Why Have a Web Site?

If you've been debating whether to spend the time and energy on a web site, or you have a site and wonder what more you can do with it, here are some suggestions of business advantages you can get from your site:

• Show a range of writing that you do or topic ares you understand.


• List special training, talents, certifications, or expertise that might not be immediately clear from the writing.


• Keep a page of links to recent work so editors don't have to track everything down or deal with attachments.


• Offer a range of informative articles that provide value to clients and prospects while demonstrating your professional abilities.


• Show a client list and a set of testimonials so it's not just you talking about you.- Set out the nature of your business and the types of work you tend to do.


• Show speaking engagements that can communicate a more robust sense of your expertise.


• Provide a frequently asked questions section that can offload the more rote and time-consuming questions that you get.


• Convey the idea to prospects or even editorial sources that you are "real."

New Online Uses of Writing

I'm going to ask you to take a detour for a moment to another of my blogs where I mentioned the rumor of the New York Times opening its API, or application programming interface.

Have you ever thought about what electronic use of material could mean beyond posting an article on the Web or publishing it on DVD or CD collection? Opening the APIs is an example. The NYT can do this because it buys all rights, and so can make anything available to anyone it wants in any way it wishes. What if a company doesn't do this? In some cases, it may not matter:

• Their contract could allow something like non-exclusive "electronic" rights, and that might cover giving the material away to others. There is no set definition of electronic rights that I've been able to find.


• Some types of writing, like recipes, do not have copyright protection under law. Were I a publisher, I'd argue that even if the other material from writers was under their copyright protection, the recipes were not. It might stand up in court or not, but are you willing to spend the money to find out?


• Information also does not enjoy copyright protection. If the publication can extract what a court might see as straight information from your article, it could make use of that information. You, of course, could claim that such a use would be a derivative work - that is, derived from your original, and so needing a license from you. But that means either having the contract tight enough up front or spending time in court.


• What if another site simply links to select parts of your material in the form of an area clearly shown as the publisher to whom you licensed the piece? I don't think there is a clear answer.

The upshot to writers should be clear. If part of your business strategy is to re-license your work, and that work appears on the web, it may be that you find other sites taking it in bits and pieces, no longer needing an article in its entirety, or you, for that matter. And what happens when you marry this with the idea of Web 2.0, in which millions of users are capable of using programming hooks to include information on their own sites and social networking pages? It makes electronic databases look benign in response. At least in the case of the databases, you can point to a few names that create most of the problems.

If you'll notice an additional theme here, many potential uses of parts of an article fall into a grey area. Even if you thoroughly nail down a contract, the chances are that things are going to come up faster than you can possibly predict, and maybe faster than is possible to keep up. I know I was surprised when I read the NYT API story - and I have known of APIs and their uses literally for decades. Maybe the only business strategy will eventually be to keep moving so quickly, and being creative enough in the process, that your work retains its value to others. In other words:

1. Make sure that you know the value you bring to writing, and "being a good writer" is simply not going to be enough.


2. Have areas of deep knowledge that are difficult to duplicate.


3. Move upscale as fast as possible. Those who work at the commodity levels of the markets - service pieces, for example - are going to be the most vulnerable to the cut and paste approaches.

Book Promotion 2.0

Author Dennis Cass has a funny video on Youtube.com about an author hopelessly trying to get with internet promotion of his work. So smartly depressing that you can only laugh.

Newspapers Using Blogs Without Permission?

Generally you might think that bloggers often take copyrighted material and reproduce them without permission online. But a UK blogger found that the Sunday Mail reproduced one of his entries without even asking for permission. The author sent a letter to the paper:

Not having worked for the Mail on Sunday before, and a stated wordage figure proving elusive, I pluck a conservative amount out of the air and stick it on the bottom of an invoice, which goes off via the kind auspices of the G.P.O. To the Mail on Sunday’s credit, they pay me my two hundred quid quicker than most biggish companies would, and John Wellington sends me his (what I am sure are sincere) apologies.

Good for him - but one graph of the reply from the paper (outside of the check) was disturbing:

We generally take the view that blogs published on the internet have already been placed in the public domain by their authors and, in case of amateur writers, most people are happy to have their work recognised and displayed to a wider audience.

There is apparently some history of this happening in the UK, once again the Mail on Sunday. And in some cases, it appears that bloggers are finding writing or even graphics used by papers without permission but then thinking they were fortunate. This commentary in the Guardian Unlimited (online presence of the Guardian in the UK) is correct in stating that online work also is intellectual property.

