An Apology to My Subscribers

March 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Unfortunately my feed appears to have gone haywire since moving domains with error messages, partial feeds, blocks of ten or no feed at all being delivered in the last month.

I think most of the gremlins have been rooted out and exterminated now so hopefully normal service should be resumed soon.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Blog 

Time to charge for access to your content?

March 27, 2008 | 1 Comment

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Regular Crucible readers, and anyone who has read my eBook, will be familiar with my sermons on the need to provide informative, useful content in order to build trust and credibility with website visitors. Whilst giving away free content is a great way of making friends, it’s not going to pay any bills and it certainly doesn’t write itself.

Well, some web publishers have had enough of relying on ad clicks to keep them fed and have moved to paid membership models.

Subscriptions offer greater stability

Over on the Teaching Sells blog, Brian Clark has discussed why a popular eBook and an SEO consultancy have now switched to charging subscriptions for accessing their latest content.

The content they provide is so highly regarded and in such demand that they are now in a position where charging a monthly rate seems the only logical, and sensible, way of compensating themselves for the time they invest in sharing their expertise.

Whilst I can’t see The Copywriter’s Crucible charging an entrance fee anytime soon, I can understand why websites with such a large regular audience and reputation feel that the time is right to evolve from living off a drip feed of ad clicks.

Is there still money to be made from eBooks?

News of the first few sites to switch to subscriptions has arrived just when I’m looking at developing other revenue streams beyond straightforward copywriting.

Since I’ve started reading Skellie’s Anywired blog, about living the jetset remote worker lifestyle, my spare moments are now absorbed in trying to think up a passive business model which can generate income even when I’m not hammering away at my keyboard.

Of the internet business ideas suggested in a recent Anywired post the most feasible for me seems to be that of knocking out a few eBooks and mining some untapped niches.

The principle behind an eBook is the same as any online learning resource – information is freely available on the web and an eBook simply packages it into a coherent format that’s easier for readers to consume.

How can you add value to an eBook?

Perhaps the key to attracting buyers is not only repackaging information, but being able to offer value beyond an ordinary eBook.

This could be in the form of regular updates, personal support or a private forum for discussing the topic – all of which will require ongoing maintenance and support.

For which only a subscription based payment model will suffice.

This is going to need some thought.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Blog, Marketing, blogging 

Why a Recession is Great News for Conversational Marketing

March 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

sunset

Whilst the storm clouds of an economic downturn are covering most in the business world with gloom, for some marketers it could be a storm with a bright silver lining. With no amount of hastily assembled ROI stats likely to save many marketing budgets from the finance manager’s guillotine, there might not be any glossy print runs for a while but for digital media it could mean getting the time under the spotlight it has craved for years.

Whilst pulling down your sails by cutting your marketing budget will save cash in the short term, the mid-long term damage can be much more costly in terms of lost market share, which will be even harder to pull back once your ship sails into less choppy water.

The sensible, brave tactic should be to market more and take advantage of your competition’s stagnation. Whilst everybody else battens down their hatches to ride out the storm, you can present yourself as the dynamic, proactive business sailing swiftly through troubled waters, and consequently picking up customers along the way.

New marketing evangelist Joseph Jaffe recently discussed advertising during a recession in his popular podcast ‘Across the Sound’ in which he advised that slashing budgets and risk avoidance was the worst thing to do. Instead marketers should be even more innovative as clinging on to the status quo is not what will attract customers looking for a business still actively building relationships and talking to their marketplace, whilst others drift aimlessly.

In fact, when times are slow marketing’s importance grows, rather than diminishes, in retaining customers and attracting new leads in order to take a healthy portion of a diminishing pie. It’s up to marketers to show that their activity is not an expense but a revenue generator.

And the beauty of many new marketing tactics is that they’re relatively cheap.

With more business research conducted online than ever, a website should be more than just an online brochure. With new social media tools, such as blogs and podcasts, along with the relatively low cost of producing a helpful eBook or monthly newsletter, it has never been easier to become a custom publisher and a trusted brand by pushing out useful, helpful content to your prospects.

So whilst a mailing campaign of your new glossy print brochure might be on hold for a while, the easy to use tools and relative low cost of conversational marketing means it could start receiving the focus it deserves.

Just remember that conversational marketing is a commitment, and not just a campaign.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Blog, Marketing 

The Problem With Free

March 12, 2008 | 3 Comments

apples_for_free

Nearly every freelance copywriter will at some stage be asked to write for free, or for such a derisory amount that it might as well be free.

This isn’t a new problem, but since the internet shepherded writers together in one big pen many will have opened emails informing them they ‘work in a competitive marketplace’, which I hope for many meant the next click was the delete button.

The problem with free is that it doesn’t work in any business model I’ve encountered.

But that hasn’t stopped the obsession with trying to source products and services for as cheaply as possible.

A business model that includes free doesn’t add up

The already burning free debate has recently had petrol poured all over it by Chris Anderson’s article about his next book, in which he discusses how ‘digital economics has turned traditional economics upside down’.

