How to Make Money on The Web. When YOU Cannot Sleep

A long essay written by somebody who wants to make money on the Web writing. But he still have to learn how to write properly and how to make money
properly.

How to make money writing for the Web

The world goes round about money. Or sex? Or both? Well, money is something that pushes hard on the Earth spinning speed. The Web being a commodity and the keyboard being just a peripheral of my arms should be enough to make money on the Web, writing.

Ah, yes, I need an Internet connection. But if you are reading this it would mean I got it somehow.

Where to start? Once upon a time, when in school, I had to resort to the dictionary or the encyclopedia. A huge collection of green-tissue covered tomes accumulating dust in the living-room. Well I should call it the Dying room.

Searching for info was just a matter of browsing the alphabetical index: aaa, bbb, fff, ggg, llll, mmm, make, make money. Here it is.

But there was no “for the Web” in the 70’s. Or at least, not outside of the ARPA premises.

Searching for “how to make money writing for the Web” on our beloved google gives an astoundingly matching:

How to Make Money Writing On the Web by Barbara Price Galvan: link

[”Paste special” on Word, allows miracles. Just paste HTML code as simple text and you avoid to fill endlessly the list of styles in your document (body text, heading 99, etc bolded]

Let’s see what Ms. Barbara is offering to us poor thirdy worldy un-literates.

Third button click on the Google link, and Firefox, swiftly (I don’t know what swiftly means), open in the background a new tab hosting this new knowledge waiting to be
discovered.

One out of 6,900,000 (thousands and millions separated by commas as americans do).

I mean, I am about to read what Google considers the first and maybe the most relevant (what Page Ranking will it have?) piece of information available online about “How to make money writing for the Web”.

I am almost excited.

Even if I start to think that this has absolutely no sense I am, incredibly, engaging myself.

Ok, I am there. The beautiful luminosity of my 1280 x 1024 pixels wide LCD monitor is showing a quite sparse page with pastel colors and soft shadows wherever is possible.

I feel like… calm.

(three dots… very much giving the sense of a direct discourse, a chat. Good stlye? Uhm. or Hum?)

Ok, Word is covering part of the page since I am writing so it’s a sort of playing poker game. I switch windows to read what’s in the “MASTER FREELANCE – MASTER YOUR CREATIVE CARRER – www.MasterFreelancer.com” page.

I read the left navigation menu. It’s rich. A lot of links. Illustrated by crisp icons. Icons, yes, in the Windows 3.11 way though. Not buttons. But many of them anyway.

Writing software, Screenwriting software, “Tools to make you a better editor, grammar expert, and style guide perfectionist.

The style is direct, concise. You, your. Positively encouraging: to make you a better editor. To make you a grammar expert. To make you a style guide perfectionist.

I feel the power of these positive formulas.

All of your needs. It’s encompassing All of My Needs in writing, screenwriting and being a style guide perfectionist.

Word is still covering the right part of the screen. I am still focused on the left nav bar.

And I have already quite a grasp on the type of content and services I am going to experience on this site.

Efficiency. I would call this efficiency. And I have explored not more than one tenth of the visible screen area. (not the page).

I proceeding with the exploration: E-book store; Book store.

Well, a writing inspirer. Could not be less than a writer. So I would obviously expect to find her books here. And here they are. Magazines also. Audio and video. The things start to become more multimedia-prone. Pricing and market guides. Life writing. I can’t grasp clearly the abstract concept behind these words: life writing. Maybe diaries? It must be so: “Software and books to help You capture Your life on paper.”

I am starting to learn something. Use the “You” when you want to establish a relationship with your reader.

New Products.

Hum. Why here. Why at the 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, tenth place? Aren’t You used to find the “what’s new” section all the way on top?

Well, here “What’s HOT & What’s NEW” is available only after other nine choices.

And, according to the Netiquette saying that when you write in CAPITAL LETTERS IT MEANS YOU ARE SCREAMING, the words ‘hot’ and ‘new’ are SCREAMED.

After Best Buys I reach Writers’ Resources. And the unavoidable “Free” downloads.

Since the page is at least three screens tall, I have now to scroll down to read the last item in the navigation menu: Customer Service.

I presume this website is making serious business if they have, besides the mandatory Contact Us, a Return Policy, World Wide Shipping, Payment Options and More.

Ok, I still have to look at what’s inside the actual content of this page. (I am cheating because I already glanced ad it but even if I have a visual memory I didn’t get a readable picture of it).

I have quite a bunch of hints to describe what this page is about and the dimension of the efforts put into it. There are a lot of services, tools and books for writers and screenwriters. There are resources for freelancers plus style guides, bargains and free downloads.

