Phil has started a series of interviews about making extra money – and started his series with an interview about Making Extra Money with Freelance Writing, with Debbie Dragon – a freelance writer for ReliableWriters.com and co-owner of Trifecta Strategies, LLC and founder of MakeMoneyFromWriting.com.

If you’re interested in making money freelance writing, be sure to check out Phil’s interview with Debbie.  If you’re looking for other ways to make some extra money – try PT Money’s  52 Ways to Make Extra Money post and keep up with his series of interviews with entrepreneurs to read how real people are doing it!

There are many other writing services out there that may be cheaper than Reliable Writers, but in most cases, you get what you paid for.  Many services outsource their work to writers overseas who speak English as a second language.  100% of our writers live in the United States.  Others simply rehash content they find elsewhere online or auto-generate hundreds of articles for search engines.  We take the time to study the topic and write original, compelling content you can be proud of and your visitors want to read.

#2 We’re Affordable

On the other end of the spectrum there are those who bill themselves as professional writers with a few big name publications under their belt.  They are capable of delivering quality content but will often charge $200-$300 or more per article.  This is outside of the budget for most website operators and although it’s a much better route than the cheap services for those wishing to run professional websites, usually the work does not justify the outrageous rates.  We deliver professional content at a rate most website operators can afford.

#3 We’re Upfront

One thing you’ll notice when looking at our competitors websites is that most don’t display their prices anywhere. You have to contact them an haggle over the price.  It’s even harder to get a firm delivery date.  They string you along until the point you feel obligated to buy before they’ll ever give you a firm price or date.  We don’t play those games.  Our order form allows you to instantly see exactly how much your project is going to cost and when it will be done without ever having to talk to a human or give us your contact info.  Of course we are also available to answer any questions you may have.

#4 No Contracts or Commitments

Other writers will use contracts or minimum commitments in order to force you to continue to use their services for a period of time.  We get repeat business by making sure our customers are satisfied with our work and want to come back, not because they have to.  There are no minimum commitments and we never make you sign a contract.

#5 Order Just What You Need

Another common practice you will find is writers who force you into ordering a package of services, some you need, some you may not.  If you try to order outside of those packages, you get hit with higher rates.  At Reliable Writers you decide what you want.  All of our services are a la carte and you get our best rate no matter which options you choose.

#6 We Always Have Time for Your Order

The problem with using an individual writer is any one person is only capable of doing so much work in a week.  If they are currently booked, it may be a few weeks before they can get to your project.  If your order is too large they may have to turn you down all together.  We have multiple writers on staff and others on stand-by, which resolves these scheduling conflicts and ensures we’re always available to work on your project promptly no matter how small or large.

#7 You Take the Credit

Many sites don’t like to advertise the fact they use outside writers and we completely understand.  We’re happy to ghost write anything you need.  Some web development firms and consultants wish to package our services with others they offer and resell them.  Although we always appreciate referrals, you’re in no way obligated to link to our site or give any type of credit for any work you receive from Reliable Writers.  You own the rights and are free to do as you wish with the content we deliver.

#8 We Do More Than Just Write

Many of our customers want the content on their site to be fully managed without any interaction on their part and we’re happy to do so.  If desired, we can directly post content to your website, provide photos for each post and submit to article directories and blog carnivals.  It is completely up to you to choose which services you would and would not like us to provide.

#9 We’re Reliable

We wouldn’t have put it in our name if we weren’t.  You can rest assured that once we give you a delivery date, your project will be delivered on time.  Having multiple writes on staff ensures scheduling conflicts, sickness, vacations and emergencies do not come in the way of getting your work done on time.

#10 We’re Experienced

The writers working on ReliableWriters.com orders are professional writers.  Most have been earning a living writing for several years, and all are experienced with writing content designed for internet readers.   Our writers are no strangers to the concepts of keyword optimization, headline creation, and linking to various pages of your website(s) or affiliate programs.  You won’t need to spend hours teaching our writers how to do these important aspects of internet writing – we already know how to do it.

See the ordering process.

We’ve compiled a list of some of the best 73 resources for online writers.

Do you use a resource or tool that we left off the list? Tell us about it in the comments.

Improve Your Writing

Regardless of the writing platform you focus on (online or offline, blogs or magazines, etc) there is always room to improve your writing:

Confident Writing – Named one of the top 10 blogs for writers for two years in a row, confidentwriting.com offers advice for finding your voice, and becoming more confident in your writing ability.