The idea is that with storage and distribution costs virtually zero it should be possible to provide digital products and services for free, with revenue generated from advertising and selling extras.

Now I was a big fan of The Long Tail, with its rallying cry for internet entrepreneurs to setup blogs and start selling fragranced soap and Moroccan kitchen tiles on a global scale, even if it was an old niche marketing principle reheated for the internet.

However, Anderson’s new stroking of the proverbial beard and sharing his vision of a freeconomy has met a barrage of criticism in a recent E-Consultancy article for ignoring the physical costs (employees, food, equipment etc) in running a virtual enterprise or providing a proven model for how such a business can be sustained.

Which is part of the problem with sourcing services based on free or cheap – it doesn’t work in any sensible business model for either the buyer or copywriter.

Cheap copy simply cheapens a business and devalues the copywriter

In a recent discussion in my local online networking group, The MK Media Circle, frustration boiled over when a brave soul suggested cobbling together a business’ website using Dreamweaver or Wordpress.

The idea of cutting corners in the creation of a business’ online presence highlighted the problem creative industries face in justifying their value to cost conscious clients.

Many don’t seem to realise that more goes into creating a finished product than just time.

Whenever quoting you should always remember that it’s also your experience, know-how and a sprinkling of skill you’re providing. Your words are not just to fill up space, but to promote your client’s professionalism, expertise and to shift a few of their products at the same time.

A professional copywriter will achieve this by reading the brief, compiling their notes, having a think then composing a message that will differentiate a product, make it desirable and pitch it in a way that persuades the customer why it will improve their lives.

Do you want people to think you’re cheap?

With a website now often the first point of contact, making the right impression has never been more important.

A badly written landing page will simply give the impression that the company is in the habit of cutting corners, which in turn means less sales and less chance of the business succeeding.

The next time you’re approached by a client obsessed with free or cheap just remember that it’s your writing that can make the difference. And if they don’t want to give the impression that they cut corners they shouldn’t be doing it with your pay cheque.

So if you’ve got a portfolio and value your skill, don’t work for free or cheap because, as with some of Anderson’s business models, the sums don’t add up.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Blog, Copywriting 

Ten Steps for Changing Your Wordpress Domain

March 5, 2008 | 7 Comments

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They often say that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do, and I think moving domains isn’t a lot better and I hope I haven’t lost you all along the way.

Ever since Google started indexing my blog as my home page, I’ve been steadily heading towards re-branding my copywriting business with my blog name. To complete the transition I’ve now not only updated my stationary but also my domain.

‘The Write Words’ was a bit generic and I’d always wanted a name that was unique and had a story behind it for whenever I handed out business cards. Mine is simply about how I discovered blogging as a marketing tool and how it took over the branding of my business.

Although it has involved a little bit of pain (all my apostrophes have changed to ‘’’ ?!), I thought moving to a .com domain was also necessary for long-term growth and to try and establish more of a global presence, crucial for my plans/dreams of swapping my laptop bag for a suitcase.

I’m still breathing into a paper bag at the thought that I might have lost my 300 loyal subscribers in the process, but here’s a brief checklist for moving your blog to a new domain with hopefully the minimum of pain.

Ten steps for moving your Wordpress blog to a new domain

1. Backup your MySQL database, preferably using the phpMyAdmin panel in your web hosting account as I had no luck uploading using Wordpress database plugins.

2. Create a new MySql database and upload the copy of your old one. You might have to compress your database if it’s over 8 MB or (as in my case) contact your web hosting company to upload it for you if your browser keeps timing out due to the size.

2. Backup all your Wordpress plugins, theme files and anything else you’ve manually edited.

3. Download the latest version of Wordpress and upload to your new domain.

4. Upload the wp-config.php after editing the details to reflect your new database information along with your theme and plugin files to the relevant directories.

5. Go to yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/install.php to complete the installation and then yourdomainname.com/wp-login.php to access your Wordpress dashboard.

6. Update information that relates to your old domain address e.g. email address.

Now here’s the clever bit:

7. Download the Moving Your Blog plugin and upload it to your old website and activate it. Go to the plugin’s options and enter your new domain address. Click Ok and now every visitor, link and search engine spider will be seamlessly redirected to the corresponding page on your new domain without any painful page reloading or alarming redirect screens.

Now here’s the tricky bit, which I don’t yet know if it has worked:

8. In Feedburner edit the feed URL with your new domains feed address. Then click on the option to delete it and select the 30 day redirect option. In theory this should automatically redirect all your subscribers from your old feed to your new one.

9. Update your blogs email subscription box and Feedburner button with your new feed’s HTML code. You’ll also have to update Technorati, which unfortunately means losing your old ranking.

10. Light a candle and pray to whoever you hope is listening that Google doesn’t banish you to the sandbox for duplicated content and that your subscribers can find their way to your new location.

So hopefully these ten steps should save you some of the time I spent hunting for answers and guidance for each stage of the process, and the comment section is now open for questions.

Depending on whether this post reaches you, hopefully I’ll soon be able to edit steps 8 and 10.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under About, Blog, blogging