A kicking start

What motivates you the most and energize you instantly – music of your choice or some motivational speech of your favorite idol? Find it out. Start your day with it. Play it loud while you are getting ready for the day. Else, you can play the same on your iPod or in car while driving to work.

Dress up nicely

Who doesn’t like to see a nice self on the mirror? Every morning take out some time for yourself. Decide what you will be wearing to work. Depending upon the day you may choose your attire. Make sure your accessories go well with your dress. Take bath, dress up, and stand before the mirror. Look how you appear on it. Make sure you don’t overdo it in terms of dress or accessories while going to work. If it’s a holiday for you and you are going out with friends feel free to wear anything. Never forget the occasion and weather when you put on clothes.

Cuddle the affectionate ones

If you have kids at home or a pet that is very close to you and very adorable make sure you don’t miss it in the morning. Even if for five minutes cuddle him, play with him. Smile on the baby’s face and affectionate gestures of your pets will immediately perk up your mood. It’s indeed a nice recreation even after a stressful day.

Hugs and kisses

Always start a day with hugs and kisses. It’s the best way to convey your love to your loved ones. It will keep you feel loved and connected.

Too much or too less information

Too much or too less information, both are strict ‘no no’. Many of us wish our advertisements too look absolutely neat, with one creative idea and nothing in it. Many award winning simple advertisements inspire us to do that. But client just don’t like it. He wants you to show his product, talk about its benefits, and display his logo. So make sure you include all important points in your advertisement. On the other hand don’t overstuff your advertisement with too many communication elements making it ugly.

Too many colors

We often think too many bright colors easily grab attention. But too many colors also look repulsive. Don’t use more than two or three colors. Colors should complement each other.

Too stylish and illegible font

Don’t fall in love with fonts that you don’t even notice its drawbacks. Don’t use too stylish calligraphic fonts in your advertisement, they are mostly unreadable. People won’t give an extra effort to understand your advertisement. Keep your font simple, bold, classy yet readable. Don’t use too many types of fonts either. Use one or two types of fonts. Concentrate on font size too. Headline, subhead, body text everything should bear distinctly different font sizes.

Logo larger than life

Often we place brand logo in center of the advertisement, large and really loud. Don’t scream too loud. Often client may ask you to emphasize the most on his logo. But too much emphasized logo won’t not only make your advertisement look ugly but also remain avoided. So keep it visible but not in center of attention.

Next time, you make a print advertisement don’t make these regular mistakes. These tips will help you to overcome these commonly committed mistakes. All the best!

In the times when your guests are at your home, you may need to exert yourself more, as you will work doubly — once to spend time with people you love and once to delight your customers with your impeccable work. We all face this kind of problem, and fortunately there is a way out of it. When I say a way out of it, I do not mean an easy way. Let me fist tell you about the ways out of it then you can decide to take it or leave it (this phrase sounds so filmy, isn’t it? Like the Godfather giving an unpleasant deal).

Work in the night

Once you have had all the laughs of the world, it is time to burn mid-night oil. This is kind of difficult, but you can manage it provided you do not end-up dining at mid-night. Stay awake for one or two hours in the night to finish the work.

Work Early morning

Waking up one hour early than usual could be tried. You can use this time to finish the works in due time. Early morning could be good, as your guests will not be waking so early, and nor will your kids and spouse.

Apart from these obvious times, you can also utilize the unplanned free time to complete the assignment. This way you will able to meet deadlines without sacrificing much on the fun your family and your guests are having. As I see, guests are not evil. They give you opportunity to break away from the monotonous life. Why not use it to the fullest? And to maintain pace of the work, do as suggested above.

A freelance writer should read anything that succeeds in catching, holding, and retaining his attention. Because the more diverse your reading habit will be the better equipped you will be to handle the challenges posed by freelance writing. You should care less about following a genre through head to tail. Well, doing it will be make you an expert and may be better accomplished as a writer of that particular genre, but expertise in one and dumbness in rest of the subjects is not what you should eye for. You need to have sufficient control on as many genres as possible.

What did you say— you will be master of one and will research for the rest?

I know many freelancers doing that, and quite a few have attained some degrees of success while treading down this road. But more often than not an article written by a freelance writer who has no prior knowledge or intuitive understanding of the subject matter lacks depth. To add depth and texture to your writing, you need to learn various things.

Freelance writing poses unique challenge that is seldom faced by fiction or non-fiction writers. Therefore, the solution used by freelance writers should also be different.

Read as much as you can, and from as many genres as you feel comfortable in!

Learning is a complex process, and acquiring knowledge is even more complex.  One never knows which piece of text or byte of media triggers what. Sometimes the knowledge gained is a direct result of the things you are reading, while at other times, it is gained because the things you are reading have activated some unknown part of the brain which has triggered something else then something else, and the end result of all this could be the new understanding you have developed.

So, to help your brain form new pattern and new understanding, you need to provide it as many types of fodders as possible.

Then why they are not plunging in?

Because we are not living in the era where capital matters. What matters today to make a business successful is idea. A business requires a killer idea to become successful. In the paragraphs below, I will tell you how to find a killer business idea.

Find killer business idea in 3 easy steps

• Step 1: Based on the ability you have, look for the industry that you can work. Alternatively, you can also look for a sector in which you will be more comfortable working. Find an industry in which you would love to work.
• Step 2: Divide the industry in various sector and list major players in each sector. Also analyze, perceive, and observe the need gap. Ask consumers and retailers about what benefit they are seeking from their existing consumption which are not yet fulfilled. I am asking you to find a need gap.
• Step 3: Find the alternative routes to fill the need gap. See how you can fulfill industry’s demand efficiently. You need to find a way to keep the price of the solution you are offering within industry’s expected price range.

