How to gain writing experience before even getting a client

Do you really think you do not have any writing experience? You are wrong in thinking so; what about your term papers and assignments that you submitted in your school and college? Yes, those were writings as well – though not professional, may be not even grammatically correct, nevertheless they gave you some experience.

But, when starting as a freelance writer we are not concerned about just any writing. We are, in fact, concerned about proper experience, which one can get only when one writes professionally, which brings us to the original question of how to get writing experience as professional without having any client. The following points will help you answer that.

1. Start your own blog and post articles on it. Make sure each article is at least 500 words long.
2. Write articles for social communities and motivate your friends to read and give feedback to you. This will be a valuable asset which you can use to show your clients to get work.
3. Write articles for free. This will help you build portfolio — this may be an option, but I will not suggest putting this into effect unless you have exhausted all the available options.
4. Write for charity website. They like contributors.

There are many ways to build your portfolio and have some writing experience. The question is are you will to find an avenue and pursue it to the end?

What happened?

They had their job and I didn’t, for long time, and that is how I realized the importance of a cover letter in job search. Do you wish to travel the same path, and have the same experience before you realize the importance of having a nicely written cover letter?

I hope not!

Benefit of having a cover letter

Why do we need a cover letter? What difference does it make to our skills?

None. A cover letter does not make any difference to your skills. But, it helps you present your skills in the friendliest manner using the least possible words. You need a cover letter because:

1. You have to compete with hundreds (if not thousands or tens of thousands) of applicants who have exactly same qualification as you do.
2. You have to make your claim of being the most suitable candidate for the job stand out among the claims made by other applicants through their résumé.
3. You do not want your CV to remain unopened and get thrown in the trash bin.
4. You want to give an idea about who you are, what your qualification is, and what you can do even before your employer reads your résumé.

Let me tell you a HR secret. HR people do not go over all the résumés that they get. They read the cover letter typed in the mail body or sent with the CV and make their mind based on the information they get in the cover letter.

If you are not convinced with what I have said above then reread the entire post and do it until you start believing it because this is important. I am leaving you with this thought, and tomorrow I will tell you about the structure of a cover letter.

In this article, we will see what you need to do to get clients from twitter.

Step 1: Use real name

Will you like to do business with sexykitten, or hotrode? I am sure you won’t, regardless of how smart hotrode or sexykitten is. This is the power of name. A good name creates a positive image, whereas, a bad name ruins the party. Use your real name or business name for the twitter profile. If your name or business name is already taken then use something close to that, but spare yourself the horror of bad names.

Step 2: Use real picture

Like a real name, a real picture helps create a positive image in the mind of onlookers. Do not go for cool looking cartoons, or any other thing. Let your prospect know that you are a real person behind the twitter profile by giving a real picture.

Step 3: Brand your background

If you do not know this then let me break the good news that you can brand your twitter profile the way you want. I will suggest you customize the background of your twitter profile with your corporate brand identity.

Step 4: Use compelling bio

Your one-line twitter bio says a lot about you. People get influenced reading that, so it better be good. Make your twitter bio forceful and SEO-friendly.

Step 5: Add URL

Many people leave URL field empty. Do not commit this mistake. Use a proper working URL in your profile. This will work as a door to your website.

Step 6: Create a list

Create a list of the tweets from your industry and make it publicly available. This will give your prospect an idea about how closely you follow the changes in your industry. He may regard you as a leader of the pack, which will mean more business for you.

-Try thinking positively about the job you hate.  Consider the positive parts, such as the fact that you are lucky enough to have a job during this turmoil.  The fact that you have reliable enough work that you’ve stayed employed, and have been able to live more comfortably than many other Americans.  Thinking about your good fortune is a great way to bring that smile out.

-Set time limits on your tasks, to see if you can accomplish your goals.  This is almost a tactic to make a game out of the monotony you may suffer if you hate your job.  Also this helps you get faster, and better at accomplishing your tasks.  The appearance of becoming a better, harder worker, could help you advance into a higher position that you won’t hate.

