With thousands of journalists having lost their jobs as the global economy as a whole and the publishing industry in particular under go major shifts, many writers are turning to Freelance writing as a way to earn a living. But one of the challenges of making your income by providing a service is that when you are not doing client work you are not getting paid. The nature of the service business is that there will be lean times when you don’t get enough assignments from clients, and other times when it seems like you might need to sub-contract out some of your work.

For those freelancers who are striving to find a way to be free of the tyranny of trading time for dollars there are many opportunities on the Internet to create additional passive income streams that can generate income for you while you pursue the work you love. Eventually, you may be able to build these income streams to the point where you can actually work less and enjoy life more without losing income. Let’s take a look at three options:

Create Niche websites
Choose a topic that you are knowledgeable about and passionate about and create a blog on that topic. Do some research to narrow down some core keywords and focus your content on those keywords. Create a rich variety of content including video that goes deep within your narrowly defined niche. For example, rather than writing about womens shoes, you might choose a few specific designers, or styles to cover.

In between client assignments you can create content for your own site. As your following grows you can start to sell advertising and generate some revenues in that way.

Creating a blog widens your exposure, helps you begin to establish a platform and can serve as an example of your work for future clients.

Create your own information products
Take your passion and knowledge about your topic and write an eBook, a video tutorial series, or a podcast. First create a valuable, informative eBook that solves a problem or supplies useful information and give it away in exchange for your visitors’ name and email address. Once they are signed up to your email list you can continue to communicate with them sharing more content and offers to buy products or services in your niche.

Sell PLR rights to your articles
Another great way to create passive income is to write up sets of articles between 450 and 550 words on a particular topic and sell Private Label Rights (PLR) to them. People buy PLR products and then re-purpose that content for their websites, blogs and information products. It saves them the time of researching and writing the content themselves and you get to do the work once and get paid every time you sell another batch of articles.

So, if you’re a freelancer who has experienced those ‘feast or famine’ days, try setting up some additional income streams to help tide you over and maybe eventually replace some of your regular income.

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I’ve been a member of a fabulous network of business women, created by LaShanda Henry, for a couple of years now. It’s called, Black Business Women Online, and this is an incredible group of powerful, driven, female entrepreneurs who are making things happen.

Earlier this week LaShanda put out a request for articles to be published in a new, free eBook called, “Get Your Business Straight: Black Business Advice from Black Business Women.” I jumped right on it and wrote up an article and submitted it. I got word today that my article was accepted, and it’s been included in the ’sneak peek’ edition that was just released today.

So, I invite you to download a FREE copy and read my article and the other articles inside. If you are a business woman, I invite you to join BBWO where you will meet a great group of professional, driven women who also happen to be a lot of fun to hang out with.

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As a busy online entrepreneur, your time is your most valuable asset. You understand how important it is to have a steady flow of fresh, relevant content to your website. But there are so many other pressing issues vying for your attention. You know that eventually you will have to hire someone so that you can offload some of the content development tasks so that you can focus on running your business. But you are also leery about taking the time to weed through and interview writers in order to find one that will produce quality writing at a price that you can afford.

Here are five steps that you can follow to find a good ghostwriter:

1. Get a recommendation
Ask around within your business network for recommendations for good writers. Be prepared for the fact that some people aren’t always willing to share when they have found a good, dependable writer, so you may have to be persistent.

Visit online forums such as the warrior forum, sitepoint and digital point forums to find ghostwriters who are offering their services. Look for positive feedback from other forum members about the quality of work and responsiveness.

2. Review their web site and writing samples
Follow the link to each writer’s website and look at their samples and testimonials from satisfied customers. You will be able to quickly get a feel for the writer’s style and if it might suit your needs.

3. Communicate with them
Contact the writer and set up a consultation. It’s great if you can actually speak to the writer on the phone. You can learn a lot about a person by the way that they speak and the vocabulary they use. If they don’t speak clear, standard English, chances are they can’t write it much better.

Find out about the writer’s turnaround time, ask about their policy for rush projects, and their payment policies.

