Questions

There has never been a better work at home idea, than doing what you really enjoy at your pace, and convenience. This makes me think about writing as an ideal work at home business idea. When we talk about writing, it is not really a career but a noble calling. It is for those of us who are talented and can construct sensible sentences. Writing is in fact an art which has very profound discipline. For those of us who can really write and have the talent, then making money at the comfort of your home has never been easier.

A writer is a very creative individual who can construct any writings in an engaging, compelling and in an informative manner. However, now-a-days any rookie who has some great ideas has turned writing to be a business venture to mint money. This in turn has turned a once a coveted undertaking to loose its respect, in turn, making most would-be writers to be demoralized and loose interest in writing. Though in great dispute and argument, writing holds a distinct position as one of the best art known to mankind. One can still make use of their God given writing skills and talent to make some good money to support their living. One of the best ways to do this is through freelancing. Freelance writing offers a person with the aperture to make a considerable amount of money. It is now a career to thousands of writers who have taken it as a full time engagement.

Once an individual decides that they want to take part in freelance writing, then they need real writing practice and equipment for their bid to be successive. Practice will help you to produce articles whose features are both compelling and of a great quality. If your article goes through the editorial review process successfully, then you are on your way in making some good income out of it. Your articles should feature regularly for you to get enough exposure and regularly money on it. Articles of profound interest to readers of both journals and magazines normally earns a writer some good returns. In fact, the returns are of great dimensions-the writers who write quality and engaging articles earn immense income from these publications.

Of late, the internet is offering big writing opportunities which one can invest in when it comes to writing. You could review all sorts of publications over the internet. One of the most popular methods of writing over the net is blogging. This is a good method for a writer to earn money. Your contributions to forums earns income. Other form of writings one can engage in over the net is through fillers, poetry, and educational write ups. To summarize all, there is still a variety of writing markets which have not yet been tapped and any body who have the guts to prosper can tap into them and earn good money for their troubles. So writer out there, why not give it a try?




- freddy ngiam

Article directories receive hundreds of articles daily - but why do some articles perform better than others? In this article we examine some of the reasons.

Article writing, for a competent writer, is a fairly easy discipline. The task is to write an informative and interesting piece of work in the range of some 400-1200 words. Yet many articles that I, as an article directory editor, have seen are just not up to the mark. Why is that? Let’s leave aside for the moment the ones that are grammatically poor or have been obviously assembled by cherry-picking several sources of information.

The function of an article written with the express intent of being reproduced throughout the internet on blogs, ezines and the like is to sell a product - indirectly. It should be written in such a fashion that the reader’s interest is piqued and then held until the article’s conclusion, resulting in a level of interest that stimulates the reader to click through to the author’s site, link or whatever.

Poor articles do not achieve this goal for a variety of reasons and most of these can be summarised by the following points:

1. The article is a blatant advertisment with little or no interesting content.

2. The article rambles on vaguely with no focus or simply has no point to make.

3. The article may have a theme but that theme does not relate very well to either the title or introductory paragraph.

An article, no matter how short, is a story - and all stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. In an article that is written for promotional purposes, these ‘anchors’ can also be called question, development and answering conclusion. So what are they and how do they work?

1. The ‘question’ should be in embedded in the title - ‘Green Cheese: Is The Moon Really Made From It?’ is humorous but effective. It defines the question that the article will answer.

2. The development discusses if indeed the moon is made out of green cheese and, if possible, offers some counter-arguments to this - ’so what then was Neil Armstrong stood upon back in 1969?’ This phase encourages the reader to think and consider what you, the author, are saying - and here you must write with authority, being sure of your facts as you can be. Any signs of insincerity at this point and the reader will realise this. Your authority has then been lost together with the credibility of the article.

3. Answering conclusion: this can either confirm or refute the theory of the moon’s status as green cheese - it depends on how the author wishes to answer his or her own title question. In this fun example we could wind up with something like ’so it appears the moon is not made of green cheese - but there are those who think it still is. Are you one of them?’ and go on in the authors box to promote telescopes, conspiracy theory books or a host of other things.

The last question is important. It performs the same function as the ‘if you want more information…’ endings but, I think, has a better ring to it as it asks the reader to consider their stance on the subject.

Articles written to the above formula - and article writing is formulaic - will usually perform well. Now let’s consider the badly written and the cut-and-paste sector.

Not everyone speaks English as their first language yet English is the language of choice for article writing. Right or wrong, it’s fact. So I would suggest to those people who write articles and whose first language is not English - get some help. Why? Simple. It doesn’t matter if you are intelligent, well-educated and successful - poorly-written English makes your article look amateurish. Get a copywriter or at least get a fluent (and I do mean fluent) English speaker to vet it for you. You might be surprised at the improvement in reception your articles receive.

For those who (and it really is so apparent) just cut and paste blocks of text from who knows where to make up an article, or for those who simply re-arrange their articles so as to make ten from one, my advice is - give it up. I see these every day. One may get posted to my directory, the rest will be binned. Realise that there is NOT a lot of really high quality content on the internet and write instead just one version of the article - but make it the best you can. That will get you noticed and you will gain the respect of your readers.

If you have got this far in this article then perhaps I’ve proved my point!


- Steve Dempster

“The best way to overcome writer’s block is to just keep writing.” You’ve probably heard this a zillion times but does this approach really work?

You’re waiting for me to say, ‘yes’, ain’t you? Well, let me surprise you by saying that I only believe 40% of that sentence. And I have 2 good reasons for it. Hear me out…

1. It’s too vague an advice

2. How can someone already with writer’s block continue writing?

Alright, you might be wondering what happen to the rest of the 60%. It took me quite a while to realize the true meaning behind the sentence and I’m about to share my revelation with you so read on…

Base on my experience, writer’s block happens most of the time when I stop and read my article over and over again.

The trouble with it is the more I read my uncompleted article, the more I feel my article is inadequate, the more I get concerned with what I should add into my article next. And boink! My brain hits the writer’s block.

My discovery is: Writer’s block often appears in my mind when I edit my article in the midst of my writing. After much thinking, I realized the truth…

What the advice, “just keep writing”, actually means is to start writing and stop editing in the first place. Okay okay, that’s not helping, is it? Here’s what I mean exactly…

Challenge yourself to write non-stop for the first 20 minutes. Leave all the editing to later. Have a spelling error or a misplaced punctuation? Wait till you complete writing your articles.

Realize the first step in article writing is to complete writing your articles. Only then do you have something to edit upon.

Discipline yourself to keep your hands on the type pad and continue rattling with ideas. Avoid the vicious writer’s block by keeping your hands away from the mouse or the ‘back’ button on your keyboard.

Sounds simple? It is!

Yet, not many people truly understand the meaning behind the advice, ‘just keep writing’. They assume that overcoming writer’s block is to keep writing after they meet the mental block. It’s not.

The only way to overcoming writer’s block is to avoid it in the first place by completing your articles before you take another look at it.

Go ahead and test this approach out. If you follow every single word I say, you too will churn an article this long in just 10 minutes within one sitting (like what I’m doing).

Good luck!


- Dominic Tay