Writing For Free Pays!

by Douglas Bower

I am pleased to announce that because of the existence of the American Chronicle, and the kind tolerance of its editorial staff, particularly Peter who has had to endure a lot regarding yours truly, I have been noticed by a travel guide publisher. Because I was permitted to send in article after article to this online publication, I am able to take on some bigger, paid gigs.

The way this works is that you write, a lot, and send your stuff into the American Chronicle for no pay. Hopefully, you write something that people actually want to read and, on occasion, respond to. The guys and gals at the mysterious editorial offices of the Chronicle, if you are lucky, approve your articles and put them on their web page. Though you aren't making money in the traditional sense, you are getting exposure. You can even mention that you have written a book or two and that you would appreciate it if lots of people buy many copies for Christmas presents.

Lo and behold, when I wasn't even looking, a travel guide publisher wrote me and asked for samples of my writing and my resume. Of course, I did what they asked pronto! I also asked which butt-cheek I should kiss. Not really, but I felt like it.

This travel guide publisher responded. After swooning to the floor and picking myself up, I read that not only were they interested in me as a contract writer but they also want to publish one of my articles in an anthology they have coming out later this spring.

After a lot of excitement-caused sleepless nights and a lot of alcoholic beverages, I was finally able to reflect on how this has all come to be. I thought I would offer some words of advice to other aspiring writers.

First, write, write, and write some more. What I mean is, write something publishable every day. Write as though you have a daily column to get out by a deadline. This doesn't mean that you necessarily need to get it published daily. The point here is that you need to produce a lot of material. And, it needs to be publishable. Make sure it is your best stuff.

Second, in this daily writing, be sure to address your niche. I write about Mexico almost exclusively because that is where I live and what I know. I write what I know and what I want to write about—life in Mexico.

Third, find a place like the American Chronicle to file your stories. Make sure, if the online publication allows you to post key words, you choose key words that you think someone will look for within your niche. For example, with almost every story I file, I put the words, "Mexico, Guanajuato, expatriation to Mexico, travel to Mexico, etc…" or some variation as the key words.

Fourth, if you are permitted to post personal info, a bio or your web page, then do so. You want your biographical information out there. You also want to have words in your bio that correspond to the key words in your stories.

Fifth, do not ever offend your editors. Do not be a cry-baby. Do not pitch fits. Do not think of yourself as a prima donna. There are enough of them in the world. Frankly, they are not well loved. In fact, do what your editors say. Always follow their suggestions, especially when they tell you to straighten up your act and fly right. I add, reluctantly, that I know this point from personal experience.

Though none of this is guaranteed to land you a paying gig, it can be the means through which you get discovered. The more stories you can file, with lots and lots of good key words, the better your chances of getting noticed.

I will keep all my readers on the Chronicle informed as to the progress of my new writing venue. I will continue to crank out the stuff that many of you apparently like reading.

I want to thanks the Chronicle, Peter, and all those readers who have actually read my work.

And, be sure to buy my books, lots of them, for Christmas presents this year.

Authors Resource Box:
GUANAJUATO, MEXICO-Your Survival Manual in the Land of Frogs

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

Seven Different Strategies For Article and Internet Marketing

by Allen Jesson

Okay, the first step on the road to Damascus and to making our life a whole lot easier is to use a thing called PLR (Private Label Rights) articles. What PL rights give you is effectively the right to brand the articles as if you had written them yourself. Those of you who are ahead of me will already be rubbing their hands together and thinking this is easy, just buy 5,000 PLR articles, re badge them as my own, submit to the article directories and hey presto, I am an overnight success.

Sorry, I wish it was as easy as that. I think I had better explain. The problem is that PLR articles get sold over and over again. They probably started their life as a genuinely unique article and once their shelf life was up, the article then found its way into the PLR soup.

So you will find that the article directories want only original articles. Indeed, Google and the like are also not particularly interested in filling their databases with thousands of copies of the same article (although with luck you can still get your PLR pages picked up). That is not to say that PLR articles do not have a place in our kitbag, to be honest, we would be lost without them. This is an excerpt from a typical PLR article (on Pay Per Click Advertising):

PPC ADVERTISING: HOW TO MAKE YOUR BUSINESS CLICK

PPC stands for Pay Per Click - a popular advertising technique on the Internet. Found on websites, advertising networks, and especially on search engines, PPC advertising involves sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed close to search results, where an advertiser pays a particular amount to visitors who click on these links or banners and land on the advertiser's web page.

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services - the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it "keyword auctioning"). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.

PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:

Pay per placement

Pay per performance

Pay per ranking

Pay per position

Cost per click (CPC)

PPC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:

1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.

etc. etc.

