I’m a freelance business writer, who just happens to focus on Web writing. It has its perks - perks I’ve seen echoed by quite a few other freelance writers in the same boat. But first:

What are “Business Clients?”

When I talk about business clients (sometimes “corporate clients” depending on your target market), I basically mean any client that’s not a “publisher client.” A publishing-focused client generally contracts articles for a content-based website, online magazine, etc., where they’ll earn through ad revenue or some other means (they may pay writers revenue share, by pageviews, flat fees, per-word rates, etc.).

Business clients, on the other hand, have another purpose in hiring writers - you’re hired to help them reach a business goal with more direct results in mind.

For example, business clients may hire you to write press releases with the purpose of getting them media or blog coverage. They might hire you write white papers for online distribution to attract their own clients. Perhaps they’ll hire you to write sales or marketing copy to directly help sell their own product or service.

Who Cares What Kind of Client They Are?

OK. Publishing clients are a little different than business or corporate clients, but why should you care? I mean, writing is writing, and as long as you get paid what’s the difference, right?

The big differences are these:

1. Business writing generally brings in more money, and
2. Far more companies need some form of business writing at one time or another than those looking simply for content.

The Perks

Obviously getting paid more is a nice perk, right? Here’s an example, using my own most common form of writing - Even someone charging on the low end in press release writing can often bring in $.10 - .20 per word, where I see the low end of Web content writing more along the lines of less than $.05 per word. On the high end, I know press release writers charging well over $1.00 per word. Personally, I charge a flat fee, but it often works out to the $.50 - .60 per word range for that type of writing. Not too shabby, given that I still charge modestly in that particular specialty.

I also mentioned the strong demand. When it comes to focusing on Web content, you’re limited to Web publishers for most of your client work. However, when you focus on business clients for your Web writing, you’ll find that nearly all companies have some type of Web presence (or want to create one), and managing that often involves a need for strong Web writers.

These types of clients also don’t have long lead times, like some larger Web publishers do, which can be nice.

You’ll also often be asked to consult on the direction of the project before you begin, which allows you to essentially serve the role of consultant in addition to writing (meaning more income if you charge extra for that by the hour).

In many cases, I’ve found far more freedom in business writing than Web content writing as well - this goes back to taking on that consultant role. You’ll often be hired for being a specialist by these types of clients, so they’re turning to you for your expertise, and they’ll often give you plenty of room to work creatively (although that obviously depends on the client).

If these perks appeal to you, what kind of writing can you actually do for these business clients?

Types of Business Writing on the Web

• Web Copy - General (such as the basic copy on a company’s site, like their homepage copy)
• Advertising Copy (like that used in a pay-per-click campaign)
• Sales Letters (anything from software to e-books can be sold through online sales letters)
• Press Releases (many companies these days are looking to distribute news releases online)
• White Papers (it’s quite common for white papers to be distributed on the Web in .pdf format)
• Product Descriptions (if a company is selling products online, someone has to write the descriptions to help make the sale)

Web writing also goes beyond actual websites. For example, you may be asked to handle email newsletters or internal communication distributed electronically. Increasingly popular is corporate blogging as well - you’ll blog about company or industry news on the client’s behalf.

As you can see, working with business clients doesn’t even necessarily mean you won’t be writing Web content - there’s simply more at stake than the actual publishing common to so many clients in the webmaster group advertising for Web writers.

Give this client type a try, and I’m rather confident you won’t be disappointed.

One of the best things you can do as a freelance Web writer is diversify your income streams by creating, and selling, informational products. I would hazard a guess that the most common informational products for freelance writers to be selling would be e-books or reports (you also might sell membership to premium content on a website though).

Now I’ve tried a few different services or methods of selling informational products, including manual delivery with Paypal payment buttens, E-junkie for payments and secure delivery, and Clickbank.

