SEO Writing has the lowest barrier to entry.

[GenYguy]

Hey guys. My inspiration for this post is Magnum's thread. viewtopic.php?t=21197

This was my own thread where I started in a similar place to Magnum. viewtopic.php?t=20433

Someone posted this link in my thread. http://www.seanogle.com/guest-posts/seo ... -beginners (read this first so you know what I'm talking about here)

So I decided to give SEO writing a shot.

Let me start by saying that I'm not trying to sell anything here. I actually care about giving selflessly of myself sometimes because it makes me feel good.

So, SEO (search engine optimization) writing. Not as hard as it sounds, lol. I had no skills when I started doing SEO writing. I was 20 years old, didn't know what the hell to do to support myself in the Philippines (which is where I want to live). I'm 21 now and it's been literally only 3 months since I got into SEO writing. When I started SEO writing I was in community college (paid for by my parents) and miserable. I didn't want to be there, but I wanted to do something useful with my time. As time went on in school and I started doing SEO writing, I knew SEO writing would be my path.

Read the seo writing for beginners link above, but basically success with this business follows a simple formula. I can confirm that the formula works. I did it 3 months ago and am still currently following the formula. Here's the formula: send out emails, get new clients, write articles, get paid.

In the beginning, I had to send out emails myself. It was long and boring copy and paste work. From about 350 emails/contact forms though, I got about 8 clients who all together gave me enough work this month to make nearly $1000.

With the money I made from SEO writing while I was in school, this new year I've hired a filipina in the Philippines to send out my emails now to market my business and get more clients. And I am happy to report that I am getting more clients! I also hired a writer on Fiver to write some of the articles for me for $5 each that I can then turn around and sell to my clients for $30. This copy writer is legit too. Fast turn around time too. Native English speaker who has a degree in Creative Writing From NYU. His work is solid, passes copyscape and just as good if not better than what I can do with no degree. And yet I'm getting paid more than he is. Success is sweet.

Anyway, the next thing that follows in the formula is getting clients. You must have a website for potential clients to view your work and rates. Making a website is cheap. Here's the link I followed to learn how to start my website. http://delusiondamage.com/start-a-website/ There's also a coupon code there that can help you save a little extra money. I'm not promoting it, I have no affiliation with the author of that article. To learn how to make your website the right way refer to the seo writing for beginners article. Seriously, the whole formula is there. This post is about my experience with the formula.

Now the word 'work' may scare you away. You might think you aren't good enough to do this. I thought the exact same thing. After all, I was only 20 years old and I thought I had no skills. I just found 5 articles online and rewrote them in my own words and put them in my writing samples. And I have had several people say they like my writing samples.

Rewriting Isn't hard. Check out this article for everything you need to know about writing unique content from existing articles. Writing unique content that passes copyscape is essential if you want to seriously and ethically do this business. You should get a premium copyscape account (doesn't cost much either) to make sure your stuff is passing the industry standard for plagiarism. You will have to write unique content on a variety of subjects for a variety of different businesses and if you don't know anything about what you have to write about then you will have to figure out how to do so. The article below tells you how to do it the easy way and it's worked well for me so far. Before you say what I'm doing is wrong or bad, read the article below first before you hit me with that. I'll just sum it up and say that the article I write is always better than the original...
http://greatleapstudios.com/blog/copywr ... -websites/

Client relationships are simple. Most of my clients I didn't even have to call them, just a few email exchanges and they give me a few trial articles. After that they just give me more work. My biggest client I had a phone call with however. Just one though. With this business, NO ONE lords over you. YOU are your own boss. You work at your own pace. Some clients may have deadlines, but that's it. As a freelancer you can pick and choose your clients and set your own rates. I started at $20 per article, but changed them to keep things more open to negotiation. Most of the time now I get paid $30 per 350-500 word article.

Now for the writing part, well all I can say is this: if a 20 year old kid with only a limited high school education (dropped out in junior year) can do it, then you should at least give article/blog writing a shot. I could go into great detail about article writing, but I can assure you that it's simple if you know a few things about SEO. For more details PM me... or check out my first thread on SEO writing. I have changed my style a bit since that thread though.

And I've never had a real job before. This will be my first year paying taxes, lol.