I think you get the idea and this article has been keyword optimized for PPC advertising and Pay Per Click advertising. To finish this piece off let us see what we can do with a PLR article and the positives and negatives of each action:

1. Use PLR Article in raw state, do not alter anything. Useful way to bolster content of web-site. Quick to do as no editing of article needed. Search engines may see as duplicate content. Article Directories not interested. Does not have any of your flavour, content could be poor.

2. Use PLR Article, reword a couple of lines, add a paragraph, change the title, add a resource box etc. Useful way to bolster content of web-site. Still relatively quick to do. Search engines still may see as duplicate content. Article Directories still might not be interested. Could spot you as a plagiarizer and potentially warn you off or bar you from their directory.

3. Use PLR Article as a base, totally rewrite the article. Useful way to bolster content of web-site. Quicker than writing article from scratch. Article Directories will like you. Search Engines will like you (because you have created original content) Mind numbing after a while. Still takes a lot of time to create content. Not much satisfaction in regurgitation.

4. Use PLR Article as a base, use a piece of software to automatically rewrite. Useful way to bolster content of web-site. A lot quicker than writing article from scratch. Article Directories will like you. Search Engines will like you (because you have created original content) Search engines are getting smarter and have introduced semantics into their algorithms, so if are things are should not how they be then watch out! Site could be de-listed! Article Directories still might not be interested. Could spot you as a plagiarizer and potentially warn you off or bar you from their directory.

5. Use PLR Article as a base, use a piece of software to tweak PLRA and automatically upload content to your web-site. Super useful way to bolster content of web-site. Speedy way of building a sizeable site. Search Engines may like you (because you have tweaked enough for them to see it as some original content) Watch out! Site could be de-listed! Article Directories will not be interested.

There is one other option we could use and that is (6) other peoples articles (like other people using ours, the ones we have submitted to the article directories). The only problem with these is that we have to leave the link in place to the other persons site. This will not be a problem down the track but for now we will stick with PLR articles as we want as many links coming into us as possible and not so many going out, if that makes sense.

Final option (7) is that you could write your own articles from scratch and upload them all manually (but we already know how long that takes).

For those of you who have been counting you will see that there are a total of SEVEN different strategies for article marketing. Guess what? Over time, we are going to use all seven. Quick word of warning; when you do find FREE PLR articles the likelihood is that there are many thousands of copies of that article already on the net. So best not to use FREE PLR articles without doing some sort of modification, preferably rewriting them in total, one way or the other.

Authors Resource Box:
Allen Jesson writes for several sites, making sense ofinternet marketing strategy and making money with a home based net marketing business.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

The Top 7 Article Marketing Mistakes Solo Entrepreneurs Make (And How to Avoid Them)

by Michele Hanson-O'Reggio

Offering "free-reprint" articles to targeted audiences is one of the most effective and low-cost methods to become a recognized expert on the internet, establish credibility and generate long-term targeted traffic to your website. Well-written, informational articles are always in great demand by thousands of publishers and editors of websites, newsgroups, blogs and e-zines who rely heavily on providing innovative and fresh content to their readership and to attract search engines and site visitors.

Unfortunately, many solo entrepreneurs who market their services with articles are making serious mistakes that result in their articles not being published and not getting targeted prospects to their website. There are 4 factors that determine the success of any article:

* the preparation you do before you write an article
* the content of your article
* the format of your article ("article mechanics")
* how you optimize and distribute your article

Let's take a look at what the most common article marketing mistakes are and how you can avoid them.

Article Marketing Mistake #1 - Not Being Clear on the Reason to Write Articles

The primary reason to write an article is to inform your audience. If your article is not written with this purpose in mind, few people will want to read your article and you will fail to see all the benefits of promoting your article. Generating links by submitting your article to hundreds of sites will help to boost your search engine ranking but if you'd like to get people to read what is in your article, and then click through to your site, the solution is to produce better content.

Article Marketing Mistake #2 - Failure to Plan for Your Audience

Who are you writing for? You want only the people who are interested in reading your article and in the services you have to offer. You're not writing for every person browsing on the internet. Ask yourself these basic questions about your target audience:

* What kind of information are they searching for when they go online?
* Do they have any problems related to what you have to offer?
* What is their occupation, sex, age, etc.?

Then strategically choose the title, keywords of your article (more about this in Mistake #7). Did you know that the title determines as much as 95% of the success of your article in terms of how much traffic your article will generate back to your website? In fact, the first 3-5 words of your title are the most important. Then begin planning the content to make sure your article provides useful information or addresses a problem with a solution.

Article Marketing Mistake # 3 - Publishing Content That Publishers Don't Want

If you want article marketing to work for you, write articles that publishers would want to publish. They will not publish your article unless it contains quality content that will give their readers value. You will also have to adhere to publication rules in order to have your article approved and listed. Rules include the use of self-serving links, unique content, the use of HTML, article length (aim for 700 to 1000 words), keyword anchor text, resource boxes and affiliate links.