If you require a confidentiality or Non-disclosure agreement, this is the time to discuss it.

4. Clearly articulate the scope of your project
Most writers lament the fact that their clients aren’t always as clear as they would like about their projects. The more explicit you are about your requirements for the project, the less opportunity for confusion. This saves time on your part and the writer wastes less time doing re-writes.

5. Have them complete a sample project
If you want to go ahead with a particular writer, request that they do a sample project. This way you can get a feel for how it will be to work with you and the writer can assess what kind of a client you will be to work for. Clearly establish the price, your specifications and a deadline for this sample project. When the project is complete you can make a clear decision on whether or not you want to move forward with this writer.

If you follow these simple steps you can get through the process of hiring a ghostwriter to create fresh content for your website quickly and efficiently.

When you are ready to hire a ghostwriter who will save you time and money while providing high-quality, engaging content that will keep your visitors coming back, please feel free to contact Evelyn Bourne, Freelance writer, and request a consultation today.

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Most writers have found themselves staring at a blank piece of paper, or a blank screen and feeling a bit of panic in the pit of their stomach because they can’t think of a single thing to write. The goal of this article is to make sure that you never find yourself in that position ever again. Let’s take a look at a few ways to create a never-ending flow of article ideas.

This article is written on the premise that you will be writing keyword optimized articles for the purpose of article marketing, but the tips on idea generation can really be used for any kind of writing projects.

Plan Ahead
Keep a list of keywords that your web site is focused on, and update this list every week. When you are ready to begin writing, consult this list to get the ideas flowing.

Capture Ideas
Use a small notebook that you carry with you everywhere to jot down ideas that strike you throughout the day. Better yet, jot down these thoughts in your PDA or smart phone and then email them to yourself. If an idea strikes and you don’t have your notebook with you, call and leave yourself a voicemail message with as many details about the idea that you can come up with.

Create a Swipe File
Open a Notepad or word processing document and use this to capture snippets of copy, headlines, graphics–anything that inspires you or gives you an idea to write about. Keep this open while you are writing so that you can take down those quick things that occur to you as you are working on other writing projects.

Brainstorm Article Titles
Come up with a list of titles for articles that you want to write articles for. Copy good titles that you find into your swipe file to inspire you.

Use Mind Maps
Mind mapping is a fabulous way to prime your brain’s creative pump. You simply write a keyword in the center of a piece of paper. Draw a circle around it and jot down thoughts related to that word or idea and draw lines from the keyword out to the related words. Visit mind-mapping.org to find an endless supply of mind mapping and creativity resources.

Try any of these techniques that appeal to you and you will never again face the terror of a blank screen. Keep adding to your swipe file and use the mind mapping technique and you will exponentially expand your productivity.

Evelyn Bourne is a freelance writer who specializes in creating compelling Internet content from SEO articles to blog posts, eBooks and special reports. Guess what? She is available for hire. You are invited to visit http://contentcreation.wordpress.com to find out about how she can create content for you.

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Article marketing is really one of the best ways to create free quality, targeted traffic to your web site. There are plenty of people out there who would love to make use of article marketing, but they are not confident in their writing ability. The goal of this article is to encourage you to give article writing a try because if you can speak clearly enough to be understood, then you can write an article. Let’s get started.

The purpose of your article is to share a bit of useful information about your web site’s topic, product or service. You will write your article using the keywords that you want searchers to use to find your site. In order to accomplish this, the first thing that you want to do in preparation for writing your articles is to gather your list of keywords.

For each article you will need a primary keyword and a secondary keyword. For example, if your topic is weight loss, then you might use your ‘long tail’ keyword as your primary, such as “weight loss tips for diabetics” and the secondary might be “weight loss.”

An article should follow the basic structure of: 1. Introduction, 2. Body, 3. Conclusion. You want to tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them what you have to say and then tell them what you told them. You want your readers to come away from your article feeling as though they benefitted in some way from having read it. The article is your opportunity to share your expertise with your visitors in hopes that they like what they find and decide to click through to your site to find more good information.

