google

I've noticed an increasing number of ads that no longer send people to the company's sites. Instead, the ads only include a link to the official Facebook page. Sites suddenly look outdated, no longer include the latest information and people stop visiting them. There are still people that visit those outdated sites and many are coming from search engines like Google. Despite Google's efforts to have a comprehensive index, there's a growing subset of the Web it can't properly index and that's Facebook. Sure, Google indexes a lot of Facebook pages, but that's like trying to find your keys in a dark room. Google needs Facebook's map to index all the pages and find the connections between pages and between users, but Facebook is not willing to license this valuable data to the most important competitor. Google tried to make the web social and failed, so now the only option to stay relevant is to build an alternative to Facebook's walled garden and that's Google+. +1s are the new links, authors have profiles, companies have social pages and this new universe will try to coexist with the old Web in Google's search results. Google tried to focus on the users and find ways to make the social Web more open, but now it has to focus on itself and do everything it can to stay alive and maybe even save the Web. "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," but that's impossible if it can't access, understand and rank that information. Back in 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin used links to determine the importance of a Web page. Now links and pages are no longer that important and the old rule of trying to send people to other sites as quickly as possible is difficult to apply. Showing personalized results requires understanding users better, encouraging them to share more content and create connections. In many ways, Google+ is the anti-Google and that's why it's difficult to understand some of the new features.

• Fixes to login problems that users may have encountered on machines that were shipped with versions R11 and earlier.
• Updated Pepper flash version.

Known issues:

• 25557 & 25559 - Hangouts will not display video of yourself or participants on Chromebooks. Audio does work, and other Hangout participants will be able to see you if video is enabled. This problem does not affect GTalk Video.

When you have a blog, you’ll attract all different types of readers, from those who just pass through one time to casual readers who come by occasionally to dedicated readers who subscribe to your blog and read every post. Clearly, your goal is to attract as many dedicated readers as possible, but that doesn’t happen instantly. Typically, you have to work on turning casual readers into dedicated readers over time.

Here are 5 ways you can transform a casual reader into a dedicate reader.

 

1. Focus on creating a great reader experience—The quality of your content isn’t the only thing that matters. It’s the overall experience that keeps readers engaged and coming back. Your blog needs to have a clean, compelling design. You don’t want to annoy readers with pop-up ads, complicated registration processes, spammy comment section, etc. Focus on creating the best possible experience for your visitors.
2. Make it easy for readers to subscribe and participate—The easier it is for someone to subscribe to your blog, the likelier it is that they’ll do so. Make sure your subscribe button is clear to see, and you can even include a call to action at the end of each post encouraging readers to subscribe. Also, make it easy for your readers to comment and share your posts on social networks. Don’t require them to register or complete a CAPTCHA to leave a comment. It’s annoying and kills their drive to participate.
3. Interact with your readers—If you want readers to stick around and keep coming back, one of the best things you can do is interact with them. Respond to them whenever they leave a comment. Connect with them on Twitter and Facebook. This builds relationships and increases their loyalty to your blog.
4. Give your readers a sense of ownership in your blog—Make your readers feel invested in your blog so they’ll keep coming back. Allow them to submit guest posts. Highlight the best comments. Ask them to submit ideas for topics they want to see you write about. Hold a contest. All of these things will create a community and make your readers feel like they own a piece of your blog.
5. Be real—It’s the easiest blogging advice you’ll ever receive. Just be yourself. Write like you talk and let your personality shine through in every aspect of your blog. That’s how you’ll build a personal connection with your readers that keeps them coming back for more.

 

What’s your best tip for turning casual readers into dedicated readers? Share it by leaving a comment.

Google+ changed the age requirements so that any Google Account user can join Google+. In most countries you need to be at least 13 years old to create a Google Account and join Google+, but there are 3 exceptions: Spain, South Korea and Netherlands. Until now, Google+ required to be at least 18 years old to "upgrade" your account. Google's VP Bradley Horowitz mentioned that there are a few tweaks and new default settings for teens. By default, only the people from teens' circles can trigger notifications and comment on their public posts. If someone outside a teen's circles joins a hangout, Google+ temporarily removes the teen from the hangout and gives him a chance to rejoin.