Article Marketing Mistake # 4 - Not Writing with Personality

In delivering your information, make it engaging and entertaining. Use your sense of humor if you have it. Put a little of your personality into your writing so that readers will feel a connection with you. When making a buying decision for professional services, the number one factor prospects consider is how much they know, like and trust you.

Article Marketing Mistake # 5- Too Much Sales Hype

Article marketing isn't about selling - it's about pre-selling. No one will publish an article that reads like a sales letter. You get to promote yourself in your Resource Box at the end of the article where you include your name, brief professional information, your unique selling proposition (USP) and a call to action with links to your website.

Article Marketing Mistake # 6 - Failing to Maximize the Promotional Opportunities of Article Marketing

In order to maximize the benefits of article marketing, it makes good business sense to optimize your articles so the search engines can list the website associated with your article on the search engine results pages. You will get free and targeted traffic from these listings! Include keywords in the title and content of your article and create metatags for your article pages. You can also include anchor text links in your resource box (the words you click on when you click a link).

Please note: there are best practices concerning these techniques so I recommend that you consult a professional to help you.

Article Marketing Mistake # 7 - Not Distributing Their Articles for Maximum Exposure

Many solo entrepreneurs don't know the top sites to target for maximum exposure. They often end up submitting their articles to over-hyped and under-maintained sites. Moreover, article submission is very time consuming and tedious so they do a few submissions but not enough volume to give them the exposure on the internet they need.

So my recommendation is don't just start writing. Plan ahead and write strategically to increase your article marketing success. The choice is yours - you can get a little exposure from increased link backs, or for a little extra work, enjoy massive exposure. If you have passion for a subject and can explain things like you would to a friend over a cup of coffee, you can write articles people will want to read. Just do a bit of planning first.

To write or not to write? That isn't the question. The questions that you must be able to answer are: What's in it for the reader? What's in it for the publisher? Does my article provide value? Savvy solo entrepreneurs generate thousands of dollars from Article Marketing each year. So can you!

Copyright 2006, Michele Hanson-O'Reggio

Authors Resource Box:
Michele O'Reggio helps entrepreneurs grow their business and get more clients by delegating and using systems. Claim your FR-EE report "The Top 7 Clues that you Need Help and Systems" - email: top7clues@getresponse.com. Discover a self-promotion system that works at Michele's article marketing website.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

Make Money By Writing And Publishing Small Articles On The Internet

by Donovan Baldwin

Right now, thousands of people from around the world, from professional authors to my sister-in-law, are using small, simple articles to make money on the Internet.

How much money can you make writing articles?

Well, that is going to vary from person to person, and a lot of other factors are involved as well. It's not simply how good a writer you are, but the subjects you choose to write about, how you address the subject, where you place your articles, how many sites you get your articles on, how valuable the information is, and the site(s) you link to with your articles. A few small, 600 to 1000 words, articles properly placed can create regular customers and sales while enhancing an internet business website ranking within the search engines...which also increases traffic to the website. Increased traffic can translate to increased customers, therefore more sales, and, in some cases, repeat sales, which translates to residual (passive)

Some people make thousands of dollars while others just make a few bucks. However, the technique is simple and it's a game that almost anyone can play. Even my sister-in-law figured out that if she simply wrote about some of the problems she encountered growing up, there would be places where her articles could be published, people who would read those articles, and a means of linking from those articles to a site she and her husband have on the internet.

So, what IS the technique for making money with small articles?

In most cases, the first step is to decide on what the general subject is you wish to write about. In this case, I have chosen to write about writing. The general subject is then narrowed down to a niche. Again, in this case, I have chosen to write about how to write small articles for profit. Someone interested in bicycling may write about racing, or even narrow the niche to a specific sort of bike racing or type of racing bike.

The niche should be related to the product. The product may be a physical product, a service, or information. Some people will have a product already. Our bicycle enthusiast above may own a bicycle store or sell bicycle parts and accessories over the internet. I offer various services and information related to writing and publishing articles, so I have chosen to write an article on writing articles...for profit!!

It is important in most cases that you choose a product or service that you enjoy talking or writing about. If you pick a product JUST to make money, but don't really care about the area of interest, you will lose your motivation during periods when income is small or slow. It is a reality, by the way, that the first few days, weeks, or even months may be periods where you will make little or no money. An interest in your topic will help keep you coming back to "open your store".

What if you don't already have a product?

There are many sites on the internet where you can find people or companies which will be happy to pay you a commission for bringing them buying customers. Most of these "affiliate programs" will only pay if the customer you send to them actually buys something. Years ago, you could find programs which would pay an affiliate for a click-thru, but, of course, many people would just sit and click on the link or have friends click on the link in order to generate income, so that went away.