To begin, type your keywords at the top of the page and then begin to do a bit of a brain dump. Write down everything you know about your topic as it comes to your mind. Get a friend to ask you questions about your topic and write down their questions and your answers. We are not concerned right now with structure, but simply with getting what’s in your head on the page. When you have a few notes written down, type your keywords into your favorite search engine and take a look at what comes up. Peruse a few web pages with articles written around your keywords to get some fresh ideas. Jot down some more notes. Keep searching until you have found enough information for your article.

Choose three main points and then fill in those points with the information you came up with. Finally, write an introduction for the main points, and a conclusion that summarizes your article and wraps everything up.

Next, you want to create a title for your article. The title should contain your primary keyword, and it serves as the headline for your article. Make sure that your article delivers on the promise made in your headline. Clarity trumps cleverness when it comes to titles because it will be read both by human eyes and search engine spiders.

The last thing you will write is your article’s resource box. This is where you share a link to your web site where your visitor can find more great content like what they see in your article. If you do a search on “article resource box examples” you will find some good inspiration for creating a good resource box for your articles.

See? That wasn’t so bad was it? If you followed these steps you now have a completed first draft of your article. Now go through and do a spell-check and grammar check. If you have MS Word, you can find these items under the ‘Tools” menu.

Don’t stop there. Go ahead and write some more articles and jot down some ideas for additional articles so that the next time you sit down to write you will not be facing a blank screen.

Evelyn Bourne is a freelance writer who specializes in creating compelling Internet content from SEO articles to blog posts, eBooks and special reports. Guess what? She is available for hire. You are invited to visit http://contentcreation.wordpress.com to find out about how she can create content for you.

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For those who are looking for a way to use their writing talents to make money writing online, ghostwriting articles and ebooks and short reports is a great way to get started. I have been ghostwriting online for about three years now, and I have found it to be a good way to put my writing skills to work and earn some cash.

By way of explanation, ghostwriting is simply the practice of writing content along with the publication rights to it. Although the ghostwriter writes the article, ebook, report, etc., the client who hires them puts their name on the piece and can claim authorship of that work.

Writing is something that I enjoy, and whether I am writing for myself for one of my own sites or for a client I always put forth my very best effort. I have been doing some article marketing for myself, and I write a metric ton of articles for clients each week, so I try to keep up on what’s happening in the world of article marketing. I was listening to Dan Ho’s interview with Christ Knight of ezinearticles.com last evening and I could feel my hackles being raised by the way they were talking about ghostwriters. I guess I should not let it bother me so much because I know that my work is always original, but I sort of felt like they were not presenting ghostwriters in a very favorable light by saying that you should never trust them, etc.

Articles are no magnum opus. They are pretty simple and straightforward to write. I like writing articles because they are quick to write, and I enjoy learning about new topics and finding creative ways to get the client’s message across using their keywords and creating value for the reader. With my education, training and years of practice I know that I am always improving the level of my writing. I agree with Dan and Chris that PLR should be used on your web site and not submitted to ezinearticles as if it were your own original content.

Here are some things that I took away from that interview:

The need to create a ‘work for hire’ agreement to give to new clients when I begin working with them. I have only been asked once to sign a notarized NDA for a client who was paranoid beyond belief about their keywords. For the most part I have not used work for hire agreements, but I will going forward.

It became clear that I need to write and submit far more articles than I have been writing. Although I joined the 100 Articles in 100 Days marathon, I had to drop out because almost as soon as I joined I got a flood of new client writing assignments and I was not able to keep up with my personal articles along with my client work. I am working daily to keep up a healthy volume of writing.

Re-purposing existing content into new articles is a great way to come up with more articles without needing to write them from scratch.

In closing I will just say that ghostwriters provide a valuable service, and there are plenty of honest ghostwriters out there who have integrity and operate in an ethical manner. (Dare I ask if you have hugged your ghostwriter today?

If you are a writer looking to make money writing online, be sure to write lots and lots of articles and submit them to the main article directories with links back to your blog. You’ll get a nice stream of targeted traffic and all the work you can handle.

