I’ve gotten a few requests to write this post and, to be honest, it’s probably about time. Creating a valuable and well written web site is a service that some people offer for free. However, do a simple Google search and try to find a web site in the top 10 that doesn’t have some sort of advertisement, store or banner. I’m willing to bet that, with most broad topics, you will be unable to find one within the first 30 results. The simple fact is that web sites are expensive to build and take a lot of time to develop. Why not be rewarded for your efforts?

Creating a Good Product

Creating a poor and rushed web site simply to make a quick buck is almost like inventing a product that serves little to no purpose. Sure, you could glue a toothpick to a bottle cap and call it an “automatic paper hole punching device,” but who would buy it? Treat your web site’s content as your advertising space. If you were to set out to buy a product, you would likely want to know as much about the product as possible. By investing the time and money required to get good Internet content can turn a plain black store sign into a sign that says “WE SELL COMPUTERS!” Your customers will know what you sell through an online search and they will know how to get there with multiple links from good content.

The First Step – You Guessed It…

Ah, Google. Nobody that has taken even the smallest step on the Internet has been able to avoid the god-like presence of Google. Not only is it the search engine that you MUST rank highly on, Google’s AdSense can turn a web site into a money making machine with only the click of a button. Although you will eventually want to move on to more targeted affiliate relationships that are set up with individual companies, AdSense can put advertisements on your web site in no time. Even when you do secure alternative affiliate relationships, there is no reason to abandon AdSense.

Banners and Links

After a while, you might begin searching for affiliates related to your industry. If you originally set up your web site solely to make money, you likely considered the affiliate relationships that you could obtain in order to monetize your efforts. For other web site owners, getting good affiliates might require adding content to suit their needs. This should always be related to your web site however. For example, if you operate a video game web site and want to take advantage of the huge amount of World of Warcraft players on the Internet, you might consider adding content about the game (perhaps 50 pages or so) and then applying for an affiliate relationship with Blizzard Entertainment.

Often, affiliate relationships can be built by simply reviewing products that are solid and relate to your web site and then linking to businesses that sell those products. Whatever the case, affiliate programs are usually free and easy ways to make money with your content. Don’t overdo it though. If your visitors trust you to provide solid and accurate information about your topic, they will likely trust that your affiliates will provide the same service, even if it is as small as a simple side banner. REMEMBER – no pop ups. Nothing turns visitors off like pop up ads or ads that force visitors to close windows to continue reading. If an affiliate uses such aggressive tactics, they are not worth obtaining.

Web Site Promotion

Finally, actively promote and market your web site through directory listings and Blog posts. One of the most effective search engine result boosts and traffic increasing tactics is simple link trading with related businesses or web sites. This can be as simple as offering a free guest Blog post to a popular Blog with a link back to your site. Provided that they reciprocate, you can support each site while promoting your own. With a good enough link trading relationship with another web site, you might be able to obtain a partnership and double your web site monetizing efforts.

However, remember that you should never link trade with a web site that offers your same products. They should be a similar supplier, not a competitor. For example, if you sell copy machines but not copy paper, you could find a great deal of value in link trading with a web site that sells copy paper but not copiers. Both web sites will benefit from the link trade and you can be sure that you will not lose business to your links.

One of the major considerations of running a content company, indeed running any business, is how to properly handle customer billing and invoices. With many content companies, this can become a major problem as someone, either the client or the company, must place a great deal of trust in the other party. No matter how you choose to handle billing for content sales, custom made content comes with its fair share of billing problems.

Project Deposits

One of the ways that Content Customs attempts to solve some of the billing problems is to require a 50% deposit on the total amount that will be due upon completion of the assignment. This is done for a couple of reasons. First, no matter what, the writers must always be compensated for their hard work. If a manager cannot secure payment for a piece of content, it is nowhere near the writer’s fault and they should never be punished.

As the writer typically receives about half of the total cost of a project, requiring a 50% deposit ensures that, no matter what, the writer will always be paid for their hard work. Of course, this requires trust on the part of the client.

Content Delivery

One of the policies that Content Customs uses to reward clients for trusting us by making their deposit is to send the content before sending the bill for the remaining amount due. We do this to share the trusting relationship with the person placing an order. As we are aware that some customers have lost money to shady content companies that enjoy stealing people’s money, we have also lost money to clients that have taken advantage of this system to only pay for half of the order and never contacting us again. Although we use security features to prevent this from happening, we can usually only hope to break even if such an event occurs.

Still, every member of upper management agrees that using a system that develops a two way trusting relationship between our company and honest clients is well worth the occasional loss.

Money Back Guarantee

Although we are very rarely put in a position where it is necessary, we also choose to trust our clients by offering a 100% money back guarantee on every piece of content that we produce. If a client is unhappy with their order after revisions, we will always offer a full refund for the order. We trust our staff to produce the highest quality content every time and very seldom receive requests for rewrites, let alone refunds. If you choose to develop a content company, one of the best things that you can do for your clients is take every step to make sure that they are confident in your services every step of the way.

While there is really no set format for designing a Press Release, most writers that regularly design them have settled on a tried and true method for creating a press release that will properly advertise new web site launches, new product lines or business announcements. If you would like to know how to create a press release or want to know what to expect from a professional, this post will help you define your goals and create (or order) the best press release possible.

The Header

The top line of a press release is typically a capitalized one sentence capsulized wrap up of what the press release is advertising. this should be the line that tells the reader what the press release is about. In essence, think of this line as a sort of Meta Description. For example:

NEW CONTENT CUSTOMS BLOG POST DESCRIBING PRESS RELEASE TO BECOME AVAILABLE ON FEBRUARY 3RD, 2010

The Grabber

Longer in length than the header, this portion of a press release is meant to draw the reader in. It describes, in more detail, the importance of reading the press release and how it is valuable to the reader. This portion is normally voiced as a sales pitch. If it is written correctly, the reader should be sold without having to continue reading. For example:

Have you ever wondered how to write a press release in the correct format? With the help of Content Customs, you can get the information that you need today. Any business owner, web site developer, sales executive or writer will be able to access this information immediately, perhaps saving them hundreds of dollars.