Some places where you can find products with affiliate programs are ClickBank.com, commission Junction (cj.com), and Link Share (linkshare.com). If you cannot find a product or company that meets your interests, just do a search on related topics and request "affiliate program" with the search. You may have to kiss a few frogs, but there are good affiliate programs in just about every field.

What do you do with your articles?

Make your own website:

Obviously, if you have several articles on a subject, you can always create your own website. A benefit of having your own website is that you control the set-up of your articles and you have complete editorial control of both the articles themselves and the website. You can add, subtract, and edit as you wish, and you can create any potentially profitable links as you desire.

The drawbacks are that your website, and article, exposure will be only as good as your search engine optimization efforts will make it and that your articles will be confined to one spot on the web. You will also have to learn something about website design, buy hosting, register domain names, and provide periodic maintenance, just to name a few responsibilities. If you want to try this route, you might want to cut your teeth with free hosting and, once you have gained competence and confidence, register a domain and host your own site yourself.

Create a blog:

There are a myriad of places to create blogs on the internet, and most of them are free. If you are a prolific writer, a blog may be perfect as you can regularly update your blog with new material. Even if you don't turn out articles regularly, you can fill in with material from the article directories, which we will talk about in a moment. Again, you will have control over most of the linking, but free services are sometimes limited in what they will allow you to do. For one example, I once tried to place a banner for an affiliate program on one of my blogs and it threw the positioning of everything out of whack. However, if you can offer interesting and relevant information on your topic and update it regularly, you can create a good amount of traffic to your business or affiliate program.

Post your articles on forums:

There are a kazillion (my spell checker hates that non-word) forums on the Internet, and you can find at least one for almost any topic or subject area. Many will allow you to create a signature which can include a link to your internet business website. Regularly posting relevant and interesting articles on these sites can create a lot of traffic, and sometimes contribute to enhancing your ranking and placement on various search engines.

Post your articles on article directories:

This is my absolute most favorite type, kind, and sort of method. Once you have written an article, you can go to any one of several good article directories and post your article. Article sites will allow you to include a link to your site. Be aware, however, that many sites will not allow linking directly to an affiliate link provided by the company you are affiliated with, so you may wind up having to create an intermediate information site or portal anyway.

Since this article may appear on several different article directories, I won't mention any specific article directories here, but, if you are seeing this article on an article directory, I possibly posted it there...which brings me to a benefit of posting your article on article directories.

Obviously, the more exposure you get for your article the better...in most cases at least. However, it can be a real pain to go from one article directory to another, cutting and pasting and dealing with the rules or restrictions particular to each site. Since many sites allow for your article, with your byline or links attached, to be copied by others, your article may be copied and placed on other sites or used in ezines. Those placed on other websites create new links back to your site, enhancing the value of your site in the eyes of the search engine spiders, and possibly bringing in new customers.

Still, you are faced with the bother of manually placing each new article on several different sites with different requirements. One way around this is to purchase the services of an article submission service. For a fee, these companies will, once you have posted an article on their site, submit it to several different article directories and forums. This can increase your exposure exponentially.

As with many things, there are few overnight successes. If you are able and willing to write at least a few articles and find places to post, them, however, you will be able to create the start of an Internet success story. The key is not to give up just because nothing happens right away. This is why you choose an area which pleases and interests you. If you are working in such an area, you will find it much easier to continue creating articles even if you are not immediately experiencing fantastic results.

Authors Resource Box:
Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer. He is a University of West Florida alumnus, a member of Mensa, and is retired from the U. S. Army. He posts many of his articles on his poetry and writing blog at http://ravensong-poetry.blogspot.com/ .

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

Article Outlines - the Easiest Way to Create Original Articles

by Nick Summers

Like public speaking, writing articles is a task that many people will avoid doing if they possibly can - often this can be so no matter how many times a person has done it before. Even if writing articles could help in their work, they can find that facing the task at hand is still both daunting and overwhelming.

So, while there are a great number of people who do not have that same off-putting attitude to article writing, there are still those who would rather walk over a bed of red hot coals than do some article writing. To overcome these difficulties, the factors that can set certain people apart from others when writing articles is that they have researched and will use methods and procedures to help them structure and plan their articles.

One of the easiest methods you can use to prepare yourself when tasked to write an article is to create an outline first. That first step of creating an outline for all your articles will help you prepare; you will have an idea of what to do first and be able to plan for all the following steps. Being prepared makes the job easier and faster and will increase your confidence. Being organized will allow for any uncertainty to be rebuffed.

A well-prepared outline can be used as the inspiration for your article as well as the design or blueprint. It will guide you as you create the introduction, body and conclusion of your article. Additionally, you can use the outline to write down some of the ideas and sentences that you feel will look good in your article, plus any key words and phrases. Any of these ideas could end up being the focal point that could help make your article more creative, interesting and appealing to a reader.

