Writing technique for RFP (Request for Proposal)

A while back, a potential client provided me with some general details of the writing work he wanted me to do for his firm. Then he asked me to send him a proposal.

Proposal?! I panicked as I tried to confirm with him what he meant by that since I had never done one before, at least not as a freelancer.


I must've not really wanted to pursue this opportunity since I didn't bother to do research or follow up with the company after submitting a contract instead of a proposal. A little time passed, I came across an article on writing RFPs (Request for Proposal). Ding! The light bulb went on. This guy verbally gave me his RFP and wanted a written response.

When a firm requires a project to be completed by a contractor or outside source, they write a RFP. This is a formal document describing the project, how the contract companies should respond, how the proposals will be reviewed, and contact information. Often, the company documents the submission guidelines to make it easier for them to compare responses. There are no specific standards or guidelines for creating the RFP, but government agencies usually strict standards they follow when conducting the proposal process.
Outside companies read the RFP and write a proposal (a bid) explaining how they can best offers and meet those needs. When writing the proposal, the company should closely follow the guidelines established in the RFP to avoid being removed from consideration for the potential project.

A typical proposal contains:
• Executive summary - summary of the entire proposal
• Statement of need - why project is necessary
• Project description - How project will be implemented and evaluated
• Organization information
• Project schedule
• Budget
• Conclusion

My situation was an informal version of all this. The client gave me a high level overview of what I might do for him. If I knew then what I know now, I would've written up a description of the client's needs and how I would complete the work in meeting those needs.

Small businesses would likely do a proposal in between the one I got and the complex government required ones. Most small businesses will be prompted to write a proposal when approaching a client. The client may ask you to submit a proposal outlining what you can do for them. In this case, write a proposal including the elements of a typical proposal and keep it short and to the point especially if the client is not a large company.

There are examples of RFPs and responses peppered throughout the Web, but which one you can learn from depends on the type of work involved. A proposal can be two pages or as big as a book. Rely on your favorite search engine and do the research to create an unbeatable proposal.

Content Site and Monetize with Google Adsense

By using a service such as you can pinpoint what people are typing into search engines when they are trying to find your product or service. By doing a little keyword research, you will know if math lesson plans are more popular than reading lesson plans. Once you have determined what people are looking for, you can start creating your blog. No need to outsource the creation of your blog to a web designer. People are going to visit your site to learn something, so give them clear, concise information. Keep adding fresh content and your visitors will keep returning to learn more. You can apply for Google's Adsense program. Google will review your site, and once it is approved you simply add some HTML code to your site. Google will place small text ads on your site that have something in common with your site's content. When one of your site's visitors clicks on an ad, you will earn a commission. The first step is to decide what kind of market you would like to target. The options are limitless. We will use an example of creating a content site targeted to moms who home school their children. That is still a very broad category, and you can limit that further by focusing on lesson plans for stay-at-home moms who home school their children that are between the ages of 5 to 9, for instance. You will also want to do some keyword research.

Key Provisions In The Economic Stimulus Law Make Outsourcing Your Payroll Processing Services More Attractive

The IRS has made reacting to the much more onerous COBRA provision contained in the new law a top priority. As the number of participants grow, more businesses may be interested in choosing to outsource this to a payroll processing services provider as the work and liability tied to it will increase exponentially. Not all companies that offer payroll services administer COBRA.While larger national payroll processing services companies usually administer COBRA, most local ones do not. Utilizing your payroll services COBRA administration has certain advantages over using your health carrier's: a health care provider may just provide COBRA for their specific health plan, but not include other eligible services, such as Dental. In addition, some larger or multi-state companies may have several health insurance choices; relying on your payroll outsourcing services provider to administer COBRA eliminates this conflict. While many companies do their payroll processing and related benefits administration in-house, many companies are increasingly choosing to use payroll outsourcing services. Two key changes in benefits law are listed below: First, a Temporary COBRA Premium Assistance has been included in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This COBRA Premium Assistance provides a subsidy of 65% of the cost of COBRA coverage for nine months to certain individuals. The subsidy's provisions are effective immediately and plan sponsors must comply with them now.