But in the United States, that doesn't help you a bit unless you have registered your copyright. Registering after infringement lets you take legal action, but you can only go after the actual profits made off your work, and you cannot ask for legal fee reimbursement. No, the only practical way to go is to register either before the infringement, or within three months of the first publication (which, in the case of blogs, means when it first appears online). If you are not registering the copyright of your new blog entries every three months, you are running the risk of someone using them and being unable to do much of anything about it.

Michelle Vranizan Rafter's Best Blogs for Writers

Michelle Rafter ran a list of best blogs for writers on her blog, WordCount. Ignoring for a moment her inclusion of my blog, there's a great list of resources, from the mechanics of writing and editing to the freelance business and corporate writing. It's worth putting on your list.

Contract Review: Custom Solutions From SmartMoney

This contract is from the custom publishing arm of SmartMoney. I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice, and make sure you negotiate, because there are some terms in here that I'm betting you'd want to change. I'll review the clauses that I think might be of interest. Warning - every now and then I find a contract that seems so odious that I indulge in sarcasm and ranting. This is one of those cases:

• Clause 1 This would seem like standard "You're going to do this and the assignment schedules become part of this agreement" wording, but there's a killer sentence at the end: "However, should Consultant receive an offer to work on other projects that may be competitive to SmartMoney’s business, then Consultant must get approval from SmartMoney before accepting such assignment." Huh? Since SmartMoney is technically in the custom publishing business, you have to get flipping approval to do something that would be competitive, otherwise known as writing for any other custom publisher? No where in the agreement does it specify what SmartMoney considers its business to be. Could that include writing an article directly for a company that SM (notice the intentional allusion to pain games) might want as a client? Check their site and notice some of the work they do: magazines, newsletters, annual reports, booklets, bulletins, and web sites. To me, that's a "that goes or I go" statement, as they're trying to control your income and business without any promise of future work.


• Clause 2 It gets better and better, or not. You must perform all the work demanded "in an acceptable manner" to get paid. Also, "In the event the Materials are not accepted, SmartMoney will pay Consultant a reasonable kill fee, the amount of which shall be determined by SmartMoney in its sole discretion." That's right, it's totally up to them, even though they could deem it unacceptable because you delivered it on a Tuesday. There's no definition of the acceptance process or how long they can delay it.


• Clause 3 a) They want WMFH, which isn't surprising because, after all, they want to own your custom publishing time and prospects. They can do anything they want with what they accept. You have to wave moral rights.
  
  b) They also want "the sublicensable worldwide right to use Consultant’s name, biography and likeness in connection with the publication, use, advertising and promotion of the Materials, SmartMoney, its Custom Solutions division or its clients’ use of the Materials, and to make such other promotional use as SmartMoney, its licensees, successors or assigns may determine." In other words, your name, background, and image become a commodity that they can use again and again to promote themselves and anyone they sell the rights to, even if you would not want to be associated with said organization, product, or cause. You cannot ask to have your name withheld if they butcher your writing, yet they don't have to give you credit at all.
  
  c)You have to warrant that "SmartMoney’s exploitation thereof [of your writing] will not violate or infringe the copyright, patent, trademark, right of privacy or any other right of any person or party or be false or libelous or defamatory." That isn't just saying that your writing won't infringe copyright or be defamatory, but that their use won't be. There have been cases where people successfully sued for libel because of the way materials were used, even though the materials themselves were fine. You can't determine context, but the way I read this, you are warranting their use, which includes the context in which they use your work. Now for the indemnification: "Consultant hereby agrees to indemnify, defend and hold SmartMoney, its partners, affiliates, trustees, directors, officers, employees and agents harmless from and against any and all claims, demands, damages, costs and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses) arising out of or related to a breach of Consultant’s representations, warranties and obligations hereunder or in any way to any of Consultant’s services provided hereunder..." Notice that you're not just indemnifying for a breach of the warranties, but for anything that would arise out of the services you provide, which means if they get sued and someone cites your article, you could find yourself indemnifying them. This is really bad.


