In many ways, writing for the internet is the same as writing for most other things. But there are some subtle – and not so subtle – differences that you need to take account of if you want your writing for the internet to actually earn you some decent money.
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Writing for the internet
Despite what you learned at school, internet writing can mean changing your writing style a bit.
Most people are put off by large blocks of text. Sure, if it’s a text book that you have to read for course work you’ll put up with this. But elsewhere on the web we’re looking for short bites of information.
When you’re writing for the internet, whether it’s for your own blog, a comment on a YouTube video or anything else you need to take account of these differences.
Tips on writing for the internet
Keep your paragraphs short. If they look like getting too long, split them. Even if your English teacher would cringe.
Use bullet points. These are easier to scan and people aren’t daunted by them.
Keep your words short-ish and simple. Writing for the internet is an art and you don’t want your reader to constantly have to go off to Google to find out what a word means.
Use headings (like this one) when you’re writing for the internet
Headings make it easy for people to scan a page and find the information they’re looking for.
Work out who your target audience is. It may be people who read your blogs. Or you may prefer to be a ghost writer for other people. Personally, when I’m writing for the internet I’ll publish my own work but I may use a pen name to keep things a bit neater.
There’s plenty of paid work writing for the internet but letting other people publish your work on their websites. Some of the popular sites such as elance allow you to do this although – unless you know what you’re doing – you’ll be competing with lots of other people.
In fact, the book I found to learn about writing for the internet has a whole section about using job sites such as elance. I haven’t used it myself (I don’t like to write to deadlines set by other people) but I’ve used these sites as a buyer and the advice given would make your bid stand out from the crowd, so if that’s your cup of tea you could be writing for the internet sooner than you think.