writing

Being able to write for a living is a remarkable gift.

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writing skillsFor most of the time, we take our ability to write for granted.

After all, pretty much everyone can write. It’s one of those default skills we learn at school. And because everyone can do it, the act of writing becomes a commodity. There is no longer anything special about it.

Your mother writes. Your neighbors write. Your kids write. In fact, chances are that one of them is writing something on Facebook right now.

But if you view writing as a craft instead of just a commodity activity, remarkable things can happen.

First, you will have found a way to express yourself, your feelings and your opinions beyond simply writing one more Facebook entry. Second…

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My favorite way to make money as a writer [VIDEO]

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money-making website videoFor most of the last 30 years I have earned my living by writing for clients, as a freelancer. And I have no complaints about that. I wrote promotional materials to help companies sell more of their products and services and, in return, they paid me for my time.

But over the last decade I have branched out a little, using my writing skills, and my love of writing, to make some money in a few different ways. I have written books, ebooks, courses and programs.

But my favorite way to make money as a writer is to generate passive income from the websites I create for myself.

The most successful of these sites, so far, is my site about coffee – CoffeeDetective.com.

As you`ll see from this video…

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Monday Spark: Giving military wives a voice by teaching them to sing together.

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singing for inspirationI’m in the U.K. at the moment, and watched a remarkable program on the television here.

Gareth Malone is a choirmaster. I understand he’s in his forties, but he looks more twenty. Anyway, he is a professional and has worked with some of the leading choirs in the country.

But recently, instead of working at some high-brow opera house, he is driving around the country to military bases. When he gets there, he organises the military wives into choirs and teaches them to sing.

Military wives are the women left behind when their husbands are deployed overseas, principally to Afghanistan. They are isolated and live under a shadow of fear, hoping and praying their husbands come home.

Gareth Malone creates a remarkable bond with these women, and tutors even the most timid of them until they find their voice.

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On your web content pages, reveal your core message slowly.

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mystery in the box revealedOften when I arrive at a content page online, I read the first few lines and find the answer or information I was looking for. Or I at least get the gist of it. I then stop reading and hit the back button.

In other words, the writer has revealed the good stuff at the top of the page, and has given me little or no reason to keep reading.

In fact, I have made the same error with this post. You have already finished reading the short version of what I plan to say and – if you were in a hurry – you could pretty much move on at this point.

(That said, the good stuff is yet to come…I just didn’t flag it in the intro.)

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4 Examples of Effective Headline Design.

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headline design for web contentHeadline design? What does that mean?

It means writing and formatting your headline in a way that makes it jump out from the page, or email, or a smartphone.

It used to be that headlines had to do a single job, on the web page where the balance of the content followed. Read the headline, and then keep reading the body text immediately below.

Today, headlines still have to work well, immediately above the body content, but they also have to grab attention and hook readers when they stand alone.

Here are a few situations where your headline has to stand alone, or almost alone: When used as a tweet on Twitter. In an RRS feed. On a smartphone. In Reddit or Digg.

In these circumstances, your headline has to jump out from dozens of others, and get the reader to click through to the full page or post.

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Your new site visitors and subscribers don’t know who you are, yet. [TIMELINE]

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Yesterday I was reading an excellent post by Chris Brogan, Start Fresh.

In his post he talks about how while you move forward with your career, many of your readers have stepped in half way through the narrative. They may not know where you “came from” or how and why you do what you are doing today.

Very good point.

For myself, I have been earning my living as a writer for 30 years now, and I have been publishing my online newsletter for over 10 years.

I guess a small proportion of my current newsletter readers have been with me from the beginning. But I’m sure most haven’t.

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