Hi, my name is BobbyT. I will be sharing with you on how to earn money freelance writing.

I started blogging this year on February 2008 on the Blogger free blogging service. Yes, you can definitely start blogging without investing any money at all. However, money can be handy if you intend to improve the look of your blog and its ranking as well as market it better.

There are indeed many ways to earn money online, some require initial money investment, while others do not. I don’t have initial money to spend, so I decided to earn money from one of my better skills: writing.

Starting up is one of the most difficult phase of any endeavors. I think if I were to offer my writing services in the commercial world, I will be ignored till today. Instead, through the wonders of Internet, I am immediately hired for several projects and have so far made about $60 after freelance writing for 1 month.

How did I advertise my service?
The internet is not a miracle marketplace. An excellent product or service will still be ignored if it is not advertised at the right place. As for my writing service, I decided to advertise it on bloggers and webmasters’ forums. I even left note about my service in the signature of my profiles. The response has been good and I usually conduct business through PM or I might give out my email to trusted customers.

Was it really that easy to get started as a freelance writer?
Yes and no. It all depends on your final aim. If your aim is to be a full time freelance writer, I will say that you are looking at a hard long road ahead of you. Unless you already have an excellent portfolio as a writer, you cannot expect to earn good money starting as a freelance writer. As for me, my initial aim offering writing services in forums is to establish myself as a competent writer in the market and create exposure to my service. Therefore, the strategies I employed is offering cheap but quality articles and also discounts for customers who are willing to give testimonials to the quality of my work. If you are willing to set your initial targets and rates lower, there will be no shortage of interested customers. I personally think that if you want to start freelance writing and charge high rates, you will face a lot more difficulties.

How to be successful at freelancing?
First you need good communication and networking skills. Negotiation is key to conducting successful business transactions. You also need to have adaptability. Initially I only plan to write about blogging topics, later on I began to write about other topics such as beauty care, technology reviews, celebrities, etc. You can of course insist on being the expert of specific niches, usually experts can charge more steep prices, that is if they managed to set sail at the beginning. I took the easier way out, by being a jack of all trades. Finally you need to have a business mind: think like your customers, what are their needs and expectations, try to fulfill them, make an offer that they can hardly resist.

What are my future plans?
I currently charge about $0.005 per word. I intend to increase the rate after I am more established, somewhere around $0.02 per word (finally I hope to achieve a rate of $0.1 per word, which is standard for a professional writer). I am also planning to set up a professional site soon to promote my writing services and showcase my portfolio. If all those turn out well, I will probably look at the possibility of expanding my role from a writer into a content provider, which means accepting projects from customers and delegating the work to some writers that I hire. A fair percentage of revenue earned shall be shared between me and my writers.

Have you considered a career in freelancing? How did you start freelance? Do you have tips to share to ensure freelance success?

Two days into our contest and we are doing pretty good. I am still trying to get some great prizes from sponsors. Luckily I found a great one that is willing to put up a nice prize for one lucky winner.

$100 American Express Gift Card

Just as good as cash, we have a $100 American Express gift card. This prize is from Copeac which is a great affiliate program that has lots of offers.

Copeac Mini Review

Copeac has all types of campaigns you can run from email, search and incentivized campaigns. They send out emails about their top offers that you can promote.

The service has been great, I frequently talk to my affiliate manager about different campaigns. There is big money in making loads of money (bonuses) as well as for referring people. You make 2% per affiliate you refer.

Contest Details

The contest is simple, all you have to do is register to Copeac. After you register leave me a comment here stating that you joined. If you have already joined just leave me a comment here with the name of your affiliate manager.

One random person will be chosen as the winner and sent the $100 gift card from Copeac.

You have until Tuesday May 13th 11:59PM PST to register for the contest.

One thing I hate on blogs is clutter. And yes i’m talking about those super long sidebars, flashing widgets and popup ads. And this clutter could be killing your blog with, longer page loads and the ability to distract your readers away from the content.

So here are my quick tips on how to take your blog to clutter free heaven:

1) Remove Directory Buttons – “but Anthony, the directories I submit my blog to require me to include these buttons” I here you say. Really? Are those directories driving you any traffic? There are plenty of quality that don’t require you to clutter you blog – use em!

2) Prettify Your Ads – Give your advertisers value for money by carefully placing your ads. Make sure they are clearly defined, centered in the sidebar or make sure they fit in with your design. If you don’t want flashing ads – ask advertisers only to provide static banners. In my experience it hasn’t had a major effect on income.

3) Remove Unnecessary Widgets – On wordpress blogs, you don’t need to have the archives or calendar widgets on your sidebar. Calendar is pretty much useless and just create an entire archives page.

4) Small and Sweet – Some blogs have the most ridiculous blogrolls that span pages. I like to have a max of 10 links in my blogroll, and these are just my favorite blogs. All the rest get put on a dedicated “links” page. You can also use a rotating blogroll!