-Take an interest in your coworkers.  Make friends, and be positive and good natured with them.  Creating a better work environment around you can really help how you feel at work.  A great way to do that is improve your relations with those around you, creating a friendly environment that you can enjoy.

-Finally, just because you have a job, doesn’t mean you can’t look for a different one.  Try looking for other opportunities that may serve you better.  Something that you can really get into, and have a true passion for, unlike your current job.  Just make sure to keep that knowledge silent, as some employers take personal offence when their employees look for work elsewhere.  The last thing you want is to lose the job you have, because you were looking for a different one.

This brief post will help you secure your Gmail account from the burglars who are out there to steal your mail IDs and other information. Securing Gmail is an easy task. Just follow the things written below and your Gmail will become secure.

Forcing Gmail to use https connection

The very first thing you need to do is to force Gmail to open a secure channel for all your online communication by using https instead of http. Using https is free. To use it, all you need to do is make a slight change in the settings. Follow the following steps

1. Step 1: Log in to your Gmail account as you regularly do.
2. Step 2: Click on the “settings” that appears at the top of the page.
3. Step 3: Make sure you are on the General Tab under settings.
4. Step 4: On fifth position from top, you will find “Browser connection”.
5. Step 5: Check the Radio button beside “Always use https”.
6. Step 6: Click save changes at the bottom of the page.
7. Step 7: Restart your Gmail. Now you will notice that your Gmail has https prefix in place of http.

Sign out all other sessions

How many times did it happen to you that you logged in our office or home PC and forgot to log out when leaving office or home? And how many times we asked our family or colleague to log you from your Gmail? And do you remember where all you logged in: Cell phones, cybercafé, friends’ PC, your bosses’ laptop?

There is no need to panic. There is a way in Gmail to log you out from all the devices you logged in at other places. Follow the following steps and you can easily do that.

1. Step 1: Log in to your Gmail account.
2. Step 2: Scroll to the bottom of the page.
3. Step 3: Find “Last account activity: X minutes ago on this computer.  Details” written at the bottom. You may or may not find “This account is open in 1 other location at this IP (122.162.225.247)”this written before the “last login” text.
4. Step 4: Click the “Details” link.
5. Step 5: A window will pop up.
6. Step 6: Go to the window and click “Sign out all other sessions” button.

That’s it. You are done. Your Gmail is secure now.

Write declarative sentences

These kinds of sentences make your writing forceful. You do not crawl, dictate or order. You just say what it is in a natural way. You do not intimidate people, you just say your things and let people think based on that. There is no offensive or defensive stance on either side.

Use Active voice

The prize for blogging was won Jack.

Or

Jack won the prize for blogging.

Which one of the two sounds more powerful? Indeed, it is the second one. When you use active voice, you make your subject do the work, but if you resort to passive voice, you ask your subject to lie down on a couch and let the object of his action do the work.

Check adjectives and adverbs

Adjectives can be alright, but adverb is strict no-no. The excess of any of these two will make your text look boring, very badly boring. Did you see that boring was okay but very badly boring was not?

Cut it

Are you not sure whether it should be there or not? Cut it! William Strunk Jr. will love you for that. Did you ask who is he? Well, you need to read The Elements of Style and ask countless English writing people to know who he was, meanwhile, just follow the advice and leave it when in doubt.

No clunky sentences, please

If you cannot create a sentence that reflects grace than do not attempt to create one! Well, did I sound like William Strunk Jr.? Then I succeed. Jokes apart; I mean to say that you should avoid creating any clunky or confusing sentences. To find out if your sentence is confusing or not, make your friend read your piece.