• Clause 4 This is one of those idiotic confidentiality clauses so strictly constructed that technically you could not tell a source the subject matter of the article you are writing. When you stop working for them, all materials that they own, you must return. As you've done WMFH, I think that means every copy of any article you've written for them. If there is "a violation or attempted or threatened violation of this provision, SMARTMONEY may apply for and obtain, without any requirement to post a bond or other security, an injunction to restrain such violation or attempted or threatened violation..." Boom, an injunction because they think you might reveal confidential information. It doesn't matter whether it's likely that they'd do this or not, because you're bound by it should someone in the company decide to make use of the clause.


• Clause 5 You can't try to get any employee or client to leave. If you do, or if there's a threat that you might, they can again get an injunction to stop you.


• Clause 6 If the non-disclosure isn't enough, here's a gag clause (first time I remember seeing this in a publishing contract): "Effective with the signing of this Agreement, Consultant agrees to make no statements relating to SmartMoney, its affiliates or the project Consultant is working on orally or in writings which impair or disparage the reputation of SmartMoney or its clients." In other words, your opinions are now censored.


• Clause 9 I think this contract was adopted from one meant for more general services: "Consultant will comply with all federal, state and local laws regarding business permits and licenses that may be required to carry out the work to be performed hereunder." You'd need something like that if someone was doing building or renovation. But not for writing, so it doesn't apply. And, contractually, they cannot make you attend staff meetings. At least something in the contract is appealing.


• Clause 10 The contract is construed under New York State law, which is good in terms of the interpretation of libel, et. al. But if there's a contractual dispute, you have to go to New York courts.


• Clause 11 This is the entire agreement, so nothing that an editor says or writes to the contrary of any clause has any force. Similarly, don't expect any term that you include on your invoice to have force - and that means how quickly they have to pay.


• Clause 12 You cannot tell anyone that this agreement even exists and you cannot tell anyone about the services you are providing to them. "Without limitation, Consultant agrees that Consultant will not issue any press release or other information concerning Consultant’s services." Sounds like that means you cannot mention them as a client in your marketing.

Newspaper Ad Revenue Takes a Tumble

If you like newspapers as a market, this is grim. The Newspaper Association of America reported that total print advertising was down 9.4 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to this report in Editor & Publisher. If you include online revenue the drop was 7.9 percent. That is not good, because the newspaper business is clearly related to that of magazines, so think of this as an early warning. And while online ads went from 5.7 percent to 7.5 percent of total newspaper revenue, growth is slowing:

There are signs that online revenue is beginning to slow as well. Internet ad revenue in 2007 grew 18.8% to $3.2 billion compared to 2006. In 2006, online ad revenue had soared 31.4% to $2.6 billion. In 2005, it jumped 31.4% to $2 billion.

As newspaper Web sites generate more advertising revenue, the growth rate naturally slows.

It is true that growth rates will, eventually, slow as the pot gets bigger. However, when online advertising is jumping by 20 percent according to Jupiter Media, you really don't want to see newspapers lagging behind.

Cry Me A River: Musician Billy Bragg on the Internet Underwriting Creatives Provide

A reader, catching up on her reading, forwarded a link to a New York Times piece called The Royalty Scam. In it, English songwriter and author Billy Bragg eloquently wrote about the inherent problem occurring on the Internet. In mentioning a conversation with the founder of Bebo.com - a social networking site that just sold to AOL for $850 million - he wrote the following:

In our discussions, we largely ignored the elephant in the room: the issue of whether he ought to consider paying some kind of royalties to the artists. After all, wasn’t he using their music to draw members — and advertising — to his business? Social-networking sites like Bebo argue that they have no money to distribute — their value is their membership. Well, last week Michael Birch realized the value of his membership. I’m sure he’ll be rewarding those technicians and accountants who helped him achieve this success. Perhaps he should also consider the contribution of his artists.

I agree with Mr. Bragg that there is a significant problem for creatives of all stripes. Also, anyone who's been reading my posts for any period of time knows that I'm not a fan of giving work away, whether for "exposure" or not. (Bragg points out that he gets exposure from radio stations; the difference is that they pay for the use of his music.)

However, the Internet issue is also a thorny one because of "monetization." Companies that own sites must find ways to make money not just from their sales, but from their operations. This is a situation that has many CEOs biting their nails late into the night. On one hand, they pay a whopping amount to acquire the social media sites because they're sure that if they don't, their companies will be left behind. But on the other hand, they can't figure out how to make money online.

