I help small companies and freelancers grow their business online.

My Newsletter, Books & Programs About Writing For The Web

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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...

Monday Spark: In fact, you CAN do it yourself.

Published on April 8, 2013 by Nick Usborne

We just returned from a resort vacation in Jamaica.

Only for a week, but we had a great time.

The resort was divided by a fairly busy road, and the lady in the photo was one of a team who used their stop signs to help visitors get safely from one side of the resort to the other.

The process was fun to watch, because drivers clearly considered stopping to be optional.

Anyway, after a few days I walked to the side of the road, and found that the ladies with their stop signs weren’t there.

Just for a moment I wondered how on earth I was going to cross the road without them.

Published in Coaching, Freelancing, Monday Sparks
1 comment

Why copywriters are the rock stars of online business.

Published on March 28, 2013 by Nick Usborne

If you go back 15 years, when I started writing online, the rock stars of pretty much every website were the coders and the designers.

Writers? Not so much. Copywriters? Not at all.

Back then it was all about the technology and the look. I went to startup meetings where the coders and designers had been working on the site for weeks, or maybe months, and then came to me, almost as an afterthought, and asked me to add some words.

Sounds crazy, but it’s true.

And as you may recall, the internet crash of 2001 was caused in large part by hugely inflated values being attached to online businesses that really weren’t businesses at all. In other words, they didn’t make money. They just worked reasonable well, and looked good.

Published in Copywriting, Writing for the Web
2 comments

Monday Spark: The 8 Secrets of success in 3 minutes [VIDEO]

Published on March 25, 2013 by Nick Usborne

I wonder how many hours, days, months and years you have devoted to your search for the secrets of success.

All those ebook, talks, programs, and more.

Well, here is some good news for you.

Now you can learn the secrets of success in 3 minutes, thanks to this TED talk by author, Richard St.John.

Inspired by a question from a high school student on a flight, he decided to roll up his sleeves and really find out what successful people had in common.

In fact, he spent 10 years on this project and interviewed 500 extraordinary people. He then distilled everything into a talk he could give at high schools. In other words, after 10 years he found himself able to answer the question he was asked on that flight.

Published in Coaching, Freelancing, Monday Sparks
2 comments

The more skills you have in your online copywriting toolbox, the greater your value to your clients.

Published on March 21, 2013 by Nick Usborne

Way back when I wrote copy offline, I was pretty much a one-trick pony.

I wrote direct mail. That was my thing. I have never written a radio spot. I have never written a TV commercial.

Back then, it was fine to focus on a single copywriting skill, because there was no connection between what I wrote for a client as a direct response writer, and what their agency copywriter wrote for TV.

Sure, we all worked to the same brief, keeping within the same campaign idea.

But the key point to understand is that the quality of my direct mail piece didn’t depend on my knowing anything about writing for TV, radio or any other medium. Why? Because each medium was separate from the other.

All that changed with the arrival of the web.

Published in Copywriting, Freelancing, Web Content, Writing for the Web
2 comments

Monday Spark: Why working is like sleeping [VIDEO]

Published on March 18, 2013 by Nick Usborne

Working is like sleeping? Absolutely.

I wish I could take credit for the insight, but I can’t. This is one of the observations shared by Jason Fried in the video below.

Incidentally, Jason is one of the people I really pay attention to when thinking about business. He is one of the founders of 37Signals.com. He is also the co-author of Rework, one of my favorite business books. And he is the co-author of a second book, Remote: Office Not Required, which I have pre-ordered and is slated for publication later this year.

In the video he makes a number of points about getting work done. But the point I want to share with you is the one he makes about comparing sleep to work.

When you nod off, you don’t instantly arrive in a state of deep, blissful, restorative sleep. You move through different stages of sleep. And to get to the really good part, you have to move through the parts that precede it. And as Jason points out, if you wake up several times during the night, for whatever reason, you can’t immediately get back to that place of deep restorative sleep. You have to go down through all the stages again.

Published in Coaching, Monday Sparks
5 comments

When quality content serves no purpose at all.

Published on March 14, 2013 by Nick Usborne

When the topic of web content comes up, whether I am talking with a solopreneur or someone at a large company, I ask a simple question: “What is its purpose?”

Right now everyone seems to be focusing on the quality of content. I get that. Quality content is good for your readers, and good for increasingly picky search engines.

In particular, quality content builds reputation and trust.

However, we still need to come back to the question of purpose.

Let’s look at this at the page level and at the strategic level.

What is the purpose of that individual page?

Yes, you want to wow and impress your readers. You want to entertain, surprise or educate them. No cut and paste. No boring stuff. Each page of content you publish needs to add to your reputation.

Published in Social Media, Web Content, Writing for the Web
2 comments