February, 2023

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Are you an opportunity-seeker or an entrepreneur?

Nick Ursborne

As freelancers we all need to invest in our futures by learning. This means subscribing to some newsletters, listening to podcasts, buying relevant business books, and sometimes investing more heavily in online courses, products or programs. But before you take the leap and invest a few hundred or thousand dollars in that next program, think carefully about what you are doing, and why.

Freelance 200
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The 4 Elements of Building Your Brand as a Freelance Copywriter.

Nick Ursborne

Too many freelancers believe that creating a brand starts and ends with the creation of a clever logo and a nifty tagline. Not so. The final expression of your brand, in words and images, comes right at the end of the process of brand creation. Why? Because, as a freelancer, your brand is YOU. You can’t create your business without putting yourself front and center.

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New Freelance Writers Are Struggling Financially (30% Are Earning Less Than $10/hr in The First Year)

Elna Cain

This is shocking! I discovered that the true answer to how much new freelance writers make remains low – $10/hour. Writers are struggling financially, and I think I know why. And even though the report was done a few years ago, I suspect the low rate remains today. It’s not as easy as saying it’s because of AI taking over or that, collectively, businesses just don’t want to pay for writing.

Freelance 211
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Do These 3 Types of Wordiness Sneak Into Your Writing?

Enchanting Marketing

I bet you know someone. Someone who rambles on so much you can’t follow their story. Worse, you lose the will to listen. Of course, you are a different communicator. You focus on your listener or reader. You try to be clear and concise. But could it be that a dash of wordiness sneaks into your writing? It’s easily done. Shall I explain? Let me tell you a quick story first … It was 2011.

Writing 285
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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

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8 Inspiring Lifestyle Blog Examples For 2023

Blogging Wizard

Need a few lifestyle blog examples to view as inspiration for your own blog? Lifestyle blogs are one of the web’s most popular and competitive blogging niches, so it helps.

Blog 278
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Outsourcing, Subcontracting, and Scaling up

Kayleigh Moore

Ask a freelance writer what responsibilities are on his or her to-do list, and you'll hear something like this: Business development. Marketing. Podcast appearances. Client communications. Project management. Creating contracts and proposals. Invoicing. Taxes. Payroll. Researching. Writing. Editing. You get the idea. For many years, I too felt it was my duty as a freelancer to handle all of these things.

Freelance 162

More Trending

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To maximize your freelance income, find the gap.

Nick Ursborne

This is something of a mantra for me: Find the gap! Too many freelancers build up a body of expertise in a particular area and then dive straight in. Maybe they decide to be a writer or copywriter in the alternative health industry. Or the financial industry. Or the software industry. They choose those industries because they are interested in them.

Freelance 190
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The Fastest Way to Build Your Freelance Writing Business (Even With Thousands of Layoffs)

Elna Cain

Look – What’s the fastest way to build your freelance writing business when people are losing their jobs everywhere you look? The tech and media industries are laying off thousands of workers. All over Twitter, I’m seeing posts from writers sharing about the latest layoffs. In the past few weeks, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, laid off 12,000 workers, representing 12% of its workforce.

Freelance 198
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6 Influencer Marketing Metrics To Watch and 5 Tools To Help

Content Marketing Institute

Before you ever tap a social media influencer for a marketing campaign, you need the right metrics. And once you engage them, you must scrutinize the analytics even more. Here are six metrics to assess and some tools to help you do so.

Marketing 145
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The Business Skill I Wish I Could Grant to All Writers

Jane Friedman

Photo by Sora Shimazaki Is it querying? No. Networking? No. Marketing? No. Of course such skills are terrific assets, but if I could wave a magic wand, I’d grant all writers the skill of negotiation. By and large, writers don’t even consider trying to negotiate; they just accept the terms/contract/pay that is initially offered. This is partly a quirk of an industry where writers regularly get stepped on and asked to work for free in exchange for exposure.

Writer 145
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Marketing Operations in 2025: A New Framework for Success

Speaker: Mike Rizzo, Founder & CEO, MarketingOps.com and Darrell Alfonso, Director of Marketing Strategy and Operations, Indeed.com

Though rarely in the spotlight, marketing operations are the backbone of the efficiency, scalability, and alignment that define top-performing marketing teams. In this exclusive webinar led by industry visionaries Mike Rizzo and Darrell Alfonso, we’re giving marketing operations the recognition they deserve! We will dive into the 7 P Model —a powerful framework designed to assess and optimize your marketing operations function.