FAQ'S on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Too many occurrences of the same word in a page (spamming). Missing H1 and H2 heading tag content. Missing ALT tag content in your graphic links. No meaningful content in the first 250 characters on each page. Less than 200 words per page. Very few pages on your website. No links from other web sites to your web site (link popularity). It's been several months and my website finally shows up in Google but it's ranked in the hundreds. Why is that? It's not always easy to get better search engine rankings. In fact, search engine optimisation is part science and part art. Search engines continually change their algorithms and tweak their rules for ranking. It is possible that Google does not fully read your page due to structural issues, your web site (or at least individual web pages) could be lacking in meaningful content, no significant web sites link to you, your web site is too small to be of any value to people searching for your topic, or any other range of problems. As such, each page must be individually optimised too for optimal ranking. Collectively, all pages of your web site reinforce the common "theme" of the site, which also can help boost ranking. Don't assume that your home page is the only important page on your site. How does the Search Engine find websites? There are two ways a search engine can find a website to add to its database. The first and most direct method is to accept submissions from web site designers and optimisers. Most search engines have a "submit your URL" section inviting submissions from Internet users. The amount of time required to see results of search engine optimisation work range anywhere from 2 weeks to a few months. This is dependent on how often search engines update their index and subsequently re-rank sites. The Google Dance for example is almost a spectator sport among the SEO community. A search engine spider is an automated program that electronically probes every URL submitted to its database. As the spider is a computer program, it is designed to look for and rank very specific items on each page it probes. If those elements are present, the spider computes a higher ranking than it would if those elements were not present.

Outsourcing - a boon to freelancers

In fact most writers from these countries who are into freelancing write good stuff, which is at par with international standards. Moreover, with rising educated unemployment in third world countries these people are quite happy with the kind of money that they get for their work. There may be debates on outsourcing in developed countries as it is eating their local jobs but the fact is that outsourcing is here to stay and countries have to make adjustments to accommodate this global phenomenon. Many individuals who had been in a full time job and one fine day decide to do something on their own had actually taken the decision either out of sheer desperation of being continuously bossed around or because they wanted to realize their dreams. Whatever is the reason behind such a decision, one thing is clear that better people must get better opportunities to show their true potential and freelancing is one such option. More and more companies are outsourcing their projects. Lower cost is obviously the major factor behind this, but sometimes the companies also outsource their projects expecting better quality. The company may not be equipped with efficient manpower to execute all types of projects. Then they search for a freelancer who has expertise in that particular field. With the advent of globalization all sorts of jobs are now being outsourced to countries where labor is cheap and one can get quality service. Projects that involve assembling, software programming, customer care, and writings are being increasingly outsourced to developing countries like India, Pakistan etc. The reason why multinational companies are outsourcing jobs to developing countries is very simple. Apart from being cost effective, these countries have a vast pool of English speaking people who are quite comfortable with the language even if it is not their first language.

Significance of Internet Marketing Solutions

The main point of consideration is to determine which internet marketing solutions proves right for you to meet the respective needs of your customers. This solution could be email marketing, search engine optimization, or creating web pages and sites. As your goal is to increase your return on investment, you need to choose those internet marketing solutions that will help you to achieve this. These marketing techniques do not cost much as they are very self explanatory. It is essential to create a website if focused your business. As online presence is essential for a successful business, these days every business whether big or small has to make their websites to succeed online. After creating a website as an internet marketing solution we optimize it for search engines. Mostly the highly quality and cheapest visitors comes from search engines listings. A website is very much essential to optimize in order to achieve the high search engine rankings. You need to make research to find your target audience, who these people are, where they are located and their financial status. This requires a lot of marketing knowledge and skills to achieve our goals in this internet marketing arena. Need for internet marketing solutions There are varieties of internet marketing solutions that are being offered by several different online companies. The main point of consideration is to determine which internet marketing solutions proves right for you to meet the respective needs of your customers. This solution could be email marketing, search engine optimization, or creating web pages and sites. As your goal is to increase your return on investment, you need to choose those internet marketing solutions that will help you to achieve this. These marketing techniques do not cost much as they are very self explanatory.

Effect of Internet Marketing On Real Estate Professionals

People will log on to your website, only when they feel they shall benefit something from it. Thus always write and come up with specific elements that will benefit the people, who are looking out for properties in any particular location. You need to understand the mindset of your viewers and make use of proper key words. Using the right keyword will assure you that your website is up on the first page of Google or MSN and that the browser will view it. Also make sure to use proper title and tag line. Many of the people choose to open your website, only if the title sounds good to them. Make sure that the title is matching the content of your web pages and use accordingly. With so many real estate agents coming online, it has become easier to view various properties at different location from the comforts of your home or office. Internet marketing is quite different from the traditional marketing. In Internet marketing for real estate, you are a part of a big market of the World Wide Web with hundreds of competitors. Apart from building a well groomed website, you also need to come up with strategies that attract and generate prospects. Thus real estate professional will have to come up with a great deal of effort and web designs to generate customers. Many a times, it so happens that you come up with the website, but fail to succeed as you make no efforts to market it.