Hello Writers,

In the last post, I mentioned the Editorial Guidelines for writers. These guidelines help describe how to compose your letters as templates and how to format your letters so they appear ‘normal’ to customers who review and hopefully purchase them.

Because of the wide variety of letter compositions and formats submitted, the suspicion is that very few writers are reading these; so, the Editorial Guidelines are posted here for easier access, as you go through editing your letters.

Keep in mind, if you find a problem or a better or easier way of doing something on the site, please post it here for all of us.

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These editorial guidelines are designed to help you understand what works are acceptable and unacceptable for inclusion in the LetterRep.com letters database. Before you submit works to LetterRep.com, please read this page.

CONTENT QUALIFICATIONS

To Be Qualified For Inclusion on LetterRep.com, Your Work:

* MUST NOT CONTAIN AFFILIATE PROGRAM LINKS. See Section #3 below.

* MUST NOT BE BLATANT AND EXCESSIVE SELF-PROMOTION OR HYPE.

* MUST NOT CONTAIN PORNOGRAPHY/ADULT MATERIAL, HATE OR VIOLENCE-ORIENTED, SUGGEST RACIAL INTOLERANCE, ADVOCATE AGAINST ANY INDIVIDUAL, HAVE INSULTING-OBSCENE-DEGRADING TONE OR CONTAIN EXCESS PROFANITY.

* MUST NOT CONTAIN INFORMATION ON: hacking/cracking content, auto-surf program advocacy or promotion, bomb creation, support for terrorism/radicalism/religious fanaticism, illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia, steroid use or advocacy, weapon/firearms/ammunition/balisongs/butterfly knives or brass knuckles, or the promotion of hard alcohol/tobacco-related products or prescription drugs.

* MUST NOT CONTAIN ANY CONTENT THAT IS A VIOLATION OF ANY LAW, be considered defamatory, libelous, or infringes on the legal rights of others.

* MUST NOT BE A SUBMISSION OF THE EXACT SAME WORKS as one that you already submitted. Some writers have submitted the same work multiple times with only a few words changed in the body — we reject these and ban writers who engage in this practice.

* MUST NOT BE A REPLY TO A PERSONAL EMAIL, letter or other correspondence.

* PUT NO ADDRESSING, DATING, REFERENCE (RE:), OR SUBJECT in the header of your letters.

Letter Title
• Be concise: instead of “announce the sale of a boat or house” write “announce sale of property”; e.g., omit articles when possible and unnecessary description.
• Lowercase first word.
• Use active verb (not –ing or noun phrase): e.g. Announce (not announcing).
• End with a period before author if named.
• Do not use punctuation after author other than periods for initials, example:
write a letter title. Author A.B.

Letter Description
• Include only 6-8 lines (salutation and body paragraph, or two if short).
• End with 3 dots (including period): .…

Insert Material
• Be concise.
• Do not use verbs in brackets (e.g. [insert amount]; just write $[amount]).
• Use brackets [ ] , not parentheses ( ).
• Name: [name] or [full name] if necessary (not [person's name] or [subject’s name])
• DO NOT PUT XX OR [XX]
• Name of company or organization: [company/organization] (not [business name] or [name of business])
• Add apostrophe-s after brackets: [name]’s or [company]’s.
• If a date is used in the body of the letter, insert date as [date].
• Time: insert time as [time] or [time period]
• Combinations: on [date] at [time], we…
• Position or title: [position/title] (not [state name of position])
• Gender: [his/her], [he/she]
• Optional material: [Optional:] Then begin the optional content as a separate paragraph.
• Dollars: $[amount]
• Contact information: [phone number] or [phone] or [email]

Letter Body
• Business letters: Dear [name]: or To Whom It May Concern: (note colon and caps)
• Personal letters: Dear [name], (note comma)
• Skip a line before beginning first paragraph.
• Double space between paragraphs.
• Use the words “from” and “to” rather than a hyphen between times or dates.
• Do not use any spacing before paragraphs (LetterRep customers can choose the format from their interface).
• Do not add any blank lines at the end of the document

Display Content
• Lowercase first word.
• End with period.
• Use active verbs: complain about poor service; express disappointment with company.

Word Choices
• Avoid “totally” (use “completely” instead) and “definitely.”
• Avoid “a lot” (use “many” or a similar word instead).
• Due to = caused by (do not use it to mean “because of”).
• Avoid contractions in business letters; they are acceptable in personal letters.
• Avoid “thanks much.”
• Use “I look forward to” rather than “I’m looking forward to.”
• Use “and” rather than “&.”

Punctuation
• Use a semicolon (;) before “however” and a comma after it.
• Use double quotation marks, not single.
• Enclose period and comma inside quotation marks.
• Use commas after all elements in a series, including last one before “and.”
• Use only one space between sentences and following all punctuation.
• Use the slash mark (/) for multiple pronoun (or other) options: [his/her] NOT [his or her].
• Follow “To Whom It May Concern” with a colon (:) NOT a semicolon (;).
• Do not use tabs; use one space.
Remove white space at end of document

General
• Single space throughout.
• Proofread the letter before submitting it!