A comprehensively planned and prepared article outline is the first step of any successful article-writing project. It should ensure that the procedure will be problem and worry free, and can be carried out with the minimum hassle. Creating an outline for all your articles will get you ready and breeze through writing an article in no time at all. Here I will provide you with some tips and guidelines in how to create an outline for all of your articles.

Designate a time frame when you can write down all the ideas that you can use for your articles. Think of some ways to attract the interest of your reader, and carry out any additional research and information gathering. If your article is to be balanced and concise, you need to marshal all the facts that will support and refute your point.

To begin your outline, do a couple of brainstorming sessions and jot down your brilliant ideas and main subject. The next step is to decide your sub titles and topics. As you would provide a first sentence for your article, one that would immediately grab the attention of your reader, you would need some as well for your sub topics.

Review and reread your ideas and notes to gain sufficient mastery of and familiarity with your topic so that writing it all down later will be much easier and more fluent.

These notes will provide the framework or skeleton of your article, so now its time to add the detail and the meat. All the paragraphs about your main and sub topics will need to be linked so that the article will flow; this will form the body of your article. The introduction will usher in the principle ideas of your article, your conclusion will wrap up your points and re-emphasise what you said in the main body of your article.

At this point your outline and ideas should be in the form of your first draft. This may take more than one attempt but remember that it is called a draft for a reason. Your article will improve and be perfected as each draft is written. Only you will see the draft versions of your article so it doesn't matter how bad you think they are. As you go on, you will clearly see the bigger picture and be able to write an article that will perfectly suit what you will demand of it.

Reread and reread what you have written down. It's not hard to be caught in the moment and get lost in your writing frenzy so always refer to your outline so that you won't drift away from your subject (you can always use other ideas in another article!). Your outline will help you keep in track. The time spent outlining, drafting and preparing your article will not go to waste as it will serve as your guide in writing.

A well-prepared outline will prove to be a very helpful tool in writing all of your articles.

Authors Resource Box:
Nick Summers runs The Right Article Article Directory, a directory dedicated to offering the best of the web's articles formatted the way you want them. Visit www.therightarticle.com today for all your content requirements.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

Get More Traffic, Sales and Subscribers By Submitting Your Articles to Directories

by Hannes Johnson

If you have a website you're no doubt constantly wondering "How can I get more traffic to my website?". As web owners we constantly want more traffic, especially if we're doing business online. It's just the nature of things because without traffic a website can't survive. Whether we want more subscribers, more customers or just more visitors to read our content -- and possibly click on our AdSense ads ;) -- it's what we crave: More traffic.

Well, how CAN you get more traffic to your website? There are various methods available, some cost money, some are free, some take a second to do and some can take a long time. What I'm doing to talk about is writing and distributing articles - submitting articles to article directories to be exact. Because it's 100% free and doesn't have to take a lot of time.

No matter what market you are in you should be able to find a subject to write about that your potential subscribers, customers or visitors would be interested in -- and if your article gets read you will most likely get traffic. Plus, you could also get some nice backlinks to your website which is of course always good for search engine rankings. I'll explain the reason behind that later on.

Now, you might not consider yourself a writer but writing an article doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't even have to be long -- 300-400 words per article could be enough if you get your point across even though 600-900 words is more common (but 1200 is usually the maximum).

If you know your market and you're passionate about what you're doing then writing an article shouldn't be a problem. If you need ideas go to forums and blogs in your niche or just see if there is anything in the news you could write about. Also, one trick is to do it like you're writing a letter to a good friend where you're telling him about something specific.

Another solution, if you have no interest in writing an article or just don't have the time, you can let someone else do it. You could go to freelance sites like elance.com, rentacoder.com or guru.com and pay someone to write an article for you. But you should have some idea what it should be about.

Let's assume that you have your article. Next thing you want to do is find article directories that accept articles on your topic and submit to as many as you can find. To find article directories you can go to your favorite search engine and type in "article directory" or "submit article". That should give you a few general directories.

These are some of my favorite directories:
http://www.articleshowroom.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com

But if you want to find an article directory that is specific to your market you should search for "X article directory" or "submit X article" - where X is the market you're in (like "gardening" or "health").

Then, when you're on the site look for "Submit an article" or "Add article". Make sure you read all the submission guidelines - some sites allow HTML codes and some don't, some places allow affiliate links and some don't, etc. Usually the article directory is organized into many categories and even subcategories. Try to select the category that best fits your article - it'll help with getting your article approved as fast as possible as well as giving you more targeted readers.

If you're not experienced in article marketing you might not realize the benefit of publishing your articles. First of all, you'll get your name displayed all over the internet - people will start to recognize it and trust you.