Teens and young adults are the most active Internet users on the planet. And surprise, surprise: they're also human beings who enjoy spending time with friends and family. Put these two things together and it's clear that teens will increasingly connect online. Unfortunately, online sharing is still second-rate for this age group. In life, for instance, teens can share the right things with just the right people (like classmates, parents or close ties). Over time, the nuance and richness of selective sharing even promotes authenticity and accountability. Sadly, today's most popular online tools are rigid and brittle by comparison, so teens end up over-sharing with all of their so-called "friends." With Google+, we want to help teens build meaningful connections online. We also want to provide features that foster safety alongside self-expression. Today we're doing both, for everyone who's old enough for a Google Account.

It's interesting that the updated form for creating a Google Account doesn't automatically create a profile and doesn't add the user to Google+ if he's not at least 18 years old. { Thanks, Oskar. }

Googlers are the types who never really leave the classroom. Guest speakers come to campus to give talks on subjects ranging from fiction to physics. Diverse groups of people work together to understand and solve big problems while groups of Googlers engage in passionate debate in our cafeterias. Given this environment, it’s no surprise how highly we value our external work in education. We have a growing number of successful education programs from primary school through to university, as well as a suite of free and open tools that reach families and classrooms around the world. Recently, we decided to gather our resources and lessons learned into one place for educators everywhere. “Google in Education: A New and Open World for Learning” highlights how people are using Google resources to enhance teaching and learning. This booklet isn’t your typical annual report; it’s a living document for educators to use year-round. We’ve also revamped our website, google.com/edu, to be a one-stop shop for teachers, students, parents and organizations to explore all of our offerings. We’ve launched a Google+ page, where everyone can stay updated on our educational tools, products and programs, and join the conversation. To develop all of these new materials, we went straight to the source, relying on dozens of educators to provide stories and feedback. We hope these resources will inspire and enable teachers, while affirming our commitment to increasing access to an excellent education for all. Thanks to educators, students and supporters everywhere for helping to extend our spirit of lifelong learning into classrooms around the globe. For more information about Google in Education, visit www.google.com/edu/about, and to stay updated on the world of education at Google and connect with fellow educators, follow us on Google+. Posted by Jordan Lloyd Bookey, Head of Global K-12 Education Outreach

We're taking bird's eye view to a whole new level with the latest version of Google Earth, released today. With Google Earth 6.2, we’re bringing you the most beautiful Google Earth yet, with more seamless imagery and a new search interface. Additionally, we’ve introduced a feature that enables you to share an image from within Google Earth, so you can now simply and easily share your virtual adventures with family and friends on Google+. A seamless globe The Google Earth globe is made from a mosaic of satellite and aerial photographs taken on different dates and under different lighting and weather conditions. Because of this variance, views of the Earth from high altitude can sometimes appear patchy. Today, we’re introducing a new way of rendering imagery that smoothes out this quilt of images. The end result is a beautiful new Earth-viewing experience that preserves the unique textures of the world’s most defining geographic landscapes—without the quilt effect. This change is being made on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Earth. While this change will appear on all versions of Google Earth, the 6.2 release provides the best viewing experience for this new data. Share your explorations with Google+ Google Earth is a great way to virtually explore the globe, whether revisiting old haunts or checking out a future vacation spot. With the Google Earth 6.2 update, we’ve added the option to share a screenshot of your current view in Google Earth through Google+. If you’ve already upgraded to Google+, you can share images of the places you’ve virtually traveled to with your Circles, such as family, friends or your local hiking club. To try this new feature, simply sign in to your Google Account in the upper right hand corner of Google Earth and click “Share.” Images of mountains, oceans, deserts, 3D cities, your favorite pizza shop on Street View—you can now experience all these amazing places around the world with people on Google+. Search improvements We’ve also made some updates to the search feature in Google Earth. Aside from streamlining the visual design of the search panel, we’ve enabled the same Autocomplete feature that’s available on Google Maps. We’ve also introduced search layers, which will show all the relevant search results (not just the top ten), so now, when looking for gelato in Milano, you can see all the tasty possibilities. Finally, we’ve added biking, transit and walking directions, so if you’re itching for a change of scenery or looking for a new route for your regular commute, you can now use Google Earth to generate and visualize all your options. Download Google Earth 6.2 and start exploring and sharing today! Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Earth (Cross-posted on the Lat Long blog)

Growing a blog takes time, patience, and a lot of focus. You can’t just set it and forget it. You have to work on building your blog every single day. Of course, this can be much easier said than done. That’s why so many blogs fail. The blogger starts off with great enthusiasm, but over time, he loses focus and the blog begins to die a slow, painful death.

Here are 3 tips that will help you stay focused on your blog.