Bad Language – Blog offers a variety of “how to” advice for blogging, PR, writing, interviewing, and general tips for improving your writing.

MIT Writing Courses – Online writing courses offered through MIT, and many focus on writing for the web.

Open University Grammar Course – Grammar workshop through Open University.

Grammar Book – Everything you need to know about English grammar rules.

Writing Fix – Writing lessons, tips and writing prompts to increase your creativity.

Freelance Copywriters Blog – Excellent blog with tips to make you a better writer. Topics generally focused on copywriting/sales writing but sometimes you’ll find general writing tips, too.

Grammar Girl – Podcast for better grammar from Grammar Girl.

Economist Styleguide – Styleguide given to all writers of the Economist.com, this is a very useful tool that all writers could use to improve the quality of their writing.

Lousy Writer – Free online resource with tips for improving your writing, communicating better, and information about various writing styles.

Establishing a Writing Business

Some people write for the pure enjoyment of writing. Some people want to earn their living from writing. If you’re a writer looking to make it a career – you’ll want to establish a writing business to generate consistent income and reliability. Here are tips for finding clients and setting up a writing business:

Make Money From Writing – An online mentoring course for writers looking to establish online writing businesses and earn income writing from home.

Keep Your Copyrights – Sample freelance writing contract

Freelance Zone – Tips for self employed writers.

Writing.com – Create a profile to store and display your writing online, and read fantastic articles about the writing business.

Fab Freelance Writing – Angela Booth regularly posts tips for freelance writers on her blog. She also offers a mailing list of tips and a number of ebooks designed to help writers establish a profitable writing business.

Chris Blogging – Great resource for freelance writers and people who want to make writing their full-time career and only source of income. Offers a one-on-one freelance writing course.

Freelance Write – About.com’s freelance writing guide offers a wealth of information for aspiring freelance writers in the blog, and an active forum with topics ranging from where to find work to people seeking advice.

Get Paid to Write Online – Sharon’s blog covers just about everything you need to know about writing for the web and running a freelance writing business.

Plan HQ – create a working business plan online and achieve your goals.

Organized Writer – tools designed for the business of writing – articles, blogs, research links, and marketing tips.

Where to Look for Writing Jobs

There are a number of websites and newsletters that feature writing jobs for subcontractors and freelance writers. You may need to weed through a number of job offers that are offering ridiculously low pay for your hard work – but don’t get discouraged. There ARE many opportunities hidden among the low-paying gigs and many writers have built full-time incomes around writing for online clients. Here is a list of sites to start your search for writing work:

• All Freelance Writing
• Freelance Daily
• Freelance Writing Gigs
• ProBlogger
• Craigslist
• Demand Studios
• Suite101.com
• About.com
• Freelance Switch
• Media Bistro
• Online-Writing-Jobs
• Poewar
• Wahm.com
• Writejobs.com
• Writerfind.com
• Writers Weekly
• Helium
• Blue Mountain Arts
• Freelance Jobs

Writing for the Web

Online writing jobs are everywhere you look, and many professional writers are turning to internet writing to increase their income. Writing for online markets is a little different from writing for traditional publications. Here are some tips for developing a style of writing that is preferred on the web:

Copyblogger – Copyblogger helps you get more traffic to your website or blog, increase newsletter subscribers, attract links to your site and sell with words.

Handbook of Journalism – Reuters “handbook of journalism” isn’t only useful for professional journalists. Web writers can benefit from their ethical journalism tips, too.

Dana Prince – Comprehensive resource for freelance writers, with many topics focused on writing for the web.

Useit.com – Terrific article about how to write for the web, because it’s absolutely different from writing for offline sources!

iStock Photo – Often bloggers and online writers are asked to include copyright free images with their work. You can purchase images from istockphoto.com inexpensively and ensure you are using copyright-free images on all of your work.

Public Domain Photos – all photographs on this site are part of the public domain and can be used for any purpose, including commercial – making them perfect for including on blogs and any other online writing assignment that requires images.

Content Strategy – All inclusive tips for writing for the web, whether writing for clients or writing for your own website.

Website Tips – Tutorials and tips for writing web- based content.

Copyscape – an online tool that checks for plagiarism.