It’s clear that most of the previous things are for selling and the infrastructure presented just on the surface seems to be solid and working.

I was almost missing an animated banner where “Wizards4Word”, a tool that would automatically format & fix My manuscript, is flashingly advertised.

This page is huge. And still I didn’t find wasted space. All the way down to the bottom (could have I said just “down”?) there still navigation options that I have lost the will to read. But they are, uhm, Ok! Repetition. Redundancy. Just the repetition of some navigation choices presented some paragraphs ago.

Together with Customer Benefits.

I am starting to see a second positive thing here. Help section repeated with different names (it was Customer Support before). Near Customer Benefits.

Customer Benefits which (or that?) are:

* All Major Credit Cards Accepted (good, I wouldn’t go for less)
* 60 Day Money-Back Guarantee (fair, Mr. Evoy somewhere was suggesting to extend this period to something like
365 days. As to say: you will forget to claim your money back)
* Fast Shipping On Stocked Items (ok, I want it now)
* Free Shipping On Each Item After Your Third Item (Savings. Offerings. Discounts)
* International Shipping Available (Of course)

I am aware that it should sound obvious. Everything I read so far is something so common that You could almost take it for granted. But the sequence is just correct.

Clear, rich, textual navigation with uncluttered graphics.
Lot of keywords in the text.
Clear identification in the roles described.
Motivation to know more.
Sense of trust in the offerings and in the trade details.
Money back guarantees and international shipping.

Everything is laid down to build a solid ground upon which a beautiful skyscraper of products can be built. Right now.

Footer. Down.

Go Back To top. A useful navigation device even if usually I scroll.

And a Viral, Promotional device: “Email this page to a friend”. I am almost tempted to use it.

I did it. I am on a new page. Absolutely in the same theme of the website. A clear form is pre-filled and ready to be sent to My friend. The message subject is pre-filled: “MasterFreelancer Web Store”. Explicitly commercial.

And the body reads:

Thought you might be interested in reading this web page: http://www.masterfreelancer.com/aah005.html

Thus I am expecting My friend to receive a message vaguely resembling a spam letter with a short, direct, informal text referring to a not very clear page aah005.html (AAH) on the masterfrerlancer.com domain.

MasterFreelancer is a name memorable that I can remember quite well. But AA005 turns on all my privacy, security,
curiosity alarm bells.

Anyway, I am going to send it.

Ouch. The thanks message was so fast that I couldn’t even read it. Maybe it’s better.

I am finally left with the actual content of the home page to be read and AAH! Now I understand: I clicked on the
aah005.html page when I was going through the hyperspace of Google. And that is why that page’s URL was referred
in the “recommendation email”.

Ok now it makes sense. And other things are coming to my mind (smart eh?) This was not an home page (a n hhhome page) but one of very many product pages. Now that I moved Word’s window I see yet another navigation on top. This one is graphical though textual. They are graphical button. Quite sober. White text on sea-green background.

Email This site is also here on top. There’s the SITE MAP then (OH, I want to see the map) and then Resource for writers and Free downloads again. But Free downloads here is promoted to main item status instead of sub item of a longer list.

Immediately below I can View Shopping Cart (this time is not Your shopping cart) and I can Check out. A quite wide Search text field is in the middle of the page with a Go button on the right side.

Redundancy is back again at the far right side with Customer Service and Contac Us.

No lack of navigation! Wherever I go: Top, Left, Bottom I can navigate somewhere with clear indication.

My eyes just fell on the top logo on the left. There was the Toll-free (for USA) number and a number for Outside U.S.

On the top right of the page there is a big advertising banner: StyleWriter, The Plain English Editor, Software to Make YOU a better Writer. Free Online Demo.

No actually it’s FREE ONLINE DEMO. And the banner has a distinguished look (not sure what it means) with a nice and well contrasted yellow text on navy blue background.

Should I click it?

But I never click on advertising…

That is why nobody is clicking on my Google Ads.

But “if it’s relevant to what you are looking for you consider the ads as CONTENT” As YOUR content. Well, I am here because I searched for “How to make money writing for the Web” so I think that StyleWriter IS relevant to the context of my visit.

OK, I click it.

Third button click on it and “pumf”. A third tab appears.

There’s a bug in my Firefox. I can’t read the page title in the title bar. I doesn’t update. I can only read the initial part of it in the tab title: “StyleWriter / Style Writer / StyleWri…” and then it’s cut by the end of the tab.

Well, three words and three repetitions. The second is a different writing style (doh!) of the word “StyleWriter”.

What are we up-to to be properly indexed by Google?

