Freelance Copywriter Secrets: Honesty is Good For the Bank Account

January 21st, 2012



Dan Kennedy is a freelance copywriter who is regarded as a hero by many of us in the copywriting profession. And for good reason, my copy of his book, The Ultimate Sales Letter, is highlighted, bookmarked and contains many, many of my handwritten notes in the margins. It is one of the best books on copywriting I own. Someday maybe I can even have his autograph in it.

One piece of advice Dan gives has paid me back many times the cost of his book in my work as a freelance copywriter. Not only is it a highly effective way to increase your credibility in the eyes of your reader, it can also help you hold a reader’s attention and it can position your product or service as the owner of its own niche.

As a credibility tool, this bit of Dan’s wisdom has few equals. When you incorporate this technique in your ad copy, it immediately sets you apart from the crowd of “we’re great,” or “our widget is the best” marketers.

As a tool for grabbing a reader’s attention and holding it through your copy, this technique uses both curiosity and self interest. It heightens the reader’s sense that some very strong benefits are about to be revealed that can’t be missed.

As a positioning tool, it helps you create your own category. No longer must you fight with the big fish in the pond. You can now own your own pond and be the only fish for miles around.

What is this wonderful piece of advice? Dan devotes an entire chapter to the concept of “Create A Damaging Admission and Address Flaws Openly.”

Let’s face it, your widget may really be the best on the planet, but it still has its flaws or weaknesses. Not only that, your competitor’s widget is not all bad, with no positive points worth mentioning.

So what do you do? You meet these weaknesses head on. If your product is priced higher than your competitor’s, admit it right up front. But then marry that drawback with a corresponding positive. Why is your product more expensive? What extras come with that higher price tag? What reasons can you give prospective buyers to ignore the higher price and focus on additional benefits they won’t get with a lower priced competing product?

Build honesty and credibility. On rare occasions, I have actually heard politicians praise their opponents (I did say this was rare) and then point out the issues upon which they disagree. When I hear this sort of political discourse, I have several reactions. First, I find myself experiencing warm feelings toward this rare politician who takes the higher ground, even though I know his campaign workers may be, at that very moment, digging up dirt on that opposing politician). Second, I find that I give the point of disagreement much more importance than I would otherwise. By admitting a few things he or she liked about the opponent, I am made to care more about those differences. For marketers, when you do reveal your positives after admitting your flaws, you are building strong credibility. Your prospective customer is much more likely to believe your positive points after you admit your shortcomings. Suspense. Nothing holds a reader’s attention and interest like suspense. When you start your ad by admitting a few flaws or by praising some features of your competition, your reader begins thinking, “if these guys are willing to expose these negatives, there must be a positive coming that I don’t want to miss. People know you are paying good money for your ad. And they know you are not doing it to promote your competition. So they start expecting to hear something fabulous about your own product. They know it’s coming, they know it will offer strong benefits and it will appeal to their self interest. Positioning. Sometimes establishing your uniqueness is a matter of refusing to compete on everyone else’s playing field. When Avis’ famous campaign admitted that they were number two, they were refusing to compete with Hertz for dominance in a race Hertz already owned. Instead they chose to play on the field of “trying harder,” which they explained meant giving more customer service and greater attention to the little things. Suppose you are writing an ad for a sports car. Sports cars are notoriously impractical and only appeal to a small niche of people who (at least in the eyes of others) are showing off, compensating for something else or just never grew out of their fantasies to be James Bond. How might you promote such a car? Here’s an example: The Thunderbolt XYZ does not have room to put a child’s seat in the back. In fact, it doesn’t have a back seat at all. Also, if you are expecting to put six bags of groceries in the trunk, forget it. You can put two, or maybe three bags at the most, in the Thunderbolt’s trunk. Carpooling a bunch of kids to soccer practice? Not a chance. But if you want to race down an open country road with an autumn breeze blowing through your hair, if you want a car that hugs corners like super glue, or if you want to make your old fraternity brothers question their entire lives, the Thunderbolt is your car. Such an ad certainly won’t appeal to everybody, but to its very narrow target audience, it might have a very strong appeal indeed. You might want to also check out my article, Freelance Copywriter Secrets: 10 Steps to Writing a Powerful USP if you want to read more about dominating a specific niche.

This technique is so powerful that Dan Kennedy advocates trying really hard to come up with negatives just so you can admit them in your ad. And when you can increase your credibility, hold readers in suspense and take ownership of a specific niche with one single tactic, I can see why.

