Article writing is probably one of the fastest growing at home job. Being a Freelance writer you have the opportunity to write articles for magazines, online blogs, and for news paper columns. Work at home freelance articles are used for many purposes. Many freelance column editors do most of their work from the comfort of their own home. Then they send it via email when finished. When magazine companies hire writers they have the opportunity to hire from all over the world. This way they have views from other cultures, views and ideas.

Online blogging has become very popular among men and women who work at home. With the interest of blogging on the rise, many of the blog host look for people who blog from home. Keeping in mind that people who blog from home are not paid highly. This technique is based on people who want to be exposed of their writing ability. In fact many writers blog for free to get their writing noticed.


There are many advantages to working from home and more pros than cons. For one, which is a big issue in this day’s economy, is saving money on gas expenses driving to and from work. Whatever the job may be. If someone has to drive to work to make their profession available then a work at home job just might work as well.

Below are some tips that you may find useful when working from home.

Budget:
First: Figure out your client’s budget. When you initially talk to clients, very few will volunteer a budget because they want to hire you for the least amount possible. Imagine yourself in their position. You’d want to do the same thing. It’s good business. To try to find out more you can try using a preliminary worksheet. Have this worksheet ask questions regarding the goals of their projects, time-frame, and budget. When being more straight-forward many clients will tend to be more straight-forward with you as well.
It’s as simple as developing a rapport.

Proposal:
Spend as much time as necessary on your job proposal. As nice and agreeable as a potential client may seem in your communications, you still need to create a proposal. Always put in enough time to cover everything. Don’t start without it, even if the client seems to be hurried. A lot of clients with give you a dead-line just to see if you can meet it at first. It’s a great way for them to learn your capabilities. Make sure your proposal covers both client and contractor responsibilities, requirements, expectations, payment agreement and terms for all charges that may fall outside your proposal. Include anything else you can think of that you feel applies to the job. Clients as often as not have a much larger scope in mind than they communicate. Spend a couple hours on this and it could save you many more later.

Hourly Rates & Charges:
It’s always a good idea to charge by the hour. Rather than providing a fixed price for your project, and finding out later that you misquoted which will cost you time and money, you need only tie your quote to an estimated rate and time-frame (i.e.: 20 hr for 30 hours). Not only does this make the quoting process much easier, but clients understand that they are buying your time- enough to finish the project. Thus the chances are increased that your client will be more lenient if you need more hours. You’ll be able to show them what you’ve accomplished, explain what you’d like to do next, and find out how they’d like you to move forward. You can up your estimated cost by ten-percent if you like. When starting out as a free-lancer, it is natural to want to impress your client with a rosy scenario and quote that are lower than your competitors. But you never want to be put in a position where you have to cut corners- producing a bad effort- in order to achieve a quote that you give without giving it proper thought.

Not only that but there is time that you’ll spend communicating, collection assets, and in administration-duties. This doesn’t include snags and problems that may incur outside your control. Therefore, do yourself a huge favor and be deliberate in the quoting and estimation process so that you produce realistic expectations. That doesn’t mean you won’t still be on the lower end of what your client typically receives from other buyers. Keep in mind they also care as much as results as quotes.

Expectations:
Set and manage expectations. If you’re quoting by project, let them know the cost and time-frame for additional changes. If you are quoting by the hour and giving them a total time estimate, let them know when you’re getting close to that quoted total time and whether you will be able to hit it. It may be helpful to have a clause that says if your total time is within 10% of your time quote, you will not charge more (this gives you extra money for finishing quicker and saves them money if you take a bit longer). Clients don’t like surprises: keep them informed on your current time status and let them know at proposal time the possibility of “run-over” and charges associated with extra changes.

Collecting Up Front:
Collecting up front of often a good idea. Aside from recurring maintenance work/costs for smaller projects (projects whose totals are under one ro two thousand), it can be a good idea to collect a portion up front. This will show your client that you are serious and far less likely to bail on them- leaving the process uncompleted. You should not have an issue being given 50% up front on most projects. If the project is large- exceeding over 1000 dollars- you may want to lower the percentage you collect up front so that it doesn’t scare the buyer off. Then at another milestone you can collect more. Use this process only when you feel it is absolutely necessary and the money will be going back into the job. Otherwise it isn’t needed and your clients will know this immediately and- chances are- find a more reasonable buyer.

Milestones:
FINALLY- set a last payment milestone that will get you through to the completion of the job. For instances, if your job is to create websites you’ll need to invoice the final payment the moment the site is complete and 100% live. For a print job: invoice when the goods are delivered. These particular invoices the client will know are coming. Use shorter payment terms as well. If you are not precise and have a proper business-like manner in regards to your payment schedule, most- if not all- clients will ride up as much debt as you’ll allow them. While most are reputable, it’s not a good business practice to let this happen.

