Writing Resources

I love Convertible Cars. Period. How about I add an exclamation to that as well, convertibles have always grabbed my attention ever since a child when I would watch James Bond, Elvis Presley, the Brat Pack, or any of the other films of the era where the epitomy of style and class was a fast sport car with no roof.

In the 21st century it seems that less major manufacturers even bother producing a convertible, most actually leave that to niche performance manufacturers, so it's nice to see a major brand like Audi releasing models that are straight off the production line, and not left to third party performance specialists.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I've always though a convertible needs to be designed from the floor up by the original design team, sure you can tweak and modify all you like, but I want the peace of mind of knowing the vehicle is intended to be a convertible. Audi Convertible Cars get the thumbs up from me for being amongst the best sport cars from a major you're ever likely to see.

Being cars from Audi, they are marketed at a different type of client, so engines and running gear are uprated and enhanced for performance, a typical Audi convertible is not a typical car. Check out the Audi A4 Convertible Cars which look similar to a regular model, but not really. The added body styling makes this vehicle stand out even though it was first brought to market in the mid 90s.

Other vehicles like the Audi R8, the TT, the S4 almost look like they were always intended to be convertibles and putting a roof on them is a sin. However there is no accounting for taste, and if you're looking for a decent sporty convertible, give the Audi range the once over before making any decisions.

One of the things I do in Spain is provide consulting services to people here who want to know how to promote their websites, too many people who own websites are also computer illiterate, it isn't their fault, but it means they have a lot of catching up to do.

I could waste a lot of time showing them how to create squidoo or hubpages, teach them how to blog, encourage them to join forums, but the reality is that none of these promote their business website fast enough. Article submission on the other hand is easy, effective, and a heck of a lot faster.

Article submission can still be time consuming if you write every article from scratch, and of course submitting the article also takes time. Now multiply that by however many article sites you want to join, and the workload becomes unmanageable.

Consequently I spin articles and then use an automatic article submitter, and I gotta tell you this works a treat. In a couple of hours I can write one completely new article, spin it using rewritten phrases, sentences, paragraphs and even synonym swapping, then submit the article to over 100 article directories. That is a huge return on my time investment.

Some of you reading this post will say, "Ah, but spinning never reads well", and I'd say you're doing it wrong! Read More

How do you know you're an expert on a topic? That's a question I get asked all the time, primarily because as a former career counsellor I always advise people to choose a job, career, or start a business where they can easily become an expert.

The huge number of expert and how-to websites that have sprung up in the last few years are an example of how even the most basic question is one that some people don't have an answer for, and the first person who gives them the answer becomes their expert.

Take a simple exercise like How to Address an Envelope. I know how to address an envelope, but there are a lot of people in this world who may never have sent a package or letter. I guess a lot of young people who've grown up with email, instant messaging, or voice over IP would make mistakes addressing an envelope.

The biggest market for that kind of information however might come from developing nations where people have simply never needed to send mail, but if a family member is living in a foreign country and sending regular letters home they might need to be show how to address an envelope. Are you an expert at addressing envelopes?

What about advertising online? A significant number of us might think that's really easy, simply find a company like a major newspaper that puts advertisements on their websites and email them to ask about their rates.

But emailing a company like Google, Yahoo, AdBrite or any of the dozens of advertising companies will likely get no response or a very confusing response. How to Advertise Online isn't easy, it's quite complex for most people, yet many Internet savvy people know how. This makes them experts, and means the knowledge they have is valuable. Someone, somewhere, will pay them for that knowledge.

How to websites are just one of the many ways we can show off our expertise or find topics where we are experts. Believe it or not everyone is an expert on something, and websites like How to Do Things prove it. The same principle is how people become scrapbooking experts, they know how to do something that seems easy, but other people pay them to teach how.

If you have an expertise in something, why not write about your expertise and sell your articles, it isn't hard, howto and expert sites are always looking for writers.

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.