E-junkie is by far my favorite of those methods from a seller’s perspective. Here are some of its benefits:

• E-junkie can be used to sell pretty much any kind of informational product you could imagine.
• You can sell up to 10 different products (you can sell an unlimited number of each) for just $5 per month - other service levels exist if you need to sell more.
• They don’t charge transaction fees (Clickbank’s biggest problem - they really add up).
• They don’t charge a setup fee (Clickbank does).
• You can easily create discount codes for promotions (you can’t with Clickbank).
• E-junkie gives you secure delivery built in - for example, you can set a time limit on each download link set, or a maximum number of downloads before a link expires to stop people from passing around a static download link (you can’t do this with Clickbank either).
• You can still accept Paypal payments, among other options.
• You can run your own affiliate program there (the only problem is that you deal with the affiliate administration and payments yourself - although they do give you the tools and reports - the affiliate issue is the only area where Clickbank comes out on top).
• It can be used in conjunction with other programs - for example, if you want to have an affiliate program through Clickbank but want E-junkie to secure your downloads and delivery, you can do that (that’s what I’m doing now with the first Web Writer’s Guide e-book).
• When you make a sale through E-junkie, you get your payment right away (unlike services like Clickbank where they hold the payments and pay you weekly, bi-weekly, etc.).
• You have complete control over your guarantees if you want to offer one (or return policies) - you don’t with Clickbank, where you have to abide by their return policies.

E-junkie’s a great service. I love it. I went with the E-junkie / Clickbank combo strictly to have Clickbank manage the affiliate program. Honestly, that program hasn’t done much for my e-book sales other than cost me more money (I lose nearly $4 of every sale I make myself, which would be unneccessary since I was making those same sales solely through E-junkie without the added cost). Unless that changes quite significantly, I’ve already decided that the future e-books in my series here will be sold exclusively through E-junkie without the affiliate program.

If you’re looking to start selling products of your own, I urge you to give them a look. The interface is pretty intuitive even if you’re new to selling informational products, the prices can’t be beat, and you retain a lot of freedom that you would lose with other services.

The following article is a guest post from Kelly Kilpatrick of MatchACollege.com.

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Each day, hundreds of thousands of articles are published on blogs and other pages on the web. Getting your content published has become easier than ever; generating a name for yourself as a writer, however, is a different story entirely. You may need to create large amounts of content to even begin to create a name for yourself.

How does someone accomplish this lofty goal with so many people out there writing and developing content on a regular basis? You must become a prolific article writing machine. Read on if this is your goal.

Find Hot Topics

Start every day using a search engine to find out the hot topics of the day. You can always use Google Blog Search to see and read what other bloggers are saying about the latest news in any category you wish write about. If you have a niche already picked out, start subscribing via RSS Feed to keep up with what your favorite bloggers are saying, as well as the most popular ones.

Offer New Perspectives

You don’t have to sit there and regurgitate the same information like everyone else; offer new perspectives on your favorite topics. Sometimes differing from what the crowd is feeling and saying can be controversial and help generate traffic for your writing. This will help increase your visibility, name recognition, and future visitors.

Quick Brainstorm

Learn how to read, research, and write on-the-fly. You must give yourself a few moments to take in new information, and then spend ten to fifteen minutes free writing about what you have learned. At the end of this step, you should have several starting points to choose from.

Sort Out Sub-topics

For every article you’re considering authoring, you need between three and ten sub-points, depending on the article length you’re trying to achieve. Think about all those “Top 5” articles you read on the web. Five points and you’re good, simple as that.

Elaborate on Each Sub-topic

Two or three sentences are really all you need to get the article in an easy-to-read and smooth format. Take a second to look back through this article. Anything look or seem familiar to you? Using these quick steps to help you create content can make a huge difference in your output, and ultimately your recognition as a writer.

By-line:
This post was contributed by Kelly Kilpatrick, who writes on the subject of top online colleges. She invites your feedback at kellykilpatrick24 at gmail dot com