Blogging For Hire - A Note to Professional Writers

If you are blogging for clients professionally be aware of several potential pitfalls that we have experienced - the unexpected use of your blog content.

You won't care if you are "working for hire", how a client uses your blog posts, but if you also sell your services to create press releases and web content, if you do not license your content or contractually state how your content is used, you may end up hurting yourself. What I specifically mean is that without restriction a client can build website content at the price of your $10 or $15 each blog post price, can get a press release written on the cheap, or even get content for their next how-to book at your expense.

Certainly this is not what you expected when you started blogging at $10 or $15 per post, but this is what has happened specifically to us, so learn from our experience! Although each client contract is different and we can be flexible, now, our standard contract states that our created blog content is licensed only for use on th client's one blog and to see us for prices on web content and press releases created from blog posts.

If you don't care that the going rate for press release writing is around $250 and you are potentially supplying a press release at your blog post price of $10 to $15, then go right ahead. If you don't care that the going rate for 450 words of content is around $250 and you are supplying it for $10 to $15, then go right ahead. Just be aware that there are some potential clients who WILL make an effort to build their site, book, or press release arsenal at your expense hoping that you simply won't be savvy enough to know any different.

We even had a client even gloat to us about the fact that they compiled our created blog posts into a book and published it as a "how to book". The nerve! If you don't spell it out in your contract, you are simply setting yourself out to be taken advantage of unfortunately.

Be particularly careful of clients who are very specific of what they want you to write in a post as they may be using it for a press release. Don't be afraid to ask why and what the use will be. Be careful of clients who give you a list of topics that look like chapters in a book, or steps to follow in a process. They may be writing a book from your content.

The bottom line is if you are contractually working for hire, you have no rights, but be aware that the price for a blog post is way, way, way below the average established market price for press release writing, book authoring, and web content creation. Don't sell yourself short or give away your intellectual property too cheaply. If you are not sure if your client is taking advantage of you, do a web search on a verbatim phrase from some of your work quoted like this "search phrase in quotes" on Google and see what pops up.

It's time to take a careful look at your contract or if you are writing without one, to get one in place.

Outsourcing Your Blog Content Creation Overseas

The old adage you get what you pay for is exactly right when it comes to outsourcing your blog writing overseas. Indian and Philippine writers simply do not have the grasp of the American language to communicate properly with blog readers. When you are serious about communicating your message, you simply do not want a United Kingdom spelling of a common word that Americans may consider a misspelling as well or the strange use of everyday term.

Your website and blog content is about communicating your business message and should not have the distractions that a non-native speaker may include in an important post or online message. It is not as if they do it on purpose, clearly non-native speakers want and try to write and speak like a native speaker, but they can miss commonly used syntax or introduce strange wording or meanings without knowing that they are doing so.

I've seen some bloggers charge $5 a post for blog writing, but on analysis the post was worded strangely or included misspellings. There is simply no replacement for a native speaker when it comes to crafting your message for your blog or website.

Blog Writing Change

We've had a staff meeting this last weekend and have changed how we blog for clients. Previously we have stated that your content may predetermine if we can blog for you and at what blog writing level.

Based on our staff meeting, four of my top writers decided that we can blog for just about anyone at our starter Jade Level. As long as there is a wealth of content to be found on the Web on their general topic, we can do a Jade Level blog for $15 per post. My team constantly surprises me with their "Can Do" attitude.

Additionally to help more people get blogging we have significantly dropped our blog set up price. Set up is now $150. Although WordPress and Blogger are both free applications configuration and set up (especially custom FTP Blogger set up), can be difficult. With our services for blog set up, we take away the headaches and even give you a 15 minute online training class to help you start blogging fast.

So if you were thinking about blogging, set up is now more affordable, and blog writing to supplement your own blog writing is easier to find and now available at our starter level for more blogs.

Blog Content Matters! It's All About The Readers

Many blog owners forget that blogging is not all about search engines, it is about the readers! Oh, I am not saying that search engines aren't important, but to have a blog really work for you on many different levels, your having great content and building readership should be your focus.

