Ray Manley, top freelance writer, content creator and marketer

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4 fantastic ways to use keywords to create an engaging first paragraph

The first paragraph or sentence of a blog: If it doesn’t stress you

This Idiot’s Guide to Clickbait

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Not long ago I installed the Downworthy plugin in my browser. It “translates”

No Lies: How to Get Content Marketing Right in E-Commerce

Content marketing is a great, wonderful, powerful way to earn attention and loyalty online … but much of what the industry talks about comes from a B2B perspective. A lot of the rules change when you move to the B2C sector, and still more change when you talk about businesses

GDPR: The Biggest Gift to Content Marketers in a Decade

“We’ve updated our privacy policy.” Seen much of that sentence lately? I’m writing this May 28, three days after the enforcement date of new European data privacy regulations – commonly known as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). One of the unintended and more humorously ironic consequences of the much

How to Explain Content Marketing ROI to Win (or Keep) Buy-In

Do you feel like you’re constantly explaining content marketing? Whether you’re seeking initial buy-in or justifying an existing program to a new executive, you’re often asked to prove that content marketing is a worthy investment. Explaining the nitty-gritty inner workings and ROI of content marketing to bosses or clients

Meet Teresa, a Freelancer Who Uses Time Tracking to Help Effectively Measure Her Productivity and Determine Her Rates

Teresa Ruiz Decker, owner of TRD Communications, shares how FreshBooks has been a game changer when it comes to tracking her time. Teresa may have only started freelancing full-time in 2017, but the road to becoming a business owner was a long one. For five years, she planned her journey—reading

8 Copywriting Techniques to Boost Email Conversions

There’s one thing I hate about email marketing copy: You never know how it’s going to perform until the campaign goes live. What seemed like a rock-star line of copy could become the campaign’s kiss of death. Sure, you can A/B test every element of each email all month,

Freelancers Union Guest Post: Security Means More Than Just Health Insurance

Health insurance and dental coverage aren’t the only benefits available to freelance workers. Discover these five additional protections for freelancers… For many freelancers, health insurance and dental coverage are the holy grail of benefits: life-changing, hard to come by, and periodically provoking the fear that choosing the wrong plan will

Creative Freelancers: 5 Tax Myths You Need to Bust

Here’s some mythbusting for some common tax myths. You just got through tax season, but if preparing this year’s taxes didn’t go as smoothly as you would have liked, there’s no time like the present to start thinking about how to better prepare for next year. Creative freelancers tend to

Tired of Getting Paid by Snail Mail? How I Learned There’s a Better Way

It might be time to bid adieu to paper checks and snail mail from your clients. When I started freelancing, I didn’t really care how clients paid me. Check, PayPal credit card – I was just happy to have clients who actually paid me. But as my business has grown

How to Create Great Gated Content From Existing Content

If your business is committed to content, you’re probably sitting on a pile of e-books, white papers, and maybe even videos. And chances are, you’re struggling to get people to download them. Often, their promotion makes you anxious. You write more blog posts and social content to promote the

6 Time-Saving Apps and Tools Marketers Obsess Over

Finding a great app or tool sometimes can feel like winning the lottery – maybe not the Mega Millions, but at least a $20 scratch-off ticket. Here are some winning picks from some of our favorite sources. MotoRead – when you can’t or don’t want to read with your eyes

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