Cheap is Expensive

I have been reviewing a lot of web sites looking for potential clients. Some are good. But there is also a lot of room for improvement.

The companies I am looking at have been around for a couple of years. They are high tech, generally in the field of alternate energy. And yes, they are small with only a few employees. It shows up not only in the Dun & Bradstreet data, but also on their website, if they have bothered to have one.

The writing is poor. Sometimes it takes two or three readings of a sentence to figure out what they are trying to say verses what they are actually saying. They haven’t learned that complex, difficult topics are best explained in simple, straight-forward text.

It doesn’t have to all be said in one sentence when three will do. Two or three simpler sentences, with modifiers in their correct places, can pack more punch. Like a building, good communication is done in bits and pieces, each contributing to the others.

Copywriting involves different structures depending on its intended use. What works for one audience will not work for another. Writing for the consumer is not the same as writing for another business or shareholder. Writing a grant is not the same as writing about the latest diet supplement.

That should be obvious. But good writing, no matter the intension, must be clear, concise, and without trite phrases or convolutions that throw the reader off.

And that takes time and practice.

Building a company also requires knowing when to call in help, even temporary help, to craft the special support the company needs to progress. Do-it-yourself is cheap. It is also expensive. It can be much more expensive than what is saved doing it yourself.

Cheap is expensive.

I learned that with plumbing, heating systems, carpentry, and web design.
Judging by my looking at so many web sites, there are a lot of people doing business today who still have not learned the lesson.

OK. Time to restart this blog. I have spent the past year working contracts for Puget Sound Energy and Expedia. Both jobs were related to documenting their datacenters. Interesting work and, as always, I learned a lot about energy systems, datacenter construction, disaster recovery and failover processes and procedures.

Now it is time to get back to this effort of freelance copywriting for the Greater Good. I always had an idealist streak in me. But I recognize that we are all on this planet together, this small rock covered with a thin film of life.

We are all dependant on each other.

We all need to understand this basic fact of our existence.

At some point soon we will have to come to terms with the fact that we are using up and poisoning our little nest, that we will have to change or be forced to change.

We are a grasshopper society. We sing and dance and play but ignore the facts that it is all going to change soon.

Peak oil is upon us. Sorry, but hydrocarbon energy is going to get a heck of a lot more expensive to extract and becomes scarcer and scarcer.

Global warming is a reality. It is not when, but how much. We are headed into very scary times. Energy shortages, crop failures, population migrations, increased weather disturbances including stronger storms, hotter and colder extremes.

I wish to write for those companies and organization which recognize the coming changes and are working towards ameliorate the consequences or our grasshopperdom.

I know what I am looking for, but not who yet.

I know an outline of what we will probably need to do and will use that as a way to focus on who and how I wish to help.

I will outline this further in future posts.