 

1. Create a posting schedule—It’s important to have fun while blogging, but you also have to treat it seriously if you want to get results. One way to do this is to create a posting schedule and stick to it. You don’t have to publish new content every single day, but you do need to create a consistent publishing schedule that works for you. Whether that’s daily, 3 times a week, or weekly is up to you.
2. Make a list of essential daily blog management tasks—What are the things you need to do to maintain and grow your blog? You need to write content, schedule it to publish at the right times, manage your comments, interact with readers, and drive traffic to your blog. Spend some time each day focusing on these essential tasks. Make it part of your daily schedule so that you don’t neglect it.
3. Set milestones—If you’re blogging without any goals, you have no direction and subsequently you’ll lose focus. You need to have something to shoot for so you can stay focused each day on inching toward your milestones. Set goals for the number of subscribers you want to get, the amount of daily traffic you want to average, etc.

 

What do you do to keep your blogging focus? Share your best tips by leaving a comment below.

 

 

The Beta channel has been updated to 17.0.963.43 (Platform versions: 1412.142) for Chromebooks (Samsung Series 5 , and Cr-48). Highlights:

• This update fixes a number of stability and UI issues.
• Introduces new Verizon activation and top-up portal featuring many user-requested improvements:
• • Enables recurring billing as the default for pre-paid monthly plans
  • Greatly simplifies the Verizon activation and top-up process
  • Allows purchase of additional data prior to current bundle expiration
  • Eliminates credit card requirement for free 100MB plan

If you find new issues, please let us know by visiting our help site or filing a bug. Interested in switching channels? Find out how. You can submit feedback using ‘Report an issue’ under the wrench menu.
Orit Mazor Google Chrome

The Beta channel has been updated to 17.0.963.44 for all platforms other than Chrome OS.  This update fixes a number of stability and UI issues.  Full details about what changes are in this build are available in the SVN revision log.  Interested in switching release channels?  Find out how.  If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. Jason Kersey Google Chrome

Google Takeout supports a new service: Google Docs. Now you can use the same interface to batch export your documents. I tried both Google Takeout and the built-in feature from Google Docs that lets you download your documents. Even if they have the same purpose, they're quite different. The Google Docs feature is more flexible: you can choose to download only spreadsheets or presentations and skip all the other documents. You can also skip the files uploaded to Google Docs and not converted to a Google Docs format (for example: PDF files, archives and video files). Google Takeout has a "configure" feature, but you can't skip one or more document types. Another subtle difference is that Google Takeout lets you export only the files that you own, while Google Docs exports all the files from your account. How to export all your files from Google Docs? Just go to the Google Docs homepage, select one or more documents, click "More" and then "Download", click the "All items" tab, pick your favorite formats and click "Download". The process is not that intuitive and you shouldn't have to select a file to see the download option. { via Data Liberation Blog }

You can’t have a blog without having content, and if you want to grow your blog over time, you have to keep publishing fresh, interesting content on a regular basis. This content isn’t going to appear out of thin air. Someone has to create it, and while you might be thinking of tackling this task all on your own, you may wish to consider the benefits of hiring a freelance blogger to help.

Here’s a look at just some of the benefits you can enjoy when you hire a well-qualified freelance blogger.

 

• Better quality content—Are you a professional writer? Probably not. The truth is that most people aren’t great writers. While you might think that the informal nature of blogging means you don’t have to be a good writer, that’s not the case. Good writing has nothing to do with formality; it has to do with the writer’s ability to connect with the reader in a meaningful way. A professional freelance blogger will be able to create better content than you’re able to.
• Frees up your time—Do you really have time to write blog content on a regular basis? You’re probably already wearing enough hats as it is, so there’s no need to don the blogger hat as well. Save yourself some time by letting a freelance blogger shoulder the content creation load.
• Only pay for the work you need—Thinking of hiring an in-house writer? You’ll have to pay a full-time salary, benefits, and everything else that goes with having an employee. By outsourcing your blog writing to a freelancer, you only pay for the amount of content you need…nothing else. It’s a cost-effective way to get new content.
• Fresh perspective—Sometimes, you can be too close to your subject matter. You’re so close that your perspective is greatly narrowed. By hiring a freelance writer, you can get a fresh perspective to tired topics.
• Avoid blogger’s burnout—Let’s face it, when you’re the only one writing on your blog day in and day out, it can get tiring quickly. If you’re all on your own, there’s a good chance you’ll get burned out and eventually give up on your blog. By hiring a freelancer to help carry the load, you can keep your blog going strong.

