I help small companies and freelancers grow their business online.

My Newsletter, Books & Programs About Writing For The Web

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Get your copy of Writing For The Web #1 -- Plus, in each issue of my weekly newsletter, you’ll receive my latest post and news of my products and services. Sign up NOW and I'll send you the link where you can download this 35-page guide. (You'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

Affirmations for Freelancers - and anyone else who works alone.

39 Affirmations to help build your confidence, dissolve self-doubt, and grow your business.

As freelancers we spend much of our time alone. This means we are alone with our thoughts – for better or for worse. The trouble is, we often get overwhelmed by negative thoughts and feelings. We don’t feel good enough, or ready enough, or valuable enough. My book, Affirmations for Freelancers, helps you change that balance, and tip your life towards confidence, optimism and positivity.

Learn more about Affirmations for Freelancers...

Popcorn Content – The craft of writing short-form content for social media.

popcorn content how to write social media content

Now available both as a Kindle Single AND a PDF Download.

Writing for social media is a whole new craft. Social media streams move quickly, so you have to hook your readers fast. But you also need to listen attentively…all of the time. And you have to engage with people. This, my latest book, teaches you how to write this critically important type of content. Popcorn Content is available as a Kindle Single or as a regular PDF Download.

Learn more about Popcorn Content...

How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites.

If you have a hobby or interest, and would like to write a website about it, now you can do just that -- and make a healthy second income at the same time.

This is the complete "how-to" package.

You get complete instructions, including lists of the tools and services you might want to use to make sure your website attracts plenty of visitors and generates a healthy income.

Learn How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites...

Copywriting 2.0 - Your Complete Guide to Writing Web Copy that Converts.

This course is about 300 pages in length - plus videos and a Workbook - and is designed to teach you the best practices in every major aspect of writing for the web.

After taking the course you'll have the expertise required to write any kind of web page – whether it be a homepage, sales page, landing page, information page, subscription page, catalog page...and so on.

Learn more about Copywriting 2.0...

New e-Book - 101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources

This 152-page downloadable book is focused on writing quality web content.These ideas, tips and resources will help inspire you to create a wider variety of quality pages...all them designed to rank well with the search engines, delight your readers, and get shared enthusiastically through social media.

In the post-Panda world of web content, new rules apply. And this book will give you a head start on learning those new rules.

101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources

Writing Kick-Ass Website Sales Copy

This is a 45-page downloadable guide and is focused just on writing web pages that are intended to sell.

In other words, if you want to focus on sales pages and landing pages, this guide will take you through every step in the process.

Writing a sales page online is not the same as writing a print ad or a sales letter. Some of the skills are similar, while others are very different.

Writing Kick-Ass Sales Copy...

But who writes the homepage?

Published on June 13, 2013 by Nick Usborne

fight for homepage There are copywriters for copy, and content writers for content…but who writes a website’s homepage?

There is no doubt that writers and copywriter are in demand.

With the explosive growth of web content marketing and social media, a lot of words need to be written. Not to mention all those sales pages and landing pages. And the emails and newsletters.

So it’s no surprise that when you do some Google searches for words and terms like copywriter and “content writer” you get a lot of results.

Here’s what I found today on Google

copywriter - 13,800,000 results

“content writer” – 4,180,000 results

There is plenty of supply and demand when it comes to copywriting and web content writing.

Which brings us to my key question…who writes the homepage?

Published in Copywriting, Web Content, Writing for the Web
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Your web content will be derivative and boring, unless…

Published on June 6, 2013 by Nick Usborne

Millions of new content pages are published online each day. Most of them are derivative and boring.

How come? Several reasons. But perhaps the biggest reason is that the environment of marketing online demands that we keep publishing new posts and new pages, at an ever-increasing rate. And photos. And videos. And slide shows.

If we don’t keep publishing, we look like we’re falling behind our competitors.

Plus, Google has made is clear that it likes “fresh’ content. And social media is driven by what’s new, and what’s happening now.

New, new, new. Publish, publish, publish.

Published in Freelancing, Social Media, Web Content, Writing for the Web
3 comments

The power of vertical networking.

Published on May 30, 2013 by Nick Usborne

A while back I was interviewed for a book on networking. My first response was, "Hey, I don't network. I hate that stuff."

In other words, you won't catch me dead shaking hands and passing out business cards at a local Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting. Nor do I cold call. Nor do I wander around conferences with my hand thrust out saying, "Hi, my name is Nick Usborne." It's just not part of my character.

I guess that was my view of "networking".

But as I started writing, answering each of the interview questions, I realized that I network as much as the next person. I just go about it a different way.

The more I think about it, we all network, one way or another. If you think this doesn't apply to you, just make a quick mental tally of the people you know in your industry. People you have worked with, exchanged emails with, met somewhere.

Published in Freelancing
1 comment

The topic for your own money-making website is right there in your head.

Published on May 23, 2013 by Nick Usborne

As you may know, outside of my regular work I also have a hobby website about coffee. It’s called CoffeeDetective.com.

This is a site I started 7 years ago, and I’m still adding to it and improving it today. How come? Because I’m a huge coffee lover and enjoy writing about it and helping people brew a better cup of gourmet coffee at home.

Another reason to enjoy writing my site is that it has become a second source of income for me and my family. Best of all, it’s pretty much passive income, through ads and affiliate partnerships. I don’t have to sell or ship anything. I just have to keep writing and adding great content to the site, which I enjoy doing.

Anyway, a few years after starting the site I decided to share what I had learned with other people by writing a program which explains, step by step, how to write your own money-making website.

Over a thousand people have now taken the program, and hundreds of new websites have been published. And some of those sites are now coming close to or even exceeding the income I make from my coffee site.

Published in Writing for the Web
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To succeed as a freelancer, make yourself uncomfortable.

Published on May 21, 2013 by Nick Usborne

I was talking with a freelancer the other day who explained how he was working with just two clients who had been giving him almost all of his work over the last 3 years.

In one sense, that feels like a dream situation for any freelancer. He has a constant, reliable source of work, every day. He doesn’t have to spend time marketing his business. He doesn’t get stressed about finding new work each month.

Perfect!

Not so fast.

If you think about it, he’s actually in a horribly vulnerable position. I have had clients like that myself. Sometimes they stay with you for a year, or maybe 3 years, or even 5 years. But they’ll never stay with you forever. Companies are bought and sold, key staff change positions or employers. And so on.

Published in Coaching, Freelancing
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Do you have an internal linking strategy for your website?

Published on May 16, 2013 by Nick Usborne

If you write web sites, for clients or for yourself, you probably know about the importance of linking.

Attracting inbound links from other websites is a great way to attract new visitors, and also sends a strong message to Google that your content is of high quality. (If your content was of low quality, other people wouldn’t bother linking to it.)

However, paying attention to links is not just about maximizing the number of quality inbound links from other sites. You should also pay attention to internal linking, within your own website.

Why does internal linking matter? A couple of big reasons.

- It helps your readers find related content on your website. Instead of having to search through your navigation system to find other pages they might be interested in, they can find the links right there within the body of the page, or listed at the end.

- These links also help Google make sense of your website. They let Google know which pages are related, and also the relative importance of pages on your website. Lots of inbound links pointing to a particular page suggest it’s an important page.

Published in Site Optimization, Web Content, Writing for the Web
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