How to Find Friendship and Support as a Writer

As freelance writers we often find ourselves locked up in our offices most days and for several hours every day. Finding friendship and support with other writers can be a difficult task. But, fellow writer and friend Tamara Waters wrote an amazing article about this and it provides fantastic information on how to find friendship and support as a writer. If you are a freelance writer you definitely need to read this.

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This article has inspired me to create a writer's group in my community.

How to Ask a Client for More Pay

I just read this article by fellow writer Rodney Southern. It provides fantastic advice on how to work with your clients so that you get paid what you feel you deserve. As writers we should never sell ourselves short.

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How to Write Great Article Titles for Web Writing

Writing an excellent title for your article adds immense value to your article and it also attracts readers. A good article title can mean the difference between your article being read and not being read.

First and foremost, your article title needs to tell your readers exactly what your article is about. Save the cutesy stuff for your subtitle. Your title is your article's label. It must tell readers exactly what to expect to read in your article. If your article is discussing the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, your title must state this.

You need to get your keywords in your title, preferably as close to the front as possible.

Keep your title short and focused. Three to six words is ideal. You can add a few more, but more than ten most likely means that your title isn't focused well enough. Google only displays the first 8-10 words of your title.

Are the keywords in your title what a typical internet user would search for? Think about how you would search for something. If you were seeking to find what the symptoms of multiple sclerosis were you would search "multiple sclerosis symptoms" or "symptoms of multiple sclerosis". You wouldn't search for "muliple sclerosis: what are the signs and symptoms" or something similar.

Put business, product or company names at the end of the title. For example, you would title your article on problems with Skype "Problems and Issues with Skype" and not "Skype: Problems and Issues".

To test your proposed article titles I suggest checking out the major search engines for quantity, quality and relevance before committing to a title. This is what I do and it hasn't failed me yet. If you see several articles with the same exact title, you should definitely pick a new one. If the title you choose pulls up little to no relevant search results there is a good chance no one is searching for it.

Rose's Freelance Writing Bootcamp #3

It's October folks so that means that Halloween is right around the corner. From experience I can tell you that Halloween articles can do very, very well in terms of page views. I challenge to write three Halloween articles by Friday, October 9th. I have seen the best results with costume ideas that include the keywords "homemade", "cheap" and "do-it-yourself". When you have completed this challenge please head over to my Ning (Click Here for Ning) and post your links in the "post your links thread". This is an easy and fun challenge and a great way to improve your page views.

Happy Writing!