 

Do you have any experience hiring freelance bloggers? Tell us about it by leaving a comment below.

Not a week goes by that I don’t talk to someone about how they’ve been ripped off by a freelance copywriter or freelance designer. I’ve been a freelancer myself for several years, and while I always take a professional approach to handling my business, I’m very well aware that not all freelancers are on the up and up.

Fortunately, hiring a good freelancer isn’t all that difficult. You just have to take these steps to make sure you don’t get ripped off.

 

• Avoid the job boards—I know that many of you are going to disagree with this, but I don’t think that the best way to find a freelancer is to post an ad on Craigslist, a freelance writing job board, or one of this websites where freelancers bid on jobs. Why? Let’s be honest—any freelancer who is truly skilled at his or her craft isn’t going to spend time trolling around on job boards. That freelancer’s services will be in demand. In other words, you need to find the freelancer. A simple Google search for the type of freelancer you need (e.g. “freelance copywriter” or “freelance web designer”) will get you pointed in the right direction.
• Always ask for samples—Never hire a freelancer without seeing samples of their work first. It doesn’t matter what services you need, you must see a portfolio before hiring. This will prove that the freelancer is capable of handling the job, and it helps to make sure you hire someone whose style and approach meets your needs.
• Be willing to pay a competitive rate—There’s something to be said for the old adage “you get what you pay for.” If you’re offering super cheap compensation, guess what type of freelancer you’re going to attract? A low quality one. You need to be willing to pay a competitive rate if you want to get the best talent.
• Pick up the phone—Spend a few minutes talking to the freelancer on the phone. Tell them about your project, ask them about their experience, find out about their working process, and try to get a feel for whether or not the freelancer will be a good fit on your project.
• Never pay the full amount up front—You should never pay in full for the project before it has been completed. In most situations, the freelancer will request a deposit before starting work, usually up to 50% of the total price. Paying a deposit is totally acceptable. Paying the full amount up front is not.
• Get it in writing—Draft up a basic agreement that outlines the details of your project, the freelancer’s responsibilities, rates, deadlines, and other relevant information. Sign it, have the freelancer sign it, and keep it on file.

 

Have you ever been burned by a freelancer? Tell us about it by leaving a comment below.

Google has been often accused of promoting its own services in Google Search. Whether it was Google News, Image Search, Product Search or Video Search, the specialized search engine showed results from all over the web and not just from Google's own services. Image Search wasn't restricted to Picasa Web Albums, Video Search wasn't restricted to YouTube, Blog Search wasn't restricted to Blogger. Even for services like Google Dictionary and Google Finance that have their OneBox at the top of the Google search results, Google shows a list of other relevant services. Google's special section that shows people and pages from Google+ doesn't look like a regular Google OneBox. It's placed in the right sidebar, where Google used to display ads. It shows up for general queries like [music], [sports], [math], that aren't typically associated with social search results. It only shows results from Google+, not from other social services like Twitter or Facebook. It's there even if you're not logged in using your Google account or you're not using Google+. If Google+ wasn't a Google product, would it make sense to show a similar OneBox with profiles from social sites? Normally, Google would have created a profile search engine and showed a group of relevant results somewhere in the list of search results. Like this: Google already indexes profiles from different sites and even shows special snippets with structured data. Why not create a special search engine for profiles like the one that lets you search recipes or the search engine for applications? When Google released Knol, many people wondered if Google could boost the rankings for Knol articles or create a special OneBox with Knol results. "Google Knol does not receive any sort of boost or advantage in Google's rankings," replied Matt Cutts and he was right. Now what if Google displayed a Knol OneBox at the top of the search results for queries that returned relevant Knol articles? Maybe Knol would've become more popular and it wouldn't have been discontinued. Is it fair to promote results from a single service, especially when you own that service? Even if those results are comprehensive, relevant and useful, it's always a good idea to also show results from other services. Some engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace developed a site called Focus on the User that lets you replace the Google+ results with other social profiles from the web. From: ... to: The results are better simply because you can check the accounts from other social services. Maybe an artist shares more information on Twitter or maybe the Facebook account is more important. "When you search for 'cooking' today, Google decides that renowned chef Jamie Oliver is a relevant social result. That makes sense. But rather than linking to Jamie's Twitter profile, which is updated daily, Google links to his Google+ profile, which was last updated nearly two months ago," noticed the authors of the Focus on the User site. I still don't think that the social search box should be placed next to the results, but at least the tweak made it more useful. "Focus on the user and all else will follow. Since the beginning, we've focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we're designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line." (Google's philosophy) { via waxy.org }

