Writing for Money: Tune up Your Writer’s Website

If you want to make money writing, your website is the hub of your business. However, most writers don’t take full advantage of the capabilities of their site to act as a fishing net to haul in lots of great clients.

Here’s how to tune up your writer’s website.

1. Site-Creation: Use a Tool You Can Manage on Your Own

Creating websites these days is laughably easy. If you can write an email message, you can create your own website in minutes.

Remember that what’s important on your site is the words on it (because words are what you’re selling).

You need lots of words on your site.

Here’s why: firstly, because of search engines. The search engines index your site and then return the site on the search results pages when someone searches for what you do. If you don’t have enough words, your site won’t appear very often.

Secondly, you need to tell people exactly what you do. You must be specific.

Many writers take the attitude that their website is a brochure. It isn’t. Your site has more in common with a book than with a brochure, although both analogies are incorrect. Write detailed explanations of exactly what you provide in each of your services. In addition, explain how and why your services are vital to your clients’ business.

2. Post Samples and Updates Regularly

Do you have writing samples on your site? You need them, and the more the merrier. Once you get to the stage where you’re turning away clients, samples on your site won’t be as important, because you already have a large clientele and people spread your name around.

However if you’re a beginner you need to post samples and updates to your site regularly. The search engines love sites which are updated often, so before too long your site will start rising in the search engine results pages and you’ll collect clients like a dog collects fleas.

3. Cut Down on Tyre-Kickers: Create a Briefing Form on Your Site

Anyone who runs a business (and if you write for money, you do) experiences five to 10 tyre kickers for every genuine prospect. You can run yourself ragged by answering questions from people who have no intention of hiring you, or you can create a briefing form on your site.

A “brief” is a description of a project. Make your briefing form reasonably comprehensive, it should take at least five minutes to complete. Prospects who can’t or won’t fill out your briefing form will never pay you to write for them, so this is an easy way of winnowing the wheat from the chaff.

Discover the secrets to selling your writing services with Angela Booth’s video series and marketing ebook. Give your writing business a marketing boost today – you’ll be thrilled with the results.

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