12 September 2009                 Published weekly by Biotech Ink, LLC Vol 2 No 26

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Inside the Insider
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Creating a Web Site for Your Freelance Business
Part 1: The Preliminaries 
by Mitch Gordon
 
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If you're consulting in the biomedical field, a web site for your business should definitely be part of your marketing strategy. If you already have a web site, you can display its address at the bottom of your business card and every email you send (and link to it from your LinkedIn page, your blog, or your Facebook page). Your web address allows people to quickly find out a lot about you and your business. In turn, it helps them decide whether you're the right person to provide the services they need.

Conversely, if you have no web site, you have no web address. When you hand out your card or send emails with no web address on them, you lose important opportunities to get new business by telling the recipient who you are, what you do, and how to find you.

If your business needs a web site, what are your choices for getting it done (and getting it done well)?
 
A small business web site can be inexpensive to maintain ($4 to $10 a month in operating costs is fairly typical), but someone has to create it first. Many business owners are intimidated by the cost of professional web site design and implementation. This type of project can cost $500 to $10,000, sometimes more. For many freelancers, such an expense just isn't feasible. And professional web design can be overkill for the kind of site that is needed for a freelance business.
 
Another alternative is to design and implement your web site yourself. But many people don't want to learn a new language--HTML--to design their web site.
 
Angel Bivins photoSo, in the words of Ghostbusters, the 1980's hit film, "who ya gonna call?"
 
The answer may be you. Do-it-yourself web site design tools for nontechnical folks are becoming widespread. In many cases, these tools are available for free from your web site hosting service. Using these tools usually requires no HTML knowledge, and everything is done within a user-friendly interface. The rest of this article describes how you can design and implement a web site using these tools.
 
First, a little background terminology. To have a web site, you have to pay a service provider to host it. A web site hosting service will typically charge you $4 to $10 a month or more, depending on the services you purchase. This service lets you store the files that define your web site content in space on the hosting service's server that they reserve for your use.
 
Your domain name is a big deal--it's the basis for your site's web address, prefixed with www. Web site owners often name their domains after their company name. Businesses usually choose the .com, .net, or .biz top-level domain for their domain names. Examples of domain names include www.mitchgordonwriter.com for a business, www.stanford.edu for an educational institution, and www.amwa.org for a nonprofit organization. You must pay a service provider (often the same company that hosts your web site) to host your domain name. Domain name hosting, with no additional services, costs about $8 a year, somerwhat more if you pay for a private listing. 
 
Tag Cloud Domain Name
The first decision you should make when creating a web site is what your domain name will be. It can't be a name that someone else already owns (sorry, medicalwriter.com is already taken). Choose a domain name that's easy to remember. You'll probably want your domain name to be similar or identical to your company name. But don't make it too long; 10 to 15 characters is the best length, not counting the .com. Avoid punctuation in your domain name, like hyphens, underscores, and periods (other than the one in .com), since it's hard to remember punctuation in domain names. It's better just to run all the words together, as in www.mitchgordonwriter.com or www.biotechink.com.

Next, choose a hosting service for your domain name and web site. (You can move to another service later if you want, so the decision isn't irreversible.) Look for a low monthly price ($4 or $5 a month), short-term commitment (in case you're dissatisfied), and good technical support. Importantly, if you don't know how to do your own web site development, be sure your hosting company offers a site-builder tool (check their web page).
 
For help in choosing a service, see www.hosting-review.com. This site provides pricing, ratings, and customer reviews for numerous hosting services.
 
Before you start creating your site, plan its content. What do you want each page to say? Look at the web pages of other consultants in your business area; for example, Google the term medical writer, and review some sites in the results. After you get some ideas from other sites, think about what you want to include in your site.
 
You don't need to define all of the content down to the last detail. But you should decide how you will divide the content into pages. One web page contains all the content the user sees after clicking on a link to it in the site's menu bar, including the content they see when they scroll. A web page is a logical chunk of content on a particular subject. Think of it like a section in a written document, typically 1 to 3 printed pages long.
 
Decide how many separate pages your site will have and what their titles will be. The titles are the menu text that will appear in the corresponding link in the menu bar. You'll likely need only 3 or 4 pages in your site. Fairly standard page titles are: Home (the first page on your site, a summary of who you are and/or your services); Resume and Samples (if you want to include these), and Contact Us (with your contact information). Don't overdo the number of pages: if a new page duplicates the content of an existing page, you don't need it. Short and simple is the best approach.
 
Hands on keyboardWrite the text for each page after you've decided on the number and titles of your pages and have a general idea of what their content will be. Do it with a word processor; you'll be able to copy and paste the text from there into the site-builder tool later.
 
This is also a good time to choose photos or other artwork for each page. You may want to buy some stock images online to supplement your own pictures, and you can download some public domain photographs for free. Be sure to include your photo (preferably a head shot) somewhere on the site.
 
As an aid to your design efforts, you can paste the pictures into your word processor document at the places where you'd roughly want them to go on the web page. However, you'll have to import each graphic into the site-builder tool separately, and you may not be able to exactly control where it displays relative to the adjacent text.
 