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Content Marketing Goals: How Many & Which Ones

Ahrefs

First, it mistakes goals for outcomes of content marketing. Second, you shouldn’t design to hit only one of those “goals” because it can hurt content quality.

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How to Improve Your Blogging Focus: 5 Distractions to Release

Blogging From Paradise

Blogging distractions pull you away from a successful blogging career. As a rule of thumb, bloggers distract themselves into failure.

Blog 145
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Make a big splash a few times a year. Or fade from view.

Nick Ursborne

It’s hard for freelancers to maintain a high level of visibility. For the most part, our clients and prospects think about us only when they need us. Day-to-day, their attention is more likely to be focused internally, on their own company and colleagues. How do we get around this? What steps can we take to become more visible? How can we stay top of mind?

Freelance 173
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Evolution of the Search Landscape and Future Search Trends

Neil Patel

Search is like the front door to your website. As the most effective way to reach your audience, search is critical to your digital marketing strategy and each customer journey. Your customers are only a search query away, thanks to search engines like Google. Once customer meets brand, it’s like connecting with an old friend on Facebook. I bet you don’t remember what it was like before.

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Mastering Remote Onboarding: Proven Strategies for Seamless New Hire Integration

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

Join this brand new webinar with Tim Buteyn to learn how you can master the art of remote onboarding! By the end of this session, you'll understand how to: Craft a Tailored Onboarding Checklist 📝 Develop a comprehensive, customized checklist that ensures every new hire has a smooth transition into your company, no matter where they are in the world.

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Is Twitter Still a Thing for Content Marketers in 2023?

Content Marketing Institute

Now that Twitter’s “new normal” has taken hold, brand reaction is evolving. To what degree? Marketers share what they’re doing (and not doing) – and they don’t all agree.

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How Author Platform Connects to Author Brand

Jane Friedman

Photo by Peter Aroner on Unsplash Today’s post is excerpted from Brand the Author (Not the Book) by Karen A. Chase ( @KarenAChase ). Certain words and phrases are bandied about all the time in publishing, but they don’t always make sense. One of the biggest is author platform. You may have attended enough writing seminars and conferences to recognize that even people in publishing aren’t consistently using the term.

Brand 145
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Improve Your Google Ranking with Search Intent & Optimization

Contently

Every second, more than 40,000 queries hit Google’s search engine. With that kind of search volume, how is a business supposed to get its content to rank high, let alone rank on page one? Since search is one of the most common ways for customers to find relevant answers to their problems or to find products, you must write your content with people’s search intent in mind.

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How to Get Mentioned on the Most Popular Blogs in Your Niche: A Case Study

Blogging From Paradise

I detest bragging.

Blog 144
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Do's and Don'ts: How to Pitch Your Press Release to Journalists

Speaker: Michelle Garrett, PR Consultant, Author, Speaker

Yes - press releases are still relevant in the world of public relations! 🎯 Ever wondered how to write a compelling press release, or what are current best practices for pitching your news to earn media coverage? In this exclusive webinar with Michelle Garrett, PR Consultant, we’ll cover tips and advice to help you get the most out of each piece of news you pitch!

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583 Sensory Words to Take Your Writing from Bland to Brilliant

Smart Blogger

It’s almost too easy. By using sensory words to evoke the sense of sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell; smart and attractive writers just like you are able to make their words burst to life in their reader’s mind. In this post, you’ll learn: The science behind sensory details (e.g. why sensory images and words are so persuasive); The definition of sensory details (plus examples); How answering five simple questions will help you write descriptive details that pack your content with sensor

Writing 133
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Google Releases a New Link Best Practices Guide

Neil Patel

Link building is something that you must focus on if you want your site to rank high. Whether it’s obtaining them naturally by creating amazing content, or by doing manual outreach, more links typically means higher rankings. We did an experiment with 200 websites to figure out the types of links Google prefers. If you haven’t read it, you should check it out as some of the results are fascinating.