SEO Tutorial - An online tutorial that gives you all the basics of search engine optimization. All online writers should have at least a basic understanding of how SEO works; the more you know the more valuable you are to your internet clients.

Software and Tools to Increase Efficiency

Serious writers need tools and software to help organize their business and increase efficiency. Whether you’re running a one-person writing service or have a team of 20 writers, the tools and software in this section will help you manage your business:

Basecamp HQ – Online project management software lets you set up deadline milestones, to-do lists, individual projects (or clients). You can allow your clients to access their projects, and manage multiple writer schedules through the intuitive online interface.

ProjectTurf – Web based project management software with discussions, calendars, task lists and more.

Blinksale – Easy and inexpensive way to invoice clients with professional looking online invoices. You can accept paypal or credit card as payments.

Mind42 – Mind Mapping tool. You can use it alone or with other writers to formulate ideas.

Open Office – OpenOffice.org is like Microsoft Office, except it’s free.

Paypal – Easy method to accept payments from clients. You need a regular bank account to link your Paypal account to, but you can accept credit cards, debit cards, and paypal payments.

Writeboard – Online tool that makes it easy to collaborate with other writers online.

Mozy – Don’t let your hard work go to waste! You need to back up your writing regularly to protect your files from accidental deletion or disaster. This is an affordable online backup service with plans for individuals or multi-users.

To Do – Online to do lists to keep you on track.

Paymo – Online time tracking tool perfect for writers who bill by the hour, or for keeping yourself on a time schedule.

Client Scribe – Web based application that helps you keep track of your customers, contact information, and all communication between you and your clients.

88 Miles – Time tracking tool that lets you keep track of time spent on multiple projects, and on screen timers to show how much time you’ve put in.

Writers Communities, Forums, and Groups

Writing can be lonely. Participate in online communities, forums and groups designed for writers and not only will you relieve some of the loneliness, but learn from people who are also writing for a living:

Backspace – Backspace is “the Writer’s Place”. An online community for writers, and one of WritersDigest.com’s 101 Best Sites for Writers, more than a third of the members of Backspace have been published. Some are even on the New York Times Best Sellers List. Some of the members are agents.

Writers Digest - WritersDigest.com is a little of everything for writers. Learn to write better from their many articles and tips; participate in their discussion groups and forums and learn from other writers.

Internet Writing Workshop – Email discussion lists and opportunities to have your writing critiqued by other writers.

Absolute Write – AbsoluteWrite.com’s forums are a good place to meet other freelance writers, bloggers, screenwiters and novelists.

Freelance Writing Organization, International – Freelance Writing Organization, International. One Of The World’s Largest, Free, Online Writing Resource Sites

Freelance Writing Gigs - Excellent online community for writers with job listings and informative articles about writing, and the business of writing.

Freelance Folder- Community for all types of freelancers, includes forums, an informative and well-written blog, and job boards.

Writing Career – Everything you need for turning writing into a career.

Writers FM – Radio station for writers by writers.

Freelancers’ Union – National membership for all freelance workers.

Make Money From Writing Community – Online community where you can start a free blog, and interact with other writers who want to make money from their writing.

Sometimes things just seem to get lost in translation. To help illustrate this point we’ve made a tool that will take any English phrase and translate it to French, German and back to English using the translation tool from BabelFish. Usually you end up with something quite different than you started with. Go ahead and try it out.

You’ll get better results if you avoid contractions and abbreviations

Here are some common phrases, quotes and song lyrics we’ve “translated” with this tool. See if you can guess what they are.

Did you find a funny translation of your own? Share it with us, post a comment. Oh, and you’ll be happy to know that at ReliableWriters, all of our writers live in the US and speak English as their first language.

Just to Help Drive the Point Home

Thank you to Garden Wall Publications for sharing this video in their post The LiverWorst Spoiler in the Whale Wide Word.

Making sure your site has an excellent design is extremely important and for more reasons than you may think. Here are a few:

1. It’s the first impression you make on your visitors and often determines whether they stick around to find out more.

2. It makes a strong impression on how credible you are. Even if you are an individual running this site by yourself, that typically isn’t the impression you want to leave on your visitors. A professional design can make visitors feel there is a much larger organization behind this site.

3. It makes visitors feel safe. I can’t count the number of times I’ve shied away from making a purchase on a site or from giving them my contact information because of a bad design. It leaves the impression the site is just out to make a quick buck and has probably put as little effort into securing my data as they did the design. That’s assuming the whole site isn’t a scam to begin with.

