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.

In other words, no client lasts forever. And that means that if all or almost all your income is derived from just two or three clients, you could lose half or a third of your income overnight.

It may feel comfortable to have just two or three clients, but it puts you in a very vulnerable position.

I don’t want to be comfortable. I would far rather be agile, responsive and prepared to deal with just about any circumstance. I want redundancy in my freelance business. I don’t want the loss of any one client or project to threaten my overall income.

When something disappears or fails, I want to be able to fall back on something else.

In part, this is about planning. It’s about making sure you don’t put your income at risk by having too many eggs in one basket.

That’s the easy part.

The hard part is about your attitude and state of mind.

I think most of us default to wanting to feel comfortable, to feel safe. But as we have seen, feeling safe is actually a pretty good indicator that you are at risk.

Instead, I work hard to remain uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like stress any more than the next person. But at the same time I know that I can’t fall asleep at the wheel.

I try to anticipate both risk and opportunity. Sometimes I get it right, and sometimes I get it wrong. That’s the way it goes when you try to look into the future.

But here is the thing. Because I maintain a state of mind that is always alert and looking out for both risk and opportunity, it means I am light on my feet and ready to respond as and when I need to.

By way of contrast, if you are immersed in the comfort of two or three clients, and something bad happens, you are in the wrong mindset to respond. You haven’t been studying other possible opportunities, nor have you built a broad network of contacts which might be able to help you with a quick change in direction.

In other words, comfort today translates into risk in the future.

But by being alert, light on your feet and a little uncomfortable today, you create an environment in which you can substantially reduce those future risks.

So here is the question: Just how comfortable do you want to feel?

NOTE: For help in planning for agility in your own freelance business, check out my coaching service for freelancers.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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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.

This means your pattern of internal links has to be considered and deliberate.

Instead of creating random internal links within your website, you should think about it and create a pattern of links that are helpful to your clients, and send the right signals to Google.

For your readers, you formulate a plan - and help them move forward within your site - by asking yourself the question, “If someone has just read this page, what else might they be interested in reading?”

Let me give you an example from one of my own sites and areas of interest: coffee.

On each of my individual coffee review pages, on which I review a particular coffee or blend, I add a link to my main coffee reviews listing page. That makes sense. If someone has read one review it figures that they might be interested in others.

Also, if a page is about a particular coffee from Costa Rica, I might also link to other reviews I have written of different coffees from Costa Rica. That also makes sense.

At the same time, I am letting Google know that all these review pages are related, and also…because I always link back to it…that my main review listings page is a very important page on the site and that they should recognize it as such.

I do the same if I am reviewing a particular coffee maker. Within each I will link to my main page on coffee makers. I’ll also link to pages that feature similar coffee makers, or other models made by the same manufacturer.

A few words about anchor text.

What’s anchor text? It’s the term used to describe the word or phrase that you hyperlink. Also referred to, sometimes, as linking text. For example, if I were to link from this post to my About page on this site, the anchor text might be, “about Nick Usborne”.

And if I were to link to the page on my coffee site about manual coffee mills, I would turn the phrase “manual coffee mills” into the hyperlink.

It’s from these hyperlinks that Google can figure out the relationship between pages.

However…I also make a practice of not always matching the hyperlinked phrase to the exact keyword I have optimized for on the destination page. Mostly I do, but not always.

So if my page about manual coffee mills has the phrase “manual coffee mills” in its title and headline, I might sometimes link to it from another, related page with the phrase, “hand coffee grinder”. Same thing, but a different term. In other words, I mix it up and keep it natural.

And that’s the key…create a linking framework for your site, but keep it natural.

If you are not doing so already, you should figure out a plan and create a framework of internal links within your site that helps your readers find the information they want, and helps Google figure out which pages are related, and which pages are more important than others.

However, as you do this, keep it natural. Do it primarily for your readers. Don’t do it with the mindset that this is a cunning way to get more traffic from Google.

Finally, it is absolutely in your interest to do this for your readers. Not only are you helping them find more of the information they want by linking to related pages, but you are also keeping them on your site for longer.

And Google will give you brownie points for that too.

Create that plan or framework now

If you haven’t been paying attention to internal linking, it’s time to get started.

