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HOW TO BUILD A REPUTATION AS A GREAT COPYWRITER

22/3/2015

Guest blogger Ronald Amaya

How would you know which dentist to visit if you had a bad tooth? You would probably ask family and friends or uncle Google – for some reviews. By and large, you want to settle for a dentist who has a good reputation. Likewise, when a client is looking for a great copywriter, they’ll want to read a few reviews the copywriter has received before clicking the hire button.

So how do you build a good reputation as a copywriter?

To read full article please click here

Making blogging as easy as ABC

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Republishing Previous Work – Good or Bad for Copywriters?

7/2/2015

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As writers, we get stuck with a lot of content whether it's copy that's not been paid for or content written for personal blogs. Very often the copy sits on your laptop or computer gathering dust in forgotten files when in fact, it could be out there getting you noticed as a brilliant copywriter and earning you some money!

Re-publishing Your Work

Re-using copy is not a sin. Google will not penalise you for doing so. In fact, many site owners encourage people to republish interesting, informative and well written articles on their sites because "good content is King". Some others like to post and publish "curated" articles because they have an audience that's keen on getting as much info on certain topics as they can. It's also a great way of creating worthwhile links.

Rewrite an Article to Suit a New Audience

If you find you've got a heap of unpaid articles on various topics just taking up space, consider rewriting the copy to suit a newer audience. Just by tweaking a piece, you can breath new life into it. This can be very worthwhile if you then decide to offer the article to a client or place it on a site like Sample Safe to sell.

The key thing about re-writing one of your articles at a later date, is you may have to do a little more research just in case things have changed since you first wrote the copy. But the beauty of rewriting it is that most of the work has already been done and with the passage of time, you may even be able to ask more money for your work!

Think About Going Hard Copy

If you've written copy for the internet and it's either been rejected by a client or not been paid for, there is no reason why you can't pitch your work to a editor and sell the work as a hard copy piece.

You may need to pitch the work to several editors at the same time and then wait patiently for a reply because they are notorious for being slow to respond. By pitching to more than one, you stand a better chance of getting a response from at least one editor.

Conclusion

Letting work sit idly on your laptop or computer rather than having it earn you some well deserved money is sacrilege. Someone, somewhere out there may well be willing to pay for your articles, content and other copy which means more pennies in the bank! Republishing your articles is okay. The only time you would be penalised if thousands of the same article got published in a very short space of time. It's also a great strategy that gets your name out there and noticed as a brilliant copywriter!

Check this out Opticopy.com

Need to contact a marketing specialist – Social Buzzing are brilliant!

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Why Public Speaking Training is Important

21/3/2013

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You may not realise it but there are occasions both in your professional and social life when you could be asked to speak publicly. It could be you are asked to give a speech at a wedding, or asked to give a talk at your local school which can seem quite a daunting task. Nerves may get the better of you before and during the speech which is why public speaking training is so important. The course helps you overcome all the issues that put you off standing up in front of an audience.

Not everyone finds it easy to stand up in front of a crowd or even their family and friends. It takes a certain amount of self confidence to be able to give a speech whether on a social or professional level. People may be confident and they might have an ability to give a speech, but with training that same person can deliver a memorable speech, one that thrills audiences and keeps them hooked.

There are many reasons why public speaking training can enhance a person's ability to stand up and deliver a great speech. Below are just five of the most important ones.

Learning How to Alleviate Your Fears

It is perfectly natural for some people to suffer from stage fright. Suddenly finding yourself in the limelight can be quite daunting. It is this fear that makes people feel uncomfortable because all eyes are on them and the fear of making a mistake can be overwhelming.

Enrolling into a public speaking course allows people to effectively put these same fears to one side. This is a crucial component of any course because once the fear of standing up in front of an audience has been resolved, a person begins to have faith in their personal resources and abilities.

Helping to Build Up Confidence

One of the most daunting aspects of standing up in front of an audience is the inherent lack of confidence in ones' ability to deliver a speech that keeps peoples' attention. Public speaking courses are designed to help build up a person's confidence. The way this is done is to focus on a person's individual and specific skill sets in order to generate a maximum impact on their audiences.

During a course, people are shown how keep eye contact with their audience. They are taught the importance of voice modulation. Both aspects are all about building up a persons' confidence in their own abilities.

However, another important aspect in confidence building is of course, to have a speech relevant to the topic that is full of valuable content. It goes without saying a speaker has to feel comfortable with the topic of the speech.

Developing Your Own Individual Style

People are encouraged to develop their own individual and unique styles of delivering a speech. The course helps people fine tune their personal characteristics, their abilities and their strong qualities to suit their needs. An effective training course will teach a person to develop their own style of speaking and not to borrow one from someone else. It is a person's own unique style that makes them good orators.

Familiarising Yourself with the Small Details

Taking a course in public speaking helps a person to familiarise themselves with all the small details that go into delivering a memorable speech. The course teaches the importance of 'first impressions' and when a pause can make a difference. People are taught the importance of interacting with audiences and how to avoid small mistakes that can may have a negative impact on a speech.

The course also teaches people how to use humour in a speech and more importantly when to include it so that audiences remain attentive and interested. An effective public speaking course teaches all of these important aspects of delivering a memorable speech.

