Web 2.0 Freelance Writing

Web 2.0 freelance writing is not necessarily new. There is much information available online that describes the term "Web 2.0″ - which essentially just means "web sites that offer user-generated content."



One new twist on the Web 2.0 theme concerns ways for freelance writers to take advantage of user-generated content. The easiest way to get started is to join Amazon Associates Program, which incidentally, has been around since 1996 and is one of the original highly successful Web 2.0 projects (the program allows webmasters to generate content for Amazon).



Amazon Associates Program uses standard web advertisements - text or graphics - and has attracted over 900,000 members (probably many more than that, as the 900,000 number is merely current membership; there are many Associates who are no longer active or who fell by the wayside due to competition).



The premise for Amazon's version of affiliate marketing is that when an Associate creates an advertisement for an Amazon product - and sells something - she or he receives a percentage of the sale price. It's that simple, and all Amazon did to harness the power of 900,000 modern-day advertising copywriters (who generate 40 percent of total Amazon sales) is to have Amazon programmers create innovative computer code (hyperlinks, HTML, and so forth) to display the advertisements on the web.



If you create an Amazon web advertisement and place it on your blog, Amazon has harnessed your personal creativity and energy, in essence employing you as one of their many Web 2.0 freelance advertising copywriters. You will have to work at your trade a bit if you want to personally generate enough sales to subsist from the revenue, but it's possible. Don't forget that at least a few of the 900,000 Amazon Associates "members" are mainstream web sites that generate oodles of web traffic; feel free to do the math on the number of product sales a mainstream web site might make based on "oodles of web traffic."



So, how to determine ways to do the same thing that Amazon does? In other words, what are some ways to leverage user-generated web content? If you examine everything Amazon does at its various web sites, you may be able to see a number of interesting ways to use other Amazon Associates web work (Amazon encourages this, because it's powerful stuff).



For instance, if you Google the words "Amazon Best Seller," and choose a category from one of Amazon's Bestseller pages, once you've clicked inside a category - Books, for example - you can scroll toward the bottom of the page and find the words "RSS Feed." If you click on the link that says "Subscribe to: Bestsellers > Books" an RSS feed will display as a web address at the top of your browser. If you paste the RSS feed somewhere on the web - the easiest way is in the right margin of a Google-Blogger blog - just select Customize, Add a Gadget, and Feed - you have in effect harnessed readily available sales data provided to you for free from Amazon's rather massive customer base. The link below "Subscribe to: Bestsellers > Books" that states "Learn more about RSS feeds for Bestsellers" tells you how to place your Amazon Associates tag (Amazon Associates ID) at the end of the RSS feed to obtain a percentage of sale from the RSS feed (if you do this, you become a real-world code writer as you manipulate computer code provided to you buy Amazon, so you must cross your t's and dot your i's; you have to pay attention to their instruction, as there are no mistakes allowed when you change the RSS feed to include your Amazon tag or it will not function properly).



If you can pull off the above, you've actually figured out a way to put Amazon to work for you. Their code writers provide you with computer code for free. You place the code on a web site or blog. Amazon's web platform and online sales force drives the best-seller lists. You sit around and receive a percentage of sales for very little effort on your part.



Amazon has many other similar functions available within their Associates Program. Their aStores allow you to use other Amazon customers' Listmania lists (not just lists developed by Amazon Associates; you can use any list generated by anyone from Amazon's entire customer base). You can also blog or link to someone else's book or product review at Amazon by way of a permalink found at the end of each review; don't forget to create an Amazon Associates hyperlink before you post the permalink(s) to the web (do this from within the Amazon Associates main web site).



To become a Web 2.0 freelance writer, you only need to understand the way in which Web 2.0 functions, which is merely to leverage power inherent to the digital exchange of other peoples' creativity and effort - in whatever area you want to write in.



The possibilities are endless.