Starfish

The show goes on!

2011-11-10T03:17:00.000-08:00

Dive 2011, Birmingham UK.
My dream drysuit – I’ve seen my dream drysuit! At last someone has realised that black is boring. And not very safe either, if you’re trying to keep track of your buddy in murky vis. (Don’t get me started on cammo drysuits. The invisible buddy – how are you going to keep an eye on him if you can’t see him?!?) Fish aren’t all black, so why should we be?

Nah. This drysuit, by Hammond Drysuits of Dartford in Kent, had a different colour for each section. Probably not a regular production number... One arm was lemon yellow, another turquoise, the front of a leg was red, the back green –if I haven’t got exactly the right colour in the right place at least you get the drift. Bright. Cheerful. VISIBLE. Maybe a bit too visible for some – not everyone does the jester look well – but un-losable. Better still, it might even keep you dry – a sore point with me at the moment...).

What else was on show at Dive 2011? My prize for gizmo of the year goes to the TriDri, a handy telescopic tube with a fan at one end and an outlet the other, for drying drysuits. I could really have used one last weekend – better still two, one in each boot!. It’s triangular, so it rests on one edge and doesn’t roll around. It folds quite small, so it’ll fit in your bag. And it blows air forward into the toe of the boot, normally the hardest bit to dry. What’s more, it was so silent that the demonstrators had fitted strips of plastic to the top end so you could see there really was air blowing through it.

In tests with a rinsed-out suit, indoors the leg with the TriDri dried in 2-3 hours while the other leg took 9 days; in the garage the figures were 3.5 hours and 14 days respectively. It’s not yet in production, so if you know anyone who could make such a thing for a reasonable price (I’d happily pay up to £40 for one), get in touch with Dr. Howard Fortescue at howard@howard-f-fortescue.co.uk.

All the usual suspects were showing – Asia-Pacific and the Caribbean had “villages” of their own, PADI and BSAC were there in force. The Photo Zone provided a colourful interlude, chats with Maria Munn’s enthusiastic staff, and a chance to vote on this year’s underwater photos of the year. The rebreather market was well represented and the technical pool was constantly busy with divers putting kit to the test.

Competitions were rampant as travel companies tried to tempt divers to book now, right now, while the mood was on them; business is clearly still very tough for many, meaning bargains and emptier seas for divers.

Among the speakers Andrea Marshall and Mack S House stood out for opposite reasons. Mack House was speaking on Underwater Crime Scene Investigation, which should have been a fascinating topic. Sadly he didn’t come alive (ironic, really) until he was answering questions at the end, by which time I’d lost interest in him and his subject.

Andrea Marshall, who should have been talking about Manta rays, threw her brief out the window and gave an impassioned speech about conservation and how divers have a huge but time-limited opportunity to make a difference to the health of the watery 71%. She apologised for being depressing but gave such a rousing call to action that no-one will have come out of that room untouched.

A busy weekend but a fascinating one, filled with friendly faces, glorious kit (I got the torch I needed at half-price, a spare undersuit for only £25, several books at reduced prices...), and so many opportunities.

But the real revelation of the show was a new low in catering (cheese-on-toast-flavoured coffee, anyone?).

Into the murk.

2011-06-06T04:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went diving. Nothing new there, but this summer has been different. The weather has been no better or worse than previous years - indeed, a lot better than a couple of years ago when we had torrential rain almost every day - but the vis has been rubbish.

Now I don't know whether that's a cyclical thing - I haven't been diving long enough - or whether it's a freak of this year. One of the club says it's the worst long-term vis he's ever known; another reckons it's a plankton bloom. All I know is that if it had been like this last year I'd probably have given up diving, so I hope it doesn't put off this year's crop of trainees.

So - yesterday. The sea was fairly calm in the bay at Catterline but as we headed north to Crawton it got choppier. Arriving under the cliff a wall of noise and the stench of guano met us from thousands of nesting birds who dive-bombed us all the time we were above water, and the swell was very noticeable.

If only they'd been this easy to see!

Once in the water I thanked Providence that my buddy (who was leading) had a white cylinder so at least there was something to spot. The vis was maybe as much as 1 metre. Looking very closely one could see that the wall would be very pretty, if only one could have seen more. I did spot dead men's fingers, tiny anemones and a whole nursery of baby common starfish, plus a few sunstars.

I was diving with new neoprene socks in my wellies and soon started having trouble finning. The socks are a lot thinner than my old feather-filled ones and don't fill up the boot in the same way so my boots and fins were heading south, away from my ankles. Stopping to hoick them up, I lost sight of my buddy. The training kicked in: look all around for 1 minute, go up a bit and look around some more, repeat until you reach the surface. No sign of her until a flurry of bubbles erupted below me like tiny mercury parachutes and a DSMB popped up almost under my nose. We must have been within a couple of yards of each other all along. We gave up. Total dive time: 10 minutes.

Three couples dived, none came up together. I know there's no such thing as a bad dive, but some are definitely better than others!

The perils of pools.

2011-01-13T05:14:00.000-08:00

Pool training - in a much bigger pool than we use!

We're now well into the pool training season. For us, up here in north-east Scotland, it will last until late March-early April, depending on the weather. That's a lot of time to spend in chlorine!

I'm currently doing my BSAC Sports Diver training, so on Monday we were learning the correct "pistol grip" for towing and giving rescue breaths. Not too much of a problem, though I kept forgetting that I should keep my ring finger and pinkie bent under the "casualty's" chin; also, because it wasn't a real emergency, everything was done in slow motion. It wouldn't feel like that in real life! And I'm sure giving rescue breaths in choppy conditions is much harder.

Now there are two things you need to know for the rest of the story to make sense. Firstly, there's a problem with the lift at the pool (it's only designed to carry wheelchair users, not the combined kit of the whole club), so we have to carry all our kit up to the first floor to start with, then down several steps to the pool-side, and then reverse the process after training. It certainly improves our fitness... And secondly, because my fins are big enough for my dry-suit boots, I wear wet-suit boots at the pool. They have quite grippy soles that should stop me slipping on the steps and the wet tiles around the pool.

So after the class I hefted my BC and cylinder up the steps to the top of the main stairs and headed back down for my fin-bag. Whoosh! My boots slipped on wet tiling and I did the last three steps on my bum and left elbow. Not very comfortable. I now have a black bruise on my left buttock as though someone's ridden a muddy mountain-bike across it and another, slightly less dramatic but equally painful, just below my left elbow.

And we do winter training in the pool because it's safer than the open sea. Ironic, no?

The Slates

2010-11-25T05:21:00.000-08:00

What do you do when the daytime temperature drops to 2C, the evenings close in and even the dogs can't raise the enthusiasm for a trip outside? You dive, of course!

Shore diving was indicated, in case the weather was too rough to launch a boat, so we needed somewhere sheltered, easy to park, not too far to walk with all your kit, with acommodation and (of course!) a pub close by. Somewhere we could get home from without trouble if the weather closed in. Somewhere with something to see once we got underwater. So off we went to Balachulish to investigate the Slates.