I don't mean to point this out by way of excusing the system, but rather as a form of explanation. Many of the now hot Internet sites depended on investors for enough money to operate. When they sell, the investors get the money, and there are still those jobs that were created. But the real elephant in the room is that making money is far more difficult than any of the Internet cheerleaders want to admit.

So, do you give a cut to the musicians, particularly "the fledgling songwriters and musicians posting original material onto the Web tonight" whose "first legal agreement that they enter into as artists will occur when they click to accept the terms and conditions of the site that will host their music"? It would seem fair, but how do you calculate it? What is the value compared to, say, the amalgamation of posts and profiles that draw people to sites?

I don't have an easy answer. If I did, I'd be making a whole lot of money from knowing it. The one thing that is clear is that the start-ups, even as they get big, don't have the cash resources to pay everyone, and the corporations that buy them do so assuming that the business model of free content is going to remain. Otherwise, they would need to see enough cash to pay people.

We can draw a lesson. Your work may be wanted on the Web, but you can't depend on others to make a living for you. You must do that yourself. If you're going to use a site to promote yourself, either be comfortable with the thought that you'll never see a dime, or start developing business models now that will let you make money. Perhaps you need a link to an online store. Maybe you need people to come to your own ad-supported site. But certainly you cannot depend on others to make your business work for you. That is your job.

Adding a Domain Name to Your Blog

You might have done as I did and created a blog (or more than one) in your main domain. For example, when someone wanted to go to my Flash in the Pan blog, they'd have had to type:

www.eriksherman.com/the-pan

However, that looks pretty clumsy. But it turns out that there's something you can do. I went to GoDaddy and got the domain FlashInThePan.org. Then I forwarded

http://www.flashinthepan.org/

to my blog and used masking (a feature built into the forwarding system) to have "Flash in the Pan" pop up on a browser instead of the longer URL. Click on each link to see the difference. This approach gives you a way to add a domain after the fact and even expand a blog site so that you could actually sell the domain name in the future if you wished. Note that this feature is probably available at many domain registration and hosting companies.

Here's another thing to consider: if you want to keep multiple blogs, or even multiple sites, you can use this domain name redirection trick to have all the people who think they are going to different sites to actually end up at the same domain. Although I don't know for sure, I'm pretty sure this starts driving up statistics on your whole domain, and will help drive up search engine results for anything on any of the sites.

Content Strategists, Not Editors

The publishing world is changing faster than you might think. Well, you knew that, but here is one of the signs that ground under our feet is cracking. “We don’t hire editors anymore,” says Meredith publishing president Jack Griffin. “We hire content strategists.” Folio reported that remark and more about Meredith in this article.

But before getting into more of the article, again look at that quote. It indicates so much in perspective. The focus is on content, not writing. That means everything - words, images, sound, graphics - is part of the mix. The "strategists" part? These people are responsible for coming up with approaches to make money for the company. Once the strategy was pretty much taken for granted. Meredith, in this case, would find a demographic, devise an appropriate publication, put it together, and sell ads while trying to build the reader base. But the new concept acknowledges that a single direction, set by the top, won't work. Strategies that work for one group may not for another. The view also says goodbye to the concept of editor: someone who is focused mostly on getting articles from writers and getting them prepared for print.

Griffin was giving a talk at Folio's annual publishing conference. As part of this new role of content strategy comes a recognition that many of the assumptions that have ruled magazine writing for decades are going out the window:

Griffin, on crutches and hobbled by a recent emergency surgery to repair a broken leg, said the change American consumer demographics—specifically, the spike in Internet usage and the emerging “white minority”—forced the Des Moines-based publisher to evaluate all aspects of its publishing business.

Meredith, Griffin said, was “founded on the social construct of Dad at work, Mom at home, Chevy in the driveway.” For a company that publishes “white-bread” magazines, he said, “the change has been quite provocative.”

Meredith has spent about $600 million in the last six years in developing its online, interactive, and integrated marketing businesses. If you're longing for the days that you could make nice money writing for major consumer print publications, then you're in danger of becoming a dinosaur. Now's the time to move in new directions.

Giving Away E-Books to Drive Sales

Author Paolo Coelho has apparently been giving away electronic versions of his books to great marketing effect. There's a quote on a site called TorrentFreak:

In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was puzzled. We came from zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next year we were over 100,000. […]

I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or not. […]

So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a site called The Pirate Coelho.

