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.

For every web site owner or writing company owner, one of the primary considerations is having a solid SEO and Internet copy writing editor. It can be tempting to simply hire a solid team of writers and hope that they can always draft excellent copy. However, hiring an editor can help with a variety of copy writing considerations. While a team of great writers is important, a good editor can combine all of their efforts into one, solid effort that creates excellent copy, every time.

Editing for Grammar

As a long time writer, I know how difficult it can be to self-edit any piece of writing. I have what I had in mind with my words clear and can tell exactly what I meant by what I wrote. However, as I have been reminded of in the past, what makes perfect sense to me might not be entirely clear to a person reading it. This is one of the prime functions of a good editor. They can be the first person to objectively read a piece of content and inform the writer if what they wrote was not entirely clear. Next to ensuring that the grammar is solid and there are no spelling errors, this is one of the most important functions of an Internet editor.

Editing for SEO

Many a good writer fails at Internet copy writing because they cannot grasp the idea of Search Engine Optimization. While writers should be able to understand the basic function of keywords and how they function in writing intended for the Internet, editors can go one step further and ensure that the proper amount of keywords is in each piece of content. This enables writing companies or web site owners to hire a team of writers and trust that their editor will be fully capable of ensuring that each article is as valuable as possible from an SEO standpoint.

Editing as a Manager

One great thing about editors is that they can, in essence, act as a manager and motivator to the rest of the writing staff. As editors normally receive each piece of content from the individual writers, they have an opportunity to ensure that content is being returned in a timely manner. In addition, a good editor has the potential to become a strong managerial force in handling your staff. As they become more familiar with consistent writers, they can be more capable of determining which writers will be best for individual tasks and determine which writers have the strengths to become editors themselves. Having such a full time delegating expert can be an invaluable tool for the success of your web site or business.

One of the things that I find plagues the Internet is the sheer amount of plagiarized content that some web site developers think they can use to boost their search engine rankings without any real effort or investment. I can tell you right now, they are dead wrong. In fact, nothing is more crippling to web sites than the inclusion of duplicate content (either on the same site or with other web sites).

Using plagiarized content is unprofessional, unfair, criminal and downright stupid. It may seem like a great way to get some free content. However, once search engines begin to recognize that you have duplicate content, your ranking will drop substantially at best and your web site will be shut down at worst.

Plagiarism – A Lot More Common Than You Might Think

One of the most memorable experiences that I had with plagiarism was when I was reviewing a test article from a potential writer. The resume checked out and the samples were solid so I gave them a test to see how they would respond to a time limit and make sure the writing in their samples matched the test. When I received the content, I did what I always do when I handle content for the company, checked it on multiple plagiarism checkers. I was shocked to see a 375 word match when the article was only 400 words long.

In addition, something about the matching content seemed very familiar to me. After double checking, I found that the article actually came from an old article directory that I submitted content to when I first began writing on the Internet. In fact, I discovered that, although my name was not on the article because I was ghost writing at the time, the article that the writer had plagiarized was actually mine. Obviously, the writer was informed of their foolish mistake and was not accepted to write for Content Customs.

Checking Content for Plagiarism

At Content Customs, every piece of content is checked for plagiarism both in our directory (to ensure that a writer has not copied work that they had previously completed but has not yet been published by the client) and against the pages on the Internet. One of our favorite plagiarism checkers is Copyscape. Searches are only 5 cents each and the limit of the amount of words you can check on each search is a nice 2,000. For a 10,000 word eBook, this means that you only have to break it into 5 sections to get accurate search results.

When I show people how Copyscape works, you can play a fun (but terribly revealing) game to show how big of a problem Internet plagiarism actually is. Search for your favorite topic on Wikipedia and copy and paste the first paragraph of the article into the Copyscape search field. You will immediately find that perhaps hundreds of pages that have copied just this paragraph and used it as their own will pop up. In fact, this is probably the only way you will ever see these web sites as they are likely buried on page 15 or 16 on Google search results.

If you are a writer, editor, writing manager or web site owner, Copyscape can be an essential and cheap tool for you to use to make sure your content is unique and you are not subject to any plagiarism claims or penalties. From the moment I started writing online until now, I have used Copyscape to protect myself, my writers and my clients from plagiarism. From time to time, an innocent mistake happens where writers are nailed by plagiarism checkers for content that they created themselves. After all, the Internet is a large and ever expanding place. By making sure your content is always unique, you can make sure that you always fairly and proactively add to it.

To try Copyscape out for yourself, you can visit their web site at http://www.copyscape.com.

At Content Customs, some upper management and editors work from local offices to better serve our clients. However, the lifeblood of the company is work from home writers. When I first started working from home, many of my friends and family asked me the same question, “How did you get so lucky?.” Indeed, when I first started doing it, I agreed. Nothing compared to waking up and starting work without having to leave my apartment, especially during the brutal winters we often experience in Upper Michigan.

However, as time passed, I began to experience some of the problems that come with working from home.  Don’t get me wrong, working from home has a great deal of benefits. You are in control of your schedule and work habits. There is no boss breathing over your shoulder (In many occassions, you are your own boss). You can set up your work environment how you feel most comfortable without worrying about offending coworkers or customers. Working from home is great. However, let’s take a look at some of the common problems that come with working from home and how you can deal with them.

Working From Home is a Lot of Work…

One of the first problems that arises from home is the dreaded distraction. If you have a family, they might assume that you are available because you are at home. You might be in the middle of a project and suddenly be interrupted by an excited child waiting to play.  This works the same way with friends and roommates. One of the things that you can do to help with this problem is to set a schedule or develop a system. Put a sign up on your home office door or speak to your friends and family to tell them that when you are in your office, you might as well be on the moon. Help them to understand that, without your work from home time, you can not work as effectively.

The second most common problem is finding time to work. When you don’t have a boss, it can be tempting to take care of the things that you want to do during the day when they come up. You might decide to get your grocery shopping done before noon or take a trip to the bank. Set a schedule every week and stick to it. There is no reason that you need to work from 9-5 if that is what made you consider working from home in the first place. As long as you set a reasonable schedule and stick to it, you will be able to focus your efforts on making sure that you get a decent paycheck every week.