Nick Usborne is well known for his online writing talents (just do a Google search on his name if you don’t know what I mean).

Recently Nick has taken on part ownership of an online coffee and tea warehouse called appropriately enough, http://www.coffeeandteawarehouse.com.

Coffee and writing go well together. I’ve just nipped round to my local coffee shop to have a cup and write this article.

Nick’s new partners have obviously been attracted by his writing skills and his influence is clear on their website.

But Nick’s new focus on selling coffee hasn’t stopped him from writing. On the contrary, it’s given him more experiences to write about and some great content to build his site’s link popularity and attract traffic.

In a recent edition of his newsletter, Excess Voice, he talks about the Lifetips.com website and how he came to become their resident coffee guru.

Anyone has the potential to become a Lifetips.com expert

Lifetips.com hosts hundreds of informational Guru Tip Web Sites for successful entrepreneurs that want to share knowledge and promote their own web sites at the same time. The sites offer “58,000 tips, articles, newsletters and big brain tests to millions of monthly visitors.”

But it does cost money – $895 as an initial fee. (If that sounds a lot, then look at the no-cost alternative below). Once approved, you are required to write 50-100 tips, optimize them for organic search by writing good titles, descriptions and of course peppering your copy with keyword phrases.

In return for all that effort you get coverage on the Lifetips.com website and have the opportunity to promote yourself to the site’s 2 million plus monthly visitors. You’ll get one link to your site per tip. For those of you who can afford to buy links that’s less than $75 per month. Seems like good value to me.

You can see Nick’s work at http://coffee.lifetips.com/ and his full review at http://www.excessvoice.com/lifetips.htm.

The no-cost alternative

First, if you have a budget for buying links, Lifetips.com looks like good value. But, you’ve got to do some serious content creation, rather than just throwing money at pay per click advertising – but once it’s done, you’ll reap the benefits in increased link popularity and traffic.

Second, if you can’t afford the fee, pretend that you do and go ahead and write the 100 tips anyway – then publish them on your own website. This will give you wonderfully useful content – attractive to your visitors, to search engines and to other websites who could link to you.

Think you don’t have enough to write about?

You could be surprised – we all carry experience and insights that could be useful to others. Here’s one way to bring them out.

Get yourself a method for keeping simple notes, either a PDA or a good quality paper notebook (which I prefer). It should be just the right size so that it’s easy to put in a pocket or purse and keep with you throughout your working week.

As you do your day-to-day work, pay attention to the ‘content’ of your work – the problems that you face, the solutions that you come up, the ideas and short-cuts you develop, the tips and advice that you give or receive from colleagues. Jot down a short sentence on each more or less as they happen.

At the end of your week review your notes. If you face these problems then so do your customers and colleagues, and others working in your industry. Pick the best of your content from your week and develop the short sentences into paragraphs. Keep your writing simple and focused on solving a practical problem or conveying an idea. Don’t over-elaborate; don’t justify your position or your reasoning – just give people the nitty-gritty of what they need to do to solve the problem.

Now get someone you trust to read and edit your stuff. If you haven’t got great writing skills, get someone to polish and edit your material. What’ll you end up with are some well-written, practical tips and insights that many people in your industry will value. Repeat the exercise until you’ve got your 50-100 tips

Ken McGaffin provides link building services to established and new
launch websites. He is the author of the highly acclaimed ‘Linking
Matters Report’. You can claim your free copy at
http://www.linkingmatters.com.