And here's something from his official blog discussing a talk he gave about the phenomenon. I'm not saying that every author should immediately run off and give away copies, but the success that some have with this method does give one pause to think. With so many book purchases happening online, maybe this is the online equivalent of going to a book store, having a title catch your eye, flipping through it, and deciding to buy it. Or perhaps this will only work with a few authors and eventually the whole approach will fall apart. Interestingly, the people I've heard of who have had success - Coelho; journalist, science fiction author, and co-publisher of the popular web site BoingBoing.net; and M.J. Rose - have all been giving fiction away.

It makes me wonder whether there has been any success with giving away non-fiction - at least the non-literary type. (If you've heard of a case, please email me and let me know.) It could be that it's an approach that only works with more "literary" works. Or perhaps it's just that non-fiction authors generally have an easier time to get commercially published, and aren't quite desperate enough to take big chances that could result in success.

When Were They Going to Tell?

Every now and then I find myself getting angry because for years publishers said, "We have to go cheap on the web because we're not making money yet. When we do, we can pay more. Hope you understand." But consider what many signs are telling you. Rupert Murdoch is someone disliked by many journalists, and he has his own agendas, but I've never heard anyone call him a stupid businessman. He's planning to make the Wall Street Journal free online. Why? Because he'll make more than the revenue from the estimated 1 million subscribers - which, given the subscription rates, has got to be at least $50 million a year.

Read that number again. And he expects to get far bigger audiences to make far more money.

When I wrote about questions I had on newspaper readership, it was clear from the numbers in the Newspaper Association of America-sponsored report I cited that newspapers are getting millions of visitors a month. I still think that in the long run they are not going to be monetarily valuable clients for freelancers, but how much are each of those people worth in annual advertising revenue?

And if you look at this Mediaweek article, Time Inc. apparently has been doing very well on the web:

John Squires, executive vp, Time Inc., said that while he’d like the company’s sites to “crawl up in terms of scale,” he’s happy with their rank in engagement and revenue per user. Speaking today at a Time Inc. Digital Showcase, he noted that according to Time Inc.’s own ranking, the company’s sites come in 15th among media companies in terms of time spent per visitor.

Happy with revenue per user? To me, that generally means that someone is making a good amount of money. Newspapers and magazines see pretty serious revenue from the web. So when were the publishers going to admit it to the writers?

Never. They don't want to pay more. They're very happy to have driven down the cost of content, because that means they have higher margins, which are the difference between what products and services sell for, and what they cost to produce or acquire. And I suspect they're not telling the editors, either. Why? Because right now the editors for online work are also making less than their print colleagues - which is also fine with the publishers, because that pushes margins up even higher.

That's what gets me angry - the con game. Just when were writers supposed to be able to redeem the promise of more pay for concessions made? Again, the answer is one word: never. I do understand the publishers, but don't like what I often hear, and I'm not going to buy the line anymore.

Newspaper Web Sites Reality Check

NOTE: Gary Kromer, director of research for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and president of the NAA Research Federation, pointed out that I had stupidly (he didn't say it, but I certainly can, because I've read enough financial statements that I should have noticed the "000" addition) misread the chart, which measures readership in the thousands. So the average monthly readership of the top 10 papers is something over 64 million a month, which, frankly, makes a lot more sense. However, the time spent on the sites is still frighteningly small, so I'm rewriting this post for clarity and to indicate the elimination of one problem - but the continued existence of another.

I still say that newspapers are cheap, no doubt about it. At first they were because their profit margins literaly made pharmaceutical companies pale by comparison. Now they are becaue their revenues and circulation keep dropping. However, they have been a traditional market for freelance writers, so it's important to know how they are doing in the new media of the Internet.

Check this set of visitor statistics for top newspaper sites. Nielsen/NetRatings is a standard supplier of traffic measure, although many people wonder how accurately they count traffic. So, apparently the top newspapers, at least, are getting a good amount of traffic.

But this is traffic that is going almost as quickly as it arrives. Look at the amount of time per visitor per month for each paper - and realize that includes all visits. Even at the New York Times, that means 5 minutes per person per visit, or a total of 20 minutes per person per month. That's close to the top end, and it goes down from there. That means hardly anyone, on the average, is spending enough time to do anything other than read a few headlines. They aren't digging into the content.

It jives with something I've seen, when one of my business blog pieces gets listed via Sphere (a content connection service) next to articles on the Wall Street Journal's site. When that happens, I'll get, oh, three or four visitors from there. According to this study, the WSJ is getting 9 million people a month, and they're staying for maybe 3 minutes a visit. Even if you have something featured next to a story, virtually no one - as in a tiny, tiny fraction of one percent - will pay attention.

