The Buddy System for freelance writers: Part 2

Here's the other pro you should know...

Web designers - and I've mentioned this before - make for excellent project partners. They tend to need writers even more than graphics people do! Might be that their brains are wired differently - they get all the technical specs, programming stuff, and can make sense of codes that essentially read like: 00100111001 (my apologies if I've just typed some sort of obscenity in code!)

So when they meet with a client about designing a website, and it comes down to putting words on the virtual page, the LAST thing they want to hear is, "Oh, just write something. It'll be fine."

That's when they're most likely to suggest that the client hire you to do the writing... if they know about you!

In talking with web people about working together, you'll want to discuss your SEO skills and knowledge and your understanding of writing for the web. Basically, you've got about 3 seconds to grab your readers' attention. Web readers tend to skim, scan, and scroll through pages - your job as a writer is to draw them in so they'll read more, and read enough to find themselves compelled to take action (clicking, calling, whatever).

Again, usually, you'll work with the web designer directly rather than with the client (although it could go either way).

How do you find web people to work with? See yesterday's post!