All that's left in the formula is getting paid for your work (or your outsourced work, hehe). Clients may pay you by check or by PayPal, I've been paid both ways. Now some clients will have you sign a contract or some kind of freelancer agreement which will usually prohibit you from subcontracting (outsourcing) your work. With most clients I haven't had to though. You can do it yourself though, if you know how it's easy, fun, and doesn't take that long either. You don't even have to like writing either. Originally I never liked writing. I didn't want to be a writer. I didn't want to do anything actually, lol. I played videogames a lot... Not so much now that I'm doing this full time, but I still have time to have fun. Especially now that I'm outsourcing more work. Eventually I want to make this business as passive as possible, that's my long term goal. When I reach the income I desire I can let my filipina worker go and just focus on outsourcing the majority of my articles. By then I will be an article writing wizard and will be able to pick and choose clients and work. I will be as close as I can get to passive income...

The pool of clients is endless by the way. The entire United States is your potential client base if you're from the US. I can only speak as an American following another American's formula. My biggest client is all the way across the country while I'm in California. My filipina worker has sent emails to most companies in California and she has now moved on to the states of Oregon and Washington. My long term goal is to cover the entire country so I can make more money!

So to recap, what you, dear reader, need to start this awesome business:
1. read the seo writing for beginners article http://www.seanogle.com/guest-posts/seo ... -beginners (by the way, the author of this article is now a friend of mine and he's also moving to Thailand in three weeks thanks to this business, he started this business when he was eighteen). All of the specifics that you need to know are there.
2. create your website
3. if you have some money, hire someone to send out the emails and fill the contact forms for you. My filipina girl works for 50 pesos (about $1) for every 20 emails, and everyday she sends out more than 100 emails, costing me about 5-6 dollars a day, for about $200 a month. Hire a filipino, they are hard workers and bilingual. I met her on a dating site originally...
4. When you get replies do the first trial articles for new clients yourself to be on the safe side. Once you have a relationship formed then start outsourcing their articles if you are allowed to. There are good writers on fiver who will do it for you for $5, they may be hard to find though. I probably got lucky with the guy that I found.

I want to hear what you guys think about all of this. What are your thoughts, concerns, questions, hit me with em! I'm open to learning new things too.

I made a new thread because now I have full confidence in SEO writing after my first $1000 dollar month and I hope this will get stickied so the people who need to find a way they can make money in a very short time practically for free and with no skills will see this.

I feel pretty good right now. Let me just say that it feels pretty badass to hire someone in the Philippines to send out emails and wake up every morning to an email inbox full of emails and replies without doing any work. And then when you get work outsourcing it and reselling it for a profit feels badass too.

You will BARELY have to leave your comfort zone to do this business. Most likely you won't have to at all... I like working by myself at home and answering to no one.

This business takes some work, but it's not hard. I'm not saying this because I'm a good writer, I'm saying this because it's true. It should not take you long to hit $1000 a month if you do this business full time. Even if you have a full time job, if you do this part time you should still see results in a month or two. I did, I was a full time college student. You just have to follow the formula, because right now at the time I'm writing this it works like a charm. You CAN do this. I used to be just as doubtful and pessimistic about online businesses as most of you guys on here are, but now I see the value in a proven to work and logical formula. The only way you will know a purported formula works is to try it for yourself and see it in action yourself.

Soon I will be in the Philippines. I need to save some more money and take care of a few big expenses first, but with this amazing business I will be ready to stay there for the long term if I want to!

Alright, I could write a lot more here but I'm tired and that's it for now. Hope someone else on this forum gives it a shot! This could be the best solution to the biggest problem which is HOW to be Happier Abroad that MOST people could do. I and many others are doing SEO writing right now and will be using it to support ourselves overseas. I got sick of searching for the solution for me on this forum, and I know that thousands of people on this website feel the same way, so I wanted to create the solution! You're welcome.

[gsjackson]

You're really working it. Congrats. I remember your first, kind of lost post three months ago, and the progress you've made is remarkable and inspiring.

I need to make about $200-$300 a month doing something like this to supplement the passive income I already have. And I could hire a Philippino assistant now. How much of a time investment am I looking at? Will you provide contact info for your assistant, and if not, where would one go to find someone who will work for that cheap?

[xiongmao]

I'm building an SEO tool if anyone wants to beta test it for me. It should help article writing guys as it helps you find things to write about in any niche.

I should have it finished by Monday - I just need to get the product registration bits done and hook it up to a payment processor.

[magnum]

See this is what I don't get, it sounds as if you don't do anything original when you write, it sounds like copy and pasting, but changing the word around so it sounds original?


