Sharon Hurley Hall

It’s been a great week for writing.

This week I have written five posts for a ghost blogging client, covering web apps, parenting and more. I’ve also written some real estate community guides – it was fun to learn about new places and convey that to a new audience.

Last week, I landed a blogging gig at the Quips and Tips group of sites and my first posts are up. Here they are:

• How to Take Care of a Rabbit – 5 Tips for Pet Bunny Rabbits
• What Do I Do When Someone Dies? Funeral Planning in 4 Steps

As well as that I’ve done a bunch of posts for Park Ride Fly USA, which is fun, because I enjoy writing about travel. Here are a couple I enjoyed writing:

• A Greener Airport
• Cruise Ship Tips on the Rise

I’ve started editing a technical article written a couple weeks ago, and have done some proofreading for a European magazine with international circulation.

To round out the week, I’ve written four resumes to help people find career success! What have you achieved this week?

I’m a big fan of article marketing. It’s a promotional technique which has worked well both for me and my clients. That’s why I was so pleased to get an email from the EzineArticles team today, saying I’d been featured in their Expert Author Case Study series.  Their intro says: “Sharon Hurley Hall is an excellent example of a member who has taken our advice as a package, instead of piecemeal like most members, and parlayed that advice into making a living with the written word.”

Check out the case study for my views on article marketing - and of course, contact me if you need an article marketing package to promote your business.

I’ve started writing for Suite101. It’s great because I can write about a wide range of topics. Here are the articles I’ve written so far:

Late last year, I posted a list of my articles on Life123. The site has since reorganised its navigation, so I’m posting the list again with the right links. Here they are:

Freelance Writing

• Five Freelance Writing Lessons
• How to Set Writing Goals
• Organizing a Home Office for Writing
• Dealing With Wrist Tendonitis
• Essential Writing Tools for Freelancers
• How Freelancers Can Build Web-Writing Skills for Free
• Three Quick Ways to Create a Freelance Writing Portfolio
• A Writers’ Guide to Provisions of Copyright Law
• Get More Freelance Writing Opportunities: Know the Market, Know Thyself
• A Guide to Ghostwriting
• DIY Freelance Writing Self Promotion

Home and Garden

• Quick Guide to Stain Removal
• Save Money with Natural Cleaning Products from the Pantry
• How to Organize Schedules for Cleaning
• How to Buy a Used Car From a Private Party
• How to Buy a Car From a Dealership
• Six Ways To Find Cheap Airline Tickets

Pregnancy and Parenting

• Understanding Pregnancy Ultrasounds
• How to Prevent Stretch Marks
• Coping with Postpartum Depression
• A Guide to Fertility Treatment Options
• Creating A  Birth Plan
• A Guide To Your Fertility Cycle
• Facts About Open Adoption
• Finding A Nanny
• Understanding Closed Adoption

Health and Safety

• A Parents’ Guide to Teenage Obesity
• How to Stay Healthy Over 50
• What Are ADD and ADHD?
• Eating Well Over 50
• Human Aging Process
• Back to School Safety Tips for Parents
• Vacation and Travel Safety for Kids
• Water Safety for Kids
• Issues with Teens and Social Networking
• Air Travel Tips For Flying With Children

Here are some of my most recent articles on EzineArticles. They are a good example of how article marketing can help you to promote a site. These can be informational articles, keyword based articles for SEO or a combination of the two.

Or should that be: writing for a books site? One of my latest gigs is writing for Webooks. It’s an ebook publishing site that is expanding to include articles related to the books’ content. I’ve written four articles for them so far, and two have been published. They are Moving Your Article From Mag To Web and Proofreading Tips For Writers. Hope you enjoy them. Bookmark my profile page so you’ll know when the next ones appear.

This is not so much a new writing gig, as a successor to an old one. I used to write for Garden and Hearth, which eventually became part of Life123.  Hence, a new site and new articles, covering not only writing, but parenting and health issues. Here’s a list of what I’ve posted on that site so far:

Freelance Writing

• Five Freelance Writing Lessons
• How to Set Writing Goals
• Create a Home Office for Writing
• How to Write with One Hand
• Essential Writing Tools for Freelancers
• Freelancers: Build Web-Writing Skills
• Three Quick Ways to Create Freelance Writing Clips
• A Writers’ Guide to Copyright Law
• Freelance Writing Markets
• A Guide to Ghostwriting
• Promoting Your Freelance Writing

Home and Garden

• Quick Guide to Stain Removal
• Save Money with Natural Cleaning Products from the Pantry
• How To Organize Schedules For Cleaning
• How To Buy A Used Car From A Private Party

Pregnancy and Parenting

• Understanding Pregnancy Ultrasounds
• Preventing Stretch Marks
• Coping with Postpartum Depression
• A Guide To Fertility Treatments
• Creating A  Birth Plan
• A Guide To Your Fertility Cycle
• Facts About Open Adoption
• Finding A Nanny
• Understanding Closed Adoption

Health and Safety

• A Parents’ Guide to Teenage Obesity
• Staying Healthy Over 50
• What Are ADD and ADHD
• Eating Well Over 50
• How We Age
• Back to School Safety Tips for Parents
• Vacation and Travel Safety for Kids
• Water Safety for Kids
• Issues With Teens And Social Networking
• Air Travel Tips For Flying With Children

I’ll be updating the links as the articles go live.

Well, I couldn’t resist adding my name to another site, especially when it comes from Google. I’ve just published my first Knol using a sample article on off plan property that I had lying around.  It was very easy to publish and I think I’ll put more of my work there in the future. To go along with it, I’ve also published Written A Knol Yet? – my review of the process on TechGerm.

If you are starting out with a home based business, the chances are that your budget for promotion does not exist. When you are new to working at home, you may be lucky to afford all the electronic equipment you will need. However, promotion is essential if you are to grow your business and make a success of it. Here are some tips which can help you to promote for free.

First of all, set up a website or blog. Although it is better to spring for the cost of registering and hosting your own domain, you can also take advantage of free blogging sites such as WordPress and Blogger. WordPress is slightly better because there is less spam and you can set up a static home page that looks like a normal website.

Use your site or blog to publish details of your skills, services and products so everyone can see them. Be sure to do some research and include keywords relevant to your home based business in your site content. That will help people to find your site through the search engines.

Next, let people know it is there. Write an article related to your business area and submit it to a free article directory such as EzineArticles or GoArticle. Be sure to include a bio box at the end that says what you do, links to your site and includes a call to action. This article will be reprinted on hundreds of sites, all of which will have a link to yours.

Register with forums that relate to your business. Post and comment regularly, using a link to your site in your signature. People will click on the link and will find your business.

With any luck the word will start to spread, but you can still help it along by commenting on relevant blogs and including a link to your website. No spam, please – keep your comments targeted and relevant and that’s exactly the kind of traffic you will get.

Of course, not all your promotional efforts have to be online. You can also put a sticker in your car window showing the address of your website or blog. You can also take out free ads both offline and online which will describe your business and make it attractive to prospective buyers.

All of these strategies will help you to raise the profile of your home based business and they won’t cost you anything but the time it takes to do them. This time is well worth spending if it means that your business is a success.

Want to use this article on your site?  Contact me about licensing rights.

Here’s one of my latest pieces on Lake Anna, Virginia. It’s part travel piece, part real estate piece and it’s on the home page of a new site on this beautiful area.