4. It improves conversion rates. There is more to a good design than just looking nice. It should help funnel your visitors towards the product you’re trying to sell and make it easy for them to find the information they are looking for. This makes for happier visitors and a happier website owner.

There are lots of common mistakes people make when designing a site. The website WebPagesThatSuck.com highlights a lot of them, but usually it comes down to people insisting on designing the site themselves. I don’t care how good you are with Photoshop, unless you are actually a professional designer, you’re better off swallowing your pride and letting someone else do the design.

Use Two Designers

This may seem counter intuitive, but don’t use the same person to design both your logo and website. There are excellent logo designers who don’t make very good websites and vice-versa. If you hire someone to do both, you’ll most likely end up with mediocre results.

Logo

The two biggest mistakes people tend to make on their logo are trying to cram too much into it or on the other extreme, adding no styling whatsoever. Your logo should be SIMPLE and elegant, preferable with a graphical element that helps to convey what it is you do, rather than simply looking cool. It should be something that can appear on a black or white background with minor or no changes and something that still looks nice when printed in black and white. Also make sure it is designed in a vector graphics format that can be scaled indefinitely, such as with Adobe Illustrator. A simple gif or jpg may look nice on your website but with become pixilated and distorted if you try to enlarge it later on.

Website

Wait until your logo is complete before having your website designed. This will give your designer a great starting point when it comes to knowing what kind of style and colors to go with. Before handing anything off to your designer you should already have a very good idea of what kind of content your site is going to contain, what the navigation structure will look like, what the key areas are you want to drive visitors to, what to highlight on your home page, etc. Hopefully you did all this before even making the final decision to launch this website. Document all this and provide it to your designer so that he/she knows what your goals are and can design a site to suite those. Trying to cram these in after the design is done usually doesn’t result in a site you are happy with.

You want to make sure your site will look nice at most resolutions so it should be designed to be no more than 1,000 pixels wide so that it fits nicely at 1024×768 resolutions. It should also elegantly fill any remaining space for visitors with higher resolutions. Flash elements on the page are ok, but avoid designing the whole site in flash or you’re likely to have problems getting search engine traffic down the road. Also be sure to design something that your visitors will be ok with visiting every day without becoming annoyed. This means avoid using a lot of animations, videos that automatically play, sound or anything else that is likely to become annoying after the first few times.

How to Find Designers

There are many great designers out there, but there are many more bad and mediocre ones and finding the right one can be quite difficult. I would suggest avoiding most design firms. They typically mark the price up significantly from what the designer is being paid which means you either end up overpaying, or the work gets sent over to a designer who works very cheaply and probably isn’t the best. The best finds are usually professional designers who do some work on the side, apart from their day job. You should expect to pay between $1,000 – $4,000 for your design when you go this route and it’s worth every penny.

Finding the right designer is going to require a fair amount of work on your part. You can start by just doing a Google search, looking at other sites you like (there is often a link to the designer at the bottom of the page), posting a project at RentACoder.com or asking for references from others. Regardless of which route you take, be sure to look over their portfolio to make sure they consistently produce great results. You don’t want a designer who is hit and miss.

Another great option is 99 Designs. This is by far my favorite and one of the more affordable options. They allow you to post a design contest which dozens of qualified designers typically compete in, providing you with 50-100+ designs to choose from. You choose a single winner who is awarded the prize money and hands over the license to the design. This allows you to see several ideas and you usually end up with a design you really love. Be sure to provide as much info as possible up front and feedback on exactly why you like or dislike each design so you can steer the contest towards a design you are going to be happy with. Again, remember to post your logo design and site design projects separately.

1. Good Content Attracts Good Sites

One of the methods for building a successful web site is to find ways to encourage other successful websites to link to yours. If you have a website full of articles that can be found on every other website in your niche area, chances are you aren’t going to get many links to your site. On the other hand, if you’ve got quality content that is unique to your site – other good sites in the industry are going to link to you from their own site in order to provide their visitors with another valuable resource.

2. Good Content Gives You Better Search Engine Rankings

Search engines look at how many incoming links your website has when deciding your position in the search listings. If the incoming links your site has come from authoritative and credible sites within your industry, they’re going to carry more weight than the hundreds or thousands of links you might be able to obtain through link exchange programs.