Internal linking is an essential part of a site’s overall architecture and usability. It helps people find the stuff they want.

And if you do it right, it will result in getting more traffic from Google.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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As a small company or a freelancer it can be tough to build a brand from the ground up.

Yes, you can create a logo and a tagline within just a few days. But a brand is a lot more than simply a cool logo and a snappy tagline.

And, no, you can’t build a brand within just a few days, a few weeks or a few months even.

Your brand will grow and develop through a combination of your own efforts, and the ways in which your customers see and respond to you. You brand is as much a function of customer reaction as it is a creation of your own making.

For example, if you sell a great product, but your customer service is horrible, that horrible customer service will become part of your brand.

You take the first step in creating your brand through design and writing. After that, once it’s out there in the wild, your brand will evolve. It will get some support from some customers, and take some hits from others. Your job is to both develop your brand, and to protect it.

When it comes to developing a brand, a lot of freelancers and small businesses think in terms of addition. They add more content, they express their brand through new channels, and across different media.

For example, one might add a YouTube channel, start pushing out images with Instagram, or write a ton of new posts that support the brand and its underlying message and promise.

But what most marketers don’t think about is supporting and building their brand by the process of subtraction.

When you add new information to grow a brand, you are taking a guess. You are guessing and hoping that the additions you make will have a positive impact. But you don’t know for sure because, like I said, your brand is in large part influenced by customer responses. And you don’t know how your customers will respond. That’s in the future, and unknown.

But when you subtract information to support your brand you can be much more certain about what you are doing, because you are dealing with the present, which you know, not the future, which you don’t know.

To start with, you might want to do an audit of all your existing content and identify pages and other content that doesn’t support your brand as clearly as it should, is attracting negative comments, or simply isn’t being read.

When you eliminate content that is off-message, confusing, or simply not supporting your brand and its promise, the remaining content becomes stronger and your brand becomes clearer.

Few people strengthen their brand by subtraction because it feels counterintuitive. People feel that building something has to happen through a process of creation, not elimination.

But this isn’t true.

When asked how he could carve a sculpture as remarkable as “David” out of stone, Michelangelo is reported to have said, “It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.”

You can build and protect your brand in the same way.

Just remove everything that isn’t your brand.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

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Many freelancers struggle to grow their business because they doubt themselves and their abilities. They feel they aren’t good enough in some way.

I have come across this numerous times when talking with or working with freelancers. Some are just starting out, while others have been freelancing for some time. But they all doubt themselves and feel they are not yet ready to get started, or not ready to approach larger clients, or not ready to charge more for their services.

If that sounds a little like you, I have some good news. (Or bad news, depending on your perspective.)

If you struggle with insecurity, you’re not alone.

Accomplished people in all walks of life feel self-doubt.

Donald Sutherland, who has acted in over 100 movies, says, “I throw up on the first day of every movie.”

Nicole Kidman says, “Every time I start in a film, I think I cannot act.”

Frank Gehry, a world-class architect, says, “I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. I get these sweats.”

In my case, after being a copywriter and freelancer for over 30 years, I still feel a moment of self-doubt every time I send a client or partner some new work.

So the bad news, if you want to see it that way, is that self-doubt is not something you feel just when you are starting out. It’s something you’ll always feel.

In other words, it’s not a reason to stop trying. It can’t be. If you allow self-doubt to hold you back, you’ll never make progress. It will always be there at your side, and if you want to succeed you have to face it, deal with it and keep pushing forward.

Even if you throw up every time you email your work to your clients.

And now for the plus side, with a quote from Darlene Lim, a post-doctoral fellow at NASA. “There has to be self-doubt or you would never grow as a person. Self-doubt is questioning and you should always be questioning yourself and the world around you.”

I think she’s right. The opposite of self-doubt is arrogance or, at best, apathy, lethargy and a disregard for your own potential.

To really grow and move forward it is only naturally to feel self-doubt along the way.

BTW – All the quotes in this post were taken from an excellent book by Richard St. John, 8 To Be Great - The 8 Traits Successful People Have in Common: 8 to Be Great

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Build your confidence to succeed with my ebook, Affirmations for Freelancers...

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was just one easy way to improve every single page of copy you wrote, regardless of the product or service you were trying to sell?

It turns out there is.