Before I close however, I must mention one thing. Be sure to marry every negative with an even stronger positive. Your goal is not to bad mouth your own product or send customers to your competition’s door. It is to convince them that, despite a few drawbacks, your product is the one that will solve their problems and meet their needs.

COPYRIGHT(C)2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.
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Wireless Broadband Access – Making the Virtual Office Possible

January 20th, 2012




Do you remember when home wireless networking burst into our lives? Suddenly we could work from any where in the house. Have you ever wanted to do the same when you are out on the road?

With WiMax, now you can!

WiMax is a wireless network access program that offers its subscribers citywide high-speed broadband access to the internet. You can be up to 31 miles from an antenna and still get online.

Although, the further you are from the antenna the slower your connection.

Here is how it works.

A broadband provider sets up several cells to support a certain geographical area. While the theoretical range of WiMax is 31 miles, most cells will only support an area from three to 10 miles.

Within this range, special cards based on the 802.16 wireless standards will allow mobile devices to surf the internet at high speed.

This cell system is similar to how digital cell phones work now.

Where this technology really shines is for mobile business computing. Imagine you are a busy sales executive. You just finished a presentation to a major client.

The presentation went well, but they asked for some revisions. Normally, you would have to rush back to the office and have the revisions made.

With WiMax, you could connect via your VPN. Mail the changes to your office, which would make the revisions and send them back. All in a matter of minutes.

Can you imagine the level of perceived customer service your clients will have? You just told them that they are important, so important you dropped everything to handle their requests.

In just minutes you emailed the changes to your boss, she reviewed and approved them and emailed the updated paperwork directly to you. Another three minutes to print them out on your portable printer and get the clients to sign! Contract closed!

How could they not be impressed!

Typical download speeds are in the range of 400 – 700 kilo bytes per second (kbps).

That is slightly faster than many cable companies allow for their cable modems. It is much faster than DSL connectivity.

Astonishingly, this technology is capable of speed bursts of up to 2 megabytes per second (mbps)!

How can you integrate WiMax into your current business? How about setting up a wireless mobile office that is always connected to your home office?

Start with getting a good laptop computer and add as much memory as it will hold. Purchase your WiMax wireless network card to get access to the broadband system.

Now, think about accessories. Will you need a portable printer to print presentations and contracts for your customers?

What about telephone service? Do you want to transfer your office phone to your cell? It could eat up your minutes, costing you extra money.

Have you thought about Voice-over-Internet Protocol or VoIP? Another name for VoIP is Internet Phone.

You could setup your office phone with a VoIP provider and take the module to the field with you. All it needs is an active internet connection to work.

Another option is to use your VoIP with a software phone program. This way you could use your laptop as a telephone.

There you have it, a complete mobile office. How great would it be to make plans with your clients in real time? Could your competitors even try to compete with you at this level?

Most likely, they could not!

In short, wireless broadband access may be the best key to increasing your competitiveness.

The freedom to engage customers, on their turf, while maintaining connectivity to your office will allow you to respond to rapidly changing situations.

Can you think of a better way to impress your clients than by being able respond immediately to their needs?
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Outsourcing To India

January 18th, 2012




Many large services oriented businesses outsource to India, where there is a competitive supply of educated workers who are skilled in IT and fluent in English. The advantage of this approach is that the client company can save costs by freeing up resources such as office space for other activities and leave the personnel department of the third party company to handle recruitment costs. Similarly many manufacturing businesses outsource to the Far East and East Europe which has heavy industries and factories but where English is perhaps not so widely used.

In many cases, the supply of suitably skilled workers is unavailable in the client’s host location and therefore the option to outsource to India where there is a more readily available supply of skilled workers would save costs by removing the need to provide training from scratch. In this context, software outsourcing such as web design outsourcing and IT outsourcing is an increasingly popular trend within the software industry in the UK where there is a skills shortage making the cost of hiring an IT professional unaffordable.

IT outsourcing can involve the turning over of responsibility to an outside firm the company’s entire IT department such as hosting, maintenance, software development and technical support. However, many companies choose to partially outsource IT functions. The client company may at a later stage choose to have more or fewer departments outsourced.

IT outsourcing can significantly lower the costs to the client’s company while matching and often increasing the end product quality, leaving the company better able to anticipate future costs and focus on other key functions. On aggregate, the cost savings made allows the company to expand their services and therefore benefit the economy as a whole.
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Outsourcing Presents Revolutionary Cost-Savings

January 12th, 2012



In today’s competitive economic environment, outsourcing IT and office work to an contractor or offshore center can present many significant efficiencies and cost-savings to businesses.

