Writing Resources

If you did a double take looking at my title, rest assured I know that copywrite isn't a word, in fact my spell check is hammering away that point quite aggressively with red underlines and annoying popups demanding to change it. But I'm going to continue using it anyway to illustrate a point.

Apart from writing this blog, I also teach English, possibly not very well but that's a story for another time, and I write professionally for clients who are either too busy, or it isn't their forte, or they're second language speakers of English and want a native to write their reports and letters for them.

Within all of this I describe myself as a copywriter (no red lines this time), and sadly many of the people I talk to don't know what that means, including native language speakers who should know better. To be pedantic, a copywriter is a noun, it is the person who writes copy for a living, and most dictionaries think a copywriter only writes advertising.

In fact I think writing copy is far more than just writing advertising, however we'll let the dictionaries have their way for now. The thing is though, I often receive blank looks from students and friends, they've never heard of a copywriter, so naturally assume a connection with copyright. Some have even asked me with an awkward tone if I work for the recording industry, I think they might be afraid to show me their music or DVD collection just in case.

It's an amusing experience for me, and illustrates how weird and daft the English language is. We have far too many words that sound the same yet have completely different meanings, and in too many instances we have words that could easily be created by less knowledgeable speakers, such as copywrite... there's that red line again.

What do you do when you're researching information for clients, and some of the source you need is historical. We all know wikipedia isn't always the best site to reference, and when I need a guide to who invented something, or who the first person was to make a discovery, well, I just need to know that my source has researched the subject to the best of their ability.

Unfortunately a lack of credibility is something that affects too many online resources, so when I stumbled on the Who Guides website something attracted me to their articles that I couldn't explain. Perhaps reading about who invented the toilet, or who invented lego appeal to me because I rarely encounter these sorts of topics.

For some of my clients I am often asked to write about who invented fireworks, in fact I think I've written three or four articles about the subject in the last six months, and probably if you're writer you will have done so as well, but have you ever read about who invented velcro? Yeah, me neither!

Who Guides mentions in it's homepage that the guides are not intended to be a complete all encompassing historical reference, instead they are intended for your average person who just needs a quick history of who invented something. I guess the site is aimed at those of us who get involved with quizzes, or like me, have a need to share our general knowledge when we have the chance.

Some of us are good at sport, others retain useful facts. I believe I'm in the second category although I rarely do well at trivial pursuit, but frequently astound my friends with knowledge of unusual topics. After looking at some of the categories listed on Who Guides I might even submit a few short articles to them myself, and if you're reading this post because you're a writer, then why not join me.

I'm a writer, I send documents to clients all the time, and I also have documents emailed to me all the time, mostly to edit and shoot right back to the client, and I have to tell you that incompatibilities between document file formats drive me nuts. Especially this new docx format from Microsoft.

I tend to use OpenOffice so for the most part I don't even notice what format I've opened a document in, and the same thing when I save a document, it doesn't matter much to me whether it's in docx, doc, or odt, but it matters a lot to clients who historically use doc and then discover to their horror that a document is returned to them in docx format.

The difference is huge, especially when the client then sends the docx to someone like a local newspaper or a business colleague who isn't able to open the file. Explaining how to convert docx to doc seems easy but a client who is used to working with doc doesn't want to be bothered understanding new file formats.

The problem isn't on my part, I simply work with the format I'm sent, but the client rarely notices their Office suite has switched format until they see the extension on the attachment, then I often get a phone call asking me how to how to open Docx files.

Of course docx is no different to any other format, but docx does require either the latest version of MS Office, or the patch that Microsoft provide to allow older versions to work with their new format. Sadly, too many people haven't updated their software yet, so expect a lot of incompatibilities and surprised recipients, or just save everything in doc format, at least you won't have to deal with the fallout.

They say history repeats itself, certainly the current financial crisis has a lot in common with the great depression of the 1930s, greed was to blame then as it is now, and then as now, the crisis was global in nature. Personally I'm finding the parallels quite interesting, so I'm reading a fair bit about the History of Things. You should too.

History for most of the people I know is something that they learned at school, it was one of the easy (or difficult) subjects that everbody either loved or hated, sadly I think most people probably hated it. In today's times surely more time spent in the computer lab, or learning a trade would seem to be a better use of time.

That is an opinion I don't agree with, I think if history os studied a lot about human civilization starts to make sense. Take the situation in Mexico, Colombia, or the US with gangs having so much power or ability to cause major problems.

Compare gang warfare today with the 1920s and gangsters like Al Capone, or gangs in London or Sicily in the 1800s, or powerful trading gangs of the medieval ages, even the Roman Empire wasn't immune to their vice-like grip on society. Reading about the History of Gangs makes you realize that wherever there are people, gangs and unsocial behavior follows.

My hope is that we fully embrace the computer age that we'll see more peace, and less war, more equality, and less greed, but I know from reading about every major revolution in civilization that nothing much changes, although for the first time ever, when I was reading the history of the internet I started to believe maybe this time things might be different.

For the first time in recorded history people from all walks of live have a voice, and in many cases just as much ability to be heard than in the past when only those with power or money could have their voices heard.

The incredible effect that social networking is having, the wonderful power of blogging, even the ability to twitter is making a difference and politicians are starting to notice. I think we might be onto something here, lets hope history starts to change, perhaps not repeat itself quite so often.

Despite the financial crisis that everyone is talking about, I'm actually earning more money online at the moment than ever before, and I'd be willing to bet you'd like to know how.

The financial crisis is actually an opportunity to earn more money, for the first time in recorded history we have a major recession and crisis where computer use and the desire to earn an income from online activities is ballooning.

I'm well placed to take advantage of this because I write for other websites, in addition to owning my own websites, and what I've noticed is that people who don't have the time to write, are in great need of writers who can quickly put together several pages of keyword optimized content.

Running my own sites is also working for me, I have several other sites that earn good incomes from affiliate programs, although I've never had much success from AdSense except on general sites like this, and even then earnings aren't spectacular.

If you're one of the writers who subscribed to my feed and want to share your thoughts on how the crisis is affecting you, please comment below. I'm always looking for other writers to network with, and it you write in other languages, particularly Spanish, I'd love to hear from you.

In this next part of my series for budding writers who want to earn some spare cash, or even make a career of writing, I'm going to talk about some other programs I've come across that promise to pay writers for their articles, or give a revenue split to writers, either way, if you're a prolific writer and can manage a couple of hundred words in a few minutes, you might be able to make a decent part-time or full-time income.

Today.com is my favorite earner for writers, you only need to be passionate about a topic, and Today.com will pay you for your posts. Simply apply to join their VIP Blogger Program (I was accepted the same day) then start posting quality blog articles. To begin with they pay $1 per post, but only one per day, so with very little effort a writer could be earning $30 per month right from the get-go. If you can also turn your blog into a popular blog they pay extra for unique visitors. Today.com pay you by Paypal or check.

451 Press is a blog network that rewards writers with upto 40% of the revenue earned from publishing your niche blog. They offer to do all site promotion, and finding advertisers, all you have to do is write and make your blog the best it can be. Read More