So Many Article Directories, So Little Time
Twice today I received invitations from article directory owners to join their new sites. In many ways I am flattered, but in other ways I almost want to mention that they have their work cut out for them. As an author of several hundred articles online [I expect to add between one and two hundred per month for the foreseeable future] I have some recommendations for article directory managers. If you are interested in learning what they are, please read on.
Benchmark Ezine Articles – My primary site for submitting articles is with EzineArticles.com. Why? Volume, service, article penetration, search engine optimization, blog, forum, email updates, site navigation, cutting edge technology, to name some features. This site is one that is highly active where authors know the manager, Christopher Knight, and hear from him regularly. You get the feeling that Ezine Articles is going places...and fast!
Ask Permission First – Some of my articles have appeared elsewhere, without my permission. I guess having over 400 articles online gives me extra special attention, perhaps more than someone who has 40 articles. Still, I must say that one web director who took my articles has apparently given up the practice and without notification to his authors. Let’s just say I won’t waste my time with someone who doesn’t at least care enough to respond to my emails!
Distinguish Yourself From The Pack – Thanks to a new article software program that hit the market over the summer, lots of folks are snapping up this easy to use program and starting their own directories. Competition is a good thing, but a shake out will occur. If you want someone like me to take interest in your site, to direct my clients to you [I have plenty], and keep me interested, your site shouldn’t even look like any of the rest of them. I am not saying you shouldn’t use the new software, but please take it to the next level and make it work to the max.
Build Up Page Rank – Heck, my own site pulls down a page rank of 6. I want you to match my site’s strength or at least come close. Some of the newer sites are not yet ranked and little or nothing has been indexed by Google. BTW, Google is it for me. MSN and Yahoo are alright, but Google rocks. After these three...nada!
Details, Details - The big picture of getting articles out there is great, but I like to see some attention paid to the fine details too. Ezine Articles has not one, but three resource boxes for authors to select from each of which contains information already keyed in by the authors. I know not of one other directory that has even one. Hmmm...
Where Are You Going? - Where is your article directory going? Do you have RSS feeds, submission agreements with other sites, unique features that are regularly being rolled out, etc. A blog where we hear from YOU, the manager, is highly useful.
There are other areas I am sure that I haven’t covered. I am not singling any directory out and I do wish you the best in your endeavor. Perhaps as your site grows I’ll sign up, but for now I am very busy writing articles and submitting to just a few select sites, like Ezine Articles. Thank you for allowing me to vent!
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Make Your Article Writing Fast And Profitable
Profitable article writing is one of the most necessary elements online when focusing on fabulous returns online and making more money online. Profitable article writing is writing and submitting informative articles with the intent to create traffic, adding revenue to the bottom line, that part being the most necessary. With profitable article writing and making more money online, it is necessary that you follow proven ways online and yet still find ways to creatively innovate repeatedly, once again looking for fabulous returns online.
Article writing is considered an old yet very effective method of marketing and advertising. A lot of marketers both new and professional have had a taste of writing articles as a tool to market and promote a product or a business. Most of these article writers have common tips and techniques to give and suggest on how can one be an effective article writer.
Here are the necessary ways to get to fabulous returns online with profitable article writing:
• For fabulous returns online in profitable article writing and making more money online, you have to focus intently on necessary elements online, and be able to brainstorm effectively to come up with creative solutions.
• For fabulous returns online in profitable article writing and making more money online, you have to prioritize effectively and to get first things first consistently and be able to leave the unnecessary things for last, if ever.
• For fabulous returns online in profitable article writing and making more money online, you have to look at the big picture and creating an action plan to make things happen. What kind of results are you looking for? Set a goal and determine what it will take, in solid action, to get there.
• For fabulous returns online in profitable article writing and making more money online, you have to write new articles everyday and maximize your relationship with them daily.
• Article writing is not about writing it with highly stated lexical words. Writing is never at all about the usage and employment of “highly educated” choice of words. In fact, it is always been suggested that when writing any document form, a writer must use conversational, ordinary, and easy to understand words and always stay away from using highly technical ones. So, loose your worries about using big words in writing.
• Article writing is all about writing from what your inner soul tells you to write. People who read your article material will have a way of knowing and sensing your sincerity to reach out to them. When you relay information to people, they will now if what you are doing is all a masqueraded drama. So, when you write, follow your heart and soul.