The Slates is a well-known dive site but none of us had been there before. We left our various warm beds early on Saturday morning and, after a glorious drive across Rannoch Moor and through Glencoe, met up at about 10.30. A group of divers from Glasgow were already in the car park kitting up. They'd been before and gave us some tips of stuff to look out for. Apparently there was a wee wreck, a motor boat of about 20 ft length, at 12 metres (we looked twice but we never did find it).

We did two dives on Saturday, the water warmer than we expected, but on Sunday most of us only managed one dive: the air temperature had dropped and we all chilled as we clambered out of the water. One hardy member, for whose kit the word "drysuit" was a real misnomer, did a second dive with a buddy who'd not been feeling too good first thing (the previous evening having been a good one...).

And what did we see? We saw the sea. And slate. Lots of slate. With very little life apart from Sea Loch anemones, a few Dead Men's Fingers, some very small fish and a lot of kelp. A couple of empty bottles, a few old tyres and a length of tracking provided light relief.

I wouldn't rush back there, but it was good to get wet again. (Mercifully, not inside: thanks to Splashsports in Dundee for the hire of a dry suit that lived up to its name!)

Wetsuit/drysuit.

2010-11-11T04:42:00.000-08:00

When is a drysuit not a drysuit? Usually, it seems. Almost everybody I know has trouble with their suit. I took mine in for repair the other day and mentioned that I was looking forward to having a watertight suit, and the guy fell about laughing.

If it's not the zip, it's the seals; failing the seals, it's a problem with the seams - either the stitching or the seam seals. Or the fabric's worn at the knees. Or the boots are not properly attached. Or... or.... There always seems to be something. I know divers who've sent their new suits back three or four times because they're getting damp inside.

When you're diving in the North Sea it matters. It's a chilly place and often chillier up top between dives. A surface interval which adds tipping rain to the miseries of damp (or worse) thermals is no fun. But we persist in buying the things and in referring to them as "dry". Why?

Back in the '70s everybody dived in wetsuits and it was normal to get a bit chilly. Then the drysuit came along; now we've gone soft, and complain about getting wet. A friend of mine decided this was a silly and expensive game with no winners and bought herself a semi-dry suit. She expects to get a bit damp and carries a jacket and hat to wear between dives. I think she may have made a sound choice. It cost her under £200, instead of £400+ for the illusion of dryness. Mind you, she hasn't dived in winter in that kit.

I'm looking forward to getting my suit back when the zip and the wrist- and neck-seals have been replaced. It should arrive in time for me to go on a weekend of shore dives at Ballachulish later this month. I wouldn't want to do that in a wetsuit, however thick the neoprene, not in mid-November. Call me a softie if you like....

Perhaps I should have asked for a furry lining while I was at it!

Starfish, masks and copywriters.

2010-05-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last posted here - I've been setting up my new website (same address as before but a very different look: http://www.greatcopy.info/), which has its own blog which has kept me busy. Also I've decided to devote this blog to diving, so if you want to follow my pearls of wisdom about copywriting, words and life please go to http://greatcopy.info/blog/. Actually, I've brought diving into the latest post there, too, but only because a word I came across was so appropriate to wreck diving. I will try and keep them separate. I knew there was a reason I called this blog "Starfish"....
    The thing is, I've become a bit obsessed with diving and I'm wondering how I can turn that into a business plan. I did wonder about marketing under a fancy name the stuff I use to keep my mask clear, without telling anyone it's really baby-shampoo-and-water, but I'm not sure I'd get away with that! [If you're a diver and have trouble keeping your mask clear, try it - it really works and it doesn't sting your eyes; "no more tears" is absolutely right. I know spit's supposed to work, but I can't get enough of it together to do the job... I ran out of the shampoo mix on my final dive last weekend, and I couldn't keep my mask clear at all.]
    Then I thought that there must be diving supply companies out there that need a copywriter. I haven't yet found a "hook" to approach them with; I'll have to think about that one.
    The advice of everyone in the business is "You've got to specialise, find a niche to market to," and that would certainly be a good niche market. It's big enough, though the major companies like Suunto probably have their own in-house writers, and it's something I know a bit about.
    What I obviously need to do is get to one or two of the dive shows and meet some of the people in the business, get known (and, as it's business-related, I can put it on expenses. I'm beginning to like this idea!). The next one's Dive 2010 in Birmingham in October and there's rumoured to be one in Scotland but I can't find any sign of it. It'd be fun to see all the kit, even if I can't afford to buy it, and get more of a feel for the lingo (that's one thing about a niche, you really have to speak the lingo fluently or you stick out like a little finger on a porcelain tea-cup).
    It's a plan of sorts; now to put it into action, starting with a warm-up email to all the Birmingham exhibitors.

    Ah well - I tried to keep it diving-related, but copywriting will keep butting in. That's life!

Guess what I've just heard...

2010-03-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I popped up to Aberdeen for the FSB conference. The final speaker of the day was Kate Adie, news presenter from most of the conflicts around the world during the past umpty-tiddly years. She was an excellent speaker (she's had a bit of practice!), amusing and incisive.

She was talking about why she loves being a journalist. Basically her enthusiasm boils down to the fact that, as she put it, she's a grown up version of the kid in the playground who can say "Guess what I've just heard" and stun her listeners with the latest news. She always got to be first with a story - and that doesn't stop being cool when you grow out of the playground.

Ms Adie also gave a brilliant illustration of the difference between telling a story and giving the facts. She was covering a very poor country in Africa which had major problems with its education budget. Rather than give the dry figures she visited a school where all the pupils gathered round their teacher while one of them was instructed to go and get something. Very carefully the child carried out an object that was obviously very precious to them all; it turned out to be the school's one and only book. As she said, that picture was so much more powerful than stating the facts could ever have been.

It's true of copywriting too: tell a story and you'll produce a much clearer picture in your reader's mind and, since people buy largely on emotion (with logic to back up the emotional decision, of course) that picture will sell far better than just stating the facts could ever do. As long as you have a clear idea of your reader you'll be able to tell a story that will work for them, and you'll never have a problem selling.

If you can say "Guess what I've just heard" as well, you'll be well ahead of the game. And you'll stay excited about your work, which means your readers will too.

Any comments? Fill in the box below and let me know what you think.

Charlotte Fleming
http://greatcopy.info/

Plea answered - thanks!

2010-03-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's blog plea was answered this morning. No, you won't find any comments there; I went to a meeting of the Small Business Club in Dundee (there for 8 am - on my birthday! How's that for dedication?) and met up with Alex Scott of Inspired Solutionz. He said "Easy", got his laptop running and showed me the answer in 5 minutes.

Thanks Alex :-)

For anyone else who might have had the same query, the answer is to go to

"New" and create a new Distribution List, either by moving contacts from another list or by inputting fresh ones. You can send an email to the whole lot at once (yesterday I sent all my Newsletter contacts an email about the blog individually - this will save sooo much time...). You can have people in several Distribution Lists at once. You can do all sorts of things.