Do you not actually add your own thoughts or spin on the subject, or is it in line with whoever hired you to write about its job to give you the opinion about said subject?



I'm all for trying something, I just don't have capital to put in to it, effort and time I can give by the day load.


I need 1500$ to escape the usa, 650$ for the ticket, 200$ for renewing my visa, and the extra 500$ to pay for food while I'm getting started in china, ideally I'd have 2k but I need to leave before my soul drains any more.


thanks again for helping me out before with this information.

[Ghost]

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[magnum]

Ghost...Don't return to the U.S.A your doing it wrong....unless you have to?

[GenYguy]

You're really working it. Congrats. I remember your first, kind of lost post three months ago, and the progress you've made is remarkable and inspiring.

I need to make about $200-$300 a month doing something like this to supplement the passive income I already have. And I could hire a Philippino assistant now. How much of a time investment am I looking at? Will you provide contact info for your assistant, and if not, where would one go to find someone who will work for that cheap?

Well if you hired an assistant like I have you might be looking at paying $200-$300 a month for him or her to send out emails for you. I'm not paying my assistant much for all the time she spends sending emails, $250 a month isn't much for her because she has to support herself and her family, and so do many other filipinas. It would probably be ok if she was only supporting herself though... I wouldn't really know.

So my point is if you were paying that much every month if you only wanted to make $200-$300 a month it would cancel out and you'd break even... so you're really looking to make $500-$600 a month which is very reasonable. You can make that in your first month if you crank out the emails. If you do it yourself (sending out emails) it takes about an hour to send out 20 emails/fill out contact forms. Consider the time it takes to load the pages, input the data, and judge if a website is viable. There's a lot of crumby websites in the search results even if you use the best search terms. On average I think it took me about 3 minutes per website contact.

How to find a filipino who will work for that cheap? Find one who is supporting their family all on their own, who is looking for a job, and you'll have a winner. I got lucky with my assistant, like I said I found her on a dating site. I didn't give her this job until I got to know her better.

[GenYguy]

See this is what I don't get, it sounds as if you don't do anything original when you write, it sounds like copy and pasting, but changing the word around so it sounds original?


Do you not actually add your own thoughts or spin on the subject, or is it in line with whoever hired you to write about its job to give you the opinion about said subject?



I'm all for trying something, I just don't have capital to put in to it, effort and time I can give by the day load.


I need 1500$ to escape the usa, 650$ for the ticket, 200$ for renewing my visa, and the extra 500$ to pay for food while I'm getting started in china, ideally I'd have 2k but I need to leave before my soul drains any more.


thanks again for helping me out before with this information.

Lol. Not copy and pasting. I have my own unique little formula for writing articles too that works well and it's pretty fast too.

I suppose I will just put it in this thread...

Benefits of the articles created by my formula:
-Easy to read (important for search engines and human visitors)
-SEO friendly with big subheadings that tell you at a glance what the content of the article is about
-As a result looks original

How do I do it? Just take any old article on the internet.
1. open up notepad
2. Start it with this:
P1:
-
3. Next to the dash, rewrite the IDEA of the first sentence of the first paragraph of the article in your own words. Don't focus on rewriting the content and the words themselves. Understand the idea within the sentence first. When you understand the idea then if you must use synonyms for the idea to make sense in your new sentence, then do so. Do this while keeping in mind that you want every sentence to appear as original as possible. That should be your goal...
4. Do this for every sentence in the article one at a time, one sentence per dash. It doesn't take as long as it sounds. You'll get really fast with a little practice. The most important part to it is having the right mindset, not focusing on rewriting words, but recreating ideas.
5. Follow the format above. P1=Paragraph 1, each dash represents one of the sentences.
6. When you've finished doing every sentence, you should decide, based on what the article was about, based on what you learned from the sentences in each paragraph, what each paragraph will be about. You are assigning a main idea, a headline if you will, to each new paragraph that you've created. If a paragraph is too short to have its own subheading, combine it with another paragraph! This is how you use creativity. Authors of articles use paragraphs/numbers/bullet points to separate ideas. You can combine these ideas and condense them under subheadings to improve readability and reader comprehension.

For example, say paragraph one was explaining why real estate litigation is necessary. The main idea, which would be my subheading, would be "The Need For Real Estate Litigation". Simple and straightforward. Helps readers and search engines know what your content is about quicker, paragraph by paragraph even. With the amount of information most people consume online everyday, quick and easy reading is in fashion right now more than ever before.

