4. Finding Work on the Web

The internet is incredibly useful (some might say indispensable) as a research tool for copywriting and it also generates a lot of copy work, both for websites and other types of online media. This does not mean, unfortunately, that the web can bring you work in abundance. You still have to go out and get it using traditional methods. In my experience you can put a lot of time, effort and money into promoting yourself on the internet and get very little in return.

Broadly speaking, there are three ways in which you can use the web to find work:

• by simply using it as a research tool to identify potential clients
• by signing up to online freelance work exchanges
• by building your own website and trying to direct potential clients to it via search engines, online advertising and other methods.

Using the web as a research tool

If there is one thing the internet is good for, then it has to be research. And that applies as much to the work you are doing as to new sources of work. At the very least, the web can give you access to up-to-date company information such as addresses, phone numbers, emails, personnel and organisational structures. Use it to find out more about companies you think you could work for. Check their press pages to see if they employ a PR agency that might be interested in your writing skills. Do they have a customer magazine you could contribute to? Is it worth talking to the marketing director about the content of the website itself? Does their job application page mention whether they need freelance writing help?

Like any form of research, however, trawling the internet can be very time-consuming unless you have a good idea of what you are looking for. I would advise using web research as part of a wider, structured plan for finding new business. You might decide, for example, to approach all the direct mail companies listed in your local Yellow Pages, in which case checking their websites would be a good way to get extra information about their businesses.

Signing up to online work exchanges

A number of websites, such as E-lance, Guru and Smarterwork, act as freelance work exchanges where clients can post projects for which contractors then bid.

These exchanges are generally subscription-based and levy a percentage of each transaction that is carried out on them (almost all have some inbuilt secure payment system through which projects are paid for).

In theory, they sound like a great idea: just sign up and bid for as many projects as you like, from the comfort of your office. Like many other great dotcom concepts, however, these services are not quite so great in practice. The problem is that while the concept is an obvious winner for freelancers of all shapes, sizes and abilities, clients are perhaps more wary of putting valuable projects out to tender to people about whom they have little or no knowledge.

The upshot is that both the value and the number of copywriting projects that get posted on these exchanges tend to be quite low and the number of bidders is very high, often running to dozens. Faced with a barrage of offers for help, often with widely ranging price tags, it seems likely that most clients simply opt for those specialists who have been registered with the website longest and thus can prove their ability on the basis of ratings provided by other project owners. As a result, your chances of winning a bid tend to be about ten to one at best; much less than you would find as a copywriter in virtually any other competitive tendering situation. Furthermore, to increase your chances of winning the work you may well be tempted to try to undercut other bidders, so that even if you win the project it is likely to be far from profitable.

As part of the research for this book I subscribed to one of these websites, Smarterwork (www.smarterwork.com), and ‘pitched’ for at least one project a month over the course of more than six months. Many of these projects were exactly the kind of assignments that my regular clients were (and still are) handing to me, without a pitch, on a routine basis. Despite spending a lot of time pitching for projects on Smarterwork, however, I never made a penny from the service.

Using a website to promote yourself

Having your own website is far from a necessity in marketing your services, but can be a handy way of giving people access to your credentials, and is particularly likely to impress clients if you expect to do a lot of work for companies in the technology sector.

Building a website is a big enough subject to warrant its own book; and, happily, there are plenty of good reference books out there. Essentially, you will need to go through the following steps:

• Find somewhere that will house (or ‘host’) your site. If you use an internet services provider (ISP) to surf the net then you will probably find they provide a certain amount of space for personal websites. However, there may be restrictions on the website addresses you can use. For a more professional approach, you will probably want to have a domain name of your own choosing, which you can buy (provided it has not already been taken by someone else) from a domain name registration service such as Netnames (www.netnames.com). These will often be able to host your site, too, for a fee.
• Get your site built. If you fancy the challenge, you can teach yourself HTML (hypertext mark-up language, the code commonly used to put together simple websites) and build your own. HTML is not too complicated and you could pick up enough of a grasp of it to get going in just a few weeks; a good book for beginners is Teach Yourself HTML (IDC Books). Nowadays, however, there is a number of web authoring software packages, such as Dreamweaver from Macromedia or Microsoft FrontPage, that make the process even easier. Be aware, however, the results can be somewhat formulaic. The other option is to get a friendly website designer to help you out, or pay for them to do the job. They may even be able to take care of domain name registration and hosting for you.
• Promote your site on search engines and via links to other sites. Web marketing is another big area about which much has been written.

Points worth bearing in mind with regard to websites are:

• Having a website does not guarantee an immediate listing on search engines. You can submit your site for a listing on each search engine (details of how to do this are usually to be found on a link from the search engine home page), although some may try to get you to pay for this – but even then, there are no guarantees your site will be listed.
• If you are going to shell out for a search engine listing, you might be better off putting the money into a service such as Google AdWords, which effectively buys you a listing whenever a specified search phrase is keyed in. And you pay only when someone clicks through the link.
• A further, free way of improving your chances of being found on the web is to get as many other sites as possible to link to yours. ‘Spiders’, the programs used by search engines to map the internet, use links as routes to find new sites, so your chances of getting a listing will be increased if other websites are linked to yours. To do this, though, you will either need to be friendly with a lot of webmasters or, better still, offer something of value that others feel is worth linking to.
• It goes without saying that no matter how simple or complex the design of your site, the way it is written is crucial. For inspiration, I suggest you key ‘copywriting services’ into a search engine and take a look at what your competitors are saying. A couple of US copywriters whose sites have impressed me are Ivan Levison (www.levison.com) and Nick Usborne (www.nickusborne.com); there are many more out there worth a look.