As professional writers, each one of us must determine what we will and will not write in return for pay. As a freelancer, there are times when I take projects that I don’t particularly want to do in order to pay the bills. But I draw an ethical line at certain tasks, and I’m wondering if other freelancers feel the same.

I won’t write sales copy for scams.

From time to time, I’ve been hired to write sales copy for products or services that turn out to be scams. Through the course of researching the product or service, I’ve turned up results including people complaining to the Better Business Bureau, people alleging that the products have dropped spyware or keyloggers onto their computer, or people complaining about how a product or service is a rip-off. If I uncover anything like this, I cancel the project. I won’t write copy designed to enable people to rip other people off, either outright or via installing malicious software. I personally feel that it’s unethical.

I don’t make false promises in my copy.

Everyone wants their copy to sound the best. People want to differentiate themselves in their niche, and give readers a reason to use their product or services instead of their competitors’. Occasionally, I get a client who wants me to highlight certain features – features that don’t function in the way the copy implies, or features that outright can’t deliver what the copy promises. I draw a line there. I’m adept at spinning copy to make a product or service sound like an ideal solution – but only if it actually works. If it doesn’t do what the seller is trying to promise it does, I won’t say that it does. In other words, I won’t write copy that lies.

I won’t work on projects I find personally offensive.

If I find a project personally offensive, I won’t do it – period. I would never want my writing associated with something that offends me, because writing is personal, and that would be akin to a tacit endorsement. At best, it’s hypocritical, which I strive not to be; at worst, accepting money to write about something personally offensive is an outright moral compromise, and that’s something I’m not willing to do for my job. This especially includes projects that promote hate, elitism, or contempt for one’s fellow man. I just won’t do it.

I won’t write biased reviews for pay.

This one gets tricky, because I started my freelance career writing ‘buying guides,’ which included reviews of certain products. Pretty early on in this project, I ran into a product that I didn’t feel warranted a positive review. I found a better product, and contacted my client to determine whether I could write about that product, instead. I explained the issue, and my client was supportive in my changing the product and writing the review about the better product.

Since that time, I’ve been very careful to avoid taking projects that entail writing a biased review. I’ll write honest reviews for pay – reviews that cover both the positive and negative aspects of a product – but I won’t write reviews that make a product sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread if it’s not, just because someone is paying me.

I don’t take projects I don’t believe in personally.

This is another tricky one. As a freelance writer, I occasionally find myself writing about something that doesn’t particularly matter to me. When I’m indifferent, I try to find an angle that does interest me, just so the copy isn’t bland and dull; as it typically is if a writer doesn’t care about the subject. I’m fortunate in that I enjoy learning about new things, so I can almost always find an angle that interests me in something that I don’t particularly care about otherwise.

But in my mind, that’s different than taking a project in which you outright don’t believe. For example, when I’m sourcing projects, I see a lot of projects in the self-help field, relating to wealth building and a number of other related topics. These are topics in which I actively dis-believe. I personally feel that these topics have no value, so I don’t bother to bid on these projects. My lack of belief would come through in my writing, and I feel it’s unethical to write about something in which I don’t believe; it’s like letting my copy lie for me. This really straddles the line, and I’m not sure many people would consider it actively unethical, but it violates my personal ethics, so I don’t do it.

I’d love to hear from other writers about this. Do you draw ethical lines at certain projects, or do you feel that doing so unnecessarily limits your potential project base? Are there any projects you feel strongly about taking, or not taking? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Language is imprecise. English is a rather convoluted language, but even with all of the special exceptions and unnecessary words we have, there are still times when language is imprecise. There are concepts that we can’t quite convey with our language. As a writer, and more particularly a wordsmith, I value precision. I prefer to use the right word for the job, instead of a word that’s somewhat close but not quite what I intend. Unfortunately, there are times when there just isn’t the right word to convey a meaning.

This, I think, is why language gets complicated. People want to try to convey a concept that doesn’t quite exist, or there isn’t quite the exact right way to say it, so people coin new terms or create additional meaning for existing words. Language is constantly evolving, and things have been added to the dictionary in my lifetime that appall me (see: ain’t). It’s in the nature of language to evolve, though, and words continue to take on new meanings, and new words are added to the dictionary every year.

