Monday, April 21, 2008

Writing Opportunities on the World Wide Web

For the frustrated freelancer, the world wide web has opened up a lot of new opportunities to make money online.

Here are some ways to make money strictly as a web writer:

  • Writing articles for paid article sites. The best known of these is http://associatedcontent.com.
  • Writing articles to promote your own website. This is known as article marketing. The key to success as an article marketer is productivity. The more you write, the more backlinks you get to your site.
  • Copywriting. If you have copywriting skills, the web is full of people who need your services. The problem won't be finding work, it will be finding time to do all the work you have.
  • Ghostwriting. Writing content for pay is a great way to start a steady income stream. You can advertise your services in forums, through a press release or through sites such as Squidoo. Work can also be found at sites like http://guru.com and http://elance.com.

  • Blogs. You can make money blogging for yourself, or get paid to write content for other people's blogs.
  • Writing your own info product. Many people have been able to quit their day job and pull in full-time income by writing one or more info products.

In short, the world wide web offers writers a lot of opportunities to get paid to write without waiting for an editor's approval. Life doesn't get better than that!

Thursday, April 17, 2008

What Do I Write About?

So what do I write about? This is a common question for most writer wannabes. The phrase "Write what you know" is one we hear over and over, probably to the point the words are meaningless. After staring at a blank pages for any length of time, it may feel like you don't know anything at all.

Oh, but you do. The things you have experienced have ONLY been lived by you. Only you have worked in the particular places you have, had the particular parents you've had, married the particular person you have married. You may have travelled to places others have only dreamed of, or you may be able to lead people smoothly around a kitchen. Maybe you have raised twelve children or grown the biggest tomatoes in the neighborhood. Maybe you know sign language because you have a deaf brother; maybe you can fix a stereo with your eyes closed.

When pondering what to write, you have to ask yourself

What makes you YOU?

What experiences need to be shared before you take them with you to your grave?

Experiences can be shared in an info product, blog, series of articles, or it can be related through a character in a novel.

When pursuing the writing dream, just open a vein and let what makes you unique come out.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

The Value of Writing Talent



I was born with the compulsion to write. I think you know when you’ve found your destiny when you are doing something you would do whether or not you got paid. In fact, for most of my writing I haven’t been paid, but I have made a conscious decision to put my talent to work and see where it takes me.

In the Bible, the parable of talents teaches that whatever talent you have been given is really a responsibility. You are expected to use your talent.

What’s exciting about writing talent, big or small, is that it can be used in so many different ways. In putting up my first website, work-at-home-parenting.com, I have learned how valuable writing web content is to every webmaster in the world. Millions and millions of sites reside on the World Wide Web, each needed to be filled with unique content. A very large percentage of site owners don’t have the time or the inclination to write all their own content, which creates great opportunities for writers to work as ghostwriters.

Article marketing is probably the best way to drive traffic to a website for free, and it is often recommended to webmasters that they market at least one article every single day. That is a huge demand for writing production.

Then there is blogging. For someone who can’t help but listen to the compulsion to write, blogging is something that has to be explored.

Writing talent can be used in other various fields, from novel writing to copywriting to poetry writing to ebook writing.

Writing talent is a gift and an opportunity. Finding a way to turn talent into cash can be challenging, but isn’t impossible. Making the decision to change your life, to take responsibility to turn your dreams into reality is the hardest part.

Welcome to The Writing Dream

Welcome to The Writing Dream. I am excited to begin this endeavor. My name is Valerie Dansereau and I am the site owner and webmaster of www.work-at-home-parenting.com. I am also the author of How to Make Money Writing for the Web

In putting together work-at-home-parenting.com I have explored various ways of making money at home, and the more I explore, the more convinced I am that writing is my first love. In fact, when you start your own website, it's so important to choose a topic for which you feel passion...otherwise creating content seems too much like work! It's taken me a year to figure out that writing itself IS my passion.

As a little girl, I journaled every day. I ended up with a journal of over 5000 pages by the time I got out of high school. I have written two children's books, not yet published and have published several stories in confession magazines.

In researching "How to Make Money Writing for the Web", my passion for writing grew. I have an interest in many different forms of writing, not just web writing, and I hope to explore topics related to web writing as well as print writing.

And so The Writing Dream has been born.