More and more businesses are scaling down by using technology to cut costs and realize outsourcing benefits such as lower labor costs and increased efficiency.

Few other fields can realize these benefits as well as information technology. Because networked systems can be accessed by qualified information technology professionals around the world, your business can farm out your IT work to offshore outsourcing centers.

Offshore outsourcers

Offshore IT outsourcing has become extremely popular because it allows businesses to avoid the high labor costs of the U.S. Sending your IT work to a centralized location also provides for greater efficiency because it allows for quicker response times and needs fewer people to operate.

Another field where such benefits are being realized is in virtual office solutions. By taking advantage of a virtual office solution, you can realize significant cost savings and efficiencies whether you send the work overseas or to a stateside outsourcing center.

In virtual office solutions, your call-handling, scheduling, accounts payable and many other clerical duties are handled off-site at a central location by staff dedicated and trained to handle these types of duties. This frees up your staff for more mission critical tasks and can allow you to reassign or downsize staff currently tasked with clerical or office duties, creating more efficiency for your business.

You may feel some anxiety or guilt over outsourcing work overseas or to a stateside center, but the money you save from sending IT and other work may be what helps keep your business afloat, saving your job and other jobs. In these recessionary times, tough calls like outsourcing present situations where one must sacrifice the few for the well-being of the many.

You Need To Manage It!

That’s not to say that outsourcing can’t have its downsides, however. Only about half of all businesses that use outsourcing are satisfied by it. Outsourcing only works as well as management has planned for its execution.

To make an outsourcing plan that works, you need expert advice that can help you realize the full potential of this management strategy. Good outsourcing advice and counseling can mean the difference between a plan that turns your operation into a well-oiled machine or just a quality-killing management nightmare.
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How can I find new outsourcing project for my company?

January 10th, 2012

I work for an outsourcing company and I want to know if there are place on the net where outsourcing work are advertise so that I can apply for this project.

Thank you.
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All About Freelance Grant Writing Jobs

January 10th, 2012



Grant proposal writing is all about showcasing the pet project of a non-profit organization in a way that makes people want to contribute money. Sound simple? It really isn’t, but grant writing can be one of the more gratifying types of freelance writing if you aren’t afraid of some hard work.

How much money can I make writing grant proposals?

If you can get your foot in the door, freelance grant writing can mean big money.

How big is big? Well, if you charge a flat fee, you can earn anywhere from $100 to $1000, depending on the project’s complexity. Alternatively, many freelance grant writers choose to take a percentage of any funds their proposals generate. If you charge 5% and the grant is worth $50,000, then that’s $2,500 in your pocket!

You may prefer to charge on a percentage basis when you’re just starting out because non-profits like the idea of no upfront costs. If the organization agrees to hire you under these terms, then you’ll get some experience that will make it easier to charge upfront fees in the future.

What exactly does a freelance grant writer do?

In some cases, you just write the grant proposal. The best grant proposals are the ones that stick out from the crowd. Remember, potential donors usually have stacks of proposals asking for cash; your grant proposal needs to shine to get a donor’s attention.

In every grant proposal, you need to include:

1. The non-profit’s vision statement
2. Detail of the project
3. How the project will make a difference in the community
4. How the non-profit will spend the grant money
5. What the non-profit will contribute (money, labor, etc.)

In many cases, the organization will want you to do much more than write their proposal. Don’t be surprised if they expect you to do all the research related to the proposal, find grantors, send the proposals, keep track of what’s gone where and who’s said what, and prepare presentations – just in case the organization is asked to pitch their idea live and in person. You should include all of these tasks in your fee, so make sure you quote accordingly.

What skills do you need as a freelance grant writer?

Strong writing skills are important, but they aren’t as important as solid research skills and over-the-top enthusiasm for the project. Grant donors say repeatedly that passionate grant proposals with spelling mistakes interest them more than grammatically-perfect documents with feigned interest.

You need to convince the non-profit that it’s better to hire you than to write the grant proposal themselves. To win the job, you’ll need to display superior research, organizational, and critical thinking skills, coupled with a genuine desire to help.

How do I find freelance grant writing jobs?

Freelancing websites like Online-Writing-Jobs, WritingBids, IFreelance and Elance are great places to start. Sites like these usually get at least a few new ads for grant writers each day.

You should also consider creating business cards and brochures to advertise your grant writing services. Printed materials convey a degree of professionalism that will definitely show non-profits that you’re the writer for the job. Send a snazzy promotional package to the non-profits in your area to let them know you’re available if they need you.