TED Talk: The Opportunity of Adversity

In part, this musing on language was inspired by a TED Talk that I watched last night: Aimee Mullins: The Opportunity of Adversity. Ms. Mullins was born without shinbones, and spent her childhood ‘overcoming’ the adversity that condition imposed. In her talk, Aimee discussed the dictionary definition for disabled, and then a modern update to that definition. The definition of disabled itself contained nothing but negative language, and Aimee’s point was that using a term that only contains negative connotations restricts the people you’re labeling with this term. In her case, she was labeled with positive, powerful words as a child, and she was able to work with her adversity to accomplish amazing things as an adult. In large part, because of the words used to describe her; the power of language.

Implications and Connotations: What Language Means

The thoughts from that TED Talk have been percolating in my mind since I watched it, and today I was working on a project and noticed I was having trouble finding the right word for a concept. I was talking about ‘getting a job.’ It occurred to me that “getting a job” doesn’t really mean what people typically accept it to mean. You can’t just go to the grocery store and get a job, like you’d pick up a jar of peanut butter or some dog food. So “get” clearly wasn’t the right word. What, then, was correct?

I tried “find a job,” but that didn’t seem right, either. Finding a job is only part of the battle. Once you find a job, you must catch the attention of the people hiring for the job, and compete against the other applicants to be selected for the job. This usually involves a plethora of steps between finding a job and being hired for a job, so that clearly wasn’t the right phrase, either.

In the end, I concluded that I couldn’t find a phrase that was exactly right for the process of acquiring a job. But if one of your friends walked up to you today and said: “Hey, I just got a new job,” you’d congratulate your friend and understand exactly what he meant, even though “get” isn’t quite the right word.

People Accept the Flaws Inherent in Language

Both from the TED Talk, and from my own musings about the imprecision of language today, I’ve concluded that people simply accept the flaws inherent in language and find ways to work around them. Think about conversations you have with your friends or the people around you. How often do you say exactly what you mean? In most cases, you probably say something close to what you mean; something that is commonly accepted to mean what you trying to convey, but isn’t quite the right way to say it. And people simply accept that as inherent in the language itself, and generally don’t think twice about the fact that they didn’t say what they meant to say, but that they were still able to convey their intended meaning.

Finding the Right Word Removes Imprecision

Language can be imprecise, but finding the right word removes that imprecision. That’s why I sometimes spend chunks of time pondering a single word choice; not because I don’t know how to say something, but because I’m thinking about the best way to say something. In many cases, any word will do. With the right contextual clues, people can figure out what you’re trying to convey even if you didn’t use the best word for the job.

But using the right word or phrase removes the need to rely on contextual clues, and removes imprecision. With the right word, you never have to worry about whether or not people will understand what you’re trying to say. And by using the right word, every time, writing becomes clearer and more precise. Clear, precise writing is a joy to read, and its message is more powerful for readers, so it’s worth spending a little extra time to find the right word.

And if the right word doesn’t exist, blame it on the imprecision of language.

When you’re self-employed, doing your taxes becomes a hassle and a chore. We self-employed individuals aren’t like the rest of the world, filing taxes as early as possible so we can get refunds. Most self-employed individuals don’t get refunds at all, and owing taxes is a real possibility if you’ve had a successful year or if you’ve simply planned poorly. To help out my fellow self-employed brethren, I’ve compiled a list of handy DIY tax tips for the self-employed that I’ve gathered myself and through accountants in the past several years.

Keep a Spreadsheet of Your Expenses

The most important thing I do to keep track of my self-employed tax liability is to keep a monthly spreadsheet of expenses. At the very least, you should track all of your business expenses. I actually track all of my expenses, business and personal, so I can track where every penny went and make sure I’ve got everything properly allocated. I create one spreadsheet for each month, and save them all together in a workbook that covers that tax year. I enter expenses into various categories, depending on the expense, such as “Marketing,” “Unreimbursed Expenses” and other relevant categories. Then I total up my monthly expenses on the same line of each spreadsheet (for example, this year I used a SUM formula in line 50 of each Excel spreadsheet to aggregate my monthly expenses in each category).

