My theories for increasing the likelihood that your Upwork pitches will actually get a response.

Since my first Medium article about Upwork was a moderate success — I’ve made $0.41! And I’m STOKED! — I was inspired to try writing a follow-up.

The first piece was 5 Upwork Proposals that Landed New Contracts, and was basically just me plagiarizing myself because I’m slowly trying to come out of my shell as a writer. There’s a ton of advice about how to approach writing proposals, but I thought actually seeing real examples of successful pitch messages would be helpful.

Now, here’s some additional advice that includes no real examples whatsoever. These are some of the things I’ve figured out over time after sending hundreds of Upwork pitch messages. …

This is one of the most overlooked aspects of search engine optimization. Improve your on-page SEO with these steps.

Your Website Has Images. Optimize Them.

Your website probably contains images. This is a good thing. Adding images to your articles makes them more engaging, easier to read, and can increase the time visitors spend on your page.

Images break up giant, intimidating walls of text and make your site content easier to scan. We all know internet readers have limited attention spans.

People tend to scan more than they actually read.

We’re like little kids with picture books. Half the time we’re just looking at the pictures and pretending to read the words.

The goal of well-optimized website images is to support the overall message and appeal of your site, increase traffic and visibility via Google image search, and make the site accessible to all users. …

Author’s Note: I once spent an entire summer researching crop circles. This short story is the result. Originally written in 2018.

For over 500 years, people thought that crop circles were some kind of extraterrestrial phenomenon.

That is, if they thought of them at all. Most people laughed them off or ignored them completely. Some weren’t even aware crop circles existed.

But the people who had heard of crop circles believed that some alien intelligence from another planet was leaving messages in their cornfields in the form of geometric, mandala-like patterns.

It never occurred to them that they might be wrong.

Given their primitive superstitions and beliefs — most notably that human beings were the pinnacle of intelligence on planet earth — it’s easy to see how people would make this mistake. …

Even though there was a lot of competition.

First Contact and Follow-Up

A few months ago, I ran across a prospective client that was looking for someone to write their website content. I reached out to the founder on LinkedIN, and to my surprise, I heard back right away — in under 15 minutes, in fact.

The initial message was simple: “Hey, I saw you’re looking for help with your brand messaging. My business partner and I would love to speak with you and share some ideas. We’re also curious to learn more about your company! Would you be up for a 30 minute phone call?”

She said yes, and we scheduled a call for the following morning. …

The most exciting thing I’ve seen in a while. If you sell products online (or aspire to) this is something you might want to know about.

Boo.st lets you sell without a website (!?!)

Thanks to the magic of serendipity, I discovered an exciting new company yesterday on Twitter. If you sell things online (or anywhere, really), this is something you probably want to know about.

Boost is a tool that allows you to sell literally everywhere using “smart hashtags.” You don’t need a website. You don’t need an app. There’s apparently no checkout.

What?! Instant super fan. I love this idea.

You can generate smart hashtags for your products “that anyone can text to buy in seconds.” …