It works for homepages and sales pages. It also works for emails and newsletters. Product pages. Shopping carts. White Papers. Radio. TV. Direct mail. Whatever.

It works whether you are selling weight-loss products or industrial fasteners. It works whether you are selling vacations or dental services.

Best of all, it’s incredibly easy to include this “secret” in everything you write.

I’m not saying this little trick is all you need to know about copywriting. Nor am I saying its use will cure bad copy.

But it will help.

Here it is...

Tell your readers, listeners or viewers it’s easy.

The easy way to whiten your teeth. The easy way to manage a huge sales force. The easy way to move your website to WordPress. The easy way to pick up more clients. The easy way to retire overseas. The easy way to build a garden pond. The easy way to find your true soul mate! The easy way to ship your products overseas. Ordering is as easy as 1,2,3!

We are all of us drawn to easy answers. It doesn’t matter whether you are a teenager trying to lose weight or a CEO trying to choose a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

In other words, the desire for things to be easy is universal.

Of course, when you step back from the keyboard and think about this, our susceptibility to the promise of things being easy is a little discouraging. Because in real life we know only too well that to achieve anything worthwhile, the journey is almost never easy.

But…however smart, thoughtful and realistic about life we might be, we are still drawn to messages that tell us something is going to be easy. We just can’t help ourselves. Over the course of a year we probably make tons of bad decisions, swayed by this simple promise.

This odd loop of wiring in our brains is something every copywriter needs to understand.

Regardless of what you are writing, find some way to include the promise that you are offering an easy way forward.

No, this doesn’t mean you should lie through your teeth. It means looking carefully at the product or service and finding some aspect of it that will allow you to make the promise.

It’s not so hard.

After all, if you are reading this, there must have been something about the headline that caught your attention. Right?

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Read my ebook, Writing Kick-Ass Website Sales Copy

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Procrastination is a bad thing, right?

Well, it certainly can be. It can be a real productivity killer.

You have a deadline, it’s getting closer and closer, and you still haven’t closed your Twitter page and got started.

Some people argue they work best under pressure, so procrastination is a positive thing. I’m not sure about that. Sounds like a clever, or not so clever, rationalization to me.

All that said, I know there have been times when I have been procrastinating for what turned out to be a pretty good reason.

For example, in one instance I was due to send a prospective client a proposal for a substantial writing project. We had agreed on the scope of the engagement and I had told him I was going to submit the proposal by a particular day and time.

As the due date for the proposal got closer and closer, I was sitting around doing nothing. Or rather, doing just about anything other than writing the proposal.

Finally I paused and asked myself why I was putting this off. Why was I procrastinating?

After a period of introspection, I finally figured out that I didn’t really want the job. The money was good, but it wasn’t really my kind of gig. Furthermore, I was getting some bad vibes from my contact person. I hadn’t worked with him before, but I was getting a feeling that he wouldn’t be very good to work with.

Finally, I trusted those little voices in my head and declined the project.

The same thing happened to me when considering a business partnership with someone. On the face of it, all the signs were good. We had complimentary skills and resources, and a good idea to work on together.

But as we went through the process of putting our plan together I found myself procrastinating, again. And for similar reasons. In spite of the plan looking good, it ultimately didn’t feel right, and I let it drop.

My point is that when you find yourself procrastinating, it isn’t necessarily a negative thing.

Sometimes it is, and you need to address that. But on other occasions what feels like procrastination is actually something quite different. It’s a group of smart and rather quiet voices in the back of your head warning you that you might want to reconsider.

If you find yourself procrastinating about just about everything, that’s probably a problem you need to address.

But if you are generally pretty productive, and find yourself procrastinating only over specific tasks or decisions, you might want to sit back and listen for those little voices.

You might not be procrastinating at all.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Build your confidence to succeed with my ebook, Affirmations for Freelancers...

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

About fifteen years ago, when my youngest son was still playing baseball, we were gathered around before a game, listening to the coach’s pre-game pep talk.

The opposing team came from a low-income part of the city. Our team’s coach warned our players not to be fooled by the fact that the other guys didn’t have nice uniforms or fancy equipment. If I remember correctly, he told our team, “If they beat you, it will be because they have greater mental toughness.”