But the main reason so many people want to get their article in as many directories as possible is because of the "resource box" or "about the author" that is displayed at the end of the article.

That resource box can contain the name of your business, your mailing address, web address (to your main page or an opt-in page, etc.), e-mail address, phone number or however you want people to contact you or learn more about you and your business. For some people the link to their website is the most important part of their resource box.

Most article directories allow "active links" in the resource box that people can click on. You definitely want to submit to as many of those directories as you can because for each one you'll get another link back to your website - and that will help you rank higher in the search engines.

Another benefit of this is that if you've written a good article that people like they'll be more likely to click on the link in your resource box - hint, hint ;). They might also feel like they've gotten to know you a little and trust you - which means they're more likely to do business with you.

A well written article will probably also be picked up by more website owners and newsletter editors - giving you more exposure and traffic. But you don't have to write a masterpiece the first time - just get started and you'll get better with each article you write.

So, to get more traffic, sales and subscribers you should get yourself an article about a subject related to your market (either write it yourself or have it written for you by a ghostwriter), find article directories that accept your topic and submit to as many of them that you can find.

Authors Resource Box:
Hannes Johnson is the editor of ArticleShowroom.com where you can submit your article to get more publicity and website traffic as well as get free content for your website or newsletter. Go here to increase your web presence:
http://www.articleshowroom.com

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

How to Get Your Articles Read - 6 Top Tips

by Nick Summers

There are many people who dread having to write papers or articles. Many just feel like it is far too much work for it all just to go to waste when no one reads them. Unfortunately, reading articles can seem like work for some people too, especially if the article is boring and very bland. Well, articles are supposed to be read; it's their purpose to impart your message and information. If it is not read then it is a waste of time and effort.

This does not happen by accident; articles have to be written to be read. It's just a matter of making them good. Making a good article doesn't have to be protracted and laborious. There are just some points you need to remember and some guidelines to follow. Once you get the hang of it, writing articles could be fun, as well as profitable for you and your site.

Of course, it is easiest to write articles about something you know about already, rather than having to spend a long of time investigating a new subject. That's why, if you own a site, you are probably knowledgeable about that certain topic and theme. When you write about that topic, you shouldn't find it difficult to decide on the subject and information you will write about. It's then just a matter of making your articles creative and interesting.

To make sure that your articles get read and enjoyed, here are six top tips to get your articles read:.

1) Use short paragraphs. If paragraphs are too long, the words get jumbled in the mind of the reader just looking at it, especially when reading on screen. It can get quite confusing and too much like hard work to read. The reader will just quickly disregard the paragraph and move on to easier reading - articles that are good to look at as well as read. Paragraphs can be a single sentence, sometimes even a single word!

2) Make use of numbers or bullets. As each point is stressed, numbers and bullets can quickly make the point easy to see, remember and digest. As each point, tip, guide or method is started with a bullet or new paragraph, readers will know that this is where the tips start. It's also good practice to format your bullets and numbers with indentations so that your articles won't look like a single block of square paragraphs - it also adds a little bit of flair and pizzazz to your article's shape.

3) Use Sub-headings to sub-divide your paragraphs in the page. Using sub-headings breaks up the article and provides a logical progression for the reader; it also makes it easier for the reader to move from one point to another with smooth and easy transition. If you can master this, you will never lose your readers' attention and they will be able to grasp your point easily.

4) Provide a good attention-grabbing title or header. If your title can appeal to a person's curiosity you're already halfway to getting them to read your article. Use statements and questions that utilize keywords that people are searching for. Provide titles or headers that describe your article's content concisely and briefly.

You can generate interest with titles that reach out to people's emotions, like, "Tips on making her want you more", or "How to make her swoon and blush".You could also use titles that can command people, for example, "Make her yours in six easy Ways".

5) Keep them interested from the start to the finish. From your opening paragraph, use interesting illustrations or real life situations that can be remembered easily by the reader. Use explicit descriptions and graphic metaphors to drive in your point, and make it easy for them to visualize what you are talking about. Don't take it too far, just do enough to make the experience pleasurable and enjoyable for them.

6) You will need to use statistics when needed as using specific facts and figures can improve the credibility and authority of your article. However, try not to make this potentially dry information too heavy, as that may impair the flow and readability of your article. Try to imagine that you are a friendly teacher explaining something to an eager student.

Authors Resource Box:
Nick Summers runs 4 Great Content Article Directory, a directory dedicated to offering the best of the web's articles formatted the way you want them. Visit www.4greatcontent.com today for all your content requirements.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

How to Get Your Articles Read - 6 Top Tips

by Nick Summers

There are many people who dread having to write papers or articles. Many just feel like it is far too much work for it all just to go to waste when no one reads them. Unfortunately, reading articles can seem like work for some people too, especially if the article is boring and very bland. Well, articles are supposed to be read; it's their purpose to impart your message and information. If it is not read then it is a waste of time and effort.

