It might seem like a tired old bit of advice, particularly in this age of computers with spell checkers built into everything including the Internet browser programs, but nothing beats good old fashioned spell checking by hand to make sure that you have everything looking right. And, if you are not a [...]]]> Proofread, proofread, proofread.

It might seem like a tired old bit of advice, particularly in this age of computers with spell checkers built into everything including the Internet browser programs, but nothing beats good old fashioned spell checking by hand to make sure that you have everything looking right. And, if you are not a native speaker and reader of the language that you are printing something in, get a native to triple check everything for you.

Why, you might ask, do I suggest this? Because poor spelling cost a company a sale last night. I was in the store and I needed to pick up some cat litter. As usual, I scoped out the other brands to see if anything might be on sale and less expensive than my regular brand (hey, it’s dirt for cats to do their business in, I don’t see any reason to pay more than I have to for it).

Anyway, as I scan the shelves a purple bag catches my eye. Amazing Cat Litter. Hmm… a bit more expensive, but I’ll bite. What’s amazing about it?

I get the bag down and sit it in my cart. A cat litter that can last for up to eighty days, with multiple cats?  Now, as a cat owner / border, I can tell you that is amazing. I do good to make it a week with a container of litter for the four cats I harbor at my place. I want to know more about this silica crystal based cat litter (particularly since I had thought a few months ago as I cleaned the cat box that silica would be a great way to absorb the urine.

I flipped the bag around to see the back and find out more.

Okay, so the bar graph is an eye catcher, and it caught my eye. 80 days is for one cat, three and you can make it for 30 days – which still beats normal litter in my experience. I look for more information about it and the next thing I see is the top right where a couple of small stopwatch images highlight some key points about the litter…. and I find a typo.

It will leab my cat tray odor-free in 30 seconds? Is “leab” the new science in Amazing Cat Litter? I am fairly positive they meant that it would be “leaving odor-free cat try” not “leabing odor-free cat tray”. Interesting to find a typo like that on packaging, but, hey, it’s just cat litter. A typo can be overlooked, right?  I smile at the typo and read on…

The benefits list is a reasonably long list.Third one down, their single bag will replace the same amount of 5 bags of clay or chumping litter… wait… chumping? My regular cat litter “chumps”? I think they mean “clumping”.  Skip that typo and continue on, a few more lines down and we have “no more urine-soaked chay”. So with my normal brand of cat litter my chay is getting urine soaked and chumping?

Still undeterred I move on to the instructions -

First line…. “adry” – I think they meant “a dry”. Step 4, I’m not sure how you remobe something, but it sounds a little painful. I think they want you to “remove” the solid waste, and that would be for “best results”, not “best rosults”.

This was just far too many typos on such a small bag of cat litter, I snapped the above pictures and put it back onto the self. I’m sure that silica absorbs cat urine quite well, but I was turned off on trying it by how many typos there were on the packaging. I saved a little money by sticking with my regular brand.

And, I think it is an important lesson for anyone that is relying on writing to sway someone. You really need to make sure that you have caught every typo and corrected them before you send something out – in particular before you print a package or booklet for a product that is intended for mass distribution. People will overlook a few typos, and some people might overlook a lot of typos, but you can also loose potential customers if they are turned off by poor writing. It makes them wonder how much they can actually trust the product if the packaging has repeated and blatant typos – which was what happened to me with the cat litter.

Sure, it’s just something for my cats to defecate in, but after a certain number of typos on the package, I decided to stick with my regular brand that I know gets the task done, rather than risk buying the more expensive (twice as expensive) brand that was poorly packaged in a package littered with typos.

Read your work, then read it without relying on your spell checker. Then have someone else read it. Writing is very powerful and can sway people’s decisions. And when it is a brand you are trying to sell, you want them to be swayed in your favor, not away from the product.

Or as anything relating to writing and online researching. I was looking at a request [...]]]> I was looking for more work online and realized that Alaska’s $7.75 per hour minimum wage is by no means a low hourly wage. Anyone that thinks it is, just needs to try to earn some money as a writer.

Or as anything relating to writing and online researching. I was looking at a request for a virtual assistant, and in one of the ads I found the person wants to pay $30 for 25 hours of work. That means they want someone that will do all kinds of tasks for them such as writing and research and a variety of other listed daily activities, for at least 5 hours per day, and they want to pay them $1.20 an hour. That’s $6 for a full day’s worth of work. That might seem like a lot in some countries, but for me it does not even pay one month’s fees on my websites. I think my mom made more than that in the 1960′s working as a waitress in diners.