At the end of the year, I put together a “Year End Summary” spreadsheet that pulls data from all of the individual month spreadsheets. For example, on my year end summary, I use this Excel formula to pull data from all of my monthly spreadsheets:

“=SUM(January!A50)+(February!A50)+(March!A50)+(April!A50)+(May!A50)+(June!A50)+(July!A50)+
(August!A50)+(September!A50)+(October!A50)+(November!A50)+(December!A50)”

Just a simple SUM formula is all you need for most of your expenses, and then you have a nice aggregate page of all of your annual expenses.

I’ve found that the easiest approach is to sit down for a few minutes every month and enter all of your month’s expenses. That way you’re not stuck sitting at your computer for hours at tax time just creating a summary of your expenses. Doing a few minutes every month is much more manageable, and makes tax time much less of a chore.

Use the Appropriate Tool for the Job

Make sure you use the appropriate tool to handle your taxes. Personally, I’ve used tax preparation services (H&R Block) and tax preparation software (Turbo Tax and Tax Cut) in the past 10 years. I’ve found that Turbo Tax Home and Business is the ideal tool for me; affordable, and covers everything I need to do in a level of detail that works for me. I prefer tax prep software because then I have the leisure to compile the appropriate data at my own pace, instead of setting up an appointment with a tax prep professional only to discover that I’m missing important paperwork or relevant data. If your finances are more complex, you might be better served by working with an accountant or CPA to prepare your taxes to ensure you meet your liabilities.

It’s Your Responsibility to Report Your Income: 1099 Hunting

Some of the self-employed individuals I know erroneously believe that if they don’t get a 1099, they don’t have to report the income. Unfortunately, that’s not true, and an IRS audit could come back and haunt them for operating under this erroneous belief.

Any client who pays you more than $500 through the course of the year is required to issue you a 1099 reporting your income. Smaller clients might not be so good at keeping track, and you may have to contact them to ensure they issue your 1099. If you track your income on an ongoing basis, you’ll know if you’re missing 1099s and can easily contact the outstanding clients. Although clients have an obligation to issue you a 1099, it’s your responsibility to ensure you report all of your earnings, so you may find yourself hounding clients to get your 1099.

Making Estimated Tax Payments = Good

Estimated tax payments are a common bugaboo for many self-employed individuals. The IRS requires that you make estimated tax payments if you make over a certain dollar amount, and you can be penalized if you fail to make estimated tax payments, or if your estimated tax payments aren’t high enough. Practically speaking, this also presents a problem for you at tax time because you could find yourself owing thousands of dollars if you haven’t made enough estimated tax payments.

This is another case where it’s extremely helpful to track your income and expenses in a nice summary spreadsheet on an ongoing basis. You can check your monthly income and expenses, and make more accurate estimated tax payments every quarter. Remember: making accurate payments up front prevents you from falling behind and owing more than you can afford.

Investigate Every Possible Deduction

The world of a self-employed individual is a world of deductions. Depending on your income, expenses and operating specifics, you may be eligible to claim deductions for a portion of your rent, your mortgage payment or your utilities. You might be able to file deductions for office supplies, uniforms or a myriad of other work-related expenses. If you elect to prepare your own taxes without the aid of a professional or tax prep software, make sure you do the legwork to search out every possible deduction you might be eligible to apply. This is one case where using tax prep software or a professional really pays for itself, because these tools help you get every possible deduction and can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Invariably, style guides disagree on some grammar specifics. I wrote a post last year about using commas in a series. In researching that post, I discovered that both common usages are correct – depending on the style guide you consult. Bottom line: grammar isn’t a hard and fast rule. Consult the appropriate style guide for your usage, and when in doubt, consider your target audience.

Deciding Which Style Guide to Use

Deciding which style guide to use can pose challenges. Obviously, if a publication or client requires a specific style guide, use the specified style guide – even if it’s an in-house style guide that doesn’t agree with ‘correct’ grammar rules. If the publication or recipient doesn’t specify the style guide, think about how the writing is being used.

If you’re writing for a newspaper or consumer magazine, the AP Stylebook is probably the appropriate reference. The AP Stylebook is also widely used for Web writing.

If you’re doing business writing, on the other hand, you’ll probably be better served by The Chicago Manual of Style.

For scholarly writing, you might want Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style or The Publication Manual of The American Psychological Association (APA Style, not to be confused with AP Style). You may also want to use The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers or the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing for appropriate MLA Style.