Having a Platform to Practice On

At the end of the day, there is no getting away from the fact that practice makes perfect. It is all well and good practising in front of a mirror, but this could never be the same as standing up in front of a room full of people. When taking in a training program, people are asked to stand up in front of others in the group to deliver a speech. This process makes it a lot easier when the time comes to stand up in front of an audience and deliver a speech to them. Public training courses are designed to help people do this with ease and confidence making the whole process that much more enjoyable.

If you would like to enrol into a public speaking course to learn all of the above because you need to deliver a speech professionally or at a social event like a wedding, then please follow the link below:

http://www.skillstudio.co.uk

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Freelance Writing Sites - The Good

2/12/2012

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Working from home is convenient and these days offers people a chance to earn some money when jobs are hard to find. But you need to be strong and you have to be committed because it's too easy to get sidetracked or taken away from your work in a home environment. You need a to set up a place within your house where you are not likely to be disturbed when you are in 'work mode'. But then you need to know when to clock off too – many people find they put in too many hours when working from home and ultimately 'burn' themselves out.

For writers, having peace and quiet is really important because you need a calm, quiet working environment not only when you write, but also when doing any research. You don't actually need much to set yourself up as a writer – obviously you need to have writing skills, a creative mind helps and the ability and passion to carry out any research needed for a topic you have to write about. You also need a computer and an Internet connection, but that's about it.

Read more of the article at the link below:
http://opticopy.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/freelance-writing-sites-the-good/

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Freelancer Job Sites - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

24/11/2012

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There are quite a few freelance writing sites out there these days - some are pretty small online affairs that don't inspire confidence whilst others have grown so big they have lost sight of quality, value and more importantly integrity. The sad truth about a couple of these successful online freelancer job sites, is that since they have made their mark on the world, and naturally a lot of money, their members, users and project creators appear to have been put on the back burner.

So let's look at these freelancing job sites - let's take a look at some positive aspects of the sites and then let's take a close look at some of the negative reviews these sites have received over recent times and let's do this one at a time. This week it's the turn of Freelancer.com

Freelancer.com AKA GetaFreelancer.com

The site that claims to be the biggest Freelancer job site on the Internet - Freelancer.com aka GetaFreelancer.com. However, there's been quite a lot of speculation as to the accuracy of these claims. A little like the site itself, many of the people who use Freelancer.com have got several identities. It would be quite fair to say that a good percentage of registered users have at least 4 other IDs - shocking or what?

Now, obviously this changes things somewhat - 4 million plus users could suddenly become 1 million plus users - and that's quite a BIG difference. In fact, it is one that just cannot be ignored. Claiming to have so many users would need to be confirmed, verified or else it could be conceived as a little deceptive - some might even want to call it a "scam".

This is a word that's frequently associated with Freelancer.com - all one has to do is check out a few of the online review sites to read what's being bandied around about them on the Internet. SiteJabber, the ComplaintsBoard and many other review sites, are places where people go to vent their feelings - and a good job they can too! After all "a problem shared is a problem halved" and all that. Thank goodness for the Internet!

The problem, however, does not simply stop there because these fake IDs allow users to get up to all sorts of shenanigans, normally at the expense of an innocent person or two. These innocents just happen to use the site occasionally. Or it could be the hapless user who stumbles into a maze of deception when they first start using Freelancer.com either to find work or to seek freelancers for jobs they need doing. And this is where it gets really sticky.............

And it doesn't get any stickier than trying to get any help from the so called "support team". It would be pretty fair to say that most of the people who work wherever it is they do work for Freelancer.com, cannot boast that the universal language of English is their mother tongue. AND believe it or not, this can cause serious issues - getting a complaint over to someone who does not have a clue what you are talking about, can, it would seem, make an already frustrating scenario a thousand times worse! Scary or what?

The founder of the site is a bloke called Matt Barrie, and hats off to the guy for getting to where he is today, which is somewhere between not being able to find a hat that fits his head and a tie to go with his suits - BUT - and there is a but, Mr Barrie reckons he can be likened to Sir Richard Branson and other earth moving entrepreneurs who have made a serious impact on the modern world.

Well.............begging Mr. Barrie's pardon - but I don't think so. I mean come on - we are talking different stratospheres here (literally) - we're talking about a guy who is hands on and who employs 'la crème de la crème' to ensure that his numerous ultra successful companies run smoothly - talking about Branson here, by the way, just thought I needed to make that clear!

Barrie on the other hand gave a talk recently titled 'The art of making $30k a year for doing nothing ' and that just about sums up how he lets his staff run the Freelancer site - c'est terrible - as the French would say, but hey, it seems to work for Barrie. It is just a shame it does not work for the people who actually use his site and therefore the people who got him to where he is in the first place.

Conclusion

Freelancer.com alias whatever it was before - has to be thought of as a freelancing job site where anything goes. It is not a site where good writers who know their worth would look for work - BUT - it is a site that offers lots of job opportunities for people in countries where there is no minimum wage issues and it is here that I remain polite.

When it comes to the site being one of the biggest on the Internet - I think this really does need to be looked into and then verified because at the moment this is a very, very grey area. Needless to say, Mr Barrie is hardly likely to look into it - I mean who would want to admit the fruit of their labours is not as big as they claim it to be?

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