• Article writing is all about perfecting your craft. There is no such thing as perfect article the first time you write. Your skill of writing continues to evolve as you go on writing. Make sure that as you go on writing, you develop yourself towards becoming the best article writer there is.
• Article writing is learning from others. As a writer, one of your sources towards having a meaningful, well written article is from other people’s point of view. Learn to learn ideas from other people most especially those people who have earned reverence from other writers. They have the experience and the wit to share.
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Easy Article Writing Tips
Whether you are just starting out with your online business or you are seasoned pro, writing and distributing articles is one of the most effective and low-cost ways to drive lots of targeted traffic to your site. Writing articles and submitting them to the article directories will get you free traffic when people click on the link in your resource box. It is also a great way to improve search engine rankings, since you will have plenty of incoming links to your site. Let’s take a look at how you can get started writing articles. Here are a few tips to get you started.
Write a Top Ten List
An easy way to get started with an article is to come up with a Top Ten List. Find a topic related to your business and jot down ten reasons why someone should purchase your product or offer advice on a topic that’s related to your website. Examples would be top ten ways to get your baby to sleep through the night, top ten reasons to write articles, or top ten reasons to buy car insurance. Once you have your list of ten items, write a little paragraph about each, explaining the reason in a little more detail.
Next you add an introductory paragraph that pulls the reader into your list. For example an introduction to the baby sleeping through the night article could mention how hard it is to make it through the day and how sleep deprived you are until you get your baby to sleep through the night. Then close your article either by summing up what you just told them in your top ten lists or encouraging them to act on what you just told them about.
Congratulations, you just wrote an article. Of course you can easily shorten this to a top 5 list. Just write a little more about each of your points.
Record Your Article
Some people prefer recording themselves while they are talking about a particular topic and then transcribing and editing it into an article. If you have an easier time talking about a particular topic than writing about it, this may be a great option for you. Most MP3 players now come with a record option, or you can pick up a cheap tape-recorder. Pick a topic and just start talking as if you were explaining it to a friend. Just start babbling and the ideas will start to flow. Now listen to your tape. Write down and arrange the major points you mad in order. Add an intro and a closing and you have another article.
Hire a Ghost Writer
If you are having a hard time writing articles, or just don’t have the time to do it, you can still benefit from article marketing by hiring a ghostwriter. Ghost Writers will write unique articles for you that become your intellectual property. You can post them as your own work to your site, your blog, as well as the article directories. You can find a ghost writer on sites like elance. There are also some freelance writers with their own websites out there. You can usually buy articles anywhere from $5 – $65.
Write an Outline and Have Someone Else Turn it into an Article
Another option if you don’t want to do all the writing yourself is for you to write a basic outline of the article and the point you want to bring across. Jot down any ideas you have for the article, then ask a friend or hire someone to flesh it out for you into an article. You may be more comfortable with passing these articles off as your own, since the content of the article was your original idea. Someone else just put it into an article format for you.
There is no reason for you not to get started with article marketing one way or the other. Get a few articles out there and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You’ll be so impressed by the results you can get even from a handful of article, you’ll be writing them and submitting them all the time.
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The Different Methods Of Article Writing
If we were to try to list all the different article writing styles that exist or will exist, we'd probably end up with an encyclopedia, because writing styles are like fingerprints. No two are completely alike.
But there are some basic development structures that are, more often than not, used by the vast majority of article composers.
After all, there are very few reasons why you'd want to write an article in the first place, and so every article written will most likely have a similar purpose based on these few motives.
For example, you have the desire to either sell a product, build content for your website, establish yourself as an expert in your field, any combination of these, or all of the above.
That's about it, unless it's merely your job.
So there's usually some fundamental similarities among articles that can be drawn upon when you're setting out to write one yourself.
Take a look . . .
1. Product Introduction and Advertisement
When writing an article, it's not customarily wise to blatantly advertise your product directly. Readers are looking for information that will help them understand how to do something, or for recommendations about what to use.
If they wanted to be advertised to, they're simply go to the Classifieds and pick out the best product for the money.
So when you're setting out to write an article about a product, it's best to build your article loosely around the product without actually naming it or describing it.
That's what your sales page is for, right?
Thus when you want to write an article introducing a product, set out to create a scenario describing a situation where a product like you're marketing could be used.