The online world, in particular the world wide aspect of the online world, has completely devalued the skills of anyone working online for a living. Average pay per word seems to have dropped down to $0.002 per word for writing. That means that to earn $1 online a writer needs to write 500 words. Average typing speed is, I think, around 62 wpm… going by that, if all they do is write, no research no pauses, solid typing at the computer, a writer can kick out around 3,720 words in an hour. And that does not account for any research or proofreading after the piece has been written. So, let’s be very crack-the-whip toward the writers and say that they can write 2,000 words in an hour, which includes a little research about what they are supposed to be writing and writing it, and proofreading, and since they are writing it for someone else that also needs to include the time it takes for them to send the writing back to the person who now owns it.

Yes, owns it. For that $0.002 per word the writer is giving away all rights to the piece and the person purchasing it owns all rights to it forever.

So, 2,000 words plus research plus sending them off to the person who bought them means the writer is working very hard to earn $4 an hour. An average of about half minimum wage in Alaska. Earning roughly $20 per day, five days a week makes it $100. So, writing their fingers off five days a week a writer can earn around $400 in a month, bringing the income for online writing up to somewhere between $500 and $1,000 if they work really really hard and can get enough work that they are not taking breaks or weekends off.

There is no room for the writer to take on a second job, because all of their time is spent writing to manage to earn what is basically rent for their home for the month. There is little if any time left for them to relax and enjoy time with friends and family, not if they want to hit the mark of possibly earning enough to pay the mortgage.

I’m not sure what a writer is to do when a world-wide market for skills means that even the best writers are competing for work that can be done by someone willing for work for $1 a month. And it is really bad that even $5 a week of guaranteed income is looking really good to me, no matter how hard I have to work for it.

So, what is the least you would take per word writing online? Has the online market caused a major undervaluation of a writer’s time?

On October 5, 2009 the FTC released a press release on the publication of their final guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials, it was this guideline that would [...]]]> In 2009 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began to look more closely at the guidelines that governed advertising, in particular as it applied to blogging and social media.

On October 5, 2009 the FTC released a press release on the publication of their final guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials, it was this guideline that would affect the way bloggers would work with advertisers. From their press release:

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

“The notice incorporates several changes to the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which address endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities, as well as the disclosure of important connections between advertisers and endorsers. The Guides were last updated in 1980.”

For the first time the FTC specifically addressed the concerns of blogging and product endorsement. In particular the FTC looked at posts by bloggers that had received cash or in-kind payment for review of a product to be considered an endorsement and new guidelines that specified that bloggers were to be required to disclose when they had material connections to a seller, product or service.

Their concern was not that bloggers made money through product endorsement, it was in the ethical question of if bloggers were being paid to give a false positive in their endorsement of products. In their revised guidelines, the FTC defined endorsements as being any advertised message that the consumer might believe expressed the opinions of the person who offered the endorsement rather than of the advertiser who sponsored the advertisement.

In the Revised Endorsement Guidelines the FTC offers the following example for when a blog posting is considered an endorsement under their new guidelines:

“A consumer who regularly purchases a particular brand of dog food decides
one day to purchase a new, more expensive brand made by the same manufacturer. She
writes in her personal blog that the change in diet has made her dog’s fur noticeably softer
and shinier, and that in her opinion, the new food definitely is worth the extra money. This
posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides.

Assume that rather than purchase the dog food with her own money, the consumer gets it
for free because the store routinely tracks her purchases and its computer has generated a
coupon for a free trial bag of this new brand. Again, her posting would not be deemed an
endorsement under the Guides.

Assume now that the consumer joins a network marketing program under which she
periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to do
so. If she receives a free bag of the new dog food through this program, her positive
review would be considered an endorsement under the Guides.”

In section 225.1 General Considerations the FTC states that any endorsements “must reflect the honest opinions, findings, belief or experience of the endorser.” They also specify the liability of unsubstantiated claims made by a person who is being paid to write about a product. Under item c of that section they clarify how this pertains to blogging:

255.1 (c)

Example 5: A skin care products advertiser participates in a blog advertising service. The
service matches up advertisers with bloggers who will promote the advertiser’s products on
their personal blogs. The advertiser requests that a blogger try a new body lotion and write
a review of the product on her blog. Although the advertiser does not make any specific
claims about the lotion’s ability to cure skin conditions and the blogger does not ask the
advertiser whether there is substantiation for the claim, in her review the blogger writes
that the lotion cures eczema and recommends the product to her blog readers who suffer
from this condition. The advertiser is subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated
representations made through the blogger’s endorsement. The blogger also is subject to
liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made in the course of her
endorsement. The blogger is also liable if she fails to disclose clearly and conspicuously
that she is being paid for her services. [See § 255.5.]