How do I land a freelance grant writing job?

Let’s say you get an email as a result of one of the packages you sent to a non-profit organization. They write:

We received your brochure in the mail. Good timing – our church wants to start an outreach program for teens. We’ve been saving but still need a lot. Do you think you could help us find someone to help with funding?

First, how do you feel about this cause? If you think it’s a total waste of time, do yourself and the church a favor and decline the project.

If you like the cause, do your utmost to give them confidence in your abilities and your enthusiasm. You might reply:

Wow, what a great idea! I think your program will make a real difference. It’s great that you’ve been saving – funders like to know that the non-profit isn’t just looking for handouts. I can write you a persuasive grant proposal that will get the attention of grantors and bring you one step closer to realizing this vision.

Again, passion is key. Show the non-profit you’re devoted to their dream, and they’ll be more likely to hire you.
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Virtual Office – Setting Up Yours Part 2

January 8th, 2012




Secondary Supplies for Your Virtual Office

Aside from the basic supplies you’ll need to make your virtual office work (like a computer and internet connection) there are some secondary supplies that will make life a lot easier. Consider any or all of the following supplies once your virtual business is up and running. Most will save you time and many headaches when conducting business over the Web.

Scanner – A scanner comes in handy for scanner documents or photos from one client to another.

Fax – Consider investing in a fax machine or better yet, try out an E-fax when operating from a virtual office.

CD and DVD Writer – A CD-RW allows you to back up files on a CD, and a DVD-RAM allows you to write large files to digital medium, including video. Both come in handy when working online.

Copier – You may need a copier if you plan to work with lots of documents. You might consider investing in a multi purpose device that includes a scanner, fax, and printer and copying capability. There are a wealth of choices you can buy inexpensively online that work quite efficiently.

Software – Depending on your business you’ll need software to support your daily operations. Don’t even consider starting a business without an email program, some form of word processing software (like MSWord) and virus protection software. Other software that may come in handy include Adobe Reader, Illustrator, Photoshop, PowerPoint and some form of spreadsheet software.
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Where do I look to find and research companies who have successful done overseas outsourcing?

January 3rd, 2012


I’m doing some research for a class and need to find examples of how some companies have successfully/failures with overseas outsourcing. I can’t seem to have any luck in finding it. Like where or what specific websites or magazine can I research to find that kind of information.
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Outsourcing and the U.S. Economy

January 2nd, 2012



It’s about time someone spoke the
truth concerning outsourcing. The politicians sure
won’t. They prefer to do finger-pointing saying it
is “his fault”. It is those greedy manufacturers
who want to make bigger profits by having cheap
labor in Asia perform your task for less money.

Did anyone ever tell you that if it wasn’t for
outsourcing you might not have a job? Did anyone
ever tell you that the underwear, shoes, jewelry
and hundreds of other items you own would cost
much more if it wasn’t for outsourcing? Probably
not.

Sure, many tasks are being sent
overseas. Why? Just because it is cheaper? No,
because the manufacturer that item had to do it in
order to be able to compete with other companies
making a similar product. If your company or any
company cannot remain in business then they will
cease to exist and you will be out of a job. As a
former manufacturer I will tell you it is
dog-eat-dog out there and every company is doing
its best to maintain sales and profits. The
company did not go into business to make products
and give you a job; they went into business to
make money and if they can’t do that they (and
you) will be gone.

Profits is not a dirty word. Again if
it wasn’t for profits you would not have a job.
The guy who owns the small business or the
thousands of stockholders who own the big
companies expect that company to make money or
they will sell their shares and you will be gone
too.

When you work for someone you want to
do everything possible to contribute to their
bottom line. Turning of the extra lights, keeping
your machine properly maintained, getting a
shipment out to a customer even if it means
staying a few extra minutes and many other little
things that you know better than I.

Until about 1975 we did outsourcing
and no one objected to it. The widget manufacturer
stopped making screws and bought them from the guy
across town or in the next state who made exactly
what he wanted and at a price cheaper than he
could produce them in his widget factory. Now we
buy the screws from China and India at a price
that is half or less than those made in the USA.
If not each widget might cost dollars more and be
enough to lose business to a competitor. If the
widget company did not outsource there could be a
strong possibility they would go out of business.

Outsourcing is not a U.S. phenomenon. It is
happening to Canada, Germany, Japan, England,
France, Australia and many other countries. Even
Mexico is losing jobs to Asia because they can
produce the same quality goods and services
delivered here for less.

Outsourcing is not only here to stay, but
is going to expand as competition becomes even
more fierce.
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