Search engines cannot be scammed. What garners subscribers and readers to a blog as well as encouraging people to come back is what search engine love too and will reward.

I've had a few incidents recently where prospects want super cheap writing for their blog. They don't care about topic or content, "just slap something up there for the search engines". What they forget is search engines are highly developed cyber intelligence tools; weighing content of a website, analyzing topics on a page, reviewing keywords, looking for duplicate content in their index, and then assigning a score which affects organic placement. Great on-topic content both on a website and on a blog is rewarded by both search engines and by readers. Content is truly King!

We do not do "production blogging". We care about what we write and our business has grown tremendously based on the quality of content that our writers produce.

Here's a good example:

Production blogging on a GPS tracking firm site provided by another firm: http://www.rmtracking.com/blog/teens-and-parents/vivien/

Our blogger writing on-topic content: http://www.rmtracking.com/blog/gps-tracking/what-does-the-gps-in-gps-tracking-mean/

Which would you rather read? A post on an alcoholic neighbor which has no bearing on the website content or information that enhances the website and services you provide. Which do you think will build authority for search engines?

New Blog Writing Service Levels

We've just introduced two new blog service levels Opal and Sapphire. Opal is similar to our popular Jade Level with a new level of 200+ words per post plus time for our writers to enter your WordPress meta tags. Sapphire has more words than our Ruby Level post plus time to enter WordPress meta tags as well.

I invite you to visit our blog writing page to review all the word count details, pricing and even samples of writing at each different level.

What make us different from others is the quality of our writing. We have an excellent writing staff containing college educated professionals, college graduates, professional journalists, writers with Masters Degrees and even Ph.D's. Take a look at our samples and I know that you'll agree the difference is the quality of writing!

Finding Content For Your Blog

After you have been blogging for awhile one of the biggest problems becomes "where do you find things to write about?"

Here are several techniques that I personally use to find content for my own three blogs.

1. Start a note card and keep it with you when you are out and about. When you think of an idea jot it down. Some of my best ideas come to me while I am sitting watching my kids at a soccer game or sitting in a waiting room in the doctor's office. Another great time is while I am walking on my treadmill. I keep a card and pencil there to jot down new ideas.

2. I have a list of 10 topics written in advance and I have broken them into my various blogs and if I need a topic, I just pick up my list and start writing. As most of my blogging is done first thing in the morning before I start work and coffee has not cleared all of the dust from my brain my advance topic list is a lifesaver.

3. Use Google News. When I have to write and I am totally tapped out, I go to Google News and enter my top keywords. There is always something in the news that pops out. Although I may not blog on that topic, sometime the article gives me a new topic, viewpoint, or spin-off idea.

4. Subscribe via feeds to at least one professionals forum in your industry. I can easily follow what is happening and is the buzz in my own industry by rapid scanning topics and the first 250 characters of the posts using My Live as my RSS feed portal. I like My Live as it has no ads and is totally customizable. This provides a wealth of content ideas and new topics.

5. Write ahead if you can on the weekend. If you are using WordPress, I have found that to write ahead on the weekend and set your blogs for a future publishing date help to keep the pressure off of you. When you blog from your topic list and publish ahead, blogging stays fun and easy.

Blogging for Business

I just had a client call me about their blogging services being done by another firm and he mentioned that the blogger was doing social network blogging and what did I think about that. The client is in a high tech market and the topics of the posts were things like: Little Norrie, Corrie, A New Car For Graduation, Daddie Finds a New Love. Good grief who was writing these posts a high schooler?

Blogging for business is just that serious business. Readers on a business blog want to read blog posts that speak to their interest and reason for visiting in the first place. Blogging is not about attracting the MySpace generation who doesn't have money to pay for the products that are used by fleets and courier services in this case.

My rule of thumb has been that business blogging should be on topic for the industry, be written in an engaging style, offer a reason for people to subscribe or visit again, and build authority on the product or service for the client for Google and other search engines.

Blogging is serious business! By the way, we got the job and the client fired their social networking blogger.

Blog Posts and "Fair Use" Guidelines

Click our post title to read the U.S. Copyright Office explanation of "Fair Use" for blog and website content.