The page. It’s still a Master Freelance page. Same user interface. It’s a product page. Guess about what: Stylewriter. So now I recognize all the navigation devices I met so far. The only difference is in the content that I still have to analyze in the previous page.

Anyway there is something that clearly jump to my eyes. The banner on top: its promoting “StyleWriter”! But I am already reading the Stylewriter page. What happen if…

Fourth tab. And is a duplicate of the page I was visiting. And the “new” page still contains an ad to Stylewriter. Maybe I should coin a new term: Fractal Advertisement. Ok, it’s just a small glitch. If I had control on the advertising system I would just exclude this page from showing the “StyleWriter” promotion banner. That’s it.

I am not going to talk about StyleWriter. I came here to read the first page out of 7 millions about “How to Make Money Writing on the Web” and I am going to read it.

I still can’t access the content of the page if I don’t go over another menu. This one is about the type of content I am browsing: ebooks. So this page is about an ebook. I can go <

Intra-page navigation is very well promoted. More pages visited more chances to sell. More exposure.

But ebook is just a macro category. I have in facts subcategories:

[ Freelancing | Writing | Marketing | Novel Writing | Publishing | Inspiration | Screenwriting ]

Textual signs as [, | and ] are quite useful in this case and they are much popular in textual navigation menu.

So I know I am accessing a page about ebooks that has many categories but the subcategory of this specific page is not signed so unless this info is provided somewhere else I have no clear indication about what category I am visiting right now.

Finally. Here is the title: “How to Make Money Writing On the Web”.

No, actually is centered. Green and written like this:

How to Make Money
Writing on The Web

by Barbara Price Galvan

The author’s name is red instead.

On the top right there’s a black and white reproduction of a book. Front view with an isometric perspective showing the thickness of a book that would have not less than 200 pages. Maybe 300.

The cover is not trying to fouling the reader. It’s just not a cover. I mean You can recognize a book when you meet one but this is just centered text.

After the title I start to receive some hints about what this ebook is containing.

71 Ways For A Writer To Make Money and 10 Search Phrases That Will Make You Money On The Web

Copying and pasting in the traditional way, using Word, creates this type of problems. Only the previous two
lines were underlined but since when you paste HTML into word you carry with you the style of the last piece of
text, now I am writing underlined.

Ok, removed the underlined.

Text underlined on the Web means hyperlinks. It means I can go with My 7 button mouse over it and, My cursor will change to the pointing finger icon, the status bar will change showing the URL where I would take if I… wait a minute.

No mouse is changing here. No fingers are appearing if I go with the mouse over the text.

Hey. It’s just underlined text. It’s not an hyperlink.

Fact. You are reading a promotional page about “How to Make Money Writing On the Web” and on the Web you usually underline text when you wan to link to a page (an image, a document, whatever) you do not usually underline text when it’s not linked to anything.

This is not a positive sign for me. Me not a writer, for sure. But a well seasoned Web designer and Web publishing courses facilitator, for sure.

The ebook is available as an electronic book and it will be delivered to me by email within 24 hours if I buy it. I would need “Get Acrobat Reader” if I want to read it.

The price is only 8,95 US dollars.

Only is maybe an appropriate adjective. 9 dollars is not much for an ebook. Well, for a book. 9 dollars for an ebook is an appropriate price.

AAH! the Web page address is just the code for this item: “Item #AAH-005”.

There’s an excerpt or a quotation:

“I personally have had several successful writing assignments on the Internet, including this one. I quickly found there were several things I needed to know how to do immediately and on a regular basis - such as how to search for jobs and information, how to get exposure for my name and writing, and how to make money. What I learned from my research will keep me busy for years. Use this information - in fact, use bookmarks so you’ll know where to look when it’s time to use this information for yourself. Which will be when you find a market for your writing.” - Barbara Price Galvan

The name is bold. I mean in bold style. This seems to be useful for Google indexing. If I stress one word it’s because (maybe) it’s important or it gets particular attention in this context. (It is).

I cannot refrain from dissecting the previous text:

“I personally have had several successful writing assignments on the Internet, including this one.”

This one for sure. But I have to buy it to read it. Let’s see what Google is saying about. I will search for the entire name quoted since it’s so peculiar I have a good chance to find the original instances of the actual author’s name cited somewhere.

Third hit:
amazon!

The “automate the Office with WinBatch” is on Amazon.

I read:

* Plastic Comb: 87 pages
* Publisher: Barbara Price- The Price Company; (October 1, 1999)
* ISBN: 1929452012
* Average Customer Review: 2 out of 5 stars Based on 2 reviews. Write a review.
* Amazon.com Sales Rank in Books: #793,627

(Publishers and authors: improve your sales)

87 pages for $29.99 $25.49.
Two stars out of five based on two reviews.

