A cou­ple of new things to tell you about today.

First off, I’m try­ing a new exper­i­ment. I’ve decided to close and remove com­ments on this blog. Just to see what hap­pens. Why? Here’s the thing…

When I post a new blog post, it will be cross­posted to a few social net­works. Some, by design with the help of a few tools and plu­g­ins. Oth­ers, by sub­scribers and read­ers who retweet, reblog, or track­back to my posts.

What I’ve noticed is, on these social net­works — Twit­ter, Face­book, Friend­Feed, Digg, and now with the new Google Buzz — my posts seem to incite dis­cus­sions on these loca­tions. Dis­cus­sions I love to par­tic­i­pate in, too, when I have a chance.

I want to har­ness that social media power and divest myself of the con­stant mod­er­a­tion of this blog. I feel that, since there are so many dis­cus­sions tak­ing place else­where, why not take advan­tage of social media and bring the dis­cus­sions to the pub­lic instead?

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After read­ing some of my arti­cles on how to find copy­writ­ing clients, one of my stu­dents, Jeff, asked me an inter­est­ing question.

He’s an aspir­ing copy­writer and wants to build his own free­lance copy­writ­ing busi­ness. When he read that I wrote copy for free when I started my career as a copy­writer, he told me he was think­ing about doing the same.

How­ever, he won­dered if he should ask for some­thing, any­thing, in return. In fact, here was his question…

“Mike, my friends have a very small busi­ness, and they have asked me to do copy for them. They say they can’t really pay me that much. I have told them I will do it for free as long as I get rights to the copy and can use it for a ref­er­ence and in my port­fo­lio. I think this is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to get more expe­ri­ence, but my wife wants to see some money on the table.

“I value your opin­ion. Can you help?”

Here was my answer.

Ask­ing for a con­ces­sion in exchange for offer­ing one is always the way to do it. While I believe your trade-​​off is good in prin­ci­ple, it’s still mea­ger. I would con­sider some money — or some larger con­ces­sion on the part of the client. Here’s why…

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If you ever won­dered how to out­source your work using new and cre­ative ways that get it done faster, cheaper, bet­ter, and eth­i­cally, too, then you need to watch this video.

Called “crowd­sourc­ing,” this rel­a­tively new out­sourc­ing tech­nique — I say “rel­a­tively,” as the term may be new but the tech­nique is as old as out­sourc­ing itself — enables you to cull spe­cific skills from the pub­lic at large.

Often, for lit­tle to no cost.

Whether you’re out­sourc­ing already, plan­ning on doing so, or just want to save time and money, this is for you. Crowd­sourc­ing also allows you to bypass free­lance bid­ding sites that can turn out to be expen­sive and risky, often with less than desir­able results.

This two-​​hour train­ing video is com­pletely free.

In it, Sylvie exposes some of the best-​​kept secrets to get stuff done. Some of which have never been revealed until now. It was orig­i­nally recorded from a pri­vate online webi­nar to our Suc­cess Chef stu­dents, but we’re mak­ing it avail­able for the first time.

The video might be free, but you must reg­is­ter to watch it, as we high­light Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity in the back­end because that’s where the video comes from. How­ever, you get imme­di­ate access to this video on the next page. You can unsub­scribe eas­ily, anytime.

Click here to watch this amaz­ing video.

Today, a client has requested, out of the blue, a refund for copy­writ­ing work per­formed last year. Yes, last year!

Can you believe it?

Over seven months have passed and this one client is ask­ing for his money back. His excuse? “I need the money.” Of course, I refused. But he sounded des­per­ate, so I pre­sume he won’t be happy with my decision.

Likely, he will pull tooth and nail to make his case, likely by high­light­ing all the neg­a­tives, warts, and things he doesn’t like as to jus­tify his case.

The thing is, while the client did not hide the fact that he’s strapped for cash, we had an agree­ment. I can sym­pa­thize, but why should that be my responsibility?

As Larry Winget often says, “A deal is a deal.”

I ask for 100% of the fee upfront. No excep­tions. I work hard enough as it is to mar­ket my ser­vices, find clients, and then write copy for my clients. Why would I want to work twice or three times as much just to get and/​or keep my money?

Even though there’s an agree­ment in place, which states that I give no refunds but do offer a 30-​​day revi­sion period for rewrites, it still irks me on a num­ber of levels.

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A mem­ber on my copy­writ­ers forum (now my blog) started a thread on what makes my forum so pop­u­lar. Every­one chimed in with some great answers, and I appre­ci­ate the feedback.

(The cool thing about it is, that very thread also reached an impor­tant mile­stone. It was the 10,000th one! Talk about a coin­ci­dence, eh?)

But then some­one asked:

“Michel, can I ask how you ini­tially got the word out about your forum?”

My answer revealed a bit more than what the mem­ber antic­i­pated. Instead of talk­ing about how my forum became so pop­u­lar, I went on a tan­gent and explained the step-​​by-​​step process I used to book copy­writ­ing projects.

The answer was so well received that I decided to reprint it here.

Now, you may be won­der­ing what pro­mot­ing a forum (or a blog, for that mat­ter) has to do with pro­mot­ing my copy­writ­ing ser­vices. Keep read­ing because you’ll soon under­stand why…

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Free­lance copy­writ­ers are an inter­est­ing bunch. They prac­tice the art of sales­man­ship in print, yet have dif­fi­culty sell­ing them­selves. They strug­gle when it comes to self-​​promotion.

So instead of being well-​​fed and con­tent, they often go hun­gry. Why is this?

I believe it comes down to three fun­da­men­tal defi­cien­cies. I observed these in myself when I was get­ting started a few years ago. I have con­tin­ued to observe them in other copy­writ­ers who are launch­ing new free­lance careers.

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What seems to have exploded lately are blog net­works and multi-​​author blogs. It’s part of the whole “social” con­cept that seems pro­lific in today’s Web 2.0 envi­ron­ment. Take Engad​get​.com, TechCrunch​.com, Per​for​manc​ing​.com and others.

Because of the trend, I decided to allow guest authors to post to my blog. (If you wish to con­tribute, you may con­tact me for details.)

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