Free Basic English Grammar Ebook, Resources from Mashable

Best E-Books for Writers is giving away a free ebook, Basic English Grammar.

Also, here are two killer posts from Mashable. The first is the introduction of Mashable Explore, making it super easy to find how-to posts they've written and lots of other stuff you could use to make your marketing efforts online more efficient.

They also have my favorite weekly post, where Mashable has a roundup of all the best they have posted for the week. You should really get in the habit of checking this out weekly, a wealth of helpful information. If you like them on Facebook, you'll come across a reminder each time this post is made.

Hopefully everyone is having a great weekend!

Marketing Your Freelance Skills

I am trying Seeded Buzz out for the first time with this post. I will let you know what kind of results I get as far as traffic and back links in a few weeks.

But this is a very important post if you are wondering if you need to market yourself and your freelance skills online, and how to go about doing so effectively. You absolutely must market yourself if you expect to have clients find you, and it really does happen! If you market your freelance writing and blogging skills the right way, you actually can be hired by a client who discovers you rather than the often tiring, daily searching for freelance jobs.

I wrote a posts a few days ago about writing effective cover letters and added the post to Seeded Buzz. While I was there I found this great articleabout your professional online presence.

These two posts above are a step in the right direction when it comes to marketing yourself. It is not a one-shot deal where you post about your skills on a forum, blog, etc. Marketing yourself online is a process, with many steps, the two included here only a part of the whole. I will talk about other tactics in a few days, so stay tuned!

Guest Post: Four Strategies for Persuasive Writing

By Tim North

Most folk don't enjoy having to write proposals, memos, reports

and the dozen other things that seem to get in the way of their

*real* work. Nonetheless, if it's your job to do it, you need to

be able to do it well.

To do this, we need to look at how to construct a persuasive
argument. To write persuasively, you need to answer four key
questions before you start:

1.  HOW ARE YOU PERCEIVED BY THE PERSON READING YOUR PROPOSAL?

    If you received a stock-market tip as an unsolicited e-mail
    message would you take it seriously? Of course not. What,
    though, if you received a tip from a long-time friend who was
    a rich and successful investor? Would you take *that*
    seriously? Almost certainly.

Great Article for Beginning Writers

I was reading through my subscription to World Wide Freelance Writer, where I receive calls for submissions, free articles, and lots of other goodies, and wanted to share this great article for beginning writers by Peter FitzSimons.

If you are on the fence about beginning to write, I highly suggest this article.

How to Start a Freelance Career

Work at Home and Earn an Excellent Income

Imagine being able to work from your own home, doing a job you love, and getting paid handsomely for doing it. Wouldn't that be great?

Well, the good news is that this is not just a fantasy. It is a prospect that is well within your reach. Today, millions of people worldwide have established highly-successful careers as freelance professionals. Writers, designers, programmers and many other home-based consultants have discovered that freelancing offers the perfect combination of freedom, creativity, flexibility and profitability.

So do you need years of experience and fantastic qualifications to join these lucky people? Not at all. You just need a skill that you can offer to potential clients, and the willingness to learn how to run a home-based business.

Of course, the biggest challenge for new freelancers is finding enough work to justify giving up a day job. How can you be sure that you will keep yourself busy with lucrative work? This used to be a concern, but thanks to the advent of the Internet, things are now much easier.

Now there are a number of job sites dedicated to helping freelancers find work and stay busy. Go Freelance, for example, brings you hundreds of fresh freelance jobs like these:

Write for Discussion Boards: $1200 per week, plus bonus
A writer is needed for an ongoing writing project. You will need to write copy to stimulate others into joining the discussion board. The writer needs to actively encourage regular and meaningful debate on the relevant discussion board, with some moderating of the content. You must have solid writing skills and good ideas.

Administer a Web Business from Home: $4000 per month
A successful e-commerce venture is seeking a part-time virtual assistant to act as a home-based office manager. You will deal with email correspondence, update site content and deal with general admin issues. You should have your own computer and Internet access.

Transcribe Author's Notes: $80 per hour, flexible working
A publishing company is seeking a freelance with an eye for detail to transcribe authors' notes and recordings for a range of ongoing projects. You must have a good grasp of English, be able to edit content into readable form, and be able to submit work from home by email.

You can sign up for a trial subscription for just $7.00, and get instant access to all the projects in the jobs database. So if you would like to get started on the road to freelance success right now, click here to sign up today!

Top 100 Blogs to Improve Your Writing in 2010

Top 100 Blogs to Improve Your Writing in 2010.

Timeless Advice on Writing Articles Readers will Love

I found this great article from Matt Cutts, a Google big dog, about how to write articles and blog posts that readers will love. You should really check this one out, well worth the read. He does a great job of helping explain keyword usage and SEO article writing.

