Harness following techniques and you won't be a freelancer who calls it quits. Your business newsletter will be different and powerful. It'll serve as a business-builder, lead-generator, and repetitive project-producing money-making marketing tool.

GUIDELINES TO CREATE A BUSINESS-BUILDING NEWSLETTER

Your business newsletter should serve multiple functions, not just one. Here's how to do it.

Function #1: USE YOUR NEWSLETTER TO SELL YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERTISE—BUT DO IT QUIETLY AND CLEVERLY.

Your newsletter should provide worthy, timely, helpful, problem-solving information — anything else, such as blatant promotion or bragging about benefits of your skills and services, will trigger prospect or client to toss out or delete your newsletter, including future issues. Learn to sell yourself cleverly and subtly.

You can do so by showcasing specific examples, samples, and results you've achieved for other clients. Your newsletter should contain 80% information and 20% (or less) promotion. You also can mention any awards you've received, if you did charity work for a non-profit association to help raise funds, spoke at a workshop or led a seminar, or had an article or book published. Both prospects and clients will enjoy reading these newsworthy achievements as they are reflections of your skills and abilities.

Function #2: USE YOUR NEWSLETTER AS A REPETITIVE MARKETING TOOL. Securing a client is multi-step — and marketing repeatedly to same prospect or client is vital to secure work. Publishing your newsletter frequently satisfies this need and increases chance of prospect or client outsourcing work to you. According to marketing experts, it takes five consecutive times to make an impact. Publish your newsletter no less than bi-monthly. Monthly is standard. Weekly or bi-weekly is recommended, especially if you publish your newsletter online.

Function #3: USE YOUR NEWSLETTER TO INTEREST PROSPECTS AND CLIENTS IN WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY.

Your newsletter should contain interesting, problem-solving copy — not fluff or generalizations. You can craft interesting copy by writing copy that:

a) solves a problem or problems; b) solves a potential or future problem; c) helps prospect or client achieve better results; d) lends valuable advice; e) helps define his or her problem; f) provides case studies of mistakes that other businesses have made and how he or she can avoid them.

Favor brief copy over long-winded sentences and endless paragraphs. Use periods over commas. Use a software program like StyleWriter, found at http://www.StyleWriter-USA.com, to help you write in plain english and to clean up your copy. Writing interesting, problem-solving, plain english copy makes prospect or client read your newsletter immediately and increases chance of securing work.

Function #4: USE YOUR NEWSLETTER TO BRIDGE TOGETHER YOUR COPY WITH YOUR VALUABLE FREELANCE SKILLS. How does a prospect or client know you can exceed their expectations on their next project, if they decide to hire you? Because your newsletter subtly shows your capabilities. Make sure you bridge together newsletter content with your freelance skills. Your newsletter content should be an extension of your experiences, skills, expertise, and knowledge. The client will realize you're well qualified to undertake his next project.

Function #5: USE YOUR NEWSLETTER TO GENERATE NEW WORK FROM EXISTING CLIENTS.

I didn’t know until a few days ago. On Thursday, 25th of November (Thanksgiving), my computer was infected by a virus that literally took control of my web browser and wrecked my machine when I tried to get rid of it.

Let me tell you what happened...

After we were all done with our Thanksgiving dinner, I went online to do some quick research for my next article. But instead, I stayed up all night battling a virus from hell!

Shortly after I got online, my Norton Antivirus and my adware/spyware removal software Spyware Doctor, started going wild with notifications of a virus presence in my computer.

I immediately stopped doing what I was doing and got Spyware Doctor to scan my hard drive. Before long, it gave me a report about 196 infected files with Trojan and some other types of adware/spyware virus residing on my hard drive!

I was shocked when I saw that. Just day before computer was fine!

So then, I spent hours going through whole procedure of removing virus from my hard drive … and soon it was clean. Or so I thought...

Here’s what virus was doing:

Everything looked normal. If you don’t know much about website development, you may never notice that something was wrong. And that’s really dangerous, because anything can happen once your system is infected!

As I continued with my research, I noticed something very strange. Many of links that I clicked on, led me to one particular website that was filled with hundreds of different affiliate programs and products.

Regardless of what website I would look at, every single website had these links placed on specific key words and phrases, such as: money, internet marketing, data, webhost, home based business, business opportunity, work, and others. And all of links would take me to this website with hundreds of products. That was very unusual.

But when I looked at my website, much to my surprise I saw same links on my site!

I couldn’t believe it! The links did not exist in my html. But where were these links coming from?

It’s my website. I wrote those webpages! I didn’t put those links there. And yet when I looked at website links were there.

I called my sister and I asked her if she was seeing same thing on her computer as I was seeing on my computer. She looked at my website and told me that she wasn’t seeing any of those additional links, other than my usual links.

That made me realize that something was wrong with my computer. I saved file that I was typing for my next article so I could devote my attention to finding a solution for this problem. A strange thing happened as soon as I hit save button. The file reformatted itself. Hyperlinks were placed on all of key words (as I already mentioned some) that were found in file. But who placed those links?

When I clicked on link, it took me to same page with hundreds of products. I got very scared because I felt like I was losing control of my computer. From my previous experience (but not as extreme), I’ve learned that virus always stays in touch with hacker’s server, constantly transferring information about my activities gathered from registry.