As Alyssa Ast mentioned in her recent post about SEO optimization, your own personal “author’s website” can immediately increase your exposure to potential clients–and if you want to diversify (and make more money), that’s good for business. If you’re just starting out, however, this may not be financially feasible. In my next post I’ll discuss cheap, affordable options for hosting your author’s website, but today we’ll discuss free hosting options.

My 15-year-old cat, Sephy, has not gone a day without fresh water. Every day his water bowl is emptied and filled with fresh, cool drinking water to drink at his leisure. It’s usually gone within a day, if not less.

But nearly 900 million people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water–something which my cat, a domesticated animal, receives each and every day. According to CharityWater.org, 42,000 people die each week from drinking unsafe water. 90 percent of them are children under the age of 5.

Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t just limited to smart, keyword-oriented content. Your links, headings and even your images are major players in your search engine ranking, for instance.

Today we’re going to discuss the importance of making your images SEO-friendly: why it’s important, the results it can produce, and how you can do it…in less than 5 minutes a day.

It’s been over a week since International Freelancers Day (IFD10) ended–and now it’s time to put their advice into action. Here are 7 important tips for freelancers, straight from the speakers of IFD10.

Have you heard about International Freelancers Day? Do you know it’s happening this Friday, September 24?

Here’s why you should take advantage of this free online event.

For experienced SEO writers, we all know what Halloween means: publish as much Halloween content as you possibly can. According to Google Adwords, there are over 11,000,000 searches done on Halloween-related content every month on average–and this doesn’t take into account the months when Halloween searches spike. But when should you publish Halloween articles? What should you publish? Let’s find out.

Many writers agree: if you want to have a successful business, you need a website. Not only does this increase brand awareness with potential clients, a website–if designed and promoted the right way–can propel you as an expert in your given niche, leading to more writing and money-making opportunities.

But behind every successful “writer’s website” is an equally as successful domain name. Unfortunately, most writers make this their last priority, when it really should be their first.

Writing Job Resource reviews Freelance Writing Online: A Guide for Beginners, an e-book recently released by Suzanne Alicie, a freelance writer and founder of Freelance Writer Online.

If you don’t have the time–or don’t want to make the effort–to create your own ads to attract new clientele, there is another option: taking advantage of the site’s features to find clients already advertising writing work.

For writers, here comes a legitimate concern: how do you differentiate scammers from trusthworthy, real-paying clients?

Granted, Craigslist isn’t a reliable place to find writing clients–there isn’t a guarantee they’ll pay your invoices on time (or at all) or offer a fair price for your web content. But this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s impossible to find writing clients on Craigslist–in fact, one of my highest paying clients found me through Craigslist.