The first thing you should know about being good at making small talk, is to stay away from controversial subject matter.  Stay away from political news stories, and religious views, etc.  These are typically topics that people have very strong opinions about, and if yours happen to be different, it can spark a fairly heated debate.  A heated debate is not what you want to be on the opposite side of, when you’re chatting with your boss at the water cooler.  Instead focus on more simple things, like personal experiences.

Show genuine interest in what the other person has to say.  This is key, as anybody will know if you’re feigning interest to perhaps gain favor with that person.  Care about what they have to say, and offer good insightful as well as courteous input in return.  By genuinely caring and giving good positive input from your perspective, you make a positive connection.

Try to keep a list of news stories or popular movies that have recently come out, in your mind.  This way you’ve got good topics to bring up, and ones that most people are well aware of.  Plus movies and common news stories are good safe topics that almost anyone can connect to, and have a lighthearted conversation about.  Lighthearted friendly conversation that can easily be enjoyed by anyone is the key.  The better you get at small talk with your coworkers, the more well known you’ll be around the office, and that gives your work a better chance at being noticed.

Once you’ve got your niche idea, you need a place to make a blog.  You can start your own by hosting the blog on your own server with your own web address, but this could be extremely costly.  The best idea is to go to a place like Blogspot, or WordPress to start out in building your audience.  Membership is free, and make the process of designing your blog as quick and painless as possible.

Now you just need to pick a good theme that invites people into your world.  This way your blog is visually appealing.  By being pleasing to the eye, people will be more likely to actually read what you have written.  Which is the other key to a good blog, good writing.  The writing is what people come to see, so make sure yours is worth their time.  Be informative and interesting, with a healthy dose of entertainment.  That’s the recipe for blog writing success.

Now you need to find a good program for putting ads on your site.  Most people go through Google’s Adsense, as it’s the easiest and fastest to use.  Adsense works by giving you money anytime someone clicks on an ad on your site.  You can earn anywhere from $.01 to $15 per click.  Ad placement is a fine art as well, so choose ads that relate to your site, so that people will be more likely to click on them.

From there it’s just about networking yourself.  Try and make friends with other people in the industry, as part of the success of established bloggers is through other blogs.  By making a network you benefit off of everyone’s traffic.  Through exchanging links with a blog similar to yours, you allow yourself to be noticed by the more successful blogs readership, affording you the opportunity to get yourself noticed.  The more traffic you can generate, the more chances you have for ad clicks.  So choose your ads wisely, and build that blog traffic!

No priority list: This is the first thing in the list because I wanted to tell you emphatically the importance of having a prioritized to-do list. In the absence of such list you will not know what is more important and what can wait till evening. Hence, what you end up doing first in the morning is the thing that was not at all important.

A pile of task: This is almost always unmanageable. A huge list of work to complete will just immobilize you and you cannot accomplish anything, so bite only what you can chew, and leave rest on the plate for others.

Wrong Timing: This is important. Do the critical work in the morning when you are fresh, and push the less important works for the rest of the day. Checking mail in the morning takes away the time in which you could have accomplished many important things.

Untidy Mailbox: This kills your time more than anything else. Too many mails in your mailbox will not boost your productivity; rather it will stamp it down. You need to organize your mailbox by filing important mails in folders and deleting the unnecessary ones.

No Do Not Disturb Sign: This is very important. In the office, being accessible to your subordinates, colleagues and bosses is considered professionalism. It indeed will win you many friends and support, but at times this will result in delayed reports and missed deadlines. Hence, you need to put “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door when you have important work with a tight deadline to finish.

Working Long Hours: If someone told you that working for hours in a stretch will fetch you great result then he was wrong. You need to take breaks at equal intervals to recharge your battery. The more relax you will be the better result will come out. Working continuously does nothing but worn you out.

Stand Up and Say No: Saying no is a good thing. It says you care and that you know the importance of the additional work that is going to get assigned to you. If you say no when you are caught up, this way you will not only save yourself from missing deadlines due to overload, but this will also help your organization get the work done through someone else who is free at that time.