All writers need to be looking at such information constantly. You are your own CEO. You are your own CFO. Only you will be the person to acquire the information and do the analysis to figure out how and where to steer your business. If newspapers cannot keep people for any length of time on their sites, then their advertising, other than, maybe, a major banner or display ad, will be doing little. Advertisers look at numbers like how much time people spend on a site. If they don't see decent stays, they're going to figure that the people won't be there long enough to see the ads, either.

Yes, Mr. Kromer is correct in saying that there are big numbers getting to the papers. However, there is still little reassuring about the results. It's not that "people don't want long stories on the internet...unless they have plenty of relevant information and perhaps in a different (table? bullet point?) format from standard newspaper fare" as he said, but that they won't be there long enough for advertisers to really get value, and that means the advertisers will be less keen on paying a general rate to appear, and not something based on click-through proof of effectiveness.

That problem obviously isn't unique to newspapers, but it's one that the publishing industry will have to address. In print, you claim that people read your publication and charge for ads that always remain on the page. Online, advertisers have the upper hand. What will it take to change things? I don't know. But I do know that at 5 minutes or less per person, advertisers will not be satisfied with the money they spend.

Giving Writing Away

In this blog, I've been following the topic of giving away content - not that there is a single answer, but because we all need to understand the dynamics. And now there's another view at The Long Tail. Chris Anderson, who wrote the book about the concept of selling small amounts to target audiences, actually refers to a commentary from Dilbert cartoonist and author Scott Adams in last week's Wall Street Journal. (Atually, you should read the Adams piece itself, as it has insight from direct experience and is funny, to boot. If you don't have a WSJ subscription, try finding this at your local public library.) Here's a particularly important passage:

A few years ago I tried an experiment where I put the entire text of my book, "God's Debris," on the Internet for free, after sales of the hard copy and its sequel, "The Religion War" slowed. My hope was that the people who liked the free e-book would buy the sequel. According to my fan mail, people loved the free book. I know they loved it because they emailed to ask when the sequel would also be available for free. For readers of my non-Dilbert books, I inadvertently set the market value for my work at zero. Oops.

In other words, giving away free content doesn't always help a writer, photographer, cartoonist, graphic artist, or other creative, though sometimes it does. As Adams writes, "Free is more complicated than you think." Understanding the new market dynamics is going to take a lot of experimentation and consideration - and a lot of discussion among those of us in these industries. The minute I think I have the obvious and easy answer is the minute I should figure that I'm definitely not getting it.

Upcoming Marketing Class

I'm teaching one of my periodic marketing classes at FreelanceSuccess.com. Here's some info:

Selling and Marketing for Writers

When: Aug. 20-Sep. 28
Where: An online teaching forum
Cost: $179 ($159 for FreelanceSuccess members)

Most freelancers love to write but feel like ducks out of water when it comes time to market and sell. If you find yourself in that category, it's probably because you never learned how. In the Selling and Marketing for Writers class, that's exactly what Erik Sherman teaches you.

Understand such basic concepts as marketing, brand and platform, all of which are more subtle and intricate than you might think. Make your marketing organic, and know what you are to the client. Find clients that fit your business, create a profile of the ideal prospect, and know what the prospect is to you. Check your marketing materials - even the ones you don't realize that you have. Understand the sales process and take control of it. Do vital market research and develop profiles of real prospects and clients. Create a prospecting program and move toward your financial goals. Make use of the rule of numbers, even if you don't take to math. Effectively follow up to get more business.

Syllabus

Week 1: Learning basic marketing principles and unlearning some bad scuttlebut. What motivates customers. Selling to a client and a buyer at the same time. Learning the emotional triggers. Handling conflicts between clients and buyers. Who your marketing is about. Getting the right relationship to a client.

Week 2: Deciding on the “right” customers, profiling customers and prospects and their fit, discounting assignment payments, lifetime customer values, rate research, client financial stability, profiling prospect needs.

Week 3: How and when to talk about yourself, unique selling propositions, positioning, branding, platform, understanding how to really use these buzzwords and knowing what they aren’t.

Week 4: The need for good marketing materials – and what they are, your most important calling cards, the difference between marketing and tools, the two basic types of marketing, understanding the tools you really need, knowing when to use a given tool, learning the basic structure of any marketing piece, the time line of marketing.

