I’d like to stop writing ‘info’ and start writing people’s stories. Do you make a living working on the internet? Do you make a living working as a writer? Then contact me and tell the world your story. Whether you get paid to write, or hire ghostwriters to promote your business.

I am looking for people who work at home, make money writing, or make more than $2000 a month online. I will post interviews over the next few weeks.

Julie-Ann Amos is a UK based HR and Management consultant, turned UK ghostwriter/Uk copywriter. Her years as a writer, and professionalism, helped her build one of the most successful International Copywriting Services. She is also author of 12 books in print, in over 20 countries.
 
Just being in the freelance world for so many years, and building a successful business, is enough to warrant kudos from those in the industry. However, Julie-Ann has mentored and nurtured other writers, sharing her knowledge and patience. 

I read her book ‘You’re in Charge Now – The First-Time Manager’s Survival Kit.’ The book discusses balancing several aspects of managing. I found the book very fundamental, in both my business and freelance career. It is one book I recommend for every freelance writer, and ironically I must have good taste as the UK’s Institute of management picked it for their recommended book to go out with their membership packs!
 
Managing a freelance writing career requires the same skills as managing an office. The number one mistake I see freelance writers make is the habit of treating their clients like a parent doling out an allowance for completed chores.  Unfortunately, the clients are hiring a service to produce a product. They want results.
 
I think Julie-Ann’s success comes from one statement in her book:
 
      Effective = Doing the right things
      Efficient = Doing something in the right way
 
Most freelance professionals are just concerned with ‘getting it done.’ They try to be ‘everything to everyone’ but do not worry about offering their clients an efficient service. I write only a few niches. I can do an efficient job. There are a vast number of freelancers, and most of them never take the time to learn the topics they are writing for. They can do the job, but they are neither Efficient or Effective.
 
Quality stands out in every industry, especially the freelance writing world. Exposure is the second element to success. Julie-Ann does not need to ‘prove’ she can do the job; the proof is already on the net to read.
 
Freelance is not about sales. It is about delivering what is promised, exactly as the client requested.  It is very difficult for one writer to provide - even when writing in a niche.
 
There are two methods of building a freelance writing career. An independent bids on their own jobs, and manages their own clients. The second is joining a team, such as Julie-Ann Amos’ team - http://www.exquisitewriting.com/. 

Any writer can apply - not all will be approved!

      Are you frustrated hiring new writers all the time to find that most of them cannot meet simple writing deadlines, guidelines, or understand what is needed? That is why we have started the new PROFESSIONAL WRITERS list.  Every writer on this list is approved by marketing professionals. It does not guarantee a perfect fit between writer and project. It will decrease the chances of hiring someone who misrepresented their abilities and skills.

The PROFESSIONAL WRITERS listed on this site must some of meet the following criteria:

• work as writers and/or editors and/or proofreaders
• have education or real world experience
• be published or in publication of a book/course
• Have a writer’s website
• Have at least 2 references or clients, or profiles.
• Fit one of the following:
  • ghostwriter,
  • pro blogger,
  • freelance article writer,
  • book writer fiction/non-fiction,
  • ebook writer non-fiction
  • technical writer
  • editor - content and/or line
  • proofreader
  • copywriter
  • university/college papers
  • white paper - scientific/engineering
  • white paper - marketing/advertising
  • case studies
  • novels
  • Writing Agent (you have writers work for you and guarantee work)

FREE SERVICE

Writers do not need to pay for this service at the moment. This list is open to any writers. All you need to do is meet the minimum requirements. When you are approved for this list, you will receive a Badge to put on your website/profile etc, to prove you’ve met our ‘professional writer’ guidelines.

(Note: We will be building a similar system for clients who need $200 or more writing projects completed a month)

cforms contact form by delicious:days

I did research on several sites. One was www.marshable.com a site with 1.7 million inbound links…of which Google only recognized 609. This is a drastic problem when people are trying to build inbound links and increase their page rank and put their web pages on the tops of search engines (called Search Engine Placement)

One thing that many people do not know about link building is that older links are dropped, meaning that a website should try to add about 100 new links every month, if they want to stay at the top of the searches. Yes, this can be time consuming (100 links x about 3min per link if doing it like an SEM pro, no breaks = 5 hours. In reality, I find that IF I just worked on one URL at a time, it would take closer to 20 hours)

List of Bookmarking Sites That Generate Inbound Links

I created a list of some sites that generate inbound links. This doesn’t mean they always will. A good example is Propeller (use to be Netscape). It once gave a website the value of Digg. Within the last few weeks posts are appearing on the seo sites that suggest that propeller has dropped to Zero value. This will dreag down a lot of websites.

At one time submitting to directories works. Now, It is very difficult to find a directory that offers any value these days. That doesn’t mean that there is no value. Marshable has PR7 with only 600 recognized links. Mirella Patzer has PR4 (in less than 8 weeks) with only 171 links.