I've still got to find out half of them, but I'll get there. As the saying goes, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And there are so many really helpful people out there, some of whom I'm getting to know. Thanks to all of you - you make the world a better place.

Time to grow,
Charlotte.
http://greatcopy.info

Spring is Sprung

2010-03-16T04:48:00.000-07:00

Spring - a time of renewal and replacements.

I've been planning a mailshot for a while and thinking that the best way to do it was via Outlook. My computer was running very slowly and I had resisted installing Outlook because of that (I used Outlook Express for emails, and it works fine, but it certainly doesn't have the bells and whistles of the "real thing"). I bit the bullet, installed Outlook - and the computer went from slow to comatose.

One of my goals for this year had been to replace the computer. Suddenly it became an "urgent" rather than a "probably necessary before I pull all my hair out". So I did some research and decided on a particular model of Toshiba laptop, with loads of RAM and all the other TLAs* you could possibly want, that PCWorld were offering at a good discount. My nearest branch is Dundee, 25 miles from the office, but I arrived to discover that it was combining with its stable-mate, Curry's, and the Grand Opening was the following day. Therefore there was no stock in the old shop and the stuff in the new one was unavailable.

Having taken time out for this expedition I didn't want to do it all over again the following day, so I trundled another 25 miles to Perth where they had 5 of that particular model in stock. Brilliant! Bought the computer, back to the office to set it up. First mistake: I should have paid PCWorld the £30 they charge to do all your transferring for you. It would have been money well spent, even if I'd had to wait 'til the following day. It took me hours... I was still at it two days later.

Most of it was straightforward, at least - burn stuff to disk, download it the other end. The main problem was how to transfer my address book contacts and emails from Outlook Express on the old machine to Outlook on the new one (with two different operating systems to add to the fun). Online fora provided several possible answers and eventually I managed to get the address book across, but the emails were a no-no. Apparently you have to transfer them before you start receiving any, and I didn't know that until after several new ones had reached the inbox. Ah well!

Now I'm learning my way round Outlook. It's not totally transparent, I have to say. I wanted to create separate groups for various types of contact (personal; businesses I already have dealings with; and prospects of at least two separate sorts). So I tried opening a New Group in the side bar. There it sat, bright and shiny - and quite un-openable. Hmm. OK, try the Business Contact Manager tab on the taskbar; there's a tab in there for Database Tools/Create a New Database, so I tried that. I thought it had worked, but there was no sign of it when I pressed "Connect". [Connect?? To what?] Furthermore, it appeared to have deleted all the contacts in the Business Contacts database I had so carefully moved across from the old computer. Bah! I re-input them, and decided to ask friends for help.

[Of course, it might have saved me a lot of trouble if I'd read the "Learn about Business Contact Manager" page in the same menu as the Database Tools. But - I don't know about you - I'm one of those people who only notice that the info's there when they've tried everything else. Perhaps I shall read it yet...]

However advice from friends suggests not trying to create databases within Outlook anyway. One person suggested using Excel, another Access - both apparently work well, though Access is said to be complicated to learn.

If any reader(s) have any other ideas (or know their way around Outlook in Office 2007 really well and can teach me) I'd be enchanted to hear from you - please leave a comment and then you won't have to find another good deed to do today ;-) Or contact me via my website: http://greatcopy.info. Thanks to anyone who can help; the sooner I get the hang of this thing the better.

*TLA= three letter abbreviation

Free Blog Promotion - Blog and Blog resource Directory

Business blogging? A few tips for beginners.

2010-03-02T08:44:00.000-08:00

I've been asked to do a talk on blogging for Events For Business, on March 25th, so I've been doing some research into what other people think is good blogging practice. I know what I want to say, but it's always useful to see what is going on elsewhere - and there's an awful lot of advice out there. Not everyone says the same, and not all of the advice is good, but it's all fascinating.

Some writers cover what to say, while others tell you how often to post. I've even been sent an article on the various ways of making money if you have a blog - not by selling your own products, but by hosting advertising, surveys or videos for other companies or promoting their products directly. Not much use if you're already in business for yourself: I tried putting ads on my blog and got a host of other copywriters promoting themselves via my site. NOT what I'd had in mind!! I realise that from the reader's point of view it wasn't such a bad idea: if they're looking for copywriters and/or their blogs, where better to start? But it wasn't going to promote my business in quite the way I'd hoped.

So, anyway, you're going to start a blog for your business (and not have advertising on it). Here are a few pointers for beginners:

Who are you blogging for? In case you really aren't sure (and looking at some of the blogs out there, you aren't alone in that), you're writing for your clients, customers, investors and/or people interested in joining one of those categories. You're not writing for yourself. Sure, you'll be writing about the company, but don't make it sound like a company report. Blogs are for the interesting stuff that goes on, the insider's view, news, chit-chat (but not scurrilous gossip - the laws of libel still apply!).

How often should you post? As often as you've got something to say and as often as your readers can cope with. I wouldn't post every day - I don't think my readers (either of them) want to be inundated with stuff. There's so much info and guff floating around the ether already, no-one's got time to read everything. I subscribe to loads of copywriting-related e-zines and I only skip through them, unless they're saying something really eye-grabbing.

What should you say? Whatever you need to say. If you're just posting for the sake of it, save your time and your readers'. They're already suffering from information over-load, they don't need more "stuff" cluttering up their time. Say something useful to them, something that will make them want to know more about you, your company and your products/services. And for heaven's sake make it interesting, well written and easy to read. Amusing, even. Anything but dull.

And if you want to come to the seminar - the other half of which covers how to use social networking for your business - get in touch with me at greatcopy@btinternet.com for more details. It's an investment of just £35 and should pay for itself in (free) marketing within months if not weeks.

24 highly effective headlines

2010-02-10T04:09:00.000-08:00

I found this excellent advice on LinkedIn and thought it worth passing on. Hope you agree. You can use all these headlines in many different contexts - just alter to fit.

The first one is an absolute classic; the original version (dating from the very early 20th Century) was "They all laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play...".

You could also use a version of another favourite, "Do you make these mistakes in English?" - the embarrassing problem headline.

Anyway, here's the article - enjoy!

Author: Zeke Camusio of TheOutsourcingCompany

"From my own swipe file:

Underdog
They Laughed When I Told Them I Was Going to Be a Professional Weightlifter. Nobody Is Laughing Now.

Who Else?
Who Else Wants to Quit their Jobs, Spend More Time with Their Families and Make $87,000 per Year Working 2 Hours a Day from Home?

Are You Ready?
Are You Ready to Discover the Secret Marketing Formula that a Handful of Dentists in the UK Are Using to Get Thousands of Dollars a Month (Without Any Extra Work)?