This does not happen by accident; articles have to be written to be read. It's just a matter of making them good. Making a good article doesn't have to be protracted and laborious. There are just some points you need to remember and some guidelines to follow. Once you get the hang of it, writing articles could be fun, as well as profitable for you and your site.

Of course, it is easiest to write articles about something you know about already, rather than having to spend a long of time investigating a new subject. That's why, if you own a site, you are probably knowledgeable about that certain topic and theme. When you write about that topic, you shouldn't find it difficult to decide on the subject and information you will write about. It's then just a matter of making your articles creative and interesting.

To make sure that your articles get read and enjoyed, here are six top tips to get your articles read:.

1) Use short paragraphs. If paragraphs are too long, the words get jumbled in the mind of the reader just looking at it, especially when reading on screen. It can get quite confusing and too much like hard work to read. The reader will just quickly disregard the paragraph and move on to easier reading - articles that are good to look at as well as read. Paragraphs can be a single sentence, sometimes even a single word!

2) Make use of numbers or bullets. As each point is stressed, numbers and bullets can quickly make the point easy to see, remember and digest. As each point, tip, guide or method is started with a bullet or new paragraph, readers will know that this is where the tips start. It's also good practice to format your bullets and numbers with indentations so that your articles won't look like a single block of square paragraphs - it also adds a little bit of flair and pizzazz to your article's shape.

3) Use Sub-headings to sub-divide your paragraphs in the page. Using sub-headings breaks up the article and provides a logical progression for the reader; it also makes it easier for the reader to move from one point to another with smooth and easy transition. If you can master this, you will never lose your readers' attention and they will be able to grasp your point easily.

4) Provide a good attention-grabbing title or header. If your title can appeal to a person's curiosity you're already halfway to getting them to read your article. Use statements and questions that utilize keywords that people are searching for. Provide titles or headers that describe your article's content concisely and briefly.

You can generate interest with titles that reach out to people's emotions, like, "Tips on making her want you more", or "How to make her swoon and blush".You could also use titles that can command people, for example, "Make her yours in six easy Ways".

5) Keep them interested from the start to the finish. From your opening paragraph, use interesting illustrations or real life situations that can be remembered easily by the reader. Use explicit descriptions and graphic metaphors to drive in your point, and make it easy for them to visualize what you are talking about. Don't take it too far, just do enough to make the experience pleasurable and enjoyable for them.

6) You will need to use statistics when needed as using specific facts and figures can improve the credibility and authority of your article. However, try not to make this potentially dry information too heavy, as that may impair the flow and readability of your article. Try to imagine that you are a friendly teacher explaining something to an eager student.

Authors Resource Box:
Nick Summers runs 4 Great Content Article Directory, a directory dedicated to offering the best of the web's articles formatted the way you want them. Visit www.4greatcontent.com today for all your content requirements.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

Writing Articles - 3 Common Mistakes to Avoid

by Nick Summers

Calling all writers and non-writers - now is the time to start enhancing or preparing those creative writing skills!

Alongside the development of modern communication technology, the popularity of information-based marketing has grown; it is now one of the best established and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is why article writing, submission and publication is also increasingly popular.

There are already many tools that people can use to make the process of distributing their articles easier. Although wide distribution of articles is invaluable in getting their contents more exposure, that is only half the story.

First, let us take a quick look at the common mistakes that some people make before submitting their contents to article directories:

1. Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.

When you write articles, there are three key benefits from distributing them: branding, lead generation and promotion. These are all part of your search engine optimization and traffic generation efforts.

However, there should be only one real reason why you write any article - informing your audience. If your article is not focused on this crucial and most significant purpose, it will fail to achieve any of the three promotion benefits because no one will be interested in reading it!

To make your articles work for you, people must want to read them and then want to find out more - so they will then click on your resource box. You can only achieve this by producing well written articles with high quality information and other content.

2. Failing to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.

You may know already that your articles can help you generate additional links back to your site. But do you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from those same articles?

To optimise traffic generation and search engine results, you will need to mention keywords at strategic places. However, you must be sure not to overdo them or your search engine ranking can actually decrease. You can also use keywords effectively in anchor texts but do bear in mind that many directories are not able to support this.

Remember that is not only about the links back to your site from your resource box once the articles are distributed. Part of doing well in your article marketing is being recognized by major publishers who will have a large audience. You can then gain the ability to leverage and joint venture with other brands because of the quality of your work. Relevant links and promotion from related sites will lead to better search engine results.

Having said all that, these things might not put much money in your pocket. There are other factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity that can boost your earnings rather than just increasing the number of visitors to your site.