The following is a list of sites that do pass value through their links. This doesn’t mean they always will. It doesn’t mean they are the only sites. Remember - this list is based on link building and search engine placement. The list is not ranked, as ranks change so often. The list is not ordered.

almost any blogspot blog

bebo

bizsugar

blinklist

blogcatalogue

blogsvine

blogtoplist

clipmarks

diigo

ezinearticles

facebook

furl

http://www.google.com/dirhp (The directory NOT the search engine

hubpages

ibibo

Jumptags

killerstartups

linkedin

mag.nolia

minxx

mybloglog

myspace

newsdots

quantcast

repptide

rollyo

simpy

snapshot

social.com

Sphinn

sproose

squidoo

startaid

Stumbleupon

Tehcnorati

twitter

webloghits

xing

yearblook

youtube

ziapp

zimbio

There may be others. If you find more sites then please add them in a comment. If you want to see a list of 200 bookmarking sites that offer Page Rank Building Value then click this link.

How to test:  If you type in your URL without the ends Not - www.mywebsite.com - just type in mywebsite. This will give you a good idea of all your inbound links. Now, type in links: http://www.mywebsite.com You’ll notice a lower number. (and if you use Google’s web analytics you’ll find even less.)

 Yahoo does recognize more links, and it is possible to rank high in yahoo. Most websites never do because web owners do not authenticate for Yahoo.

View a Complete List of 200 link building/Bookmarking sites.

A blogmaster needs at least 3000 different websites to link to their blog – in the last six months- to reach the top 100 on the Technorati list. Of course, the number one way is to get people to link to your blog – but this is not easy. Telling people that they may put an excerpt of your blog on their site will work – but this will not build 3000 links.

There is a good reason why you need to build your Technorati rank. First – it brings up your Alexa rank because many people who use Technorati have the Alexa toolbar. One of the most popular methods of increasing Google rank is to build 50 – 100 blogs and create your own network. Within weeks you have 500 legal links, and PR3. This will also increase your Technorati rank and using ‘duplicate content’ will also keep the relevance. (remember to only promote one blog so it earns high PR… creating a link farm will not work)

Claim your blogs on Technorati.

You can purchase links (legally) through forums: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58 Just be careful. The problem is that you can’t please everyone. You cannot increase your Google and Technorati ranks. You need to chose which is most important to you. As for me? I get very little of my 4m hits a year from Google, so it doesn’t bother me whether Google likes my links or not.

The concept was first introduced in Japan with Womansword. Japanese women had their own dialect and vocabulary that contained dual meanings, and could be used to influence or motivate men. This notion made business managers and sales people reconsider the theory of an ‘innocent comment.’
Here are a few aspects of toxic communication that can sabotage sales, destroy a productive work environment, or undermine the best customer service strategy.

Toxic Communication Styles

We’ve all met them, the business manager who consistently, rudely, and loudly chastises people’s stupidity. This not only costs the company talented employees, but has far reaching repercussions.
This person will inadvertently treat a business associate, and not even recognize a problem. No one is good enough that they can be one person in private, and another in public, another in business - it is impossible.

Every time a business person walks into public they are putting on a performance. Communication is not about feelings. The objective is not to win, to be right, to overpower another person. The objective is to reach a certain goal or conclusion.

Threats

A threat can be as simple as a lifted eyebrow, ignoring a suggestion, swearing, crossing arms, or looking bored. Any behavior that demeans, embarrasses, humiliates, annoys, alarms, or can be deemed verbal abuse

These can be as simple as a raised eyebrow, and ignoring a person’s suggestion, to swearing, any behavior that demeans, embarrasses, humiliates, annoys, alarms or is intrusive is a threat whether it is a word, gesture, or body language.

Professional negotiators and public speakers practice communicating in front of a mirror. Just put a mirror by the phone and watch yourself talk to people. You’ll be surprised at the subliminal messages you convey.

Silence is Not Golden

Listening is the solution to 50% of all problems. An open, safe environment invites people to air a grievance, alert managers to problems, and keep managers on-top of their subordinates personal problems and office conflicts.

Listen to your clients. Analyze what they say. Try to assess their wants and needs. No one wants to argue. In fact, as soon as someone starts to argue it indicates that they lack the communication skills needed to win an argument. That argument may be a customer service conflict. It may be the simple ‘sales process.’ Or, it could be something as simple as asking someone if they are ready to buy.

Practice
Practice these rules. They will increase sales, increase the
number of times people agree with your ideas, and pave the way for your business success.

Write for webmasters. If you write content for webmasters and exchange reviews with bloggers who use sites like SocialSpark where they most likely have the Alexa toolbar ( you can insist that you only exchange posts with sites that have the Alexa widget on the blog).

Write to an international audience. I have a large audience of women from India. Alexa toolbar is big in India, so these ordinary bloggers can increase my Alexa rank without trying.

Create an Alexa category on your blog. Even if the blog is a general ‘how to attract traffic’ or ‘how to improve your page rank’ then you can still call it Alexa News.  This is a purely marketing move. Visitors from Google will not help your rank. Google doesn’t care how many people visit your site, how many RSS subscribers you have, or whether 10 people digg your blog posts a day. In fact, even building links to please Google doesn’t guarantee that you’ll build a good page rank – so don’t cater to Google fans.