How I Did It
How I Went From a Complete Rookie to Ski World Champion in Only 3 Years and How YOU Can Do the Same

How To
How to Lose 2 Pounds per Week for 8 Weeks Eating Ice-Cream

Niche Headline
For Busy Doctors Who Want to Cut Back Work Hours (But Don’t Want to Earn Less Money!)

If You Are…, You Can…
If You Are a Doctor Who Makes More than $100,000 per Year, You Can Pay 42% Less in Taxes!

Secrets
Successful Serial Entrepreneur Reveals the 6 Secrets that Helped Her Make Millions Selling Informational Products

Warning
Warning! If You Mess This One Thing Up in Your Mortgage Application, Your Banker Can Take Your Home!

Give Me… and I’ll Show You…
Give me 90 Seconds And I’ll Show You How You Can Have a Flat Tummy in 3 Weeks

Ways
5 Ways to Make More Money With Your Existing Website Without Getting More Traffic. Guaranteed!

Celebrity
What Would Brad Pitt Say if He Saw You Wearing This Dress?

Illegal
A Money-Making System So Easy that Should Be Illegal

Direct Statement
Get 1.25% Cash Back on All Your Purchases!

Question
Are You Sick of Your “Love Handles”? Don’t You Wish They Would Just Go Away? What If I Told You that You Can Make them Disappear with 2 Simple Exercises that Won’t Take You More than 6 Minutes per Day?

Testimonial
Microsoft Has Increased their Online Sales 142% in 2008 Using Our MarketPack. You Can Do the Same. Discover How!

Command
This Is Your Chance to Lower Your Long-Distance Call Costs. Take It!

Guarantee
Natural Cream Guaranteed to Completely Eliminate Your Acne in 13 Days –or 110% Money Back and You Keep the Product!

Problem/Solution
What Would Happen if Your Computer Crashed Right Now? How Much Valuable Data Would You Lose? Here’s How You Can Make Sure This NEVER Happens to You

Discount
5 DVDs. 5 Bucks. No Commitments. No Strings Attached. Act NOW!

Reasons
9 Reasons Why You Need to Stop Complaining About the Economy and Do Something About Your Business Right Now

Story
How a Single Mom with Two Kids Managed to Get Out of Debt and Save $20,000 in 11 Months without Working Extra Hours

News
Doctors Astounded by New Miracle Pill that Increases Chances of Getting Pregnant by 211%

Not This… But This…
No “Get Rich Fast” Scams. No MLM Lies. No “Build It and They’ll Come” BS. Just Down-to-Earth Tips for the Smart Business Owner.

And remember: you can combine two or more of these tactics into one headline!"

Jargoning on and on

2010-01-16T08:16:00.000-08:00

As my regular reader(s) may know, I started learning to scuba dive in November and I'm now trying to get the kit together. I've found a dry suit with all the thermal undies for a very good price on eBay, and I'll be trying it for the first time in the pool on Monday, so fingers crossed that the obviously new zip has been properly fitted. I think I'll leave the undersuit off for the evening, just in case! It might be a tad too hot in the pool, too, as it's slightly warmer than the North Sea.

Next on the list is a boyancy compensator (BC, BCD or stab jacket), gas cylinder (or bottle), 1st stage, 2nd stage (regulator), BC air hose etc. As you may have noticed, there's a lot of jargon involved here - I had to look it all up on the internet because our training doesn't cover the intricacies of 1st stage, 2nd stage and so on - we're just told "This is your reg, this is the octopus (or AS), this puts air in your BC, this one's your gauge - oh and you'll need another air hose for your dry suit, of course".

That's all very well, but when you start looking for the gear on the 'net everyone suddenly gets very technical. They don't talk about regs and octopusses... not even for second-hand sales on eBay. I know there's an argument to be made for correct description, but not to the point of excluding people who need the right gear to stay alive 20 metres under the sea. Well, other people have obviously had this problem before, so when I Googled "scuba dive jargon" I found several lists explaining everything I need to know and then some. Thank heavens - and whoever wrote them! Like Scots, I can't speak the language very well yet, but at least I'm beginning to understand it.

Again, the other day I was talking to someone about wine-speak. I spent 15 years in the wine trade, latterly teaching evening classes to consumers, so I know quite a lot about wine-speak. It used to make my sister roar with laughter when I talked about a wine having "biscuits on the nose". Made sense to me, but she had a wee mental picture of a small dog sitting up and balancing a biscuit on his muzzle. When you're trying to describe the often quite small differences between one Champagne and another, you need a good list of flavour-associations; people in the trade know what you're talking about, everyone else just gapes.

One way and another, it all got me thinking about jargon and how so many people think it's OK to plaster it all over their web pages. It will be, if the only people who ever read the pages are in the know (e.g. a site written by an engineering company to be read by other engineers). But what if, like me with the scuba kit, readers know they need the stuff but haven't a clue what you're talking about? This is where a good copywriter can really help, by keeping it simple and using layman's terms if at all possible; if not, by creating a glossary that can either go on a separate page or in a box at the side of the page where the jargon's being used.

I also think some people use jargon to try and confuse you into buying stuff you don't need - I definitely got that impression when I tried to buy a new domain name at GoDaddy a few weeks ago (see "Website Drama in NE Scotland", below). I got so muddled and befuddled I just left the site and registered the name elsewhere, and I think a lot of people do the same.

So if you're writing a site for something that tends to use jargon, my advice would be to follow Henry Ford's dictum: KISS (Keep It Simple and Straightforward - that's the polite version anyway!). Avoid jargon like the plague. Cliches, on the other hand.... but that's a different story.

To find out more about GreatCopy go to http://greatcopy.info/ or phone +44 (0)1241 828620.

To be (me) or not to be

2009-12-17T03:10:00.000-08:00

I've just read a fascinating article by James Chartrand (Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants) outing "himself" as a woman. She discovered that she got more and better jobs and less hassle when she worked as a man than under her real name.

I'm wondering whether I ought to change my persona for online jobs. It obviously wouldn't work with live networking, but I could become Charley - which was my nickname when I was at college, as it happens. It would mean a cdrtain amount of hassle: changing my Elance profile, my website, my LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pages (or creating new ones) and finding a new image to represent me - and inevitably becoming "Charley" to a lot of people who currently know me as Charlotte.

It's not as straightforward as it sounds. I wouldn't be me any more. My Charley days were a long time ago and I was a different person then. It would be weird going back.

I haven't been around long enough yet to reach the glass ceiling that James encountered, so I don't know how necessary it would be to change. And even with the evidence she provides I'm still not sure I can cope with turning myself into someone else, as though I were on the witness programme.

Maybe I should double test it - apply for the same jobs under both names and see what happens? James did that and found the male "her" got more work than the female.

Maybe I should just go for it. The research has already been done, though admittedly only by one person: not a very large sample. (Though she did mention that she wrote about it because a "friend" threatened to out her - and the friend was also a woman who wrote as a man...)

Has anyone else out there discovered the same phenomenon? If so, I'd love to hear from you. You don't have to tell me your real name or go public: you can contact me direct at greatcopy@btinternet.com.

