Comments on: How freelance journalists and writers can use Google’s Keyword Tool to get work

By: Sally Whittle

Sally Whittle — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:03:47 +0000

I suppose I sort of imagine, in my hopelessly old-fashioned, 1.0 way, that writing isn’t something you just farm out to someone you found on Google.

Also, I did use PPC for PR training but obviously this is way more competitive – our sad little ad never showed up on searches for PR training before about page 6 of results, but we got loads of clicks from blogs and websites running those little affiliate ads, and every month I shelled out £75 for ads running on pages that weren’t even appropriate (like we’d be displayed on journalist job sites). Ditched it after a year.

Was I doing something wrong, do you think?

By: Andrew Bruce Smith

Andrew Bruce Smith — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:26:41 +0000

Sally – appreciate your comments (as ever!). I don’t think there is any argument that recommendations and existing clients/working relationships are the best way to get work. However, in a tightening economy, I would have thought that at least testing a small scale PPC campaign might be worth the effort. If you assume that only 1pc of those 8,000 searches for media training were from people who were in the market for purchasing media training, that’s still 80 opportunities to get work – and presumably even one or two media training gigs would be better than a poke in the eye.

Or look at it this way. What if you set a target eg gain one day of media training in the next month. Work out how much you’ d be prepared to spend on a PPC campaign to justify the effort. Create your PPC ad with a dedicated landing page specfically designed to convert. You can’t guarantee that it will generate work, but surely out of those 8000 searches for media training, at least some of them must be from people looking to buy related services – also, there is a lot you can learn about the traffic these ads generate that might help to better understand why and what your potential customers might buy.

I agree, perhaps this kind of approach isn’t for everyone – but surely giving it go is better than just hoping the phone will ring?

By: Sally Whittle

Sally Whittle — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:51:43 +0000

Interesting post.

I think you’re perhaps over-estimating the value of the approaches that might come through Google, though.

Many (95% plus) of the unsolicited approaches from new clients these days come from SEO farms, commercial blogs or big websites like About.com that pay less than £10 per thousand words – they’re really geared for students and the like.

I am certainly taking on more corporate work as newspaper budgets decline over the summer, but most of that work comes from recommendations, previous working relationships or from people finding details in online directories like the NUJ’s or Gorkana’s.

In 10 years, I can probably count the number of profitable approaches that have come from people who found my website on one hand – so the investment I’d be prepared to make in keywords at this point would still be very low, personally.