I don’t even remember who won that game. And I think it was a generalization to suggest that all kids from low-income families necessarily have more mental toughness than kids from middle-class families.

But his point was a good one, and I tucked it away in the library of my mind. Because mental toughness matters.

In fact, I think mental toughness is a freelancer’s best friend.

It helps you keep your eyes on a better future when the present doesn’t look so good. It enables you to keep going while others give up. Freelancers with mental toughness know that their career won’t all be plain sailing. They know they’ll have some unlucky breaks. They know that life isn’t fair.

But they keep marching forward.

This matters because we are all of us deluged with messages that suggest freelancing is somehow easy. If we follow a proven path, or take these three simple steps, somehow success will fall at our feet.

But it’s not like that. Having a freelance business is no different from owning any other kind of small business. You have to work hard. You have to take some knocks. When you fall down, you have to stand back up. If this week’s marketing approach doesn’t work, then you need to tweak it and try again. And so on.

Does this sound a little daunting? Depressing even?

I hope not. Because I don’t see it that way at all.

To succeed in any kind of business you have to tackle challenges with energy and a positive mindset. You have to push through the barriers and obstacles.

To me, this is what being truly entrepreneurial is all about. You face a challenge with your eyes wide open and you push. This means being focused and being stubborn.

It also means knowing where you are going, and being determined to get there.

And yes, it calls for a certain amount of mental toughness, because you are going to take some knocks along the way.

That toughness is your friend because its absence will knock out a lot of your competitors. Plenty of freelancers give up after a while, unwilling to accept that the path to success isn’t always easy.

So how about you? Do you have mental toughness?

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Build your confidence to succeed with my ebook, Affirmations for Freelancers...

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

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Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

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A while back I wrote a post about how copywriters are the rock stars of online business.

Put simply, ecommerce is driven by words. Without good copywriting, there are no sales.

If you have talent as an online copywriter or content writer, you are fortunate. These skills are a true gift.

Now let’s look at two very different ways in which you can use that gift.

First, you can focus on making as much money as possible. You know you have a skill companies need, and you can look for ways to maximize your fees and revenues. When you have something of great value, you can sell it at a premium price.

You trade your gift for cash.

But there is another way of looking at this, taking the meaning of the word “gift” a little more literally.

Look at your gift as something to be shared and passed on.

Instead of trying to sell your gift, you take the view that the benefits of your skills as a copywriter are something you would like to share.

You truly want your clients to prosper. You take pleasure is sharing your gift, and using your copywriting skills to help your clients grow their businesses and succeed. Your gift is being passed on, from you to your clients.

Of course, you still charge for your work. But your mindset is different.

And I think you will do much better in the long term if you are motivated more by the desire to give than by cash.

To focus on the cash means you are always looking at your business relationships with the eyes of a trader or accountant. You’re just looking for the money, and chasing your invoices.

When you focus on sharing your gift, everything changes. Now you approach the business relationship with a more generous heart. You really want to help your clients. You work hard to use your skills in ways that will help them succeed. You take pleasure in being part of their successes.

Now you are sharing your gift.

And here is the counterintuitive part. This latter approach with almost always result in greater success for you, certainly in the long term.

Clients dislike it when freelancers just do the job, as per the brief, and then run. They know when a freelancer is all about the money.

However, clients love it when a freelancer really rolls up his or her sleeves and is clearly interested and enthusiastic about the project, and eager to help as much as possible.

The client doesn’t call that first freelancer when the next project comes along, but he does call the more generous, “giving” freelancer.

This shift in mindset also helps you do a much better job or marketing your freelance services.

When you are all about the money, the prospecting process is pretty cold and clinical. And marketing certainly isn’t fun. It’s not something you enjoy doing. It just becomes a numbers game.

But if you are focused on sharing your gift, instead of on the money, prospecting becomes a whole lot more enjoyable and less stressful. When you are reaching out to prospective clients because you would just love to share your gift and help them, that’s an activity you can enjoy.

Psychologists have known for a long time that money is actually a very poor motivator in our lives, and that one of the most powerful and enduring motivators is a desire to serve and give to others.

Give this some thought.

As a writer or copywriter you have a gift.

Focus on sharing that gift and you will almost certainly build a more success business for yourself.