The main principle to ensure your success is to plan you article to make sure that it will fulfil the function that you intended it to have.

3. Publishing content that does not help your readers.

Maybe in the process of writing articles, you fall into the trap of thinking that all that you want is to have links back to your site, and that any visitors it can generate are fine. But guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your content automatically. They regularly have guidelines and specifications on the type of articles that they accept.

You can double the number of sites you can submit to when you are writing articles that the directories will want to share with other people. All it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand regular readers and your potential audience will increase overnight.

You should be aware and make use of the fact that general articles submitted on directories may not receive the same level and type of exposure as targeted, specialized content articles geared to a narrow group of people. Learn the difference between these two and it will surely help you know what kinds of articles to write and to submit.

Basically, you need to write articles that publishers want in their publications if you want your article marketing to work in the most effective way. This also means you have to obey the standard guidelines: spell checks, correct grammar, well researched content and an interesting and relevant topic. It may even mean that you have to hire a writer to produce good content on your behalf.

In the end, it is all really a matter of choice on your part. You can start getting a little exposure from increased links back but on a very basic level, or enjoy massive exposure from the relatively small amount of extra time it takes to research and produce quality content.

Authors Resource Box:
Nick Summers runs Content Cow Article Directory, a directory dedicated to offering the best of the web's articles formatted the way you want them. Visit www.contentcow.biz today for all your content requirements.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

Get Free Traffic To Your Website

by Martin Thomas

The Reason you need to submit articles is that it's a way of promoting your websites. You write an article (or set of articles is better - at least 10) on a subject that's related to your site, then put them on as many free article sites as you can, i.e. you give them away.

At the bottom of your article, you are allowed to put a link back to your site. The search engines then pick up all these one way back links to your site and eventually you are seen as important enough to start directing traffic there.

Also, the article sites are frequented by webmasters looking for suitable articles to publish on their own sites and to their ezines. Part of the deal in allowing them to publish is that they include the link back to your site. Decent ezines get archived as web pages, and so you end up with permanent one way links back to your site.

So you are now getting traffic from four sources. From the free article directory sites, from websites where webmasters publish your articles, from ezines (and eventually website archives), and finally from the search engines.

More tips
Submitting Articles are Important for SEO and Traffic. Articles Create Backlinks!
Backlink creates traffic, help out SERPs, and improve

Page Rank.
Anyone should be able to write 250 words on a subject in which they are familiar.
It doesnt really matter on what the topic or subject, as long as the article is not about illegal activity.
Create your article in a word processing program so that you can easily edit, spell check and format.
Copy your article into a text file for easy copy and paste when it is time to submit.

An authors bio section for each article is available on each article submission service. The bio section allows you to insert an html hyperlink. Write one or two sentences referencing your website and include your name. Make sure you use proper hyper linking for your URL.

It is of utmost importance that you do create the proper true HTML hyperlink in the bio section of your article, otherwise the article will be republished without a true live link to your main site.

Proper codes:
Your Target Keyword Phrase yoursitename
This will show the words, Your Target Keyword Phrase yoursitename .com with the entire line a live hyperlink. Submit your Article to several article submission websites. There is an easy way of doing this and that is to use Article marketer.

Most Article submission sites have RSS feed capability. This allows your article to be shown on multiple websites that utilize the RSS feeds. In addition many webmasters and blogs retrieve articles from article submission sites to add content article to their own sites. Every occurrence of your article re-published on a website, creates a free one-way back link to your site.

As time goes by, your articles will be republished on mutiple sites. An article even on a nonpopular topic can still be re-published on 60 or more sites. Popular category topical articles will be published on 100 to 1000s of websites. Every instance of a republished article creates a backlink if the hyperlinked URL was correctly inserted in the original bio section area of the individual article.

As your articles age on the republished sites, and the republisher work on their own SEO and Page Rank, your article on their site increases in Page Rank as well.

Additional tip for checking your back links. Do a Google, Yahoo, or MSN search using quotations marks around the name of the article, For example search for My article title, you will find all the results for that name that will consist of mainly the article that you have submitted. Daily you can easily see with a simple search the amount of back links you are gaining through the simple republishing of your article. You should check to make sure that the backlink is Live on the new site republishing your article. Also check over time the Page Rank of those new backlinks.

Most sites that house articles allow the option to make comments. You can then make a comment on your article and include a simple phrase to seek more information by going to the same site referenced in the bio while including another hyperlink. If you do make a comment, make sure you reference by name you are the author and dont attempt to include a hyperlink not already in your article.

In a few months when the next Google Page Rank update occurs, all your articles should have page rank of their own, all passing Page rank back to your main site.

You should also notice some click through traffic in reference to your well written and informative on the article topic.

Authors Resource Box:
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View Original Article Source at Altrana.com