In order to limit its potential liability, the advertiser should ensure that the advertising
service provides guidance and training to its bloggers concerning the need to ensure that
statements they make are truthful and substantiated. The advertiser should also monitor
bloggers who are being paid to promote its products and take steps necessary to halt the
continued publication of deceptive representations when they are discovered.

The FTC addresses the need for disclosure of material connections between an endorser and an advertiser in section 255.5 Disclosure of material connections and paragraph 2 of Example 3 defines it in terms of social networking sites using the example of a tennis player that discusses laser surgery that was received at a specific clinic she has been paid to endorse:

Assume that instead of speaking about the clinic in a television interview, the tennis player
touts the results of her surgery – mentioning the clinic by name – on a social networking
site that allows her fans to read in real time what is happening in her life. Given the nature
of the medium in which her endorsement is disseminated, consumers might not realize that
she is a paid endorser. Because that information might affect the weight consumers give to
her endorsement, her relationship with the clinic should be disclosed.

A bit farther down in Example 7 they define what is expected in product endorsement disclosure in a blog post:

Example 7: A college student who has earned a reputation as a video game expert
maintains a personal weblog or “blog” where he posts entries about his gaming
experiences. Readers of his blog frequently seek his opinions about video game hardware
and software. As it has done in the past, the manufacturer of a newly released video game
system sends the student a free copy of the system and asks him to write about it on his
blog. He tests the new gaming system and writes a favorable review. Because his review is
disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the
advertiser is not inherently obvious, readers are unlikely to know that he has received the
video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product, and given the
value of the video game system, this fact likely would materially affect the credibility they
attach to his endorsement. Accordingly, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously
disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge. The manufacturer should
advise him at the time it provides the gaming system that this connection should be
disclosed, and it should have procedures in place to try to monitor his postings for
compliance.

And of interest to anyone in social networking is Example 8 which addresses disclosure in forums:

Example 8: An online message board designated for discussions of new music download
technology is frequented by MP3 player enthusiasts. They exchange information about
new products, utilities, and the functionality of numerous playback devices. Unbeknownst
to the message board community, an employee of a leading playback device manufacturer
has been posting messages on the discussion board promoting the manufacturer’s product.
Knowledge of this poster’s employment likely would affect the weight or credibility of her
endorsement. Therefore, the poster should clearly and conspicuously disclose her
relationship to the manufacturer to members and readers of the message board.

In reading through the guidelines it is clear that the FTC finds nothing unethical in a blogger, or someone participating in social networking, being paid or given in-kind payment for their opinion on a product or service, they simply require that the average reader of such information be able to identify when someone is being compensated by a company to write about their product or service. Their ethical stand is simply that they require any such endorsement of a product or service to be an honest representation of the product or service based on the personal experience of the person who writes the blog entry, with equal responsibility being on both the advertiser and the endorser to assure that all statements and claims made are true and able to be substantiated.

The FTC is also very clear in their caution that the guides do not cover every possible instance of endorsement, and that any instance of endorsement would need to be weighed on the actual circumstances of the advertisement.

The best advice I could offer to anyone that is looking to incorporate advertising into their blog or social networking would be to pause, take a good look at your blog, and ask yourself – “If this blog belonged to someone else, and I was a new reader, would I be able to easily identify endorsements where the blogger was paid in some way to write about something?” Another question that you should, in my opinion, ask yourself is “Would I have recommended that without having been paid in some way for the recommendation?” If not, you need to make doubly certain that the average reader can identify that you are being paid in some manner for making endorsements on your blog. You do not have to disclose how much you were paid, although it is usually appropriate to indicate if you received the product for review, you simply need to be sure that your reader can identify endorsements where you were paid in some way by the advertiser to recommend their product or service.

So, that is the FTC’s perspective on the ethics of blog advertising, now I want to hear what you have to say. What do you think? Is it unethical to publish advertising on a blog? Why or why not?

In 2008, Burst Media did some research into The Perils of Ad Clutter and [...]]]> In this post: I will be sharing what I can find about what the average site visitor seems to think of each type of revenue generation and which ones I find more or less obnoxious when I visit websites and blogs.

In 2008, Burst Media did some research into The Perils of Ad Clutter and how website visitors view a website that is cluttered by advertising. Their survey included over 4,000 web users who responded both to their Internet experience and their perception of advertisers.

It should be noted that the Burst Media definition of “Ad Clutter” is the presence of so much advertising on a webpage that it degrades the experience of visitors.

