleasant and mostly harmless source of heat and light. But when you concentrate the rays of a sun to one particular point, using a magnifying glass, you can create fire that can burn down acres of forest and bring damage worth billions, if not zillions of dollars.

How do you select your business writing specialization? It is useful to look for an area in which you have lots of interest in. Your hobby would be an ideal place to start because you are already an expert of sorts in that area.

b) Start a blog to showcase you business writing
As mentioned earlier I have found blogs to be extremely powerful tools in generating business writing assignments. The trick here is to specialize and narrow the target market your blog is targeting. Most huge niches in whatever area you can think of, are already very crowded.

For instance the area I target in my main blog is online marketing. If you do a google search with the words “online marketing” this will give you a good idea of what I am talking about. So I narrowed down the niche to deal in online marketing using articles. I am constantly reading up on the subject, testing and trying out new things to the extent where I know quite a lot about this subject of interest. And anybody reading my blog will quickly sense this.

The result is that people interested in using articles to market their sites and generate traffic will find my blog very useful. They will talk to others about it and they will also have no problem assigning me business writing assignments to help generate traffic to their sites.

You can earn an income from posting google adsense pay-per-click ads at your blog. Apart from earning you income, this will constantly put pressure on you to generate traffic to your blog. This will naturally also increase the chances of you landing online business writing assignments.

One of the most effective ways of generating traffic for your blog is by writing business articles and posting them at article directories and other relevant sites on the net. Usually writers feel very painful about writing something that they end up being underpaid for, let alone for free. But when you post your articles free at sites and use them to direct traffic to your blog, then at least you will end up getting paid when some of this traffic becomes clients for your writing services.

The amazing thing is that this business writing will virally expand on the net (if it is any good) and this way, a single article can end up being posted and re-posted all over the net resulting in thousands and ultimately hundreds of thousands of links pointing back to your blog. The income potential of this for you, is colossally huge.

c) Advertise your business writing services in free online classified sites.
The previous two methods of generating business writing assignments will tend to take a little time to start generating business and actually deliver business writing clients for you. So as you patiently wait for it to take effect, it is useful to utilize another shorter-term solution or tool. This tool classified advertising in high traffic online sites that provide this service for free.

The ones that will be most effective for you will depend on which area of business writing specialization that you have taken up. There are general sites like www.freelancewriting.com that I have personally found to be very effective. Go to the section “freelancers seeking work” and carefully read the other ads you find there and try and learn as much as you can to help you write your own.

d) Be careful how you handle your business writing enquiries
Be very careful how you handle inquiries from business writing prospects. Do not rush to tell them how wonderful a writer you are. Instead read their mail carefully and get a feeling of what their exact needs are. You should then clearly reflect this in your reply so that the prospective client feels immediately that you understand their business writing needs.

e) Be patient.
Once you have put everything in place, patiently continue working our plan for at least one month. There are very few strategies and plays in a football game that work immediately. Usually it needs to be worked on constantly during the game before it starts showing any signs of either success or failure. The same applies here except that this is a strategy that has already worked wonders for me and therefore with the proper implementation and patience should also be able to work very effectively for you and get you lots of business writing assignments.

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