LetterRep.com Editorial Guidelines:(AFFILIATE PROGRAMS)
Sorry, we DO NOT ALLOW ANY AFFILIATE (OR DISTRIBUTOR) LINKS in any works. Please don’t send them in or your work will be rejected.

Dear Writers,

Customers are starting to complain about their personal information appearing in the letters written for them that other customers can purchase.

Actually, some of the customers have a right to complain. Although the customer-side Terms of Use explains that the details of the letters written for them will be fully disclosed to others who visit the site and purchase the letter, and while it is their responsibility to read the Terms of Use, few, if any, ever do.

LetterRep is setup as a service where customers can purchase templates of the letters they need; yet, because some requests are so specific and individual to customer needs, it is nearly impossible to compose a letter that could ever serve as a template for the need of a future customer. Because of this reality, I as well as others, have become complacent in our efforts to write templates, instead opting to just put the customer’s names, dates, amounts, etc., into our letters.

As was recently stated in another blog entry, LetterRep.com just reached its 5000th letter. As of this writing, we are now 95 letters away from our 6000th letter submitted. The pace at which letters are submitted far exceeds the speed at which the LetterRep.com staff (mostly, I) can proofread each letter and turn it back to the writers when a letter does not meet the standard of a template or includes too much personal info.

Because of this, the task now falls to the writers to judge their own works and edit them accordingly.

So what, right? Why would I as a writer care if a customer dislikes the fact that I wrote personal info into their letters. I, as a writer, don’t have to deal with the customer…that’s LetterRep’s job.

LetterRep is changing, as some of you have noticed. In the new year, the writer’s side will change extensively, giving each writer his own ‘mini-site’ within LetterRep.com. The main LetterRep site, while it may still list letters that are available on it, will become a portal to send visitors on to writer mini-sites within the site. Upon this change, writers will become liable for the content their letters hold!

Rather than customers accessing LetterRep.com as the point of contact for complaints, customer service issues, requests, FAQs, ‘contact us,’ etc., the customers will have more direct access to writers and it will be the writers with whom they voice their grievances about the content of the letters. Writers will likewise have more freedom to upload their works, edit and change their works, delete their works, make their works active (visible to customers visiting the site) or inactive, without works first being screened by LetterRep.com.

Now is the time to start editing your letters. Review each of your letters for names, dates, weights, amounts, measurements, etc., and replace each with appropriate terms within brackets, i.e., [enter name here], [enter weight here], [enter date here], etc.

While you are at it, make some other corrections, as well.

No dates go into the Body portion of the letter.
No addresses go into the Body portion of the letter.
No return addresses go into the Body portion of the letter.
No closings (Sincerely, Yours Truly, Best Regards, etc.) go into the Body portion of the letter.
No blank whitespace goes at the beginning of a paragraph (spaces between paragraphs is okay…just no spaces at the beginning of the paragraph’s first sentence)

All of this needs to be removed because the site posts that information in the letter automatically for the customer. When writers include this information in the letter Body, it appears duplicated in the final review. Please leave it all out. Just write the body.

The Editorial Guidelines is a good place to find out about making your letters into templates.

Also, if you feel that a letter is just too specific to ever be made into a useable template and you would just like to remove it from your inventory, please send me the title and a note asking for it to be deleted and I will gladly remove the letter from the site: admin@letterrep.com.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Happy Holidays.

~Rob

Hello Writers,

Some of you have already noticed the newest development added to the ‘Contact User’ email messages - your photo and bio. This new development is added to improve the ‘human touch’ aspect of these messages.

As written two posts ago, ‘Succeeding with the ‘Contact User’ feature,’ those writers who take the time to understand customer requests and then respond through the ‘Contact User’ link to requesters with sincere questions and encouragement for them to join by clicking your message’s accompanying link have repeated in having customers click the link to hire the writer exclusively to write their requests into letters. The ‘human touch,’ the sincere questions and encouragement, is the deciding factor.

Other writers are simply posting generic notes that look as if they were written for any and all requests and then cut-and-pasted into the ‘Contact User’ text field. Requesters can sense this, as we call can.

Now, to help improve the ‘human touch,’ your photo and a brief bio can be added.

Some writers have voiced some privacy concerns. Honestly, it really does not have to be your photo you post into the site. If you want to post a pic of Emily Bronte or Joseph Conrad, it is perfectly fine with me; but, real photos of yourself will send the same message as your sincere understanding of their request. Also, try to upload portrait photos. Pics of you standing with a crowd of people or pics of you taken a great distance from the camera will not render as well for customers. Please take a look below at an example of the email message containing my photo and some ideas for a bio. Click the image to enlarge. (Note: Because the pic was not 150×150 pixels it appears elongated in the message.)