New Year, new persona? Watch this space!

This crazy language of ours...

2009-12-09T03:06:00.000-08:00

I don't know where this started (somewhere in North America, judging by the usages), as I got it as a FW/FW/FW email (with lots of other people's email addresses left in by the forwarders - I wish people wouldn't do that!), so I can't give credit where it's due. If you read this and you're the author, thank you very much and please let me know who you are so I can tell everyone. [The bits in square brackets are my own additions - this stuff sets you thinking!]

Anyway, here it is:

You think English is easy??? Read to the end . . . a new twist
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce .
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present .
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow [but not to sew, obviously].
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger, and neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? [You can be disgruntled but not gruntled?]

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, you fill in a form by filling it out and an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why when the stars are out they are visible but when the lights are out they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this . There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP.'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ? We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special. A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP !

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP...When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on but I'll wrap it UP for now my time is UP so........it is time to shut UP!

Now it's UP to you what you do with this email.

[So I passed it on to you. I hope you lapped it UP... Sorry - this sort of thing can get addictive!]

What's your market?

2009-12-03T08:52:00.000-08:00

I bought two pairs of apparently identical trousers by mail order the other day. When they arrived I tried one pair on to make sure they'd fit, as sizes vary so much. They were fine. Then I tried the other pair on and they were a bit tight. Not bad enough to need sending back, but definitely smaller than the other pair.

It got me thinking. They were probably cut out by machine, so the pattern pieces will have been the same size for both pairs. Only when the pieces went to the (human) machinist did the size alter - but not sufficiently for them to be re-classified as a smaller size or to be sold as seconds. They're fine, just not the same as the other pair.

It's human input that makes the difference.

Same with writing. Two people can work on an assignment (say writing an article for a web site) and produce completely different pieces. Identical subject, different angle. Or, if it's a re-write to keep a web page fresh, they'll make different choices of words and change the whole feel of the article.

That's what makes copywriting so interesting: the individual slant each of us brings to a piece of writing. It's also why one person will write better for business-to-consumer (B2C) copy while another is better at business-to-business (B2B): the first will have a chattier style, the other a more formal, less sales-orientated one. Some lucky people can manage both and they really thrive.

B2C tends to fairly niched - you write a good sales letter for one business and its competitors ask you to write for them too. Writing for B2B is much more varied - you never know whether you'll be writing a Company Report for an oil company, a brochure promoting a conference venue or a website for a high-end leather-goods company catering to executives. You're still in the persuasion business, but you can leave out all the high emotion of B2C sales copy.

It can take a while to discover your style, but once you've found it you're half-way to finding your clients; you at least know which sector you're aiming for (B2C or B2B). They both pay well, once you've got a bit of experience under your belt, and there's plenty of work in both areas.

Which way do you think your talents lie? Worth a thought...

BloggingForProfitToday, or how not to set up an affiliate website

2009-11-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

This internet marketing lark's not as straightforward as everyone tells you. The new website is nearly finished, but setting up a Pay Per Click ad through Google Adwords was another palaver! Apologies to any technical types reading this - I'm definitely not good on the techy language (nor the techy stuff, as you'll see...).

The website is http://www.bloggingforprofittoday.com/ - or that's the one I registered. Reasonably straightforward, you might think - says what it means and all that. But because it's hosted by Microsoft Home Office Live, its URL as far as Google Adwords are concerned is http://greatcopy.web.officelive.com/default.aspx (the official home page of the site). That won't attract the eye of the passing human looking for info on how to blog for profit; I wanted to get the word "blog" in there somehow.

But Google "disapproved" it because I put http://www.bloggingforprofittoday.com/ (my official domain name, you may remember) as the visible URL in the ad. They disapprove of non-matching URLs: the one in the ad has to match the "official" one. Not that they say so anywhere on the site - I had a spirited exchange of emails with their help desk before I discovered what the hitch was.

To solve the problem I changed the page you reach from the ad (the landing page) to the one with the main info on it, http://greatcopy.web.officelive.com/Bloggingforprofit.aspx, rather than the default home page. So far, so good.

As anyone who's ever seen a Google Adwords ad knows, there are three lines of ad text and the fourth line is the URL the viewer sees. You haven't much space for that fourth line, and http://greatcopy.web.officelive.com/Bloggingforprofit.aspx doesn't fit it. It does, however, go in the URL box (a fifth box when you're setting up the ad; you don't see it when you're browsing). So I got round the problem by altering the visible URL to greatcopy.web.officelive.com/Blog, which was allowed - and there the ad is, proud as punch, on the right hand side of the first page when you Google "blogging for profit".

When you click on it you even get taken to the right page, which is a major plus. If you click on http://www.bloggingforprofittoday.com/ you get taken to the default home page, which now has an article on it. I don't suppose that matters - the article may give the reader enough info to make a decision about whether they want to blog for profit or not, depending on the reader; and of course they can navigate to all the other pages on the site from the article - but it's not ideal.

It's been an interesting learning curve, and definitely not the most effective way to go about affiliate marketing! But at least I know one really good way not to do it next time... And the clicks are beginning to come in, so who knows - I may start to see some profit for my efforts soon. That would be good.

Website drama in NE Scotland

2009-10-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

I've just joined Clickbank as an affiliate marketer, 'cos I think there should be good money to be made if I can get the hang of it, plus it's a useful way of honing my marketing skills.

Having found a product I thought would sell well (and that I'm happy to sell), I had to set up a website for it. What a palaver! I tried GoDaddy, and found a name that worked with the keyword research I'd done. Then I tried to buy it and was instantly reeling among all the other bits and bobs they tried to sell me - without any explanation of what they all did.

Did I need hosting? How many pages did I want to buy? For how many months? Did I need help building the site? Would I need to know HTML to be able to use their website set-up program? And so on... and on... and every time I got to the checkout there were more options. I got totally betwattled, and went elsewhere. (Memo to self: yes, it can be a good idea to offer "people who bought that also bought this" suggestions at the checkout - but not to the extent that the potential customer leaves to protect her sanity.)

I already operate a website (greatcopy.info) via MS Office Live. It was really simple to set up and required no knowledge of HTML. If you have one yourself, please read the next bit really carefully.

I thought I'd try putting my new domain on my MSOL account.

Big mistake. You can only operate one domain per account (you only find that out after you've done it, unless you spend your time reading the posts from people who've tried it before - and you're hardly going to do that if you haven't encountered the problem yourself, are you? Why don't they tell you when you start looking for new domain names?!?!?).

Anyway, I set up a new account and then looked for ways of transferring the new domain to it. You can't do that either. Oh, and it's not called transferring (too obvious: transferring means moving a domain from one host to another), it's called re-delegating. (Re-delegating?!?!? I didn't know I'd delegated it before.) Who comes up with these terms????? Do they speak English, or do they dream in techno-babble?

