homeschoolingincome.com » Writing

Rocket Product Creation; A Review

Audrey — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:36:35 +0000

I must admit, I’m a fan of Kevin Riley. I like his big smile, and he always looks happy on his videos. Not only that, but his products are good.

Rocket Product Creation was released just prior to Christmas, with the announcement that it would help you earn Christmas cash by creating an info product and selling it online, all within 3 days. It’s now being promoted as a general “how to write a report and sell it” ebook. Sounds too good to be true? Well, I tried it, and here’s my opinion.

Kevin’s report is over 100 pages long, so grab a coffee before you start to read it through. It not only tells you everything you need to know about how to create your report, but also gives you a report template to make layout easier, and a copy of the $7 script. Never heard of the $7 script? It’s pretty powerful. It allows you to set up automatic download of your report after your buyer has paid with Paypal. It also allows you to easily recruit affiliates – people who will promote your report because they can make a commission any sales they generate. Imagine 1000 people you don’t know promoting your report, and you share the income 50/50 – that’s income you wouldn’t have if you’d restricted yourself to making sales on your own.

There are screenshots throughout the ebook on how to set up the $7 script, and Kevin even gives you ideas on how and where to sell your report, and find affiliates.

This ebook does tell you everything you need to know to start selling your report online, but the proof is in the pudding, as they say. Did it work for me? Yes, and no. I did write a report, which I was very happy with. I’m not at all technical, and in spite of the excellent screenshots that are in Kevin’s ebook, I did need help with the script setup, so had to add a few dollars for tech help to my outlays. Overall it took me more like 5 days, slotting it in around making sure the children did their maths, and arranging activities for our homeschool group. I also still have writing clients to keep happy. Yes, I did make sales, so this method definitely works.

This report is currently selling for $24.95, which, for the ebook, report template and sales script, is very good value. All you need to get up and running is a domain and some web hosting. If you want to dip your toe into the world of online publishing, or if you’re already working online in some other capacity and want to try creating and selling your own info product, this report will get you started. Click on the image in this post to find out more about this product. Highly recommended.

Power Ghostwriting – A Review

Audrey — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:56:13 +0000

I’ve mentioned a few times how I’m keeping busy with writing clients. I now have three regular clients I write for, and have also picked up forum posting work through my new writing website. I would say that writing web content has definitely given me the most income online so far. While I quite like writing, and it’s paying several hundred dollars a month, it’s not passive income, and that’s ultimately where I want to go. But, for now, I’m more than happy to write for dollars

I’m not a bad writer, but I will attribute the bulk of my recent success to Jenn Dize’s Power Ghostwriting course.

What this course will do is not only teach you how to research and write web content, but will show you how to find clients and market yourself. This last part is where I fell down. Now, as I mentioned, I have regular clients who come back to me for more, I regularly pick up work on the freelance sites, and I have a website promoting my writing.

I must admit, one of the hardest parts for me was believing that my writing was worth a decent price. Jenn’s course gave me the confidence to put myself out there as a content writer, and boy is it paying off! Jenn’s course teaches you everything you need to get started as a writer.

I know as homeschooing mums, we’re on a very limited budget, but Jenn’s course is something that has already paid for itself over and over again. I’ve contacted Jenn and asked for help at times when I was working through her videos and mindmaps, and she’s very quick to respond.

This will work for anyone, you don’t need any special skill set to write. Check out Power Ghostwriting and see how you can increase your family income without taking time from your family. Highly recommended.

Earning From Freelance Sites Such As Elance

Audrey — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:02:59 +0000

: Image by orangeacid via Flickr

It’s been a while since I added anything to this blog, I’ve been reading through some opportunities but none have really inspired me and convinced me that they’ll earn, so I haven’t written about them.

Since I’ve had a bit of success in the freelance writing sphere of late, I thought I’d chat a bit about how to get the most out of sites such as Elance.

Elance, Rentacoder and other such sites are very useful for linking people who need a job done, and people who can do the job for them. Webmasters post details of their job, and you have the opportunity to bid for the work. The webmaster then chooses the winning bidder.

Obviously most of the jobs are computer based/online tasks so they’re ideal for us as stay at home parents. We can do the jobs when the children are asleep, or when they’re doing some quiet reading.

There are plenty of types of jobs, from graphic design, to writing, website building and virtual assistant type tasks. It can look pretty overwhelming. Think about your skillset, and stick to exploring jobs you have the skills to do well. If you don’t feel you have any skills that would be useful on Elance, have a look at the writing jobs. We all can write.