Week 5: Difference between marketing and sales, what selling isn’t, stages of the buying/selling process, get the right emphasis when approaching prospects, matching the sale to the need, getting into a conversation with prospects, handling objections whether heard or silent, closing the deal.

Week 6: Need for numbers, determine your personal sales conversion rate, planning on enough marketing and selling, enjoying marketing and sales, the biggest single problem in getting business, the power of unimportance, being genuine, negotiation.

Testimonials

Here are some unsolicited comments that some students from the last session I taught posted on FreelanceSuccess when I mentioned that I'd be offering it again:

"I just scored a new column this morning by putting to use what I learned in the class."

"If you're stalled on your marketing, just getting started, looking at new revenue streams or just want to tweak your message, this is a great class."

"I snagged a $4,000 project using techniques I learned in Erik's class."

I can't promise this sort of response, but if you do the work and apply it, you will start seeing positive results.

Finding Sources

Finding people can be time-consuming and frustrating. I've just added something called Finding Sources to the Resource section to the left with information on some tools and techniques for both online and real world looking.

Time for Online?

When trying to understand publishers and where they're going, it always makes sense to watch the usual business leaders - like Time Inc. It's not necessarily the most cutting-edge or experimental, but the organization is one of the most prestigious in the industry, and others look when it moves.

So it's interesting to see a couple of items about the company's commitment to online publishing. About a week ago, Gawker reported that Time Magazine was "shoving its reluctant writers online." As managing editor Rick Stengel wrote in a memo:

I suspect that some of you regard writing for TIME.com as an obligation, and not what you came to TIME to do. But times have changed, and we have to change with them. If you care about what you do - and I know you do - then you need to display your talent, your expertise, and your dedication online as well as in the magazine. That goes for editors as well as writers. Everyone should now have beats and areas of responsibility (Ratu has the list), and you should talk to Josh as well as your editors about what your contribution to TIME.com should be.

And now Advertising Age has an article about how 1.2 million subscribers to the company's publications are getting emails pointing them to People's first digi-mag - a 30 page magazine/website hybrid found only online with an animated cover. The print version of People (notice how we adjust our language almost unconsciously to address the changing circumstances) will also promote the site.

The online world is already business as usual, but emphasis will continuously shift there. Now is not the time to bemoan print magazines folding or how the world is changing. Yes, it is - and it always does. Now is the time to position yourself to become an expert at online work. If you asked most writers now, I'd wager that they'd say it's just a matter of writing.

That will change. You'll see a growing push for additional skills that make the lives of the publishers easier. At least some degree of HTML coding. Knowledge of popular web software. These and others will become what business calls barriers to entry. Then there will be the additional skills - multimedia, use of specialty programming languages, comfort with databases - that will be the additional value making some people worth paying more than others.

So how are your skills?

Searching the Web's Past

One problem in searching the web is that it’s constantly changing, and something that may have appeared on a page might not longer be there. For example, a company might have posted something that was incriminating in some way, shape, or form, and then, realizing this, taken it down.

In such a case, it’s time to call Mr. Peabody and hit the Wayback Machine. It’s a reference to the old cartoon episodes when a genius dog and his boy, Sherman (no relation), would travel into historic periods for amusement. And on the Internet, there is The Wayback Machine Internet Archive.

You provide the URL and this site goes through 85 billion pages archived since 1996 and shows you up-dates for each year. It doesn’t capture every change on the web; for example, I used it on my own site and found no changes in 2007 and only one in 2006, though I’ve made incremental changes in my home page. But, I did find older versions. It’s worth a check. Also, there is archived video, audio, text, and even legally down-loadable computer pro-grams and you can search through these as well.

If you only need to go back a few months, there are other options. Google.com, Live.com, Yahoo.com, Ask.com, and Gigablast.com all keep cached searches going back anywhere from three months to a year, depending on the search engine.

Free BBC Online Courses

If you've ever thought that doing some radio or TV might be interesting, here's a great resource: BBC online courses. From handling microphones and cameras to editing, production, and how to interview for the radio, there's a ton (or should that be tonne?) of solid information from people who are acknowledged experts. There are also other resources, including interviews with BBC reporters, BBC news style guides, and articles on improving your production skills. And if you're using the online materials and not looking for face-to-face courses, it's free.