OK, so how do I re-delegate it, then? It seems MSOL domains come from a company in Australia, and what you have to do is so complicated my head's still swirling - it involved 6 emails, 2 phone calls to Australia to try and speed up the process, and most of the day to accomplish. And the domain is still "pending" on the new account, so I shan't be able to do anything with it for 24 hours.

What a waste of time (so far 3 entire days have been spent on this farrago)! Why can't they just have a simple button that says "I want to move this domain from one of my accounts to another"? Or better still, just allow you to operate two domains within the same account? It can't be beyond the wit of software to recognise that there are two domains needing to be billed. Or three... or four... Just as well I started with plenty of hair.

Next time I try this, I may even go through an expert. I didn't this time because I thought it would be quicker (and cheaper) to buy "off the shelf" and I don't need any bells or whistles. But given the hassle factor and the time it's wasted, I'm not sure it was either cheaper or quicker. Still, I guess it's all part of life's rich pattern and I've learnt something from the whole process: just 'cos you've done something once, doesn't mean it's going to be straightforward the second time!

If you want to have a look at the site (give me a couple of days!) it's www.BloggingForProfitToday.com Just thought I'd mention it...

2009-10-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

Just back from holiday and found this excellent advice in my inbox, so I'm passing it on to you word for word. The Wealthy Freelancer is an excellent ezine - if you're interested, you can find all the details at the end of the piece, or click on the title to go direct to their website.

The Wealthy Freelancer
How Much Time Should You Spend Marketing Your Freelance Business?
Posted: 01 Oct 2009 03:00 AM PDT
It’s one of those timeless freelancer dilemmas. When you’re busy, you don’t have the time to market. Which means that when the work dries up, you have nothing in your pipeline.
So you work feverishly to find work. But prospects and clients sense the desperation in your voice (you think you’re hiding it, but they can still sense it). That only works to repel clients. Which makes you even more anxious. And so the vicious cycle goes.
What’s the solution to conundrum? Spend 10% of your work time every week on a high-impact marketing activity. Schedule that time as if it was for a client project. Schedule it every week without fail. And you’ll rarely encounter dry patches in your business.
Why 10%
Because I’ve never seen anyone else give freelancers a straight answer on this issue. And because 10% is sensible enough that anyone can do it.
If you have more time, do more. And if you have zero work and a pile of bills coming up, spend ALL of your time marketing your business. Treat prospecting as your full-time job until you get some work coming in.
But if you’re very busy and you freelance full time (say, 40 hours or so a week), then four hours a week is still doable.
Heck, even if you were absolutely slammed, you can still squeeze in four hours a week just by waking up an hour earlier Monday through Friday. Not a morning person? Then put in one more hour every evening.
And don’t just do whatever marketing activity feels right at the time. Have a plan so you don’t have to make decisions on the fly. Finally, focus your efforts on marketing activities that yield results — not just the activities you love to do.
The benefits of this “10% rule” compound very quickly. Steady effort yields steady results. This evens out your workload, eliminating much of the peaks and valleys we often experience as freelancers. And even when you’re slammed, getting leads you can’t pursue is good for your self-confidence, which helps you keep your fees where they should be (and even raise them in some cases).
What do you think: Is 10% a reasonable effort level? How do you make the time to market your business? Have you found it hard to develop such a habit? Why or why not?
——————
Ed Gandia is co-founder of The Wealthy Freelancer and author of the popular e-book Stop Wishing and Start Earning: A Low-Risk Plan to Escape 9-5 and Launch a Profitable Copywriting Business.
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How to win friends and ... you know the rest - or do you?

2009-09-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

I found a little piece that intrigued me in the travel section of my regular newspaper last weekend. It was about venues looking after their customers less well, cutting back on upgrades and so on, due to the recession.

This seemed to me a remarkably silly way to go about running a business. If you want your business not just to survive the recession but to come out of it strong, you don't upset your customers or treat them less well than when things are good. You treat them even more like Royalty: you do everything you can to please them so they go on spending money with you. Especially hotels, who are having trouble finding top-paying customers to take up the suites and top-price rooms. Why not put "ordinary" customers in them and give them a really great experience? They'll tell their friends and relations, their business colleagues and even the chap they bump into on the street corner, all about how well the hotel's treated them. Good word of mouth is free (and priceless) - bad WoM is also free, and notoriously spreads 20 times further.

OK, these hotels aren't giving their visitors any worse a room than they were expecting - but they could be giving them a diamond-encrusted, solid gold experience with caviar round the edges. And wouldn't that make a great impression?!?!?

In the last recession I had a friend who worked in a posh hotel in Cambridge. He told me that half the expensive rooms were shut up because they had to take the lightbulbs out of the lamps to put in the rooms that were still in use (it was part of a big chain and this money-saving diktat had been handed down from head office). How short-sighted! Put the lightbulbs from the smaller rooms into the posh rooms, give every one a glimpse of what they can aspire to when their finances improve after the recession - guess where they'll come for their romantic weekends, and which room they'll ask for?

It's the same with marketing spend: now's the time to talk to your clients, if ever there was one. Let them know you're still going strong, tell them about changes to personnel or products or whatever might interest them. It needn't cost much - an email newsletter once a month would be fine (so make sure you grab their email addresses). But keep talking to them. If they disappear, so will you.

This isn't just special pleading because I might get the job of writing the words (though if you do need any written, please get in touch...)! It's plain horse sense, and it saddens me how many businesses seem to think that their clients have no option but to come to them. We all have competitiors, and few clients are totally loyal (are you?). They'll happily buy from whoever is in the front of their minds, or whoever gives them a reason to stay in touch.

Make sure it's you giving them a reason - and then treat them like Royalty. And they'll be (if only a little bit) more loyal and help you come out the other side of the recession a better, stronger business with a great reputation. Win-win - the best way to run a business.

Growing Ambitions

2009-08-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

I've just joined an enterprise called Growing Ambitions. To quote from their website, "This unique UK-wide volunteering initiative puts real people, doing real jobs, in front of young people as career Speakers to tell them what their careers are really like and give them great ideas for their future. They need more real careers information. Growing Ambitions gives impact to volunteering in education and is an award-winning, not-for-profit organisation."

Which seems like an excellent concept to me. I knew what I wanted to do when I left school, but my career (as an opera singer) failed before it even started - though I've had lots of fun singing in choirs of all sorts, and still do. I don't remember getting much in the way of careers information at my rather posh boarding school in the early 1970s - I think we were supposed to just get married and not worry our pretty little heads about careers. My head not being particularly pretty I never got married, and I've lurched from career to career ever since. I've been a stage manager (well, if I couldn't be in the operas, at least I could work on them), book seller, cycle courier, wine merchant and educator, double-glazing telesales person, trainee driving instructor, taxi driver, multi-lingual tour guide... and now I'm a freelance copywriter. It may not be much of a career path, but it's certainly been an interesting life.

So am I saying careers information isn't that necessary - if at first you don't succeed, and all that... ? No, I think the more information you can give kids to help them decide where their talents lie the better. There are loads of jobs that I'd never heard of when I was at school (copywriting being one of them), heaps of possibilities for people with all sorts of varying interests and capabilities, things they might never have dreamed existed.

