Tips for Promoting Your Home Based Writing Business Online

If you're considering a home based writing business, or if you've already started one, you know that advertising can be an enormous expense. Print ads are costly, and they don't always reach clients effectively. Fortunately, in the age of the Internet, a home based writing business need not rely on print ads alone.

Whether you're searching locally or globally for clients, consider the Internet a partner in your home based writing business. There are many free or low-cost methods of promoting your services online. Here are the ones which have worked best for me:

First things first: Get a website. You may think, "No kidding!" but I'm continually surprised by the number of home based writing business owners who don't seem to think that having a website is necessary. Actually, I managed - just barely -- to operate my home based writing business without one for the first three years. It wasn't because I didn't think a website was a good idea. I believed I couldn't afford one, and I had no clue about how to design one myself.

I was probably one of the last people on the planet to learn of the do-it-yourself website. (Compare website builders by reading reviews on http://www.websitebuildermagazine.com.) By the time I discovered an affordable website builder, I was eager to expand my home based writing business beyond my local area.

Having a website has made a tremendous difference in the volume and diversity of the projects I get to work on. My design isn't fancy, and that's fine. When you're promoting a home based writing business, putting a lot of bells and whistles on your website is probably not the best option. Mainly, you need a clean design, clear descriptions of your services and your background, contact info, and examples of your best work.