Once you are through with this, make a business plan and execute it. The business plan should cover every aspect of a business. You need to ascertain the challenges as well as opportunity. Do a SWOT as well as PESTLE analysis. Do not forget to make a list of things you need to run the business.

In this short post, I will provide a list of common cause of concern for freelance writers, especially when one is starting out on the freelance writing journey.

Investment

If you thought it is just the number crunchers who worry about investments then you couldn’t have been more wrong. Investment woes keeps freelance writer worried as well, but most of the time it is not the investment in stocks, bonds, and funds that worries a freelance writer, but it is the investment in equipments and stationeries.

Do I need to have that new Mac? Or will windows do? Should I buy a printer, scanner and fax combo, or will the faxing part be dealt with installing fax modem software? These and similar questions pops in the minds of freelance writers quite often, and answer to these depends upon the requirement one has, and the stage of career a freelance writer is.

Working too much

Some people have left their day jobs for freelancing in a belief that he will have to work a lot lesser than they do while in a regular 9-5 job. Well, if the work timing is your concern then leaving your job is not advised because a freelance writer may have to work long hours. If this seems like a problem then revisit your decision. I took this job because working more was never a problem for me because I love what I do. Having said that, I must say that in time, everything will settle down, and work hours will become more regulated, but not initially.

No clients

Not getting enough clients to keep one occupied is another common worry that most of the freelance writers have. If you are in the initial stage of your career then this worry is legitimate. Indeed, getting a new client is difficult, and that is why we stress on retaining existing clients. If you stick long enough to freelance writing, you will see that this worry also subsides in time, as you start getting more and more clients through referrals.

No Money

This concerns all of us. We all get paranoid when it comes to money. After all, this is what we get (along with experience, learning, excitement, and fun) from freelance writing. When starting out, a freelance writer often commit a mistake of grabbing low-paying jobs. This indeed gives you something but not what you deserve for the time you spent. Hence, a freelance writer gets frustrated. Do not fall prey to the clients that wish to take you for a ride by paying you less and making you work more. I once travelled down that road. It was fatiguing. Wait for some time, you will get well-paying clients.

One of the best strategies is to try as hard as possible to not take the rejection personally.  So many people tend to take rejection too personally.  You aren’t being rejected based upon anything besides your writing.  That also doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t like your writing.  Sometimes your style, or your content just doesn’t mesh with what the buyer has in mind.  In that case it’s nothing to do with you, they just were looking for something else.

Once you’ve come to those realizations, it’s time to rebound.  Remember why you are a writer.  Obviously you love to write, and you want to work towards having as much of your work printed as possible.  The only way to accomplish those items, is to keep trying.  You can’t get work published if you stop submitting.  So bite the bullet, and get past the pain of rejection by submitting to another source.

Just remember, the reason you are getting rejected is because you’ve tried submitting your work.  Rejection means you are at least trying to accomplish something.  The real problem would be if you aren’t being rejected, because that means you aren’t putting yourself out there to as many sources as you could.  Keep working at it, and see rejection as a sign of you trying to succeed.  That’s a better way to think things through, and a better way to inspire yourself to work through the bad, so that you can have the good.

Copy writing is like cooking. If you do it with love using proper ingredients in the right proportion then the guests will be delighted, but when the copy is cooked without much consideration to the proportion of each ingredient, the guests will excuse themselves and leave the party. A good copy consists of the proper use of six key ingredients, which we will discuss below.

Visitor value

No one is interested in knowing how cool the technology was that you used to make the product you are offering, nor do they want to know how ground-breaking the innovation is on which you have based your product. No one gets sold on empty words. People need empathizing words, words that understand their needs, and tell them how good their lives will be after using the product in question. They want to know, why they should invest time, energy and obviously money in the product you are selling.

Appeal to emotion

Do not get sold to the idea that we are made of nuts and bolts, reasons and logic, and comparison and decision. No, we are not. We are, if you prefer it that way, emotional fools. We are governed by the synaptic firings and misfiring, and yes we are made up of veins and bones. We only act when we feel something is important or worth it, and we see any worth or importance in any word or goods only when we understand the value of it, and we understand the value only if the product or the word connects. Touch me where no one has touch before, and I am all yours!

Headlines are important

How many times do you want me to reiterate the importance of headlines in making the visitors act? Instead of wasting my words on how important a good headline is, and how you should create one, I will suggest you to read How to Write Crowd-Pulling Headlines Part –I and three other articles following this. Please do not mind my words. I was trying to be funny. I know I have failed.

Make it lively

Well, the last two sentences of the previous paragraph was written deliberately to make you react, and that is what I call making the post lively. Do not preach gospel. You do not need to adopt a serious tone and make a long face to say something serious. People are not that dumb! You can use sarcasm, controversy (yes, I mean it), humor, drama, or anything that you think will make your writing lively. An image can also do the magic.

Third-party endorsement

My employer says I am a good writer. He thinks I am one of the best writers he has ever employed. Do you believe it, or will you believe it more when I say, I am the best writer around, and you cannot find a writer better than me in the budget you have? Which one sounds more credible? Indeed, the first one, and that is because someone else is saying I am good. You should do the same for the products you are writing about. We call it using testimonials. Testimonials vouch that there are people who liked this product. Use credible and authentic testimonials.

Call to action

Hey man, you wrote a great article, but what am I supposed to do? I liked what the product you wrote about, but from here where should I go? What should I do? These are some questions that are in desperate need for an answer, and the answer is call to action. Add call to action words like, “Hurry, the Offer is Limited!,” “Call Now to Avail Special Discount,” “Click here to Know More.” in the copy you write and the click through rate and also the conversion rate will increase significantly.

I hope I have done justice to this topic. What do you think? Have I missed something that had to be covered? Your suggestions, feedback and complains are welcome. Use the comment box below.