The Dev channel has been updated to 16.0.912.77 (Platform versions: 1193.194.0) for Chromebooks (Acer AC700, Samsung Series 5, and Cr-48).
This build contains a number of performance, stability and security improvements. Additional fixes include:

• 24748 - Device not scanning for networks
• 23518 - No UI notification given on connection timeout

In just over a month we will make some changes to our privacy policies and Google Terms of Service. This stuff matters, so we wanted to explain what’s changing, why and what these changes mean for users. First, our privacy policies. Despite trimming our policies in 2010, we still have more than 70 (yes, you read right … 70) privacy documents covering all of our different products. This approach is somewhat complicated. It’s also at odds with our efforts to integrate our different products more closely so that we can create a beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google. So we’re rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of our products and explains what information we collect, and how we use it, in a much more readable way. While we’ve had to keep a handful of separate privacy notices for legal and other reasons, we’re consolidating more than 60 into our main Privacy Policy. Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies—and having one policy covering many different products is now fairly standard across the web. These changes will take effect on March 1, and we’re starting to notify users today, including via email and a notice on our homepage. What does this mean in practice? The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience. Our recently launched personal search feature is a good example of the cool things Google can do when we combine information across products. Our search box now gives you great answers not just from the web, but your personal stuff too. So if I search for restaurants in Munich, I might see Google+ posts or photos that people have shared with me, or that are in my albums. Today we can also do things like make it easy for you to read a memo from Google Docs right in your Gmail, or add someone from your Gmail contacts to a meeting in Google Calendar. But there’s so much more that Google can do to help you by sharing more of your information with … well, you. We can make search better—figuring out what you really mean when you type in Apple, Jaguar or Pink. We can provide more relevant ads too. For example, it’s January, but maybe you’re not a gym person, so fitness ads aren’t that useful to you. We can provide reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day. Or ensure that our spelling suggestions, even for your friends’ names, are accurate because you’ve typed them before. People still have to do way too much heavy lifting, and we want to do a better job of helping them out. Second, the Google Terms of Service—terms you agree to when you use our products. As with our privacy policies, we’ve rewritten them so they’re easier to read. We’ve also cut down the total number, so many of our products are now covered by our new main Google Terms of Service. Visit the Google Terms of Service page to find the revised terms. Finally, what we’re not changing. We remain committed to data liberation, so if you want to take your information elsewhere you can. We don’t sell your personal information, nor do we share it externally without your permission except in very limited circumstances like a valid court order. We try hard to be transparent about the information we collect, and to give you meaningful choices about how it is used—for example our Ads Preferences Manager enables you to edit the interest categories we advertise against or turn off certain Google ads altogether. And we continue to design privacy controls, like Google+’s circles, into our products from the ground up. We believe this new, simpler policy will make it easier for people to understand our privacy practices as well as enable Google to improve the services we offer. Whether you’re a new Google user or an old hand, please do take the time to read our new privacy policy and terms, learn more about the changes we’re making and understand the controls we offer. Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering

If you've ever wondered who designed Gmail's logo, Kevin Fox has the answer:

Dennis Hwang designed the Gmail logo. At the time, Dennis designed virtually all of the Google doodles and he did a lot of the new logo work as well. The logo was designed literally the night before the product launched. We were up very late and Sergey and I went down to his cube to watch him make it. The initial version used the same font as the Google logo (Catull), but Catull has a very awkward 'a', so Dennis decided to use Catull for the 'G' to tie the brand to Google, then cast the others in a cleaner sans-serif (Myriad Pro, if I recall correctly).

Another ex-Googler, Douglas Edwards, confirms the story in his book "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59":

Dennis Hwang spent the day before the launch coming up with ideas for a logo and trying to make it work in conjunction with the clown-colored Google brand. (...) Even after four years at Google, I found it astounding that one twenty-something guy was sitting alone at his desk, sipping tea and developing the main branding element for a product to be used by millions of people - the night before it was scheduled to launch.