And if I can help them find the right peg to hang their hat on, that will be a good job too. If you want to get involved, just go to http://www.growingambitions.org/index.php and volunteer.

Swimming with the fishes

2009-08-18T03:28:00.000-07:00

I'm going swimming this afternoon for the first time since I can't remember when (apart from the dip I took after a sauna in Finland in June, in a decidedly chilly lake). It's not because I like swimming pools - I loathe them and the chlorine that infests them, the damp march back and forth to the changing rooms, the verrucas, the sheer indignity of the whole proceeding - but I've finally made the decision to learn scuba diving.

I've wanted to dive for ever. I tried a "taster" class a few years back and had a panic attack because I was trying to breathe through my nose and all the air available was what was in my mask. It's very counter-intuitive, for me at least, to breathe in the water: I spent a lot of my childhood seeing how far I could swim underwater without having to come up for air (my record was 2 lengths of the pool). But I'm determned to crack that. I want to swim with the fishes! I went on one of those boats with underwater windows last summer and the views of fish, sponges, underwater rock formations and the rest rekindled my longing, and now I'm going to stop dreaming and start training.

In order to train with my local club you have to be able to swim 8 lengths. Doesn't sound like much, but I have no idea whether I can do it or not. Training starts in October, so I've time to get fit, but best find out in good time, I thought, so I'm off now to find out...

2 hours later: it wasn't very much - I did 12 lengths, no trouble. That's a relief! The only bit that aches is the outside of my hands, from 12 lengths of breast-stroke. Oh, and I need to get some goggles so I don't have to keep my eyes out of the chlorine and give myself neck-ache. It was warmer and much cleaner than my memories of swimming pools past, and the showers really worked, too. Altogether not the chore I was expecting ;-)

Moral: face your fears and do it anyway - and start early enough that you can do something to solve any problem that crops up. Or something like that! Same with deadlines, I guess...

Making Elance work

2009-05-22T01:17:00.000-07:00

I've been pitching for new business on Elance recently. It's been quite a steep learning curve - more what not to do than how to do it - but I was awarded my first project yesterday. The client is in New York, I'm in Scotland, so I would never have met him except via an agency like Elance.

A lot of people say you can't make money on Elance, but I've had good reports from others - one copywriter, Angie Dixon, who makes $5,000 per month on Elance, has even written a book on how to do it. You can find out more at www.ElanceSuccess.com. She tells you exactly how she achieved her level of success and how you can turn it on and off like a tap (faucet) if you need extra work or get too busy. It's an easy read, and the tips are easy to put into practice.

Angie recommends starting by writing articles, but so many of those jobs are really badly paid ($10 for 500 words is typical). So I stuck with what I know, writing web content, which pays much better. The success tips are the same, whatever sort of writing you enjoy - and there are employers looking for ghost writers, short story writers, writers of questions for English language courses, bloggers, technical writers, translators, you name it.

Being on Elance is also, of course, another way of getting "known" to search engines, and pushing your website a bit further up the rankings with extra links. And speaking of links, I highly recommend LinkedIn, the business social-networking site. Whatever line of business you're in there's probably a group for it, and the amount of expertise you can link into is huge: it's a really great resource, and you never know who you're going to meet there.

If you've found this useful, please let me know (or even if you haven't!).

Happy writing and I wish you health, wealth and vitality.

The best is only just good enough.

2009-05-07T02:54:00.000-07:00

I found a great quote in My Documents today - I'd saved it there after copying it from a shop window poster, so I have no idea who originally said or wrote it:
"The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten."

How true - and how often it's forgotten!

Mind you, low price doesn't necessarily mean poor quality. If you buy a cashmere jumper in the sales at half price (low-ish, anyway!) it's still a cashmere jumper, and a jolly good buy by most standards. I'm thinking of a cheap acrylic jumper, that feels lovely and soft when you first buy it but looks like rubbish when it's pilled after the first couple of washes, not to mention the fact that it won't keep you warm. That sort of poor quality is never worth spending your hard-earned on.

My grandfather apparently (I never met him) used to say "The best is always the cheapest" - meaning that the best lasts longer than however many cheaper ones you'd have to buy to replace each other when they wore out/broke/looked awful. The best is built to last, fit for purpose tomorrow as well as today. If you're totally fashion-conscious and throw your clothes away at the end of every season, then cheap might just be OK, but for normal folk it's a waste of money.

The same is true of employing freelancers. There's no point hiring someone just because they don't charge much; there's probably a reason for it. If you want work done right, first time, on time, choose someone who has enough pride in themselves to charge a decent fee. They'll take pride in their work for you, too and save everyone stress, time - and, in the long run, money. Hire the best: not necessarily the most expensive, but definitely not the cheapest.

And hire someone who's trained to do the job. Don't just use someone from the office because they're there. I get very depressed reading websites (there are loads of them) that have obviously just been copied straight from the company brochure - who do they think is reading the site? Do they have the site up there just for potential investors, or do they actually want customers? Because if it's the latter, they need to sell, not tell. They need to focus on the reader and his/her wants, needs and desires, grab him by the wallet and make him buy Right Now This Minute before he has a chance to navigate away to another site that does want his business.

If you're in the position of setting up or revamping a website, and you don't have a trained copywriter in-house, do yourself and your company a favour: hire one. A good one. And be prepared to pay a decent fee for her efforts.

Thank you very much :-))

The joy(s) of freelancing.

2009-05-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

So there I was, walking the dogs in the drizzle and wind, and it dawned on me: this is why I went freelance. So that I could walk the dogs when they and I want (OK, I could do without the rain...), instead of at crack of dawn in the dark before work, and again in the dark after work, having spent the day in some overheated office with people I don't really like.

Though actually I've never had a job like that. I've only ever worked in an office for two periods of a few months, and both times it was with people I could at least tolerate and at best have a good laugh with. It was the hours I hated.

I prefer to start work when I'm ready and finish late than to get up at the same time as the rest of the world, have lunch ditto, drive home ditto, and then watch the same TV as everyone else. I'm not a ditto. I don't even have a TV, which put me at a bit of a disadvantage at the "water cooler" (or kettle, as we called it).

I'm told a lot of people miss the chat when they go freelance. I don't - maybe that makes me a curmudgeonly, anti-social boor, but I like to work in silence and just get on with it. I get distracted by the view from my window (those roses really need pruning and training back to a trellis: a job for a still day this summer), or by the dogs arguing in the background over who gets to lie in which bed. But I can hang on to my train of thought through those distractions where I can't with words or music going on in the background.

Most people when they consider becoming freelance writers think they'll be working for themselves. They won't of course: or if they do, it probably means they have no clients or editors clamouring for copy by yesterday. It takes loads of guts, self-belief and dedication to work completely for yourself, writing a book that may never get published, or painting a picture that may never be bought, admired, hung on a wall. More than I've got!