The “Book Description” needs some editing, verbatim copy:

Book Description
Question Shouldnt there be some way to automate your computers redundant little chores and some big chores too; to make life easier? Answer The answer to that question is Automate The Office To Be More Productive With WinBatch by Barbara Price Galvan.

Now an unexpected but well appreciated laugh:

1 out of 5 stars Poor example of 7th grade Composition!, December 29, 1999

Reviewer:
Robert L. Gabardy “Old Duffer” (Fountain Hills, Arizona USA) - See all my reviews

This book breaks every rule of Composition that my 7th Grade English teacher taught me. Not only are you exposed to singular subjects with plural verbs, but sentence structures throughout the book are poor. The book makes reference to a CD that is supposed to accompany the book, but is not furnished. The author immerses the reader in computer jargon from the Introduction on to the end of the book. This, notwithstanding the implication that the audience is expected to include non-programmers. The non-programmer will need Pepcid before going very far into the book. Save your money. Your dissatisfaction with this writing is guaranteed or your money back!

Amazon is asking:

Was this review helpful to you?

Amazon is not recommending any other book near this one. I could read some sample pages but I don’t have the will to.

The fourth Google search hit is still an Amazon one: WebMusic.Com: Making CDs and MP3 Music Free
87 pages for $21.99 $18.69.
Only 2 left in stock

* Spiral-bound: 60 pages
* Publisher: Barbara Price- The Price Company; (December 13, 1999)
* ISBN: 1929452063
* Average Customer Review: 5 out of 5 stars Based on 1 review. Write a review.
* Amazon.com Sales Rank in Books: #1,591,984

60 pages for 19 dollars.

Book Description
WebMusic.Com: Making CDs and MP3 Music Free

This book will help you learn to download and listen to free music via the Internet. Then turn those free songs in to a MP3 CD or a CD that can be played on your home or car stereo. Learn how to take your favorite songs off you own CDs to create a mixed CD. This book comes with a CD-ROM with over 25 free MP3 songs ready for you to convert or just enjoy.

One “perfect” review:

5 out of 5 stars Wow! Easy enough for a child., February 19, 2000

Reviewer: A.Calvar (USA) - See all my reviews

I have read this authors other books and this one is on all levels. My 9 year old daughter wanted me to buy this
book and within an hour she was making her first mixed free cd. She loves it!

I think I could access the author’s page on Amazon and actually I see the seven books listed.

I won’t see the other google’s results. I have the impression that the majority of them are just portals aggregating mass of similar products and just copying the description from the cover.

Like this for instance:
http://www.booklocker.com/books/189.html

a Nice interface: but the very same content.

I think Barbara did a great work in promoting this ebook.

I can’t believe I found a page of our HTMMWOTW on Amazon:

List Price: $12.99
Price: $11.04 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. See details.
You Save: $1.95 (15%)
Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours
Only 2 left in stock–order soon (more on the way).

It costs more than the first page where I found it: 11.04 instead of 8.95 us dollars.

and finally some reviews:

1 out of 5 stars Not much content, January 9, 2001

Reviewer: A reader

This pamphlet, filled with grammatical errors and typos, purports to help writers make money writing on the Web. Unfortunately, it’s more about conducting Web searches than anything else, providing a list of out-of-date search engines as a starter. Lacking any kind of transition from chapter to chapter, you wonder why some of the material is there at all. The last chapter talks more about selling products on the Web than writing for sites. You won’t learn much at all here on finding writing work on the Web.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2 out of 5 stars Not What it Seems, August 25, 2000

Reviewer: A reader

The book is a small pamphlet like booklet. It is very technical; it goes through searches, free web pages, and designing a web page, not much about writing. Some helpful information about getting unpublished work seen.

1 out of 5 stars Not worth your time, March 7, 2000

Reviewer: A reader

It is a shame that a book touting “writing” on the web should be so poorly written and lack any real new information. If you know how to perform a search on the internet, you don’t need this book.

4 out of 5 stars Want to get published? Buy this book!, February 19, 2000

Reviewer: A.Calvar (USA) - See all my reviews

This book was interactive and taught me where to go to keep job opporunities piling up on my desk. I would recommend it to anyone breaking into the writing field.

Coincidentally A.Calvar, the last reviewer is the same enthusiastic reader of the other book about mp3…

Well, at this point I totally lost interest in HTMMWOTW. But I learned some useful things during the analysis.

It would be nice now to summarize them but I feel sleepy.

Ciao,

I spent 145 minutes in writing about 4000 words and 23000 characters.

Pieces of gold:

Free Web Site Pages Especially for Writers