Two things that became immediately apparent and really, I do not think, required a study were:

• Website visitors do not like ad clutter and will leave a website they feel is cluttered with advertising
• Ad clutter can have a negative impact on a consumers’ perception of a product or service

For the freelance writer this means that care must be exercised on what kind of advertising is used on their site, and how it is used. In the Burst Media study it was determined that men were less likely (27.5%) than women (32.1%) to leave a website they considered to be cluttered with advertising. So if your primary audience is men, you can likely get away with a cluttered website as long as it has the information they want buried somewhere in the advertisements. If your audience is composed of mostly women, however, they are going to want less advertising and more quality content. This trend tended to increased with the age of the respondents up to age 55-64, when after 65 the abandonment dropped back down to the high 20% range for both men and women. In all age groups for both men and women the lowest number was for men aged 35-44, and even then 24% said they abandoned a website if it was too cluttered by advertising. The lowest number for women was the 65 and older age range, where 27.3% said they would abandon a website they felt was too cluttered by ads.

The concern for advertisers is in the response that potential customers have to seeing their product or service on a website that the visitor perceives as being cluttered with advertising. In the Burst Media research it was found that 52.4% of the respondents had less favorable opinions of a product or service after they had seen it on an ad cluttered website. That is a disaster for advertisers who could potentially be harmed by their own advertising. And again, women were more likely than men to voice an unfavorable opinion after having seen an advertisement on a page they perceived to be cluttered.

For those who maintain a website, this means they need to look carefully at what advertising they present to their visitors. I have left news sites that had too much advertising for me to easily read the article I wanted to read – and I am not talking about a single man operation blog, I am talking about a major newspaper (think L.A. Times, NY Times, etc – it was a major newspaper website that was over-cluttered by advertising.)

When I visit a website, I have learned to zone out certain areas as being advertising heavy. I tend to ignore the upper right section of a web page, where banner ads are most often displayed. I also ignore the area directly above content and any interruption in the content. I will also ignore most of the items shown on the side (left or right) of a website. These are all common places for advertising to be placed.

This automatic skip has brought on a new style of advertising that is still finding its place in online advertising. In Content Ads. These are going to require a post all their own, so… next up in this series – In Content Advertising…

The Internet has been both a blessing and [...]]]> As a freelance writer I am a self employed writer. Someone that sells their skills to those who are in need of the specialized skills I have, specifically some forms of business writing, online advertisement copywriting and transcription work as well as researching information and fact checking.

The Internet has been both a blessing and a curse to freelance writers like me. It makes it easy to write and share whatever we want to talk about without a need to locate newspapers or magazines that will hire us on as stringers, but it also forces us to take a drastic cut in payment for our skills.

According to the 2005 edition of Writer’s Market the average pay for an advertising copywriter is $83 an hour or $1.50 per word, with a per project average of $1,273.

The everything should be free concept that has flourished in the world of the Internet has had a significant impact on many who try to make a living as freelance advertising copywriters with the average (in my experience) payment for an online advertisement being wrote and published online a mere pittance of what it would cost to have one written only in the traditional publishing world.

In my experience with online advertising over the past few years a freelance advertising copywriter can expect to earn an average of $5.00 to $10.00 per project to wrote and publish the advertisement. Sometimes it is lower, as low as fifty cents, sometimes it is higher, but rarely have I heard of a project that was more than a couple of hundred dollars to write and publish an advertisement on a website with significant traffic.

So, how can a freelance writer manage to earn any kind of income when their options are limited to say the least? If anyone really comes up with a good answer to that one I would love to hear about it. For now the options are severely limited and for the most part writing addicts such as myself often need to depend on holding down a job that pays the bills and/or taking whatever work they can, even if they would prefer to write about other things, in an effort to make ends meet until their true love in writing starts paying enough to support them.

In my case, I started out wanting to be a fantasy and SciFi writer and took on business writing to pay the bills. I moved to online advertisement copywriting because it fueled my love of researching a variety of things and the pay was better and more dependable than the business writing had been. I even managed, just before the economic crash of 2008 and several years of subsequent personal life unsettlement for myself, to earn a full-time income from my writing. My mom was so proud of me and that was when she told me I had finally earned the right to actually call myself a writer. (My mom was rather firm in her assertion that someone was not actually a writer unless they made money writing.)

Someday I want my writing, which I have focused in the Urban Fantasy genre, to support my retirement here at my home in Alaska, paying off my house and purchasing me a small 1800′s farm house in the lower 48 where I can go on vacations with my friends in my retirement years.

Until that happens. I need to make money that pays the bills. Part two of this will look at what sources I know of that allow a freelance writer to earn at least a minimal income and a few that could promise more than a mere few dollars a day.