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At least that’s what the little voice in my head gasped when I joined Jeff Herring’s Article Writing Marathon earlier this week. I’m a writer, and a blogger, but somehow I’ve only managed to get less than a dozen articles submitted at Ezinearticles.com. I spend a lot of time working on my sites and writing for my clients, but recently I committed myself to becoming one of my best clients and writing more articles to get the word out about my blog and to hone my skills.

While I enjoy writing a lot, I have never been a fast writer. Recently, I did some research on how to be a more productive writer and I wrote a blog post about it. I am putting some of those strategies into place, and one of my goals is to shave down the time it takes me to produce an article. I also want to continue to improve my writing skills, so joining an article writing marathon should do the trick nicely.

When I got started on this project I made a list of topics that I enjoy writing about, that I am knowledgeable about and that I can write on fairly effortlessly without needing to do a ton of research. I divided that list into sub-topics, and an idea I got from the 100 Articles in 100 Days forum is to make a mind map of each topic as I narrow the focus. I also intend to keep my eyes open for article ideas to pop into my head from my daily life. This journey can also lead me to even more topics of interest to write about.

This week I have begun each day by writing my designated article before I dive into the other writing projects that are vying for my attention. That serves to give me a big boost of energy and accomplishment to start the day off in a positive way.

We even have a hashtag on Twitter.com: #HAHD. I’ve been tweeting my progress and I’ve gotten some good encouragement from my twitter peeps.

So, in the end I will have more than just 100 articles under my belt. I will have a ton of new back links to my blog, more visibility in the search engines, more traffic–nothing but good stuff. I’m excited about my progress so far. If you join us at 100 Articles in 100 Days you can look at my profile and see my running list of articles. I will also find a way to keep my progress updated here on my blog so that my readers can observe and hold my feet to the fire if I begin to falter.

If you’re a writer, I encourage you to check out the challenge and see if it might be just the thing to breathe some new life into your writing practice.

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Writers often labor a long time, raise procrastination to high art, and finally, when it can be denied no longer they sit down to the page or the screen and begin to write. Life holds many distractions, and unless you have luxury of a writing studio in the turret of an old mansion in the country with no telephone, Internet or clamoring children those distractions can quickly nibble away at your writing time. In this article we will look at a few useful resources that can help writers become more productive.

What is Your Current Writing Process?
When approaching a new writing project where do you start? Take the time to document your current process step by step so that you can see what you are doing now and what you might need to change. Do you try to edit yourself as you go? Separating the writing (creative process) from the editing (analytical process) can free you up to write more freely. Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, encourages writers to give themselves permission to write “sh*tty first drafts,” in order to free their creative mind.

Embrace a Productivity System
Having an overall productivity system for your life and work will also help you to operate more efficiently in all areas of your life thereby freeing up more energy and time for your writing. There are several productivity systems to try. The goal is to find one that suits your style and personality. Dustin Wax of Lifehack.org has written an article about the different productivity systems and why you should adopt one.

Try a New Writing System
Writing FAST, written by Jeff Bollow, and subtitled, How to Write Anything with Lightning Speed, outlines a writing system that can help any writer write faster, and with more clarity and simplicity. Bollow presents a step by step method for generating ideas, chunking projects down, speed writing, and editing quickly.

Establish a Writing Schedule
What are your peak productive hours? For some people it might be early in the morning while the house is silent. Others might produce their best work late into the night. Look at your calendar and plan your work a week in advance. Schedule blocks of writing time during your most productive times of the day.

Delegate and Outsource
What aspects of your work can be outsourced? Take a look at the way you described your current writing process. Which tasks within that process can just as easily be done by someone else? Review your daily ‘to do’ list and select a few of those items and delegate them to someone else so that you can focus your time and attention on your writing.

Manage Distractions
Your environment will have an impact on how you work. Depending on the nature of the project you might want to write in a bustling café, or with the children and pets running in and out of the room. At other times you might need the quiet ambience that can be found in the corner of the library, or in the garden, or alone at home.

