Your opt-in email list is the nerve center of your online business. Whether you are a blogger, an affiliate marketer or a freelance online content producer like me, you must build your own contact list of prospective customers if you have not already done so.

But it’s not enough to just gather up those emails and sit on them like they are going to hatch. Each one of those emails is your direct contact with a person who has visited your website, seen what you had to offer and liked it enough to give up their contact information. They have agreed to continue to receive emails from you, so go ahead and communicate with them.

Your list is only valuable to you when you foster a warm relationship with them. Take off your ’sales’ hat and put on your, ‘getting to know you’ hat. If you want to be able to send promotional offers you must first create a mutually beneficial relationship with them by providing value.

This afternoon I joined a fabulous webinar put on by Janet Legere, who was talking about, How To Write Auto-Responder Letters. Here are a few tips that I learned from her on this content-rich webinar:

Your goal is to get your opt-in members to begin to know, like and trust you more, so be real, be authentic and engaging with them.

Janet and her husband Don do these free training webinars at noon on Saturdays, so I recommend that you scoot on over to her blog, http://janetlegere.com, right now and sign up for her email list so that you can get a link to sign up for her next webinar.

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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 have actually had an account at Twitter.com since August of 2006. I was in Ed Dale’s famous, 30 Day Challenge, and he was raving about the potential that Twitter held for engaging with our audience, building a following and sending traffic to our blogs. However, there was one small problem. There were not enough people on Twitter yet who ‘got it,’ so, I had about a dozen followers for about six months.

Flash forward to today when I have almost 2,000 follower. I find Twitter to be a fabulous marketing tool. I get lots of traffic from it, I am able to spread the word about what I’m up to and I’ve developed a community of friends there where we chat and re-tweet each others posts.

I do not use any of those apps that auto-tweets for me, although it would save me a lot of time. I don’t spend more than about 30 minutes all together over the course of a day on Twitter. I often send some tweets in the morning and then I sprinkle them in throughout the afternoon. I check my @replies and see if any of my peeps have anything that needs re-tweeting.

In my estimation, I send about a dozen or so tweets a day, unless I am trying to get a lot of exposure for something like a webinar or teleseminar. Then I might send a few more.

So, yes, I’m a Twitter fan. I try to keep it real, and yes I tweet about what I’m cooking, what I’m eating, what I’m writing, and when I find inspirational quotes. I tweet about what’s happening in my world–for instance right now I’m a bit snowed in as we’ve received about 24″ or so of snow this weekend and I haven’t got a shovel to dig my car out. . .

My Twitter handle is: @evelynwrites. Follow me.

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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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I’m working on a manuscript in my ’spare time,’ which, as a work-from-home Freelance writer/single mom is a bit of a misnomer. My goal is to make progress on it each week, and I will not give up until I have it finished.

This morning, I saw this email from Julie Isacs in my Inbox. It inspired me so much I wanted to share it with you:

Book Cover

At the beginning of a book, or other long writing project, it’s
helpful to create a vision board or some other visual “touchstone”
to keep you inspired, focused, and moving forward on your writing
journey.

Your visual touchstone could be:

* A vision board of your book to put on your wall, or on your
computer as a desktop background or screen saver.It can include
your book cover,”NY Times bestseller,” or any other words or
images that excite you about your book.

* A mind movie: A vision board turned into a video, inspiring
thoughts and images moving to the beat of an uplifting song. You
could even record a voice-over talking about how you’ll feel when
the book is completed, and how it’s going to affect the people who
read it.

* Your book cover: If you don’t have your book’s official cover,
you can create a rough draft (it doesn’t have to be perfect) that
has meaning for you. Besides using the book cover on your computer
as your desktop image or screen saver, you can print out the cover
and put it on your refrigerator or near your computer. You can also
put your book cover on a 3-ring binder, paste it on a book-sized
diary, or create a physical mock-up of your book in some other way.

* Your book’s back cover: Put this where you can see it, or
combine it with the book cover described above to create your
“book.” Be sure to add a couple of testimonial “blurbs” to the back
cover copy saying how wonderful your book is.

* Your book’s table of contents: Print your TOC in a nice sized
font, so you can easily read the chapter headings. Put it where
you’ll see it often.

* A picture of the ideal reader you want to educate, inspire, or
entertain through your writing. It can be someone you know, or a
clear representation of your ideal reader (age, gender, etc.).

* A picture of something you’ve promised to buy yourself when you
finish writing your book. There’s nothing wrong with a little
incentive. Writing a book is a big commitment, and completing it is
a HUGE accomplishment. Celebrate the many little wins along the
way, and when you’re finished do something big and wonderful for
yourself.

* Or some other image that has meaning for you. It could be an
author you admire and want to emulate, or someone (or something)
that inspires you to do your best.

