Are you completely satisfied with your company’s domain name?  Does it perfectly reflect the image of your company that the public should have? Will consumers recognize your domain name when they see it and will it make sense to those seeing it for the first time?  Does it speak to who you are and what your company does?

A great domain name serves many purposes. It is very important for successful SEO.  It can bring instant recognitian to your on-line presence. It can be easy to remember and serve to enhance your public image.

And what of a bad domain name? It can waste your time, energy and digital funding by taking your company nowhere on the Internet.

The Great Writer and Solution Content offer a domain name consultation service that can enhance your company’s on-line presence, increase your SEO success and further develop your brand and image.  We can provide you with great content, that can achieve many of these goals, but your domain name is the ultimate tool for success.

Our domain consultation service looks at your company, your mission statement, your goals, your market and your competitors.  We then determine several potential domain names that best express your company, its products or services and the image you would prefer to project.  We do extensive research to find the perfect domain name and check on its availability.  We also make sure that it is unique and does not duplicate what your competitors are using.

We have performed this service for companies for a fee close to $5,000.  We are reducing this service, for the month of July, to only $500.  Your only additional expense is the minimal cost of the new domain name.  This provides an enormous opportunity to advance your company’s on-line image and your SEO success.

The Great Writer will either replace an existing domain or help your company with its introduction to cyberspace.  Our research will find the perfect domain name for your company. It can mean all the difference in your company’s digital success.  Contact us today.

For the full-time commercial copywriters who read this site, I am presenting a prime example of why the lower end of our profession is about to slip off into darkness and forever be lost.

It is an illustration of just how dismal the market is for lower-cost writers and the buyers who are guiding soon-to-fail businesses.  For those of us who work to turn small businesses into big businesses, it is disheartening to know that so many short-sighted business owners are driving their businesses into the ground.  Copy and content writers, who provide services to this market are generally new to the market or hanging a shingle out with a sign that reads ‘copywriter’ without any formal knowledge.

I spend about 5% of my time looking at projects posted in the service marketplaces.  There was a time when good projects could be found there.  Today, the rates paid by buyers are 80% lower than a year ago and the need for quality writing is nowhere to be found.  If you need proof of this, take a look at this project cancellation notice from one service marketplace website. (they must have thought that my bid was stratospheric…it would have been a fun subject, so I placed a bid)

The buyer should learn to spell ‘professional,’ but I doubt that he knows the word.  The project required an amount of writing that would cost $400 on the low end of the commercial copywriter fee scale. Most of the writers bidding on the project bid $50 in open bidding.  These are not full-time commercial copywriters as a rule, but 50 bucks for the amount of writing required was a cheap rate for even mediocre writing.

Note that the buyer cancelled the project and complained that $50 was too high considering that he can get the work done for $20.  Will this buyers’ business be around a year from now? Very likely NOT.

Business owners very rightly focus on ROI.  They have to get the most bang for their buck.  They have to balance this concern though with the need to build a solid image and brand.  One of the worst mistakes they can make is to compromise on the quality of their content and copywriting. If their target market is made up of reasonably bright people, the prospective clients and customers will remain just that; prospective.

On this site, I have talked about the downside of hiring a $60 writer, but just imagine the $20 writer.  It’s a good thing that the buyer does not expect ‘professional’ quality writing. Unless their target market is made up largely of illiterate buyers, then they are shooting themselves in the proverbial foot.

The disturbing fact is that the service marketplaces no longer offer professional working writers with a venue for connecting with serious buyers.  They have become a repository for low-quality writing and soon-to-vanish companies. I can’t speak to the state of graphic arts, web design and programming, but as for writing, the writing is on the wall.

The lesson to be learned here for buyers of copy and content is that they may have to seek good writing elsewhere.  The other reminder is that scrimping on quality will result in steadily decreasing sales. Worse yet, for small businesses, it can mean no increases in struggling sales.

The lesson for writers is this; don’t waste too much of your time in service marketplaces. You will be reduced to the lowest common denominator.  It’s like a brilliant person marrying an imbecile; the imbecile doesn’t become brilliant in the process.  The brilliant person, on the other hand……….

If you need quality writing and expect to have a successful company or continue a record of success, then by all means, contact us.

The freelance copywriting market has been corrupted

Who needs quality writing?  What is quality writing?  Does quality writing still exist in the world in 2009? These questions are legitimate and warranted in light of the state of freelance copywriting today. 

The staggering unemployment rate in the U.S. has flooded the freelance copywriting market with untested amateurs who use the service marketplaces to find uninformed buyers.  Copywriters in countries where English is the second language are flooding the world market also, writing English copy and content for an English-reading market.  Both groups pose problems for buyers, professional copywriters and even readers.

Service marketplace buyers suffer

In service marketplaces like Elance and Guru, buyers are snatching up the work of unproven writers because of their low-ball bids.  The buyer never sees beyond the bid amount and rarely blames the amateur writer when the copy or content falls flat.  Brand and image seem to take a back seat when a page of words comes so cheaply.

The net result of this trend is to drag down the fees for copywriting.  While free markets normally have a positive outcome for the consumer, the effect on copywriting is just the opposite.  

Buyers, in the service marketplaces, get copy and content that does not convert their site visitors or sell their products or services.  The buyers are left scratching their heads wondering if they need a new sales approach.  Their sales strategy may be sound, but the words that convey that strategy may be poorly planned and poorly structured. 

The $60 dollar copywriter-quality is not in their vernacular

Imagine the quality of writing when a writer bids $60 to author all of the content for a new website.  Juxtapose that writer’s experience and mindset with the requirements of the website.  In most cases, the website has been developed to sell a product or service.  Each page of that website has a specific purpose and mission, all of which is compromised by hiring the $60 writer.

Imagine also the impact of the web content on native English speakers and readers when the content has been authored by someone who does not speak or write English as a first language.  The writer is confident that their copy or content is written in perfect English, but the site visitor knows the difference and the image of the site owner’s company becomes dubious.

It may seem too cliché’ at times to state that ‘you get what you pay for,’ but the reality of the freelance writers marketplace is that a buyer is always left with what they paid for.  In the case of a website, the all-important content, tasked with achieving sales and brand-building, is ineffective at doing either.  The company eventually fails and the site owner points the finger at the competition or the market.  The sad truth is that the content they purchased may have done just as well as a placeholder.

The net result of hiring an inferior writer

What can a buyer get from a freelance writer for $60?  Words.

Take the example of an e-commerce website.  The content on the homepage has to be effective at selling a site visitor and prompting that visitor to explore the site beyond the homepage.  A professional content writer knows how to do this and what will motivate the site visitor to remain on the site past the first paragraph on the homepage.  A $60 content writer knows how to construct a paragraph.

The About Us, FAQ and Service or Product pages all offer additional opportunities to sell.  An inexperienced content writer sees these pages in stark terms.  There is enormous missed opportunity for the site owner because the amateur writer only regurgitates what he or she is told.  There is no value-added benefit.

How many companies will lose the potential for meeting or exceeding sales goals because they decided to take the cheap approach and hire the lowest cost copy or content writer?  How many companies will fail because they hired a writer who could barely author their own bio?  When quality writing is sacrificed, who suffers most? 

We are living in an era where service providers can access a worldwide audience.  Some of those service providers are experienced and competent and some will be a bane to their employers.  Many site owners will never realize their impact and many small businesses will fail because they scrimped on the most important commodity they require; quality writing.  Hire experience.  

Contact us today.  It’s your image.