I have tried everything I have learned in the copywriting forum. I built a website that can be found in my signature, tried adwords, and have tried elance. With all these phases of marketing, I actually lost money. I didnt really know what words to target for the adwords campaign. That is probably why that failed. $100 spent and not one inquiry. I had a hard time getting my foot in the door at elance. I was up against guys that have been there for years. I wasnt a total failure. I did make about $300 in the past three months, but I am looking at making $300 per week! I know you guys dont want to give your secrets away, but I am really struggling to find clients. Actually, I am struggling to find good clients. I can write 500 word articles for $2 all day long. That just doesnt cut it. It was good to get some experience, just not enough to make it worth my time. I would love you forever if you could help me get my foot in the door. What am I doing wrong? What can I do to get up to at least $1000 monthly? Thanks.
Investing in AdWords or bidding is not worth but a waste of money and time for individual writes, in my humble opinion. All of your hard-earned money is going to the trashcan paying for advertising so I would suggest investing your time in networking as one of the possible solutions to find new contacts and best paid gigs. A two-dollars article can give you writing experience but people may doubt of its quality even being good, that might eventually affect your professional reputation.
Ask this on the marketing forum. If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times, start with getting critiques on your site, your ads and your articles before doing anything else.
I know Adwords can work for freelancers (especially specialists, where you have more highly specific keywords to target). But as the OP said, targeting the wrong keyword phrases is just a waste of money. So not a good place to tread if you're not sure where to start with that. I think what you really need to focus on though is networking, like Trusted_Writer said. Most of the best deals are done privately through referrals, and those won't come your way until other writers (and clients) are familiar with you, trust you, etc.
You could make a site for yourself and earn from the income it brings through Adsense or an affiliate program. Writing a lot of articles per day will give you at least some results with bum marketing. Maybe you should start expanding your sights.
That's ok. Keep the lesson, see it as valuable experience but don't give up and/or try different ways to achieve the goal of $300/week. What might be helpful is to learn from the pros who ... Share their secrets.
Did you notice shkad14's signature stating "You must use my writing services...You simply must!"? From my point of view this argument sounds a bit childish, but I might be wrong because I could be associating it with my niece's method driving traffic to her Marilyn Monroe's fansite consisting on similar affirmations.
For this to work you need to write well, have a basic understanding of SEO, have 25 dollars. If you don't understand SEO there are plenty of places you can learn it, online and for free. Steps 1. Register domain name. 2. install Wordpress blog 3. Write 100 articles 4. Monetize blog with adsense As a niche I suggest you pick online freelance writing. I also suggest that you advertise your writing services, prominently on your blog. There are a few people making a very good living like that.
Just a word of advice, basic changes on your main page, make the header 'Written Style' not writtenstyle Change the header font you are using, it seems to ignore capital letters, this is not good when you are trying to sell a professional service. It currently looks like "specializing in ghostwriting, article writing, press releases, and ebooks" It should look more like Specializing in Ghostwriting, Article Writing, Press Releases, and E-Books. This should be the same on all the titles throughout your site. Remember that titles should use capitals in the major words Dont give in just yet, try your hardest to avoid doing poorly paid jobs and get the blog on your site up and running, letting prospective customers see your work is an invaluable tool in promoting yourself! Currently the blog link doesn't work which is a bit of a negative I wouldn't use Adwords or similar, instead focus on delling your workin in relevant areas such as DP or Elance. Elance has given me some nice jobs although I really wish they would start paying via paypal since I get randomly hit with overseas transfer charges at the moment, taking £40 a time off me Very annoying when jobs were only worth £80!
Mate it takes time and mistakes to succeed in internet marketing, otherwise everyone would be doing it. You're progress isn't bad at all. It's about 8x stronger then my first three months.
Yeah, I had a similar reaction when I read it. Telling people they must use your services won't really help unless you're also telling them why. Is it top notch quality? Great prices? Expert credentials in the niche you write on? Why hire you?
$300 in three month is not bad. Keep expanding our client base. Get you some repeat clients and get them on your gmail (chat) and MSN. I find the gmail chat feature to be VERY useful. I'm not a writer but got a few related resources for writers (sig).
It takes time. You can't simply be discouraged just because you didn't reach your target amount for the week/month. Establish, develop, nurture a niche if you want - be an "expert" on that. Write articles and sell them as article packs or PLR packs. There really are a lot of ways. Don't limit yourself to Elance or DP or even your own website.
Well if you say you're good. You need to prove it. Ask your Previous Buyers to recommend you online. Believe me a good relationship with your client helps alot. Try targetted ADs on Freelancer Websites that are promoting people like you. Recommend people at Forums that have substantial traffic to try you out. Its hard to establish yourself among your competitors, but its not impossible. You got to keep trying alot at first. In the later run, it just flows to you. Writing to Companies, that need freelancers is also one of the key techniques in this. Hope you get what I mean.
Hi, I offer freebies to potential clients as long as they are willing to give me a customer review if they like my service, why don't you offer 10 people an article or writing, and and them to review it for you in some fashion? dave
As the old saying goes; "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again". I believe diligence and perseverance is the key here. Keep on writing, keep on submitting and above all, have faith in yourself and the content you are producing. Try submitting samples of your work to blogs and get people to review it. Word of mouth can be very powerful.
Yes, that is what I thought after reading such signature, because you need a solid argument before getting people's attention. However we haven't heard of shkad14 after posting and that is another lesson to learn. Asking for advice, techniques or shared secrets it's fine but accepting criticism is a must if you really want to improve
I agree with the power of networking. Once you get the ball rolling with a few good clients, more will begin to fall into place.