Learning How to Write Articles for the Web

It has occurred to me that although I have offered you a ton of information on where to write I have not posted instructional information that will help you learn HOW to write. I can't count the number of people online I have talked to, when asking how to make a living online and I tell them to write articles and get paid, they say "But I'm not a writer." Here's what I honestly think about that. Do you think I came out of the womb fully formed as a writer? No!

If you took basic English classes in high school you can write. If you can type your thoughts in a coherent way, you can write. Of course, I didn't just jump into writing either. Before I began writing seriously in 2003 I studied like a demon. I didn't take classes on writing, I went to the library and got every book I could find from successful writers on how to write. It's not hard to learn, you just have to make your mind up that writing is what you want to do. What you will find is that what you are missing is more a basic understanding of proper grammar and punctuation more than anything else. But there is also the art of stringing a story together with a beginning, middle and end. Even online articles require this talent, and it is one you can learn easily, just by reading, finding a mentor, and practicing.

Of course, unfortunately there are 'writers' submitting articles in droves everyday who cannot write. This makes me mad because I worked hard to become good at what I do and it shames the whole writing profession when people who cannot write submit articles online, getting paid peanuts for trash. (A pet peeve of mine I'll leave for another time.)

Below is a list of books that you can either buy on Amazon cheap, or check out free at the library on how to write. Just put your belief behind you that you can do it and begin to study, practice, submit stuff online, and before you know it you will be a published writer! Once you are published there is nothing that can stop you from seeking that thrill of being published again. With each new publication you will want to strive for more well-known sites that pay better and better for articles, and you may even want to branch out to getting published in print.

The Write Start: Practical Advice on Successful Writing

The Writer's Home Companion

The Yahoo Style Guide IF YOU ONLY GET ONE BOOK TO LEARN TO WRITE FOR THE WEB, GET THIS ONE.


(This blog post is written for those of you who aspire to write articles online and get paid. If you want to learn to write creatively; fiction, poetry and essays, then that's a whole other ball of wax, which I will discuss and offer advice on in my next post. I will also give you a reading list to get you started learning to write creatively.)

Finally, the Long Tail Explained for All Content Writers to Understand!

If you have been writing and promoting content for any length of time you have probably heard so many SEO experts talk about 'the long tail' method. I have, but all along I thought it was something over my head and I didn't have time to learn to do it.

But man was I wrong! Come to find out, after reading this great article from the Ezine Articles blog, I have been creating long tail articles for years. There is nothing mysterious about the long tail, just read the article in the link above and see for yourself, and be sure to promote this post so that other content writers can ease their minds about the long tail.

The Writer Magazine Holding Online Open House Through October 22, 2010

America's #1 Monthly Magazine for Writers

The Writer magazine invites you to a virtual Open House on WriterMag.com from noon on Friday, Oct. 15 through noon the following Friday, Oct. 22. Everything on the Web site will be open for anyone to view.

During the Open House, you can:
• Search through the market listings
• Read subscriber-only articles
• Review informative Web columns
• Look through the forums and read the what members are talking about

If you like what you see, you can take advantage of features for registered users by signing up on WriterMag.com. It's easy—and free! Just look for "Welcome to WriterMag.com" on the right side of the home page and click on the "register" link.

You know where to go with a doubt

Top 7 Tips For Writing Effective Articles and Blog Posts

As someone who has been writing and blogging online since 2003, one of the most important things I have learned is that quality content trumps all. If you are just starting out writing articles online and/or blogging, you will read all kinds of stuff about how to increase page views, reach the first page of Google, and increase your revenue online by adding mass content to your site. This is not true. The BEST way to succeed online is to write quality articles, original content that you produce yourself, not free articles that you find online, not auto blogging, just really good content.

Below is a list of what I consider the seven best tips for writing the best online article or blog post you can produce. If you follow these guidelines for each piece you write online you WILL succeed.

Tip #1–Write Informative Content with Authority.

Unless you are simply blogging for the fun of it or for personal reasons, nobody cares what your dog said or the newest trick your kid performed. Readers of quality blogs visit regularly because they are finding something of value to them. Search engines are the same. If you want to get on the map with your articles and blog post, make sure you are giving visitors what they came for, helpful information, and write from a position of authority. You shouldn’t write an article or blog post about a specific topic unless you are an expert on that topic or you have done diligent research. Believe me, it will show.

Take Small Steps

One thing you will quickly learn in your new writing career is that it is easy to become overwhelmed with information and your list of things to do. Like New Year’s resolutions, you are probably asking yourself very soon after you have set them down what happened to get you off track. It’s only a matter of weeks before those grand ideas have wafted away in the morning mist not to be seen again for another year.