I may not (yet) make a lot of money at this writing business, but it sure beats the daily grind, and I can do it wherever I want - and whenever. That's my kind of business.

Furry balls

2009-04-29T06:34:00.000-07:00

I stopped using an office chair a few weeks ago and started using a 65cm exercise ball instead. I saw a client using one and thought "perfect!". It's supposed to be good for the core muscles, and I thought it would help my lower back and tum.

Besides, I can bounce on it when I get excited.

Nobody had warned me that it needs pumping up every few days. The desk got higher and higher, my back was having to get longer and longer; then it got to the point where my chin was virtually at desk level and I dug out the pump. But how to remove the bung? It was in tight, flat to the surface of the ball. I tried fingernails but gave up after a few seconds - it's not that I spend a lot of time admiring my nails, but I do like to have them intact. The blunt edge of a knife? No good. I ended up using pincers, nervous that the sharp corners would pierce the rubber. It seems all right though - I've had to do it several times now, and no visible damage so far.

Then there's the problem that rubber is - well - sweaty stuff. Which is fine if you're working out and expecting to get damp. Sitting in my office, quietly typing away to myself, I don't anticipate a perspiring bum, and I can't say I enjoy it much. I draped an old, dog-damaged pashmina over it, but it kept slipping off. So I looked on the internet and found Furriballs, with a whole selection of covers. You can have long-haired pink, ocelot, black panther - you name it, there's something to match most decor. Sadly no persian rug patterns, so the one that arrived yesterday is brown-and-white-cow. It will add a certain je-ne-sais-quoi to the surroundings, I like to imagine.

Now all I have to do is let all the air out of the ball, fit the cover, and then pump it all the way back up again ... by which time I shall be sweaty all over. Next time someone asks me "Do you take regular exercise?" I shall look them firmly in the eye and reply, "Yes, in my office, without ever going near a gym. And I work as I work out".

Ah, the joys of modern materials!

Still waiting for the results on my lower back and (especially) my tum...

A good day.

2009-04-24T03:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was St. George's Day and Shakespeare's (official) birthday, and today marks the anniversary of the composition of the Marseillaise in 1792. Shirley MacLaine, Barbara Streisand and Paula Yates were all born on this day, while Daniel Defoe (author of Robinson Cursoe) died on it. Obviously a good time of year to bring a child into the world if you want them to be "artistic".
Today was also my father's birthday - he died back in 2000, so it's a good day to remember him. He was a real Englishman, a career soldier with a lifelong passion for horses who became a farmer when he retired from the army aged 49 after 30 years' service.
He joined up in 1939, half-way through his studies at Oxford, trained as a cavalry officer - on horseback, in wartime, in 1939! - then had to learn to command a tank. He was captured fighting in the desert, escaped and walked south through Italy to join the British forces and then fought his way back up again. And then he went back to Oxford to complete his degree. Some "gap year", as an old friend of his said at his memorial service. He spent most of his service away from his Regiment (10th Royal Hussars), so we lived in Italy, Australia and Norway, with occasional postings in Blighty. What an amazing childhood for us...
Then aged 49 he went off to study farm management with a lot of boys half his age, and spent the next 20 years looking after cows and "baby beef". It's sad to reflect that he made more money selling the farm than he ever did running it.
What does this have to do with anything? Not much, except to celebrated the life of an extraordinary "very ordinary" man.
And of course, happy birthday to you too if you were born on April 24th! Have a great day.

The apple storm

2008-10-21T10:36:00.001-07:00

What a storm we've had these past couple of days! The last apples are off the tree and demanding to be used - even the autumn raspberries were being blown off the bushes; I've never seen that before! And the flimsy bit of plastic netting that acts as my front gate was blowing practically horizontally. So tomorrow was due to be Gate Day, when a couple of friends and I would build a new one. I spent much of yesterday buying all the hardware and extra wood (already got most of it) and we planned the whole thing like a medical operation, down to the last bolt.

And now one friend's had a to call off as she's going to have to work tomorrow. Maybe it's a good thing - it's freezing cold and still very blowy, and working outside wouldn't have been much fun.

What's that got to do with writing? Not much, except that now I shall have time to do some...! There are so many things to do at the moment - those apples, for example - that it's getting hard to find time just to sit down and write. Still, I got my client's website draft finished yesterday evening and emailed to him, which felt good. Let's hope it still feels good when I get his response!
It's not procrastination, nor lack of organisation: everything is important, just in different (mostly non-paying) areas of my life. I suppose it's just as well there aren't too many paying things that need doing, otherwise I'd never get the non-paying ones done at all. Maybe I just wasn't cut out to run a business?!? Or maybe having lots of paying stuff to do will "concentrate the mind wonderfully", as the man said about imminent death. We shall see...

Strictly come writing

2008-10-14T04:09:00.000-07:00

Some people go to the gym. I loathe gyms; I skate.

I've been learning ice-dance since I first went to college aged 18, so I started too old to be really good at it, to compete at top level, but I've been doing it long enough to be very competent. And I got thinking about the similarities between ice-dance and copywriting. A bit far-fetched, you might think, but stay with me on this one!

They're both about:

balance: obvious in skating! In copywriting you have to balance the stories, the sales pitch, the testimonials, the product details: too much of any one element, and the text feels unbalanced or stodgy, and it won't work.

accuracy: ice-dance is about neat footwork (forget what you may have seen in Dancing on Ice; dancers spend hours practising to get their feet to look as though they're about to tangle); copywriting is about accuracy of facts and details. And then there's the editing and re-writing: just like ice-dance, you have to be tough on yourself and get it absolutely right.

technique: like any sport, skating has technical difficulties. Copywriting uses techniques that evolve over time and need to be learnt and practised just as hard and as often.

stamina: I used to be on the ice at 5.30 am to train for 2 1/2 hours, do a day's work and be back at the rink at 10 pm for another hour, to avoid the public sessions. Depending on deadlines, copywriting can be just as tough.

partnering: ice-dance is a contact sport; so is copywriting - no client, no need to write!

fun: skating to me is the next best thing to flying, and I love writing - it's more fun than most things you can do sitting down...

Dance and copywriting both need a sense of rhythm.

For both you have to remain upright: stance or carriage is the main difference between an ice-dancer and a free-skater: a dancer is more upright and the body moves in a more controlled way. And if a copywriter's lying it will show in the copy and the copy won't fly.

They both involve a bit of fancy work - copy has to grab the attention and "surprise Broca" (Broca's area is the bit of your brain that deals with the mundane, the expected; it fills in the blanks. "In this day and ... ", "with the economy ... ...". When you surprise Broca, you shake the brain up: "with the economy breakdancing into recession"). In dance, I guess the equivalent would be the costumes and makeup and the lifts.

And with both of them, you never stop learning and improving, stretching your boundaries, trying new angles and novel moves, sweating the bad stuff out.

There, I knew I didn't need to go to the gym: I can write copy instead!