Using ‘Correct’ Grammar vs. Common Parlance

When you’re doing formal writing, you should definitely use correct grammar. If you’re writing for a corporation, or drafting professional documents, you’re typically representing a company and should utilize correct grammatical rules and word usage. However, if you’re writing for a more informal audience – on a blog, for example, or for a less formal target demographic – you might want to consider intentionally throwing some of the grammar rules out.

For example, if you’re talking to a more informal audience, and you want to build a rapport, you might want to ignore grammar rules like “don’t end a sentence with a preposition” and throw one right out there on the end. In fact, I know a lawyer who intentionally prefers to use more common ‘incorrect’ punctuation and word usage so his clients view him as more accessible, instead of using a correct but stiff writing style that fails to connect with the readers.

The goal of all writing is to connect with your reader on some level, so consider who you want to reach when you’re writing a piece. Ask yourself what tone and style would be best received by your audience, and utilize that style. And yes – if it means bending some grammar rules, bend some grammar rules. The world will keep on spinning, and you might get a new customer out of it.

Proofread, Proofread, Proofread

Finally, to make sure you’ve got it right, proofread, proofread, proofread. Read your copy as you’re writing it to ensure you’re using proper grammar and putting punctuation in the appropriate places. When you’ve finished a piece, re-read it for any errors and correct any awkward word usage. For important pieces, close the document and walk away from it for a while, and then come back later and review one final time for correctness. The triple-check should be enough to ensure you’re sending a beautiful, correct piece of writing out into the world, to the best of your ability.

In light of my articles on Why You Need SEO and Beware of Seo Firms last month, I thought I’d post some do-it-yourself SEO tips and tricks for small businesses or individuals who want to improve their search engine results without hiring a large firm. You can do a lot to improve your SEO on your own. If you don’t have the time, or don’t want to mess with the more technical aspects of do-it-yourself SEO, you can always outsource these functions – but know what they entail so you can decide if you’re getting what you pay for.

Content Optimization.

Content optimization is one of the keys of overall SEO, and it’s a service that I regularly provide for my clients. To optimize your content, you should break your content down into digestible chunks that pertain to a specific topic. Make sure the content relates to the title. If you’re not sure what to write about, or what title to use, try a free keyword search tool, such as Google’s Ad Words Keyword Tool, Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool, or other keyword search tools. These tools can give you an idea of what people are searching for so you can optimize your content for popular keywords in your field.

Use headers in your formatting to improve SEO.

One of the most important things you can do to improve your SEO yourself is to use headers in your Web page formatting. Many people simply use a “<strong>” tag to bold important subheadings in Web page designs. This totally misses out on the optimization available by using targeted headings. If you use a “<h1>”, “<h2>”, or “<h3>” tag for your headings, search engines place more weight on those headings, and give you a higher page rank if your headings relate to your title and your Web page content. By using the <strong> tool instead, search engines read your webpage as having no subheadings at all, and you’ll miss out on the opportunity to take advantage of those headings to boost your SEO and page rank.

Pay close attention to Title tags in DIY SEO applications.

Title tags are perhaps the single most important part of providing good SEO for your Web pages. Search engines look at title tags for keywords, and compare the title tags to your page to see if the content supports the title. If you don’t get your keywords in the title tag, you might not get ranked at all for that content – in spite of optimizing your content. The closer the keyword to the front of the title tag, the more it can influence your page rank. You should also make sure that the important title keywords appear at least once in your copy – bonus if you can work it into your subheadings and use the appropriate heading tags.

Leave the styling for CSS.

We’ve already looked at what opportunities you miss when you bold your headers instead of using header tags. Similarly, you should try to forgo styling in HTML as much as possible and leave the styling to the CSS. When you use CSS to style your page, you can specify how headings should look, how links should look and what visual styles you want to apply to your website. That means less code in your Web pages themselves, since the code is in the style sheet – and a better code-to-content ratio, which improves SEO.

Additionally, by keeping your styling in the CSS style sheets, you can implement standard HTML tags and code and capitalize on SEO functionality. You can also easily change styles via CSS to alter colors and other display properties, and test how these font and style changes affect conversion. This gives you an easy way to improve your conversion rates without having to spend hours changing every page’s HTML.