Other distractions that can hinder your productivity can be found right there on your computer. As you are writing your mind may wander a bit and before you know it, you are researching medieval hosiery on Wikipedia. Unplug your Internet cable and disable the wifi. Set a timer for the amount of time that you have allotted for this portion of the project. Pickthebrain.com blog has some great tips for eliminating the frustration that often comes with the writing experience.

In our chaotic modern world multi-tasking has become the rule of the day. In the words of E.L Doctorow, “Planning to write is not writing. Outlining…researching…talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.” Unfortunately, if you want to be a good writer you must let those ideas go and learn to focus. Acquiring a laser-like focus on the task at hand will go a long way towards making you a better, more productive and satisfied writer.

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Writing for a living, in the not too distant past was somewhat of an oxymoron. Before the Internet, freelance writers did not have many options. They submitted their poetry, magazine queries, and book proposals to the major magazines and publishing houses and then played the waiting game for weeks and months just to get an answer, which, far too often consisted of a rejection slip.

Thanks to the Internet there has been a revolution in the world of publishing. Add in the chilling effects of this ‘downturn’ economy that seems to have sucked the life out of almost every industry and you have the perfect storm of opportunity for writers who are ready to blaze their own trail online. In this article we will look at four methods that writers can use to work towards making a full time income from their writing.

If your big dream as a writer is to become a published author, the exposure and name recognition you receive from having a successful online writing business will only help you when it comes time to market your book.

Freelance Article Writing
If you are just getting started as an online writer, article writing is a great place to start. There are billions of web sites on the Internet and they all need fresh, relevant content to keep their readers coming back. Article writing is a great way to generate revenue quickly.

Everyone is an expert at something, so start there. Write up a batch of sample articles on topics that you feel comfortable writing about at first. There are lots of sites online with article writing tutorials, however, Jeff Herring, ‘The Article Guy’ is my favorite. Set up a blog and post your sample articles there for your prospective clients to see. Include your rates, and as you complete work for a client be sure to ask for a testimonial that you can put on your site. Social proof is very powerful.

Doing article marketing for your own site is another way to generate traffic, back links and establish you as an expert in your niche. Set up a schedule and submit a few fresh articles per week to the article directories and watch your numbers consistently rise over time. Caroline Middlebrook has a great post on her blog that addresses article marketing in depth.

Find creative ways to maximize the value of the content that you create when you write articles. Create PLR (private label rights) packs of articles that you can sell. You can read your article and record it and sell it as an audio article. Create a short video with your article and share it on youtube.com or one of the other video sites to get traffic for your blog.

Additionally, you can begin to write and sell eBooks. An eBook is really just a compilation of several articles on the same topic. You’ll have to add in transitions and make it flow, but they are not difficult to write. Always brand them with a link back to your site and they will also provide some ongoing traffic for you.

Create a Mailing List
Set up an opt-in box above the fold on your blog and offer a free subscription to your newsletter and rss feed. Consider offering a bonus gift as an incentive for subscribers. Use your newsletter to share news and information with your subscribers, and when you begin to create your own products you can introduce them to your list.

Social Networking
Set up a profile on Facebook and Twitter.com, and some of the other social media sites to gain exposure for your writing. You can also gain credibility for yourself as an author by sharing tips and resources with your followers. Participating in social networking also helps to ensure a steady stream of traffic and links to your site.

Joint Ventures
Joint ventures are an effective way to grow your list, gain new customers and develop strategic relationships with other writers or Internet marketers. Find other newsletter publishers who will promote your blog or products in their newsletter for a percentage of sales. This needs to be a win-win proposal, so provide the publisher with a free copy of your product so that they can review it and recommend it to their list.

Finally, enjoy the process. You will learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t work as you go along. Keep good records and through trial and error, you will come up with a system that works for you. Align yourself with others who have already achieved what you are working towards and get advice and guidance from them. Never stop reading and researching and expanding your knowledge base. Ultimately, success comes to those who simply hang in there and don’t give up.

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