And you’ll enjoy life a great deal more in the process.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Build your confidence to succeed with my ebook, Affirmations for Freelancers...

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...

On the face of it, this may sound counter-intuitive.

Why would an online copywriter be interested in social media? These two areas of expertise and interest seem worlds apart.

There is a very simple reason.

Smart copywriters focus on the wants and needs of their readers. Smart copywriters try to see the world through the eyes of their prospects and customers. Smart copywriters walk a mile in the shoes of their prospects and customers before they type the first word.

Back in the days before the web we did this mainly through focus groups.

With the arrival of the web, we could take a peek into the lives of our audience by lurking in relevant forums, reading customer reviews and listening to the opinions and voices of our customers at every opportunity.

For me as a copywriter, this ability to listen to my prospects – before I started typing – was a game-changer. I had never been a big fan of focus groups and similar research approaches. With the web, I loved the fact that I could listen in to what people were really saying. I was getting it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

For example, if I was writing an online sales page for a particular line of digital cameras, I could do a whole lot more than just rely on the client to give me information about their potential buyers. By researching blogs, review sites, forums and customer feedback I could get an in-depth, first-hand insight into what people really thought about those cameras.

Like I said…a game-changer.

Well, now we can research our audience in even more detail, and immediacy, with social media.

Think about it. The task of a copywriter is to get into the prospects’ minds, identify their problems or challenges, figure out what they want, and then deliver an answer to which it is easy to say yes.

Social media takes the guesswork out of finding out what our prospects are thinking. Using simple search tools, like Topsy.com, I can find out exactly what my prospective buyers are thinking and saying…right now. And now. And now.

For me, the most important thing is that I can find out the exact language my prospects use when writing about the product or service I’m trying to sell. This language is often markedly different from the language used by my clients in their briefing documents. Business people rarely “get” or use the language of their customers. But when I write in that language, I can significantly increase levels of engagement and trust.

This is why I made it my business to dive into social media several years ago. I wanted to understand it and use it as a means to help me become a better copywriter.

Of course, I soon realized that in addition to listening to what people published through social media, I could also take part and connect with other people who shared my own interests, both professional and personal.

It was then a small step towards understanding that participating in social media was deepening the relationships I had with my readers, and leading to more sales of my own products and services.

And once I was able to understand that dynamic…using social media to move my readers from viewing me as a stranger to trusting me as an honest and authoritative source of valuable information…I was in a position to teach the same process to my clients and readers.

You can follow the same path.

But if nothing else, as a copywriter you need to understand and participate in social media, because you’ll always improve your craft by listening to the real voices of the people you’re writing to.

The better you know your prospect, the better your copywriting will become.

NOTE: I have created a social media training program specifically for freelance writers and copywriters. It is published by AWAI, and you can find their information and sales page on the program here…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

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In many ways challenges and goals are similar.

Both are about achieving something important at some point in the future. Both can give us a sense of purpose and direction in our lives, and in our work. Both set the bar a little higher and drive us to perform at our best.

But I think there is an important difference in how we perceive challenges and goals.

First, let’s look at goals.

A goal often takes the form of a written description, with a deadline. “I will publish my first ebook by the end of this year.”

There is nothing wrong with setting a goal like that. Apply a little self-discipline, set a schedule and you’ll get that ebook written and published.

But there is something a little impersonal about a goal. Also, it’s at a distance. The moment of achievement is months or years in the future. It’s that thing in the future we are striving for. But we don’t really get the reward until we get there.

A challenge feels different to me. It is very personal, internal and something we feel and live with every day.

Set a challenge, especially if it is a little scary, and that’s something with a heartbeat, pumping a little adrenaline into our system every day.

Maybe it’s just me who sees and feels a distinction between goals and challenges. For me, one of the best ways to get me moving is to hear someone tell me I can’t do something. As soon as someone tells me I can’t, I take it on as a personal challenge, just to prove them wrong. (Assuming it is something I would like to do.) But I also set challenges for myself, privately.

If this distinction resonates with you at all, you may want to take a look at your own goals and reframe them in your mind as personal challenges.

Live the challenge every day, instead of peering into the future at a distant goal.

Get that adrenaline flowing!

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

Build your confidence to succeed with my ebook, Affirmations for Freelancers...

Find out about my coaching service for freelancers...