No Direct Mail at Christmas? Strike while the iron is hot...

Many charities and social enterprises rely heavily on donations that result from direct mail appeals at Christmas time. With the threat of the Royal Mail strike/collapse, they will need to consider online methods of fundraising and start preparing now for a campaign. There are many ways to make money from writing online such as getting paid to write articles, writing and selling e-books, money generated by advertisers on your blog, compelling stories that inspire people to donate and direct e-mail to your supporters.

Articles are needed for websites all the time. People want fresh and current content on whatever they are researching or looking to buy and they want to know that the content is reliable. They also want to be able to understand it, so your writing should be clear, concise and understandable to an average 14 year old. It's a bit like writing a funding application, you have to assume that the funder does not have any understanding about your subject area and you must avoid using jargon.

To get started, you could write about 5 samples of your work (about 500 words) and you can then submit them to sites that are interested in your field. You can also network with internet marketers and webmasters. Many of the big websites outsource their writing projects and are looking for interesting content.

You can be as creative as you like and set up fundraising appeals. For instance, there is an appeal running on Facebook right now called Causes. This costs nothing to set up and already they have raised thousands for various charities. Last Friday, a Twitter campaign was launched. Every time someone mentioned '#BeatCancer' money was donated to cancer charities. A new Guinness World Record was set for the most social mentions in 24 hours, which by Saturday had already topped 200,000 on Twitter, Facebook and blog posts. Don't underestimate the power of free social networking.

You can create newsletters and reports that you send out to your sponsors to encourage them to keep sponsoring you. If they know that you are continuing to make a difference, they will want to keep supporting. If you can develop a story telling style, all the better. Case studies can be an extremely effective method of convincing the public to donate. It goes without saying that you need to be careful about confidentiality especially on the web.

Press releases are a very powerful and effective way of encouraging people to visit your website. If you are doing something that is newsworthy, let people know about it. You can submit it to Google news and of course let your supporters know about it in an email. If you don't have anything particularly big happening, you can always interview some of your service users and create a testimonial report.

E Books are very popular now and very easy to create. There are plenty of software packages available that make it really easy for you to convert your information into an ebook. You could write one that has international appeal or one that is aimed at your local community. Once you have created it, you can upload it to ebay, let people know about it and where to find it and they can buy it through paypal.

Blogging is very useful. Blog sites climb to the top of the search engine quickly because they have so much content. Make sure you keep using your key words and remember to link to your website. This will help to improve the rankings of your site as well. Allowing advertisers to place ads on your blog is another way of generating some income, as you will get paid a little every time someone clicks on one of the ads. Google is good at matching appropriate adverts to your blog through Adsense. More on that later!

If you really want to get stuck in and make some money from writing, the Directory of Social Change are hosting a fabulous workshop:

CHARITY WRITING AND PUBLICATIONS TRAINING DAY
Monday 2 November
Directory of Social Change,
24 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2DP
http://www.dsc.org.uk

Maybe I'll see you there!

Happy Writing,

Kay