Nikolaas, a reader of this blog, noticed that Pegman - the Google Street View icon - looks different for Belgium. When you try to move the icon, you'll notice that Pegman got some French fries. "Occasionally Pegman dresses up for special events and occasions, or is even joined by peg friends in Google Maps. Some of these icons stay in Google Maps for specific locations, such as the skiing Pegman at Whistler Blackcomb Mountain and the penguin for Street View imagery of Half Moon Island, Antarctica," explains Google. Street View was launched two months ago in Belgium, but it's not clear why Pegman looks different. Maybe because French fries originate from Belgium. { Thanks, Nikolaas. }

In a country renowned for its natural beauty, one of the most spectacular landscapes is found along the Trollstigen (Troll’s path) – a vertiginous road which affords remarkable views of the mountainous scenery. Lucky for us that a Street View car made the journey¹ , allowing us to experience some incredible vistas.

We’ll take a tour of Trollstigen², starting at the bottom where we can see several sections of the road climbing the mountain side.

With very narrow sections, eleven hairpin bends, and an average gradient of 9%, the road could fairly be described as challenging, and long buses and trucks are not allowed on it. The road is also closed by snow for several months of the year.

As we approach the first hairpin, we can see one of the waterfalls that feed the mountain stream which courses through the valley behind us.

By the fourth hairpin we’re starting to rise above the treeline and a second waterfall comes into view.

As we continue upwards we approach a stone bridge with a small parking area for people to admire the waterfall, though for some people the Street View car was apparently more interesting!

While some sections of the road have been widened, others are still very narrow, but the threat of oncoming traffic hasn’t stopped these intrepic cyclists from tackling the ascent.

By the seventh hairpin we start to get glimpses of the views awaiting from the top.³

At the penultimate turn, we can see the road below, and the full majesty of one waterfall …

… while the other cascades right next to us.

At the final hairpin we can see patches of snow on the mountainside across the valley, and the full view of the valley in the embedded Street View at the start of this post.

No more hairpins await us, but the road continues upwards through an increasingly barren landscape.

As we approach the top of the climb there is a parking area, a visitors centre and viewing platform that allows tourists to take in the scenery. While there’s currently a small range of stuff to buy⁴, there’s actually a new facility under construction which should better cater to the needs to the thousands of people who travel the Trollstigen each year.

After passing this curious monument, the road continues south through a landscape considered (by all except perhaps the most fastidious of virtual tourists), every bit as spectacular as that which we saw on the way up.

Wikipedia has a brief article about Trollstigen, but there’s more detail at the Norway tourism website. Or you can watch a motorcycle tour of the road on YouTube.

Locations: Norway / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views

View in Google Earth

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You're reading an entry from Google Sightseeing, which is copyright © 2012 Alex Turnbull & James Turnbull and must not be reproduced without permission.

At some point, you may find yourself needing the services of a freelance writer. Maybe you need someone to create sales copy for your website or brochure. Or maybe you need a blogger to create a few posts each week. Or you could even need an article writer if you’re still relying on article distribution as an internet marketing strategy.

Whatever the case may be, one of the first things you’ll need to do is decide how much you’re going to pay a freelance writer for the project. Now, if you’re like a lot of people, you may want to know just how little you can get away with paying to get the job done. After all, the less you have to pay, the better, right?

Wrong.

Here are 5 reasons you shouldn’t hire a cheap writer.

 

1. Quality will almost always suffer—There’s an old saying that applies perfectly—“You get what you pay for.” If you’re going to hire a cheap writer at rates far below the industry average, you’re almost certainly going to get work that’s well below the industry average in terms of quality. If you want good work, you have to pay competitive prices. It’s that simple.
2. You may not get original work—How are some writers able to produce content for just a few bucks a pop? It might be because they’re actually stealing the content from somebody else. That’s right. Many companies have been burned by cheap writers who simply stole content off the web, maybe spun it a little bit, and passed it off as fresh and original.
3. Cheap writers often lack experience—Think about this. If a freelance writer was good and experienced at their job, would they be scouring the job boards looking for work at dirt cheap rates? I didn’t think so.
4. Cheap writers may also lack professionalism—If you’ve ever dealt with a bad freelance writer, you know how much of a nightmare it can be. They promise to deliver the work by a certain date, and then miss the deadline. They drop off the face of the earth and stop responding to emails for days or weeks at a time. They come up with insane excuses about why they’re behind on their work. Spend a little more money so you can hire a true professional.
5. Good writing takes time—Writing anything takes time. It takes time to do the research, outline a plan, create a draft, edit the draft, and rewrite the content until it’s just right. When you’re paying someone a dirt cheap rate to write something, they’re not going to spend as much time on it as they should. Time is money.

 

Have you ever hired a cheap writer? How did things turn out for you?