The Main Text

February 2nd, 2010 – The main text serves as the meat and potatoes of the press release. Any information that is pertinent to the press release should be included here. The first paragraph should begin with the date of the press release, just like this one did. Each paragraph should describe an individual talking point of the advertisement. When ordering a press release or drafting one yourself, it is always helpful to write a 5 item list containing a topic for each of these paragraphs. This helps center the content and give you the most value for your dollar. Save alternative services or options for the last two paragraphs and keep the important information about the advertisement in the first three.

About Us Section

This section described the web site or company and builds trust with the reader. This is a very simple section. Typically, the information includes the site or company launch date, how they have grown over the years and where they are today. Keep the information professional rather than conversational in this portion.

Contact Info

Obviously, no press release is complete without information on how to contact the distributor of the advertisement for more information as well as a last chance to include the web site’s URL or company’s phone number. The information provided should be formatted as follows:

• John Blogposter
• President
• Blogsandyou.com
• 555-555-1234
• jblogposter@email.com

At Content Customs, we get a lot of orders for eBooks. If you place an order for an eBook, you obviously know what you are doing. At an average of 20,000 to 40,000 words per eBook, this can quickly become an expensive service. So, many people that do not understand the value of content often question the value of a well written $1200 to $2400 piece of content. However, there is a great deal of work that goes into the development of an eBook. It is never as simple as just writing a 20,000 word article. Hopefully, this post will shed some light on the process of developing an eBook and how they can be valuable to web site owners and marketing wizards alike.

Research, Research… Research

The first step in developing an eBook is a graduate thesis amount of research. As most eBooks are designed to be sold as “electronic textbooks,” people that purchase such content are looking for a stand alone resource. eBooks can serve as membership benefits to a web site or even (as we have written before) company employee handbooks, training manuals and helpful guides. Whatever the purpose of an eBook, it requires a great deal of research. I typically estimate that 5 hours of research both on and offline is required for each 10,000 words of content.

Writing a Special Type of Content

At Content Customs, we have writers specifically trained to handle the stress and special considerations of writing an eBook. They normally have deadlines as little as 2 days. This means that the writer will likely work two 14 hour days, at least. eBooks really are comparable to writing short stories. Consider how much it would cost to hire a writer to draft a classic book like “Animal Farm” or “1984″ (George Orwell has been on my mind). This service could cost $10,000 to $12,000 at the best of prices. In fact, this is often the price that you would expect to pay a good individual freelance writer.

Why Do People Pay So Much for eBooks?

To put it simply, eBooks are some of the most valuable pieces of content on the Internet. Not only can they be broken up to fill an entire web site worth of content, they can be a great way to attract memberships to web sites or be distributed at a flat fee to customers. you might be surprised to learn that most manuals or short books that you purchase on Amazon or another related web sites were actually eBooks when they were produced. The customer published them in their own name and resold them as a physical book. By hiring a ghost writer, this is something that you can do as well. If the subject matter is current and valuable to a wide audience, you can break even in as little as a few weeks. Following that, it’s pure profit.

If you are turned off by the high price of having an eBook produced, think again. If you are serious about your content or business, having an eBook drafted (or taking the time to draft one yourself) can be one of the best ways to quickly boost memberships, site traffic and overall sales.

When we first began preparing to expand our capabilities of selling content, we enjoyed partnership with some mass submission web sites that were essential in our business growth. In essence, we were responsible for submitting ongoing content on a freelance basis.  However, the submission system was faulty enough to make submitting articles a headache. Editors for the web site would request changes that were absolutely incorrect or but heads with our own editors over matters that left us wondering if they had any experience with the subject matter that they were editing. to give you a few examples, I can remember some comments very clearly:

• Please refrain from using the term “slide” when describing the trombone. It is a valve instrument.
• “Off” is not a preposition.
• Passive voice is always better than active.

Long story short, we fulfilled our contract with the web site, paid the writers for all of the work that they had done and counted our losses. Although the content submission was regular and we could count on it to give us as much work as we needed to build our staff and secure a client base, the faulty submission standards were impossible to predict and resulted in a great deal of rejected articles that were fine pieces of content that the site’s editor simply took issue with in an opinionated manner. With client’s we are always flexible to deliver the best content possible and follow their every request. With this web site, it was simply not possible as there was no real client.

Lost Work

Thus, folders began to build up on manager’s computers titled “Lost Work”. Although the web site did not pay for the work, we paid the writers for the work and filed it away, hoping to have some use for it later. Recently, I have had several phone calls about buying older articles for a reduced rate. Of course, these lost work folders came to mind and we were able to sell a substantial amount of them to make up for our previous losses. We simply charged what we paid the writer and released the rights. Suddenly, a database of content that might sit around for years until we opened a web site on which to use it became a popular request.

The only reason this comes to mind today is that I was shocked to recently hear how many writing manager simply abandon lost content in the interest of saving time or not wanting to be reminded of previous unsuccessful efforts. Almost as bad, I have heard many cases of individual freelance writers abandoning lost “flat rate” work to revenue share web sites where they might make 20 cents for the content over a period of a year.

My advice to all writers and managers that handle content – never give up on work. you will take a loss from time to time, especially when you are just starting out as a freelancer and have some clients that never pay for the completed work. Make sure the writers are paid and hope for the best in the future. You never know when the content might prove to be valuable.