When you're done, you'll have the bones of your article in notepad. Now most of the work is done, all you have to do now is put it all together into a nice looking unique article.

If you did step 6 then you can rearrange these paragraphs. This has many benefits. Likely your article will read better if you do this if you've done every sentence like you were supposed to. You can start with one subheading that starts the flow of your new article, and take those sentences you created for that subheading and that main idea, and link them all together in a way that makes sense and reads good. This is how you can create a better article than the original. Subheadings can keep your ideas flowing more smoothly, you'll thank me later for using subheadings...

Here's another little tip: using subheadings is an easy and legit way to increase the word count of your articles, and improve SEO at the same time.

Once you've done the first paragraph, look at the rest of the paragraphs you did. Decide which one to use after the first one. Try to make it flow as differently as possible from the original article so you can call it your own. Instead of using the second paragraph for the second paragraph in the article, use the last paragraph that you did if it makes sense in the context of your new article and the first paragraph that you did for it.

Do this for every paragraph you wrote in your notepad until all of the content is written and rearranged into new sentences, paragraphs and subheadings. When you are writing the article in microsoft word this is your opportunity to creatively use new keywords. That's the most fun part for me actually.

The best way I can describe all of this... It's like putting together a puzzle. Putting all of the pieces together. Figuring out how it all fits together. You know what it will look like, but you don't know how to put it together yet. That's what writing new articles is like. You just have to do it piece by piece. You see what the picture of the puzzle looks like on the box the puzzle came in (the original article), but you have to recreate that picture using all of the individual pieces. You end up creating what feels like a masterpiece. You created an embodiment of the picture, a new work of art, even though it represents what was on the box the entire time.

Maybe not the best analogy in the world.

When you're done, you should have a big bolded subheading for each paragraph. Now you can create your title. I don't usually start with the title first. I usually do that after I've written the whole thing so I know the best title to use...

Finally, when all of your new content is written, run it all through copyscape. You may be surprised at your own writing skills when copyscape returns no results. This is the norm for me now, my articles always pass copyscape the first time through.

Your article should now look like an article. It should look good and read well. That's how you write content for an article. Call to actions and keywords are a different matter, all depending on the client and at your discretion.

I know I might get flack for this post. If you don't understand, PM me and I'll show you an original article and my new article that came from it, and you tell me if you can see any resemblance. I'm betting that you won't.

Now, back to what you were saying Magnum. Yes, of course I add my own ideas and spin to an article when I can, but not at the expense of information from the original article. If you don't include useful information from the original article, you're doing your readers a disservice.

This writing biz only requires about $20 bucks capitol to start it up if you send out the emails yourself, which is what I did in the beginning. It's boring as hell and time consuming but it can be done. If you've got effort and time by the boatload though, then go for it!! This business might be perfect for you.

[Ghost]

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[WorldTraveler]

Much easier said than done getting money through advertising by writing content on the internet. I love to see some real number for people that do this. With the millions of sites, I'm sure they'd be lucky if they crack a couple of hundred dollars a month.

[xiongmao]

OK my new SEO tool is now available:

http://www.nichelaboratory.com/Default.aspx

It has quite a few features, but the ability to find a whole load of keywords and phrases in any niche make it useful if you're doing something like SEO writing (especially if you don't know a niche well).

If anyone wants to write me a testimonial I can use on my site, then PM me and I'll upgrade you to a free fully working copy.

Also let me know if you have any problems installing it. Creating an installer for Windows 7/8 is a pain in the ****.

Let's go make some money!

Edit:

I've written a HA blog post about my tool, in it you can see some of the keywords I found for Happier Abroad:

http://blog.happierabroad.com/2014/01/k ... eport.html

[GuyAbroad8293]

You are competing with people from India and the Philippines. It's very hard to survive when westerners would rather outsource the work to India/Philippines in order to save 5 dollars instead of hiring a western natural-born english speaker.

[thighlander]

SEO is real, but it is also one of the favorites of the snake oil salesmen selling seminars on how to be a digital nomad, etc...kind of like online stores, there is more money in selling the idea and the how to, than actually doing it.

[rudder]

It looks like I've found the reason why whenever I search for a topic the first page of search results is a handful of articles that are seemingly regurgitating the same information in slightly different words.