Thanks to the internet, reaching prospective clients has never been easier.

Whether you are a freelance web designer, writer or international mountain guide, you are likely to have a website, twitter account, LinkedIn profile and blog – and so you should. Without these tools, most of us would be lost.

The trouble with the internet is that it makes publishing and communication dangerously easy. With the ‘publish’, ‘send’, ‘tweet’ or ‘share’ button ever present at the top of your screen, online business communications – and that is what they are – are often shared prematurely.

No matter what business you are in, for freelancers, first impressions are crucial. Continue Reading

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Let’s look at seven major blunders that appear on the freelancer’s sites on a regular basis.

Remember: your website is your virtual salesperson. The design is the way that salesperson is dressed. It makes the first impression. But the copy are the words coming out of that salesperson’s mouth: that’s what will make or break the sale.

When a prospect is looking at your site, they have a question in their mind: “Do I want to hire this person?” Your copy’s job is to make sure the answer is “Yes!” as often as possible.

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Recently here on Freelance Switch, Thursday Bram discussed whether freelancers should be making use of the trend towards global outsourcing, to free up their writing and project management time by employing virtual assistants overseas to manage menial tasks.

Today, I’d like to expand upon that theme, and talk about how freelancers, especially copywriters, could be turning their personal cottage industry into an international enterprise, by teaming up with translators to go global.

The web is becoming an increasingly multilingual place. The growth in internet accessibility worldwide means that, in the near future, English will no longer be the ‘lingua franca’ of the web.

Web surfers prefer to browse the web in their native language – and this means that if you want to reach an international audience, you need to go multilingual.

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Site: Men with Pens

In this interview learn from James Chartrand of how to take your freelancing to the next level. She outlines ways you can grow from a freelancer into an agency, sell your own educational products, and increase your revenue. She runs Men with Pens where she manages a team of creatives that deliver copywriting and graphic design services.

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Anytime I work with a young copywriter eager to launch their career, there always comes a time when they ask the inevitable question: “what are some good how-to books for copywriters?”

The truth is, there are none. A good how-to book may provide a few tips, a couple of poignant stories from the trenches, but the cold, hard truth is that you just have to jump in and hope you learn to swim fast enough to keep up. Because the reality of being a copywriter is nothing like you’ve learned in advertising school or in any book on the craft. The real world of a busy, working copywriter is faster and far more demanding than you could imagine.

Still, there must be a book or two that can help, right? Oh yes. But, they’re probably not the books you’d expect. These books aren’t how-to manuals on writing killer copy. Instead, the following essential reads are intended to inspire, stoke the imagination and prepare the next great copywriter to embrace innovation and trust his or her inner voice. Here are my 5 unexpectedly awesome books for copywriters.

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You’ve got a problem. What has started out as a straight forward design and development job has hit a sudden snag. While the client originally promised to take care of all their content, they’ve come to realize that it is actually pretty hard to write about their services. Now they’ve come to you to bail them out.

What do you do?

While you may initially think of running for the hills or waving your contract in the clients face, refusing to be involved in helping with a website’s content may be leaving money on the table. And while you may not think of yourself a great writer, eBook author Donna Spencer shows you how to get the job done in Rockable Press’ book, How to Write Great Copy for the Web.
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She’s got a well-known celebrity client and tons of tricks for getting and retaining clients. And she wants to help entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground.

That’s why I thought we could all get something out of an interview with Laura Roeder of Roeder Studios. This California-based social media and publicity guru has plenty to share about how she’s effectively positioned her company—and how you can do the same with yours.

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Interviewing other creatives is always interesting; I like to see where they draw inspiration from, how they built their business and what keeps them ticking.

So when I came across copywriter Jon Wuebben—who has also written a book on his craft, along with creating a few other ventures—I knew he would captivate the freelancers that read our blog. Read on to learn more about how Jon has created several businesses and published a book, all while keeping his eye on his clients.

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Creative careers work in magical ways. Take Ed Gandia, for example. The Georgia resident was working in sales and always wound up working for companies with small or no marketing budget. He never thought that he could be the one creating the marketing collateral.

Then he fell into copywriting, and the rest is history. Now Ed, 36, runs his own copywriting business along with www.TheProfitableFreelancer.com to inspire other copywriters to make good money doing what they love.

Ed leveraged his strong background in sales to enhance his career as a copywriter. Prior to launching his copywriting and consulting business, he was a senior account executive with Constructware, an on-demand construction software company. During his five-year tenure there, he created and implemented a marketing and sales program that helped revive a software product and boost its sales by more than 500 percent.
Now Ed’s a copywriter and consultant specializing in technology—and he’s earning big bucks doing it. All the same, Ed has got a passion to help other creatives earn great money, and I wanted to find out how he’s doing it. Continue Reading