One of the biggest benefits of writing for the Web is the ease of publishing - you can write and publish almost instantaneously. Unfortunately, this instant gratification can lead to publishing in haste, errors unchecked.

Therefore, when writing for the Web, it’s essential that you pay a bit of extra attention to proofreading - especially with client projects. Here are a few tips that won’t take terribly long, but will help you catch errors that you might otherwise miss:

1. Read it aloud. - Whether writing an SEO article, a sales page, or a blog post, try reading it aloud before either delivering it to your client or publishing the piece to your site or blog. When you read it to yourself silently, you’ll see what you expect to be there rather than what’s actually been typed (because you know what you meant to say). This is especially true when the piece is fresh in your mind. Reading aloud can help you catch subtle errors or things that simply don’t sound right (like a run-on sentence).
2. Take a break. - Don’t publish or deliver the writing until you’ve waited at least a few hours after its completion. This helps to counteract what I just mentioned - you won’t have what you were trying to say fresh on your mind, so you may catch errors you would miss if proofing it directly after writing.
3. Get a second opinion. - While this is extremely important if you’re not writing in your native language, getting another opinion from an unbiased source can be beneficial to any Web writer. Another reader can be especially helpful by letting you know whether or not you’re conveying your points (you may know what you’re talking about, but does your writing really help the reader understand it?).

These tips may be simple, but they go a long way towards improving your writing for the Web.

One thing you’ll learn in The Web Writer’s Guide to Launching a Successful Freelance Web Writing Career is that being a Web writer can be about much more than taking on articles, copywriting, or other writing projects from clients.

Something I like to talk about when I’m chatting with new writers is moving beyond that client work and writing “for yourself.”

What is “Writing for Yourself?”

When you write for yourself, you’re not being contracted to create something based on the needs of a client. You become the client! You have absolute control and complete freedom, and rather than a one-time payment, in many cases you’ll earn recurring income over time.

E-books as a Form of “Writing for Yourself”

E-books are one of my favorite things to work on as far as my “me” projects go. As you know, I’m soon launching the first e-book in the Web Writer’s Guide series. I also previously wrote and sold a short e-book called Press Releases Made Easy (which is now available for free through ProBusinessWriter.com).

Both of these projects have been completely different for me. My press release e-book was created at the demand of my clients - some simply wanted to better understand press releases. I spent a “whopping” 5 hours writing it - yep, that’s it! At that point it was just 18 pages (the updated version available on the site listed above is now 20 pages). It earned me far more during the time it was being sold than I would have earned by billing out those 5 hours to clients - and the income kept coming in. When you aren’t expecting it, it’s like a pleasant little surprise every time you see a new payment rolling in (you’ll learn to love that feeling).

The new e-book is over 80 pages (it will likely be closer to 90-100 pages when the edits are complete). It took me months to put together (a big difference from the first e-book). I ran a 14 Day E-book Writing Challenge at my freelance writing blog a while back. At the end, I felt my work was too general, and that it would be better served as an e-book series. So I spent further weeks separating that information, expanding upon parts of it, and weeding things out to target the more narrow niche of freelance Web writing. That’s how the Web Writer’s Guide series and this blog were born.

My point is this - when you write for you, you get to decide how much time you want to put into a project, what you want that product to “look like” after the fact, and how much you want to earn from it (you’ll get there with a combination of the right pricing strategy and the right marketing plan). The only deadlines you’ll face are the ones you choose to set for yourself, and a little bit of discipline will go a long way in letting you work your own writing projects around client work that pays the bulk of the bills in the meantime.

Pick up a copy of Launching a Successful Freelance Web Writing Career after the e-book launches to learn more about residual income streams available to Web writers. Keep your eyes peeled for updates on its pending launch (hint: in less than 2 weeks)!