You really have two ways of tackling these sites. Firstly, you can try and get the work by being the cheapest bidder. I’d not recommend this route for a few reasons. Firstly, there are very talented people in countries such as India and the Phillipines, who bid very low. Many are talented writers with an excellent command of the English language, and often bid around $3 per 500 word article. Secondly, do you really want to spend your limited free time working for a few dollars per hour? Even if you did, you’d soon feel resentful of the time you were spending on your work, and how little you’d be getting back for it.

The second way, and this is the way I’d recommend you approach it, is to bid what you feel you’re worth, and show the website owner exactly why you’re the best person for the job. I won a bid to ghostwrite an ebook on dogs and exercise. My bid was fairly high, but I got the job. I’m a vet, so I know about dog health. I run with my dog and have competed in agility, so I not only have the theoretical knowledge, but tons of practical experience.

So, my suggestions for successful bidding on freelance sites are:

Make sure you’re capable of doing the job. You need to have the skills, and you need to be able to fit the work into your schedule. Many of these jobs have a deadline and if you don’t follow through, either because you can’t do it or you run out of time, it leaves the webmaster short of time to get the job done. Your feedback score will reflect this.
Work out what you want to earn per hour, estimate how long the job will take you, and bid accordingly.
In your bid, you have the opportunity to share your skills, knowledge and experience, and what you can bring to the job. Sell yourself to the website owner, and show them exactly why they want you to do the job for them.

Yeah, it’s a bit like a job interview, isn’t it?

But, it works. Think about your skills and your life experiences. Maybe you’re a nurse and can write about health issues. Maybe you’re a naturopath and can write about natural therapies. You don’t have any useful career related skills? You’re a parent, and there will be sites needing articles written about parenting issues. With the increase in the number of families removing their children from school, you’ve got a lot of valuable experience to share. If you still think you haven’t got anything to offer, it’s not hard to research things online so theoretically, you can write on any niche.

If you don’t feel confident in your writing ability, and want to learn more about writing for the web, I can highly recommend The Content Chef, written by Courtney Ramirez. This is an ebook which tells you how to earn an income writing web content. It has a 30 day step by step plan on how to get started. Yep, it costs US$37. But, thanks to this ebook, I’ve just won an ongoing writing job - up to 8 articles a week, and my winning bid was US$20 per 400-600 word article. It has well and truly paid for itself. Check it out here.

Build A Membership Site For Ongoing Income

Audrey — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:16:01 +0000

One feature of earning an income from most websites is that when your customer has come along, made their purchase and and received their product, they may not feel the need to return.

One way of making repeat sales to the same customer is by building a membership site.

Basically, this is a subscription based site where people sign up and are charged a fee on a regular basis, commonly monthly. In exchange, they get access to information or products.

One common business model is a membership to an ebook or article site, where for a monthly fee, members get a certain number of articles to use on their websites, or ebooks to sell. However, you can create a membership site in just about any niche you can think of. I have a friend who has a child with food sensitivities, and has developed a huge library of hypoallergenic recipes. I think a busy mum would be happy to pay a nominal fee monthly for a tried and tested recipe once a week.

It’s an excellent business model because once you have sold your product to your customer, and you continue to provide good content and service, there’s no reason for anyone to cancel their membership. It allows you to leverage your time – you can create something once, and sell it over and over, with minimal ongoing effort.

What do you need to get started? Well, there are membership site programs which range in price from under $100 to over $1000, but it won’t surprise you by now to hear that you can in fact build a free membership site using WordPress.

You’ll need a domain, webhosting, and WordPress installed on your site. You can change the appearance of your site by uploading a new theme – there are lots of free themes you can find by searching on Google.

Once you have your theme, you can then install your choice of membership plugin – there are several to choose from.

The “Tech Guy Next Door”, my friend Sagar, has written a comprehensive and inexpensive report on how to set up a free membership site with WordPress. It starts with how to set up WordPress on your domain, and from there tells you exactly how to install the necessary plugins to have a fully functioning membership site in a couple of hours. He also spells out the really important part – how to set up the payment process. You can check out the details here: WordPress Membersite.

Once you have your site set up, and you have your content ready to go, you need to get traffic to your site. Yep, any internet business depends on traffic, and as we’ve already mentioned, there are lots of methods you can follow to do this.

Start thinking – what do you know, what are you good at, and how can you use it to earn ongoing income by turning it into a membership site. It’s not as hard as you think.