Having good content on your website will improve your search engine rankings and increase the amount of traffic you have coming to your site.

3. Good Content Encourages Repeat Visitors

Some people focus on filling their website with articles having their keyword phrases used in every other sentence, to entice search engines to put them in a more prominent position in the search listings. What happens when a real person tries to read those keyword-stuffed articles? Most of the time, an article written with the focus on keywords will not read well to a “real person” and you’ll lose that website visitor. If the content you offer on your website doesn’t offer anything of value to your visitors, it really doesn’t matter if your site is in the first page of search engine results, does it?

Keeping good content on your website takes more effort than simply filling it with quick, keyword-stuffed articles, but it’s necessary to offer your readers information they find valuable. When website visitors learn something from the content on your site, you become the expert on the topic and chances are, your site visitors will bookmark your website to return to again and again.

4. Good Content Keeps Visitors On Your Site Longer

In addition to giving your readers a reason to return to your site to find out more information, having good content also keeps visitors on the site longer. The longer people spend on your website, the more likely they are to click on advertisements and sponsored links which result in revenues for your website.

5. Good Content Improves Sales Conversions

If you have a website that sells products or services, having good content on the site will go a long way toward improving your sales conversions. Not only can good content be in the form of sales copy; but the rest of your website can also encourage sales simply by being well researched, well written, informative, and help the reader experience the product or service you’re trying to sell. If you can make an emotional connection between the reader and the product or service, you’ll see a spike in sales.
Having well written content makes you more credible. Being more credible on a website that tries to sell products or services will result in web visitors who are more likely to buy your products and services.

We have a few tips that can help you make it through this process, but first, there are a few basic guidelines you should follow when choosing a domain.  They are:

Get a .com – You may be tempted to go with a different extension because there better names available and there are several popular sites using non-dotcom extensions, or because it’s a f ew dollars cheaper – but don’t do it.  Regardless of how much you try to drill into the head of your visitors that the extension is .net, .org or any other extension – at the end of the day, a fair percentage of them will type in .com anyways and you’ll be giving up your hard earned visitors to the competition.

Focus on keywords – Your domain name is one of the factors that goes into search engine rankings.  Having your primary keyword(s) in your domain will be a great help down the line to getting your website in a better position in the search engines, and is something you should shoot for if at all possible.

Keep it short – People have to be able to remember the name of your website and type it, it’s important to keep the name simple and short, even if it means you can’t fit your keywords in.

Odds are you’re going to have a hard time finding an available domain that meets those criteria without help.  Here are some excellent sites that can make the process much more simple.

NameBoy – This site will let you enter a primary and secondary word and come up with several dozen variations of those terms using synonyms and similar words.  It will also check if each one is available so you don’t have to.

MakeWords – If it’s a short unique name to build a brand around that your after rather than one that communicates the purpose of your site, give MakeWords a try.  It will generate 20 random names matching your criteria and let you know which are available.

WSMDomains – Thousands of .com domain names expire every single day because the owner chose not to renew it.  WSM Domains provides a free list of which domains are dropping by day which you can search for keywords.  It may take you a while to find the right fit, but there are several to choose from for most industries every day.

Sedo and Afternic – Many people register domains with the intent of reselling them for a profit.  These two sites are the primary marketplaces for selling these domains.  You will likely pay a couple hundred to a couple thousand or more for any name you find on these sites, but when all else fails, they provide a great way to find a good quality domain name.

Well, it’s not hard if you are looking for writers – you’ve found us.  Right here.  Hey, we didn’t call ourselves reliable writers just for the heck of it.  The writers working behind the scenes of ReliableWriters.com have made hundreds of clients happy over the years by providing high quality writing projects… on time.  They even know a little something about how to use internet content to bring visitors to your website – because after all, what good is it having great articles and web content if there is no one stopping by your site to read it?

In case you’re not yet familiar with content marketing and how you can use it to promote your website, you should grab our RSS feed or bookmark this blog to visit later because we’ll share what we know with you.  Sure, we’re taking a chance.  You could learn all there is to know about article distribution and blog carnivals and content marketing and run away and do it yourself – but we think once you understand how these things work, you’ll still want to hire us to help you with it all to make sure it gets done consistently and on schedule.   We’re real reliable like that… but you don’t have to take our word for it.  Go ahead, order something and test out our content writers for yourself.  You know you want to.