The bottom-line is that all content on the web is copyrighted whether you know it or not and whether there is a notification on the page or not. For blogs and even website content you absolutely must be careful not to infringe on someone else's copyright.

These are my best practices:

Don't ever snatch someone's content. Link to the full article on their website just like I have on this post. Don't copy the article and then paste it into your post or website page even though you may reference the original page location.

If you are going to quote something from the article my rule is to copy only one or two paragraphs, blockquote it and then reference and link to the full article on the home location. Always make it clear that this is someone else's content.

You can use a topic or thought to get your own creative juices going and then put aside the original piece and write one that is uniquely your own, but you may even want to reference the original article if you are stating any of the number or research that may be in the original article. You did not do the actual research and should make sure to give credit where credit is due.

If you do get a "Take Down Notice" to remove content, act immediately to remove the offending or infringing article in full and don't replace it later on hoping that the original author won't be looking. There are services that trawl the Web looking for duplicate content, don't think that you can remove it and then put it back up in a month or two. If you did get caught, make changes in your procedures so you don't create future situations.

The bottom-line is keep and protect what is your and honor what is someone else's. A good writer's rule to live by.

Why You Should Never Use Blog Content as Website Content

I have a pretty pointed take on this subject and so if you disagree, just post your comment below. I think that blog posts are just that blog posts. Blog posts should not be copied, compiled with other blog posts and migrated into website content or used to create a book or e-book.

I have personally had several situations recently where this has happened. Here's why I simply do not think that it makes sense to use blog content for anything other than what it was intended - blog content.

1. Blog posts by their very nature are derivative works. They are a discussion on an article that someone else has published and researched, a discussion from a widely published online news article, or may be in some rare case unique content. Although there may not be a real copyright infringement issue on blog post content, they are derivative works. Derivative works do not belong in your website. Unique content belongs in your website. For extremely high profile websites where there is a huge investment in technology and marketing and the fact that our society is so litigious blog posts may even make that site a target for copyright infringement actions.

2. From an employer point of view when a client takes blog posts and moves them into their website content, they are paying $15 a post and website content (uniquely created) starts at $80 a page and $169 if we do not design your website. This is grossly unfair to our writers to pay them for a blog and then have the end user change the use of their writing. We've even had one situation where a past-client cheerily told me, I'm going to write a book using your blog posts as the content isn't that great? These situations are grossly unfair to our writers. We have great writers and I value their expertise. Based on some of these recent situations, we now license our blog post content and copywriting content. We want to control what happens to what we create and want to make sure that our writers are fairly compensated for what they do.

3. Not all writing is "Work for Hire". In all of our contracts now, we stipulate that our writing is not to be considered "Work for Hire". In fact if it is not spelled out in the agreement and you do use the content for other than it was intended in the original agreement you may be setting yourself up for a law suit. Your situation may be different, but I am just pointing out a fact that this could be a possible sticking point when you decide to use a written piece in another fashion than it was intended.

4. Blog posts are written in a casual tone and style. Website content is written in a more informational style with a strong marketing focus. Blog posts are more point of view writing.

The bottom-line from my perspective is that blogs should stay as blogs. If you like a blog post and think that it would work great on your site. Ask your writer to do a feature article and let them know it is website content, pay more, get a longer piece, and clarify your rights to the content. Do the right thing when it comes to your writers.

New Copywriting Services Released

My firm has been providing professional web copywriting services for a while, but this past week I finally formalized them and created a new section on my website.

You can click my post title to go to the home page of the section. As with all of our other services, you will find that we are transparent. Unlike nearly every other firm on the web, we post our copywriting rates and writing fees. We even go a step further in our FAQ section and explain your ownership rights and about our charges.

Although we may not be a good match for every client and particularly one who wants "Work for Hire" or unlimited rights, at least you will know that up-front and not when you finally get to a Letter of Agreement.

We offer several types of writing services: blog copywriting or ghost blogging, e-newsletter writing services, website content services, and feature article writing services (these we do perform as "Work for Hire").

So if you need writing for the Web, I invite you to check us out, review our information, pricing and consider us for your next project.