To keep me inspired as I write “Brainstorming Your Blog,” I’ve not
only created a book cover, I’ve put it on the front of a 3-ring
binder, created chapter dividers, and will be printing out the
book’s pages as I complete them.

The reason I’m doing this is four-fold:

1. To encourage me to finish each of the individual sections that
I’ve outlined.

2. To help me feel more connected to the book, and, therefore,
more committed to going all the way to a completed manuscript.

3. To get a visual and tactile sense of accomplishment as the
completed pages of the book grow.

4. To help with the editing, as there is something about having a
piece of paper to edit that helps me see things I might not catch
online (I don’t know why this is true, but it is).

Do you use any kind of visual touchstone? How has it worked
for you?

by, Julie Isac from the Writing Spirit.com

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I purposefully used the term mindful productivity to distinguish between being insanely busy and being thoughtful and deliberate about the work that I do and the projects that I take on. As a bustling solo-preneur, I wear a lot all of the hats in my company. I am a freelance writer creating website content for several clients, I am a blogger who manages a portfolio of blogs in different niche topics, and I’m also a marketer, an artist, a mom to three daughters and a woman who supports several non-profit causes.

With all of these things on my ‘plate,’ I must be deliberate and mindful about everything that I do. I am quickly approaching the point where I will no longer be able to do everything myself and still maintain this pace. What is the solution? The solution for me is going to be to hire someone so that I can regain some of the time that I spend doing tasks that must be done, but can easily be done by someone other than me. This will free me up to focus my time and talent on my core strengths.

Since I am not quite to the point of being able to hire an assistant, what I have begun to do is to carefully consider every item that gets added to my ‘to-do’ list. After prioritizing the order in which the tasks need to be completed, I mark down whether that is a task that I could hand off to someone else. Then as I do those tasks, I write a quick procedure guide for it if necessary. I may even start recording quick instructional videos to make this process quicker. So, by the time I am in the position to hire someone, I will be able to use the instructions that I have written up to get them started and save me the time of explaining it each time.

My plan is to first hire out the obvious time-sucking chores that don’t require any specialized knowledge such as laundry and housework (some of it). Then I would find a good VA to handle some of the marketing tasks, and website maintenance tasks. As a recovering perfectionist, I will have to learn to let some things go and have confidence in the fact that I don’t have to do it all myself.

So, if you’re a solo-preneur who has almost reached the limit of your capacity, consider the tasks that you do each day and start designating which ones could potentially be outsourced to free up your time and energy for more important tasks. Mindful productivity is all about balancing time–which is your most precious resource–and energy. Do what you love, love what you do and find someone else to do the rest.

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I was on youtube the other day when I saw this video. I’m all about product creation these days, and I like what this man has to say. So, take a look and see if you’re not inspired as I was.

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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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Guest post by Kathleen Gage

We’ve all heard stories of people making boatloads of money online by selling information products. Yet for most people making their first $100 would make them very happy. You see, once you make your first $100 the next $100 is much easier.

One of the best ways to develop your first information product is write a report. The best part of all is you can charge anywhere from $5 – $25 for the report! In some cases, even more.

Before I get into more on reports I want to explain what information products are. Information products include books, CDs, MP3s, white papers, reports, teleseminars, webinars, Podcasts, etc. In the Internet context, the term refers to electronically deliverable, knowledge-based products.

Anything that contains knowledge and you can deliver it electronically is considered an information product.

One of the easiest (and quickest to create) information products around is a report. And yet, many people have no idea where to start, how to market and how to turn their information into profits. Let’s start at the beginning.

There are ample benefits to creating low priced reports. Nowadays, many consumers would rather pay a few dollars for a fast solution to their problem than have to search around for the information (even if it’s free).

It doesn’t matter what topic, market or industry, reports are a great way to provide solutions to readers and generate great revenue with very little work.

Reports are also a great way to build your opt-in subscriber list. Most people have heard, “The gold is in the list.” This is so true. With a good opt-in list of subscribers you can literally make money at the press of a button.

Reports are so easy to create that you can often do so with little or no money out of pocket. Sure, there is time involved, but when you consider that you can generate hundreds (and even thousands) of dollars in revenue from a 10 – 20 page plus report, the time invested is worth it.

Because your reports will be delivered electronically, there are no storage costs. With physical products you have to keep inventory on hand, find a place to store them and often watch them collect dust. This won’t happen with online reports.

After the initial costs of developing your report, there are literally no additional costs to continue selling them.

With the right systems in place you can generate excellent revenues fast, easy and with what seems like the press of a button.

Kathleen Gage, The Street Smarts Marketer™, is an Internet marketing advisor who works with spiritually aware speakers, authors, coaches and consultants who are ready to turn the knowledge into money-making products and services. Visit http://budurl.com/zmkr for her report on how to develop money making reports.

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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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