Anyone know a good technical writer?

Hi Andy

I have written technical manuals before but am not applying for the job (and besides my hourly rate is take what you think is a good hourly price and add a 0), but I have a DIY suggestion for you.

Download Camtasia or an equivalent (Camtasia has a free period) and fire it up. Now do "review style" instruction videos such as - "Today I am going to show you how to easily set up a new project". If you do them as review style vids, then you have videos that can double as lead gen items if you publish them to youtube. Of course you can do pure instruction videos and self host them too (eg Amazon S3 is a good solution to keep data costs down).

The advantage of video is that, as long as you don't sound like a drowning goat, they are personal, fast to make and people can SEE what you are doing.

And if you do sound like a drowning goat (and I do), outsource the audio. Get the audio you do redone by a professional voice over artist and sent back to you as a mp3. Redo the screen capture to match the timing in the audio (or edit the mp3 using audacity to match the existing video) and marry the two together in Camtasia.

There are some good ones at Guru dot com... I used one last year, and she was good... I cant remember her name though.

Thanks to everyone who has offered advice and PM'd me with their details.

For anyone else that is planning to get in touch please include some writing samples and preferably some verifiable testimonials. So far all four people who have messaged me have told me all about what they can do but not one person has shown me.

If one person had sent me writing samples and a couple of clients I could call they'd probably have the job by now.