Participate in Foreign Alex sites

http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500?&qterm=&p=DestTopSites

Asia uses Alexa. Getting on those sites, and reaching the top, will increase your rank even higher.

This tool will give you Google, Alex, and Complete rank. It offers a far more accurate image than Google does.

For example. www.healthafter40.blogpsot.com has dropped from PR4 to PR0 in the last 3 months. However, it has increased 75% on the Alexa rank an increase of more than 1 million. It is currently around 2 million in ranking, getting about 5000 hits in 3 months. This is not good traffic, but it does show that (unlike Google) the website has increased in popularity, hits, and repeat traffic.

After downloading the toolbar, go to the bottom right of the browser. Click the Alexandria bar. Now you can see all the stats on page rank and information that you could possibly want to see. For example, I found that 33% of my readers are from the UK, and I have a large percentage of visitors 15% from India.   This will have a dramatic effect on how I write to my customers.

I clicked incoming link and it opened up the tabs to show my incoming links from different browsers. For example, I have 1098 that Google recognizes, and 1973 that Yahoo recognizes.  I also know that my rank is 1 398 600 . I don’t have far before I start ranking high enough to make better money as a blogger.

Just owning the Alexa toolbar will increase the Alexa rank of the websites you visit. It might be a good idea to post that you have the Alexa toolbar. If you visit a site and increase their rank, they ‘may’ return the favor. At least, if you are working with a group of professionals who want to increase their page rank then they must all have the alexa toolbar.

Adding the Alexa widget to your website is vital for attracting new members to your website.

The last benefit is that you can see a webpage’s Google PageRank, and Alexa’s Page rank.

Most people do not realize that Amazon owns Alexa. The Alexa rank is measured based on the amount of users who visit the blog or web site – but only if they have the Alexa toolbar on their browser.

As Google becomes an unreliable tool for measuring Page Rank – face it, every time the webmasters learn how to use the algorithm, Google changes the rules restoring the elite positions of their advertisers. A blog or website that doesn’t work within their parameters is penalized, benched, and has to start all over somewhere else.

This is giving Alexa and RealRank more importance in the small business world.  Haven’t you noticed more and more of the Paid Post sites adding Alexa and IZEA’s Real Rank to their blog ranking systems? ReviewMe, Text Link Ads ,SocialSpark  and Sponsored Reviews are just a few.

Question #1, will increasing Alexa Rank increase the number of people who a) have the toolbar b) visit your site from the Alexa traffic pool.

One thing that Alexa has in its favor is the fact that it calculates traffic on a three month basis. It also calculates the number of pages viewed as well as the number of visitors.

Getting Started With Alexa Rank

Step one: You need to understand that Alexa rank is skewed towards blogs with a large techie audience. (Much the same way digg is) because the techies are the ones with the toolbars.  If you want to increase your page rank, then you need to convince your blog members and RSS subscribers that the Alexa toolbar is an important download.

Is this a defect? Well, you can look at it two ways. If you can get these people reading your pages, then by default, your blog is considered to have good/original well-thought-out content.

Step 2: Get off Blogspot and wordpress.com.  I’ve talked to several people who have moved blogs off the community blog platforms and watched their daily traffic trends increase from somewhere in the millions to less than 100 000 within two or three months.

This is not a guarantee. www.inspiredauthor.com has more than 350 000 hits a month, more than 10 000 pages on line, is pinged daily, has 150 members who blog, has PR4, and is not in the top 100 000 at the moment. But then, it is not a site that techies would be interested.

Step 3: Consider buying traffic to get started. This will bring visitors to your site, help you determine what the best topics to write about are, and increase your rank. If you make the perfect match (read more on how to make the most of traffic buying and revenue generating in the web promotion section of this blog)

Step 4: Download the Toolbar

IE    http://www.alexa.com/site/download/

FireFox  http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/ 

The firefox version

Step 5: Join Social groups such as Digital Point, Stumble upon, and technorati. These sites send visitors to your site, and build ‘inbound’ links. Do not limit yourself when building exposure. I’ve even used yahoo answers!

Step 6: Set your website as your homepage. Alexa is set to limit the number of requests it accepts from a website, per day. However, if you have a laptop, an office computer, a home PC, then the access count up.  Do not set up FireFoxes ‘reload’ feature. This may seem like a good idea, but Alex is smart enough to stop that type of black hat SEO.

Step 7: Include the widget on your site. There’s no evidence that the Widget improves traffic ranking. It only informs Alexa that your site exsists and ensuring your inclusion in the Alexa service.

Step 8: Create sub domains instead of several domains on similar topics. Alexa will combine them into one page rank.

The only thing you can do is learn how to stop debt. Recently I read a report that claims the average household pays $400 in interest a month… not counting their mortgage.  It is the credit card debt and small loans that add up. The more you need the money, the more interest rates you’ll pay.

I’ve given several talks on debt. If you want to work at home - cut up your credit cards and pay off your loans. “A dollar saved is a dollar earned.”  A good website such as www.aca4help.com can help connect debtors to programs and resources to make lowering their debts easier. Spend an hour on the site and you’ll be surprised at how easy you can get out of debt.