Whatever online trends come and go original, engaging content that informs, entertains and educates your potential  customers is essential. But how do you do that when you’re already slammed trying to  run a home business? There are ways to create a lot of good internet content with far less effort than you might imagine. Here are some ways you take a single article or blog post and make it work extra hard to promote your home business:

Youtube it – There are two ways you can turn a single article into a promotional video to upload to YouTube and other video sites. First if you are comfortable being the star of the show invest in one of the new FLIP video cameras and record yourself reading your article. These little wonders are practically idiot proof and uploading your final product takes just a few minutes.

If you are camera shy try turning your article into an attractive visual presentation using photographs or illustrations. Microsoft Windows Movie Maker is a great free way to create such presentations or a service like Animoto lets you create something even more spectacular for a small fee.

Podcast it – Take a longer piece (or string together one or two related pieces) and turn them into a podcast. If you don’t feel you have the technical skills to create an MP3 file and RSS feed by yourself (although the free software Audacity makes it fairly easy) sites like Utterli allow you to record using just your phone and then gives you the code to post tour podcast on your website or in a newsletter.

Taking audio one step further you could expand on your articles and turn them into your very own radio show at sites like Blog Talk Radio.

Tweet and Digg – Every time you create a new piece of content of any kind tweet about it, post it on your Facebook page and make sure you Digg, Stumble and Propel it to increase its visibility even further.

Pop Ups – Many home business owners seem to think that pop ups are great and that filling their site with them is a good idea. For many people though pop ups are nothing but a nuisance and a turn off (after all why are there so many pop up blockers available?) Some appear before the user has even had a chance to view the first page of a site, others before the average person can get half way through reading the first few paragraphs. It’s a little like that old fashioned door to door salesman who wouldn’t take his foot out of the door, annoying and counterproductive.

No Contact Information – Your potential customer or client is interested enough by the content on your site to want to learn more, or they have a real interest in the products you are selling but have a few questions before they proceed to checkout. They scroll up and down the page and cannot find any contact information. For many net savvy surfers that is an immediate red flag and they will determine that you are not someone that they want to do business with. It takes two minutes to add a contact page (like ours here http://myworkathomeresources.com/about/contact/) and it can make all the difference.

Demanding Contact Information – More websites are now demanding that a customer enter contact information before they can access a certain part of a site. I have recently encountered several blogs whose articles looked interesting but when the read more button is clicked a pop up appears demanding name and email address before you can continue reading. My instant reaction? Navigate away and find the information somewhere else. People are very concerned about their privacy. If they are interested in your products and services they will share their email with you, but do not force the issue.

Step 1 Just Write! – Many people get stuck because as they are trying to write a creative and intelligent set of sentences they get bogged down, by editing each line as they go along. When you first sit down to write, do just that. Don’t worry for the time being about spelling or comma placement, get your ideas down first.

Step 2 Edit – After you have all your thoughts down and your draft is completed is the time to begin editing in earnest. Read your piece through once and immediately make note of any required changes that are glaringly obvious. Consider your initial choice of words too, could the prose be better, does what you have written actually make sense?

If you rely on a spellchecker to catch your errors be careful. The average program will catch most of them but if you wrote “your” when you really meant “you’re” it won’t correct you, the word is spelt right and this a computer, not a literature professor.

Step 3 Read it Out Loud – Read your piece out loud, either to yourself or to a friend. This will help you catch what you may have not by just visually reading the piece through, especially when it comes to proper punctuation. If you are not under a huge deadline put your work aside for an hour or so and then go back and read it through again. Does it still sound as good as you thought it did?

Follow these simple guidelines and you should find that writing for marketing purposes becomes easier every day, until one day you wake up and its almost second nature.

Know Your Audience – Your affiliate links need to be helpful to your readers. Consider why they come to site in the first place and choose your affiliate programs based around that interest. If you blog about baseball don’t include big ads for printer ink just because they have a high potential payoff. Your readers are there to read up on stats, scores and team gossip; printers are not likely to be on their mind at the moment. Purchasing a new replica jersey? Your content may just pique their interest enough that they go right off and do that.

Show that You are Trustworthy – Readers are savvy, they know an affiliate link when they see one. If you break their trust in your opinion by promoting a worthless or “dodgy” product that you do not believe in but, has a high payoff they will feel either ignore or possibly stop visiting the site. New rules governing bloggers are making honesty in blogging even more important. As of December 1^st bloggers are required by the FTC to declare in writing to their readers if they are being compensated in any way to mention a certain product or service, which is making a difference to the way bloggers are approaching their daily posts.

Be Helpful

Throwing together a quick list of your favorite books chocked full of affiliate links is unlikely to be successful. Writing a careful and original review of one, with the affiliate link added in a more subtle manner is far more likely to get the results you are hoping for. Think of affiliate ads and links as complements to your content, not simply standalone advertisements.

Remain Relevant

Keep up to date on all the latest offerings from your affiliate programs and change out your ads on a regular basis. Seeing something visually new and stimulating may motivate a regular reader to finally click on that link for a product or service he has seen on your site many times before.