Toolbox with toolsIf your content is organized into logical, titled pages and you've written the text and chosen the graphics for each, you're ready to proceed to site implementation using the site-builder tool. Next week, in Part 2 of this article, you'll learn how to use a site-builder tool to bring your design to life. Stay tuned!

About the Author
_______________________________________________________________________

Mitch Gordon has been a professional writer for 16 years. He will complete his Masters degree in Regulatory Affairs in early 2010. Mitch's specialties are regulatory and clinical documentation, and he writes a wide range of other documents that support life-sciences companies.
 
Mitch Gordon
Medical and Regulatory Writing
Website: http://www.mitchgordonwriter.com
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 707-869-4561
Open Jobs and Gigs for Medical Writers
 
The jobs listed in the Biotech Ink Insider come to us mostly by word-of-mouth and direct contact with hiring managers and recruiters. If no new jobs are communicated to us in a given week, the Insider won't be published that week. See also our disclaimer at the bottom of the newsletter.
 
If you're a writer or editor and are getting calls about staff or contract positions you aren't interested in, please forward that job information to Susan Caldwell at [email protected]. We'd be delighted to publish such positions in the next issue of the Insider.
Principal Medical Writer, Medical Communications
Northern NJ
 
This position in the Medical Communications Group can work remotely for 2 to 3 days a week.
 
Will be responsible for the preparation of clinical documents for worldwide sub-missions to regulatory authorities and for leading medical writing teams assembled to support large projects. Will support Managers within Medical Communications by providing technical guidance to junior members of the department.
 
Requirements:
  • An advanced degree in Life Sciences - PhD or PharmD preferred. 
  • 10-plus years in pharmaceutical Research & Development, with at least 5 of those years in senior-Level medical writing.

Responsibilities:

  • Independent preparation of clinical study reports, integrated clinical summaries, overviews, and other regulatory documents on investigational drugs in various stages of clinical development
  • Lead medical writing teams assembled for large projects, e.g. submissions; coordinate and direct work of internal or external medical writers assigned to the writing team
  • In conjunction with Director and MedCom Managers, will coordinate resource allocation and identify projects that exceed capacity of internal medical writing staff
  • Will serve as liaison between outside writing sources and will review documents prepared by those outside resources
  • Will serve as department's representative for assigned therapy team/working groups, and will participate in determining submission-level timelines
  • Will review, update and communicate the operational and functional procedures utilized by the department with regard to document creation, review, quality control and publishing/archiving. Will also serve as a technical expert for the department and represent the department in cross-functional decision making teams and committees

Jeff Sprague
TalentMine, LLC
2680 Bishop Dr., Suite 203
San Ramon, CA 94583
Office (925)867-3200 ext. 7388
Cell (925) 768-6521
Email: [email protected]

Contract Medical Analyst
Southern CA

English must be first language.

Duration of contract is 10 months.
 
Hourly Rate $60 - $65
 
First 6-8 weeks will be training period, with 3-4 days on-site and 1-2 days can be done at home.  After 6-8-week training period, � the work may be done from home.
 
Requirements:
  • Doctorate degree in pharmacy or medicine; PhD in bioscience or equivalent areas
  • 2-5 years of drug information experience. Or, other health science degree such as nursing or physician assistant with 7 years of drug information experience in a pharmaceutical setting
  • Solid technical writing skills, ability to assess and interpret clinical study data, tabulate and graph data; ability to conduct medical literature searches and evaluation; ability to communicate medical information verbally or in writing; expertise in using MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and literature management system e.g. ReferenceManager, EndNote, or ProCite.

Job Description:

  • Research and respond to inquiries from health care professionals on a daily basis; conduct literature searches on Amylin and competitor products; utilize OVID or Pub-Med database and/or review clinical study reports for medical teams
  • Liaise with key stakeholders, including medical development, medical disclosure, medical research, clinical affairs, regulatory affairs and global safety to obtain information and to ensure data accuracy
  • Evaluate published medical literature; provide critical review and editing on the response documents created in-house; attend scientific conferences to strengthen knowledge of company products, technologies, current trends in relevant therapeutic areas
  • Manage selected projects independently; create medical backgrounders on company's products; provide training to Med Info team at Customer Support Center (CSC), field sales and potentially field medical teams on relevant scientific information and/or operational processes; provide current medical information, communicate timelines to support medical communications strategies and department initiatives
  • Identify issues that are relevant to departmental functions and provides appropriate input and suggestions to project team or manager. Perform other duties assigned by the manager
  • Perform all responsibilities in accordance with company Standard Operating Procedures, Good Clinical Practices, and appropriate industry and regulatory guidelines, rules, and regulations; contributes actively toward the satisfactory execution of long-term interdepartmental projects as assigned
  • Ensure that initial information regarding adverse events or product complaints of which s/he is made aware during handling of a medical information inquiry is gathered and handled according to FDA mandates and company policies

Contact:

Chad Dunavant 866-458-4322 etx. 19021  [email protected]
Phil Press         866-458-4322 etx. 19025   [email protected]
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Comments or questions? Email Susan at [email protected].