Ebook Writing For Fun And Profit

Audrey — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:03:43 +0000

Ebook writing would be one of the most popular online business models out there in cyberspace.

The beauty of writing your own ebook to sell is that there are very few expenses, and once it’s done, it can be sold over and over again. Not only that, but there are ways of getting extra income from your ebook, such as placing carefully selected affiliate links in your text.

There’s no reason why you can’t build an ebook writing business from home. It’s convenient to type up an ebook while your children are doing their schoolwork. In fact, if your children are old enough, you can set a research project for them, and market the results.

Let’s look at the basics.

As with any internet business, the first step in writing your ebook is choosing your niche. Look at yourself and your skills and you can easily come up with a niche or two. Within that niche, look for a topic to write on. I’ve been with my husband now for 23 years, that’s not all that common any more. How did we do it? Not a bad niche. I like to train my dogs – again, a popular niche. Do you have any skills or hobbies? It’s easier when you’re starting out, to write about what you know.

The next part of ebook writing is doing your research. Find a problem, or an obstacle, or a goal, and write about how to solve it, overcome it or meet it. Check out forums in that niche, and see what people need help with. I know of one smart marketer who went to a forum, asked for suggestions on how to solve a problem, compiled the answers into a report and sold it.

After you have chosen your niche and topic, it’s time to lay out your outline so you have a plan to follow. This can then be used as your table of contents. Then, just start writing. You can edit your work later. Alternatively, you can use a product such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking">Dragon Naturally Speaking, and you can talk as your computer “types”.

How many pages should you write? Well, there’s no arbitrary number of pages for an ebook – write until you’ve thoroughly covered your topic, but don’t add any fluff just to pad it out.

When you you get started on your ebook writing, avoid technical jargon and write in a way that an upper primary school aged child would be able to understand. Be sure to edit it when you’ve finished, to pick up any spelling or grammar errors.

Most ebooks are sold in pdf format. You can use Open Office, the free word processing software, to create your ebook - there are lots of very attractive free templates out there. You then convert it to pdf by going to file>export as pdf.

Many people also invest in an ebook cover graphic which you can place on your sales page. This can cost anywherefrom $5-20, or you

can grab a free template from Absolute Covers and add some text using your favourite photo editing software. If you don’t have any such software, then download The Gimp. It does everything you need, and it’s free.

There you have it – an ebook, a cover graphic, and it’s cost you nothing so far – you’re now in the ebook writing business.

To sell your ebooks, you’ll need a website, and a means of collecting payment. Again, it’s easy to do this with WordPress and Paypal, and all it will cost you is the price of a domain and web hosting.

Writing Web Content For Dollars

Audrey — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:22:04 +0000

As you browse the internet, you’ll read lots of articles on lots of different topics. Would you believe that in many cases, the website owner hasn’t written those articles? Writing web content is one job that many website owners outsource. If you have a good command of the English language, and can research well, they could be outsourcing to you.

You don’t need much to get yourself set up in business writing web content. You’ll already have a computer and internet access, but you’ll also need word processing software. Open Office is free, and will do everything you need.

There are a couple of ways of getting started writing web content for dollars.

Firstly, you can write unique articles for website owners. This means that you write one copy of the article, it is sold to the website owner, and it is now his.

Another way of earning by writing web content is to write Private Label Rights articles. These articles are sold cheaply, perhaps $1 per article, and often in bundles of 5 or 10 on related subjects. However, they’re sold many times over. Website owners usually rewrite the articles in their own words before publishing them on their website.

There are a few steps to writing web content that sells. Firstly, make sure your article is keyword optimised, which means it is written with several instances of the relevant word(s) chosen by your client. He will have chosen those words after researching what phrases people search for online.

Secondly, it must be grammatically correct, with no spelling errors. After all, you are a professional writer.

Thirdly, it must be accurate. If your don’t research the topic thorougly, your article may have inaccuracies that will negatively affect your client’s business.

If you’re going to be writing web content, you’re going to need some buyers! It’s a great idea to set up a website displaying your best work in a portfolio, and directing potential clients there. You can find clients in internet marketing forums, such as the Warrior Forum. By using the internet, the whole world is your market.

Always be professional – respect deadlines, don’t take on more work than you can handle, and do everything you can to ensure client satisfaction. It’s better to have a few good repeat clients than to have to continually search for buyers.

Writing web content is a great way of earning while being home with the children. It’s extremely flexible, and by being a freelancer, you have total control over your working hours.