5) Trim the Categories List – You definitely don’t need a category for every single post and I wouldn’t say 10 general categories is enough. To be more specific use the built in Tags (in WordPress blogs). Surprisingly, having less categories creates a more user-friendly blog.

Do you have any tips on how to cut down on blog clutter?

Find me at BloggerTalk.tv and Follow Me on Twitter for Free Domains!

I’m definitely excited about this weeks contests. Our first day has already seen about 15 entries with another two days left. It’s not too late to win a t-shirt for being a RSS subscriber.

Contest Day Two

Today will be a little bit different. Last year about this time was the one time I’ve ever asked for donations. Well, I am doing it again. This time with more of a “reward”.

This ‘contest’ will be the only one involving donations. It is not a raffle, but more of a thank you for those who are interested in sending a few bucks our way from paypal. Don’t forget it’s my birthday, we are headed to Las Vegas!

Details

Like I said we are looking for ‘donations’ for our little trip. The minimum donation is $1. For those who donate we are offering several perks.

Everyone who donates at least $1 will receive a permanent link on this post as a thank you.

One random person who donates at least $1 will receive a ‘free’ 125×125 banner for one month.

One person who donates at least $1 will receive a RSS footer listing about their blog for a month.

The top three donors will get a month blogroll listing.

We appreciate every donation and we are expecting a great Las Vegas trip. If anyone wants to put up a prize for this particular contest let me know.

To donate please send your $ to ff_n_stuff@yahoo.com or feel free to use the donate now button.

Written by Mark of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

Last week there was a day in the spotlight that you may not have known about. It was RSS Appreciation Day (May 1), a day to promote the wonder that is RSS and how it has brought so much to enrich our lives by keeping us in touch with content we want to know more about.

Aaron Abber of FullTiltBlogging.com created something based on this appreciation that continues now to May 15. It’s called FeedaPalooza. Not only do you get to know more great blogs out there, but you can also get lots of FREE goodies! For example, I’m currently offering my first free ebook where I share with you my tips on buying domains. It’s called Domain Secrets Revealed. The only way to get it is by subscribing to my feed, which you can do right here.

Want to see the other blogs and what they offering for FREE? Then you can go here and browse the categories and posts…and subscribe!

If you’re wondering who Aaron Abber is, he’s someone I’m glad I’m getting to know because he’s mentoring me and a few others about how to generate leads which can lead to profit. He’s not some fly-by-night guy either. He’s helped at least two people become millionaires. I recommend getting to know him.

After writing Making Enemies on Social Media I knew it needed a follow-up. I’ve gotten caught up in “online drama” which has effected certain social media aspects. It’s unfortunate, but can be avoided.

Here are 5 ways to go about making enemies online.

Constantly Thumbs Down/Be Negative on Stumbleupon. Tons of bloggers use stumbleupon for their own promotion as well as finding interested articles online. If you are looking for attention, go ahead and be mean and negative, but you won’t be making many friends that way.

Bury On Digg. Don’t forget to leave a comment that you buried the story. Unless there is a good reason, I don’t see the point in burying anything just because you don’t like it. Obviously people do, thats why it has votes.

Call People Out on Your Blog. Blogging news spreads fast, especially if it’s controversial. We’ve seen this a lot on the blogosphere in the past weeks. Take a look at my list of drama link love. Maybe these bloggers are out of things to write about, instead are trying to cause a stir.

Submit “Spam” to Social Media. If you want to piss off a social media user, submit spam. Start with Sphinn, they are very focused on quality. Start submitting spam, you will be found out pretty easily and you can gain a few “enemies” of pissed of internet marketers.

Lie to Your Readers. This is the biggest sin of them all. Some bloggers do this by recommending a product or service. If it doesn’t turn out to be what they thought, they can get burned.

An example of this was/is the Agloco scam. Many bloggers promoted this (not me) giving people the idea it was making them money and they too should join.

How could Agloco of been mentioned on some blogs as their “biggest earners” when no one made anything? Make sure to have integrity while blogging.

The moral of the story goes back to the old saying. Do to others like you would want done to you. Unless an article is crap I don’t give it a bad review, I just move on. Just because you don’t have value to it, someone else might. Just because it’s the internet, doesn’t give you an excuse to be any less of a good person.

May is a huge month for us around here. Its my girlfriends 21st birthday, my 22nd, and we are headed to Vegas to celebrate. We haven’t had a contest in a while, so I figured I would do it big this month. For the next 7 days we will be giving away different prizes to tons of winners.

T-Shirt Giveaway

Our first day will be giving away t-shirts. There will be 4 t-shirts given away, 2 from San Diego, and 2 from Las Vegas!

This contest is for our RSS feed subscribers. To be eligible you must be a subscriber. Make sure to grab our feed!

You can basically enter twice if you want to. Subscribe via Reader or RSS by email. We want to make sure you don’t miss any updates or contest news!

The deadline to leave a comment on this post and state that you are a subscriber is Thursday May 8th at 11:59pm PST.

We have more days available for sponsorship. Make sure to contact me if you are interested.