One last important note - The higher the resolution of your photo the more slowly it will load in the email messages. Upload a photo with as low a resolution as possible.

The layout of the email may change a little, but this is the basic idea.

Let me know if you have any questions.

~Rob
LetterRep.com

Hello Writers,

Just a short message.

Try this website for finding bullets and descriptions for your resumes and resume cover letters: http://www.onetcodeconnector.org/

This site is the U.S. Department of Labor’s website listing every currently recognized job in the U.S. workforce and the list of bullets for each job description. Enter a job title into the search field and choose the nearest title to your query.

About the only change necessary for resumes is to change the verbs from present to past tense.

Hope this helps.

Rob

Hello Writers,

First, please include your name in your messages to customers when using the ‘Contact User’ link on the Current Requests page. Something like, “Hello, my name is [your name]…” will be fine. At the moment, there is no way for the administrator (me) to know which writer sent a particular message to a customer.

Earlier today, I received a very encouraging message from a customer who had been contacted by a writer via the ‘Contact User’ feature. The customer replied to the message he received thinking he was replying to the writer. Instead, his reply came to the site.

Not knowing which writer wrote the message, I have no way to tell that writer to contact this customer again. (It seems the requester - an ESL customer - misunderstood he was supposed to click the link and register.) I have asked the developer to find out which writer sent the original message. I’m posting the writer’s note here not only to serve as an example, but also so the writer can get prepared. Once the developer tells me which writer sent the message, I’ll forward the customer’s note.

Here’s the writer’s note:

“Hello and congratulations on your marriage. I need a bit more info to write a nice letter for you. I assume this letter is to the manager of your job or place of employment. If that is so, then may I confirm you are telling them this so they can update your records…is that correct? Is this going to the attention of a specific individual?”

‘Contact User’ Success
One writer (not the one who composed the message above) has been particularly successful in converting the ‘Current Requests’ customers using the ‘Contact User’ link. It seems she is doing her level-best to put a ‘human touch’ to her messages to the customers. That said, I must admit that the LetterRep.com ‘face’ may appear a little distant and maybe even cold (in a computer-ish sort of way) to the casual customer, so much so in fact, that customers may feel like any contact from LetterRep is likely to be just an automated response rather than a real person who sincerely wants to help, as I’m sure all of you are.

So, from the business side of LetterRep, I have asked the developer to allow writers to upload a picture of themselves to the site. This picture will get added to the message that gets sent to the requester when a writer uses the ‘Contact User’ feature. (The picture will also work nicely for a future page to be added that allows writers to talk a little about themselves, their writing credentials, writing accomplishments, customer testimonials, etc.)

Now, back to the plot…

Another means our very successful ‘Contact User’ writer has employed is the posting of messages to nearly every single requester who took the time to post a request. The law of averages has allowed this writer to succeed where others writers who wrote one or two messages and then stopped to see what would happen have not.

In light of her success, it is recommended to all writers to take the time to write personal, human, thoughtful messages to each current requester.

The current requesters are returning to the site to purchase…it’s just taking some convincing to get them here.

Hope this helps.

Rob

Hello Writers,

LetterRep.com’s newest feature has been added - Contacting the requesters.

Primarily, the need to contact requesters is to ask for more details necessary to write the requested letters. However, the majority of non-prepaid requests go unanswered by the writers, even if enough details are provided. With the Contact the Requester feature, some advantages have been added to inspire writers to ask for details and encourage the requester to return to LetteRep and join. The reward is…if the requester returns to the site and joins, the requester’s letter then belongs to you exclusively.

The feature exists for the moment only for Current Requests (non-prepaid requests) and looks something like the image below (it’s a little rough at the moment)…

Here’s how it works…

From the Current Requests page, look for a link to the right of each request title reading ‘Contact User.’ Clicking this link leads to a page displaying the request title and any details provided by the requester. Beneath the details appears a textfield for writers to create a message to the requester. Here’s a screenshot of how it looks:

NOW IS WHEN WRITERS GET TO SHOW THEIR STUFF! (This should separate the sheep from the lambs.)

Upon entering the necessary text and clicking the ‘Submit’ button, an email gets sent from the LetterRep.com site to the requester. The email looks like this:

Into the textfield writers should not just enter questions about the details necessary to properly write the letter, but also inspire the requester to return to the site and join.

If writers are able to inspire requesters enough to return to the site (by clicking the link in the email message above) and ‘prepay’ for their letter to be written, the customer’s request then belongs to that writer exclusively!!! No competition from other writers.

As one writer put it, the Current Requests are a goldmine.

Now all writers have a chance to contact those customers who simply drop off requests.

I hope this helps us all.

Rob
admin@letterrep.com