Text 141
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Enterprise Content Marketers Share Challenges, Opportunities [New Research]

Content Marketing Institute

What is the most frequently cited challenge for enterprise marketers? What content format rose to the No. 2 spot? Discover the surprising and not-so-surprising findings in our newly released research.

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How Authors Can Build Relationships with Independent Bookstores

Jane Friedman

Photo by Ksenia Chernaya This article first appeared in my paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet. It touches on issues of literary citizenship, which is the focus of my upcoming class on March 1. If you want your book to be carried by independent bookstores, the most important thing to remember is that every store is different; you need to carefully research each store before you make an approach.

Copy 144
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The GTM Intelligence Era: ZoomInfo 2025 Customer Impact Report

ZoomInfo customers aren’t just selling — they’re winning. Revenue teams using our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform grew pipeline by 32%, increased deal sizes by 40%, and booked 55% more meetings. Download this report to see what 11,000+ customers say about our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform and how it impacts their bottom line. The data speaks for itself!

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How to Put Creativity at the Center of Your Content Marketing

Contently

A woman jolts awake in the dead of night, awoken by a thud from downstairs. A wizard, who’s been training in the magical arts since he was a boy, is about to face his first great test. Plane crash survivors on a remote island grapple with their new circumstances. Each sentence is the start of a brand-new story. And somehow, in one sentence, these stories have the power to capture our attention and spark our curiosity—something content marketers aim for with every piece they create.

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6 Ways to Get Backlinks through Blog Comments

Blogging From Paradise

I can hold a conversation with a closed door.

Blog 144
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Choosing a Niche for Your Online Business: 3 Creative Models

CopyBlogger

If you want your marketing to work, you have to first get specific when choosing a niche for your online. Continue Reading The post Choosing a Niche for Your Online Business: 3 Creative Models appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Housing Market Books — Realtors are the Ultimate Experts on Housing Trends

Melanie Saxton

There is no better person than a Realtor to write housing market books. True, economists and the financial sector report on the real estate market from their particular lenses, but the experts in the trenches are brokers and real estate professionals. These types of books don’t need a heavy word count. They can be written in a series and updated as needed as the real estate market (and interest rates) continue to fluctuate and adjust.

Marketing 130
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5 Ways You Can Win Faster with Gen AI in Sales

Incorporating generative AI (gen AI) into your sales process can speed up your wins through improved efficiency, personalized customer interactions, and better informed decision- making. Gen AI is a game changer for busy salespeople and can reduce time-consuming tasks, such as customer research, note-taking, and writing emails, and provide insightful data analysis and recommendations.

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Get Common First If You Want To Develop a Great Content Strategy [Rose-Colored Glasses]

Content Marketing Institute

Does your business have a good handle on what you mean by an e-book, white paper, video, etc.? What about a common understanding of thought leadership, advertising, and sales content? If not, your content strategy likely won’t work.

Content 142
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Authors Who’ve Launched Their Careers on TikTok

Jane Friedman

Photo by cottonbro studio The following article first appeared in my paid newsletter, The Hot Sheet , which covers book publishing industry news and trends for authors. Learn more. While book sales were down in 2022 compared to 2021, they’d be down much further if it weren’t for TikTok. In fact, the growing sales of adult fiction since 2020 can be credited partly to TikTok’s influence as well as to Colleen Hoover, who is active there.

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Three Ways to Use Google Trends for SEO in Your Content Marketing

Contently

Content marketing is like cooking. There are days when you are inspired and creative and deliver the best risotto ever. And then there are times when you just want someone to tell you what to whip up because you’re flat out of ideas. Another challenge? Your creation has to satiate even the most finicky eaters. In its State of Content Marketing 2022 Global Report , keyword research tool company Semrush surveyed 1,500 content marketers worldwide.

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8 Glaring Guest Blogging Errors

Blogging From Paradise

Guest blogging is still one of the better ways to be seen by a high volume of targeted time-space creatures (humans).

Blog 142
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10 Ways to Leverage Buyer Signals and Drive Revenue

In today’s ultra-competitive markets, it’s no longer enough to wait for buyers to show obvious signs of interest. Instead, sales teams must be proactive, identifying and acting on nuanced buyer behaviors — often before prospects are fully ready to make a purchase. In this eBook from ZoomInfo & Sell Better, learn 10 actionable ways to use these buyer signals to transform your sales strategy and close deals faster.