Category Archives: work from home

money

How To Make Money Writing – Even If You Can’t Write!

How To Make Money Writing

Did you know that some people who make a lot of money writing failed high school English? No matter how well or how badly you write, you can make serious money writing articles. But most article writers earn little or nothing.

Why is this?

Why Most Article Writers Fail

failWriting for profit is not difficult, but unless you know what you’re doing and how to do it you won’t make money. What most writers don’t know is that it’s not about how well you write. Making money from writing is a simple skill, but you were never taught how to do it.

For example, did you know that your purpose in writing an article is NOT to get people to read the article? You really don’t care how much of the article they read, because reading the article doesn’t bring you any money!  What you really want them to do is click on your link

You Don’t Need Long Articles

The temptation when you start writing articles is to put as much content in as you can and write everything you know about the subject. This approach leads to long, boring articles, with too much information, that don’t get read and don’t earn money.

Keep it short. 500-650 words is quite long enough (check the length of this article) – your job is to maintain interest, not to wear down your reader.

It Doesn’t Take Much Time

You know already that writing articles is a sure-fire way to earn money, but are you concerned about the time it will take? The answer is it doesn’t take long to write an article.

With a little practice, you will find that writing an article for profit will only take you about 15-20 minutes (as long as you’re not a really slow typist!) If your typing skills are not up to that, you can easily learn to improve them – there are many resources on the internet you can use to speed up. A Google search on “improve typing speed” yields about two and one-half million results!

It Doesn’t Need to Cost A Lot

There are many free resources available – some good, some not so good. Here is a great free resource to get you started.. There is also inexpensive (not free) training available.

The best training is the kind where you follow their rules and write articles as you go. Ezine Articles, for example, provides excellent training in how to write articles destined for their site. They are also one of the few sites that insist on all original content, forcing you to write your own material rather than just copying someone else’s work.

Where Do You Find Content?

There is content all around you. You can search for articles that have already been written on your topic, but do not copy them without permission and full attribution. Quote your source, and make it clear that you have copied the article with permission.

Better still, rewrite the article in your own words. This is an excellent way to get started with article writing, but after a while you will find that you have more than enough information in your head to write entirely original material. It just needs organizing.

Conclusion

Article marketing can be rewarding. It may seem like a chore when you start, but you will soon find that it’s easy to set aside a half hour or so per day to write one or two articles. The secret is to make it a habit.

Alan Jenkin has published a variety of articles for a number of years.
Learn the secrets of making money with articles now from the free e-course at Profitable Writing System.
When you finish this 7 part e-course you’ll be well on your way to turning your content into cash!

Profitable Writing

(This article was previously published in GoArticles.)

Alan Jenkin

Author
Alan Jenkin has posted to several blogs for a number of years. His subjects include health and fitness, running, personal development and internet marketing. He lives in Texas and has a vacation home in the Caribbean, where his hobbies include boating and scuba diving. He is married to best-selling author Billie Willmon Jenkin.

Is it OK to take a break?

Is it OK to take a break?

If you are a member of my service for runners (http://halftrainingschedule.com) you may recognize this as the title of my last newsletter.

I just spent five weeks in Central America, mostly at my home in Roatan, but also took a few days to visit Nicaragua.  Although it’s true that you can do this business from anywhere, there are some requirements.  You need a phone, an internet connection and a computer.

I took a VOIP phone with me and I have a router and air card for the internet connection.  Both worked well on occasion, but the internet connection was a lot slower than my US one.  My computer was an aging laptop – adequate, but only just.

I soon recognized that I needed to adapt my daily method of operation (or DMO) to take account of these limitations.  Working before 6AM I could generally get a reasonable internet connection.  From then until 5PM it deteriorated, and after 5PM it was worthless.

When we went to Nicaragua for a few days, I left my laptop behind and discovered the freedom of traveling without one!  Billie and I managed with a small backpack each.  Well, I did, but Billie always ends up with more than one item …

Fortunately, I had already handed my hot prospects over to another team member to nurse while I was away, so I took a break from business while we traveled.  When we got back, I cranked up the laptop again to get started once more.

Only it didn’t.

Dead Laptop

When I hit the power switch, nothing happened – not even a whirring sound.

It just sat there with a black screen and looked at me gloomily.  I unplugged it, plugged it in again, shook it, swore at it, spoke soothingly to it, asked if it would like some coffee — nothing worked.

Reluctantly, I took it in to the local laptop laboratory.  They didn’t exactly laugh when I showed them my relic, but they did ask how old it was.  “Younger than me” I replied …  I knew I was in trouble when they told me that the problem was that it would not power up … (I kinda knew that.)

“But why?” I asked.

“Could be a number of things”, they replied.  “We’ll check it out and let you know.  Pedro will look at it.”

The next day I eagerly scuttled in to the shop and asked if they had fixed my laptop yet.  “Pedro hasn’t looked at it yet” they told me.  “Maybe tomorrow … he’ll call you when he knows.”

Remember the H-factor?  Five minutes should be all it takes for a skilled technician to discover the cause of a no-power problem.  OK – let’s say an hour – that translates to two days applying the H-factor.

So on the second day I went back a little more apprehensively than the day before.  “Oh” they said “Pedro looked at it yesterday – we can’t fix it.”

No point in asking why he had not called me, of course.

“It needs a new motherboard.  We can order one for you, but it will take a month or so.”

Back to the question – is it OK to take a break?

As you can tell, I didn’t have a choice, unless I wanted to buy a new laptop in Honduras at twice the US cost and with a Spanish keyboard.

For the next week I went into almost total withdrawal.  I could check my e-mail on Billie’s Mac, but even that was difficult (why did they have to make it so unfriendly to a lifelong Windower? – I have cursed Bill Gates with the rest of them, but I don’t find Steve Jobs an improvement unless I want to take the time to study his MacQuirks.)

The good news is that I’m now back with a great new laptop and a great new attitude.  Refreshed and excited to get back to my DMO with some cool new ideas for improving it.   Yee-haw!

New Laptop

So the answer to the question about taking a break  is “If it feels right, do it”!

Obviously, if you’re in the middle of a major launch it doesn’t make sense to take a break, but otherwise try it.  You will find it helps your attitude (especially if you’re feeling stale) and it may improve your business.

You may not even need a new laptop!