Deciding when to outsource SEO.

SEO isn’t something that everyone wants to do. Even though much of SEO is simple enough for anyone to implement themselves, it does still take time and requires you to tinker with the website. If you simply don’t want to deal with managing your website, or making the little tweaks that improve your SEO, it might be worthwhile to outsource your SEO.

Beware of expensive firms that charge you thousands of dollars for relatively minor SEO tweaks. Find out exactly what a firm’s SEO services entail, and decide whether it’s worth the cost for you. Much of what SEO companies do breaks down into these SEO categories: optimizing content, optimizing title tags and adjusting formatting. The technical aspects, such as title tags and formatting, are relatively easy tweaks and shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg.

For more info on things to look out for when you’re outsourcing your SEO, check out my article “Beware of SEO Firms.”

The question of quality vs. quantity is a question you face in any marketing campaign. If you keep a blog, should you strive to post daily and occasionally let drivel slip through, or post once or twice a week but limit your posts to quality information? If you’re using articles to promote your services, should you contract for ten short articles just to get your name out there, or one quality article to increase conversion and convince people to use your services?

The argument for quantity.

The argument for quantity is obvious. The more opportunities that people have to see your name, the more likely you are to reach people who wouldn’t see you otherwise. I.e. if you have 10 articles posted on 10 different websites, you’ve got a much higher chance for readers to see your articles than if you have 1 article posted on 1 website.

This is a common mistake that many people make when they’re planning a new marketing campaign. Many people would look at a limited budget, and say “Ok, I can get 10 low-quality articles out of this budget if I hire a low cost provider.” The simple mathematical outcome would drive the decision to select a low-cost provider for the sake of getting a greater quantity. Unfortunately, that approach only examines one part of the picture.

The argument for quality.

The argument for quality has more subtle benefits. If you deliver quality content, you’ll give your readers valuable content – content that they’ll have a reason to stick around and read. When readers see low-quality content, they’re likely to click away again immediately in search of someone else who provides better content. In this respect, quantity gives you more opportunities to get in front of readers, but less of an opportunity to make an impact.

For offisite article marketing, a similar principal applies. If you’re posting content offsite to try to lure readers onto your website and into using your services, you’ll need to give them a compelling reason to click that link. When you post ten articles that are full of the same drivel you can find on any other website, readers have no reason to click through to find more information and no temptation to use your services. If you post only two or three articles that contain unique information and convince your readers that your services are valuable, you’ve given those readers an excuse to click through to your website.

Quality content is your key to conversion.

Quality content also serves a very valuable purpose: it establishes you as an expert. Provide readers with informative, unique information, and they’ll see that you know your field. If you speak only in generalities or fail to give readers something they can’t find on a hundred other websites, they have no reason to choose your services over any other provider. When you’re looking for conversion, quality counts.

Quality content drives page views organically.

The primary argument in favor of quantity versus quality is the argument that a higher quantity of content gets you visibility in more places. While this is technically true, it’s not the only way you can get visibility. If you provide quality content on a wide range of topics – especially if you provide content on an ongoing basis, like in blogging – you’re much more likely to capture readers organically through search engine results and word of mouth. SEO is skewed to provide greater preference to ‘quality’ content; not keyword-laden pieces that are designed to ‘trick’ search engines into providing a higher page rank; so you’re more likely to capture readers organically if you provide quality content. This gives you opportunities you wouldn’t have with poor-quality, high-quantity content.

Quality content is good for word-of-mouth.

Low-quality content may get you page views, but people won’t think of you twice and certainly won’t recommend you. High-quality content – content that provides valuable or difficult-to-find information – is content that people will remember, and recommend to friends and contacts. How do you think things grow virally? It isn’t because it’s forgettable content. The key to viral marketing is to provide memorable content that people want to share – not mediocre content that people just don’t care about.

Bottom line: ROI on quality content is better.

Bottom line: your return on investment for quality content is better than quantity. Sure, quantity can get you page views – but low-quality content won’t get you conversion. Since the key to any business website is conversion, quantity just doesn’t have the bang for the buck that quality content provides. Invest in quality content, and you’ll see a direct return on investment that correlates with the quality of your content.