Start with the problem that needs solving and conclude with some possible solutions. What you're doing is building an argument and leading the reader to an obvious conclusion. Finish it off with your bio box that leads them to your sales page.
2. Building Content
The key to building good, solid content for your website is somewhat different than writing an article to introduce your product. With your product introduction, your article is, obviously, product driven.
But when you want to build content, your motivation would be more niche driven, or keyword specific.
The objective is to fill your website with keyword rich article content to entice the Search Engines to spider your site with as much enthusiasm as possible. The more information you can supply on a specific topic, the more your site will be viewed as important and useful to general web surfer.
The Search Engines want people to use them, so when they find such a website, they're more than happy to list it.
So to accomplish this, your article would start out with a single keyword or key phrase that's specific to your website to establish the purpose behind it.
By sticking to this specific topic, you'll be assuring yourself of a well written article that fits right in with your website's theme.
3. Establishing Yourself as an Expert
Of all the reasons for writing articles, this one should be viewed as a long range approach. The concept behind it is to gradually produce articles based on one particular field in order for your readers to learn to associate your name with that one field.
The intended outcome is to establish yourself as a teacher, and one who has good recommendations to give. This, in turn, will help you develop a following of people who would actually go out of their way to find articles you've written.
This is a great way to build a mailing list too.
Once you've written several articles about a topic, you can then add a link in your bio box to a free report or ebook. When the readers click on the link, they're taken to a page that requires them to sign up to get the free publication.
So the more expertise you show in your articles, the more sign ups you'll get.
4. Combinations
Of course you can combine any of these methods and still come off with some great articles. However, you'd want to want to build on one method and incorporate the others in with less enthusiasm.
For example, you'd be hard pressed to prove yourself an expert and build a following if your articles were always obvious product endorsements. And your content building efforts would suffer if every article was more about your expertise than the niche topic its supposed to be about.
So though its possible, you're best bet would be to choose one method, or one purpose and stick with it for each article.
Whichever method you choose, its vital that you provide good quality work. Articles are a lot like Classifieds in one important way. A good one can entice almost assured positive response, and a bad one . . .
Well you know the answer to that.
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Seven Tips To Successfully Write Web Articles!
Online readers love free information. They scour the internet daily looking for specific information to solve their problems, help them be successful, live longer or get healthy. You should join the information revolution too! Publish your free helpful solution-oriented articles to the web.
But wait! There are a few things to keep in mind when writing for the web. Long paragraphs are usually acceptable for print media; they are not for the web. If you want to write articles that web users will love to read and put to use follow these 7 simple tips:
1. Make your article scan ready. A study by Jakob Nielson publicized as guru of web page usability by the New York Times published that only 16 per cent of his test users actually read the copy they found online; 79 per cent of them simply scanned it. Your impatient web readers will want important information to jump out at them.
Some practical ways to make your text scannable are: headings, sub-headings, bulleted list, numbered lists, easy steps and/or typeface variation. For example, compelling headlines are considered an art. Are you drawn to the author’s article as “How to Write Web Articles” or “5 Tips to Write Winning Web Articles?”
2. Keep it short. Get and keep the attention of web readers by delivering short messages. You put effort into gaining your web reader’s attention; now make their click worthwhile with brief compelling copy in bite sizes.
Start with the conclusion. Your readers may not make it to the end of your piece to get it. Web readers don’t want to get bogged down in long blocks of text. So get to the point early and use the rest of your article to support that main point.
3. Make Your Title Sizzle. Dull titles will not capture your readers interest. It will make your article fade into the sea of other boring articles listed in article banks these days. You have to create a title that will reach out and grab your reader by the collar. To get your article read, start with a sizzling title. Make it short. Create interest. Include the main benefit or solution in your title.
4. Talk to Your Targeted Audience. Your information is not for everyone. Avoid generalities. Choose a friend or family member that’s interested in your topic. Write your article to them. Writing to a friend will make your copy personable and friendly.
You won’t come across as a fussy hen, do this, do this, don’t do that. You will connect with your readers as a friend giving advice. Your article will do a better job of building creditability for you. Creditability inspires trust and readers only trust their friends.
5. Add substance. Resist fluffing your articles. Include practical valuable information in your copy. Everyone loses when you don’t take the time to impart substance. It increases the reputation of the web being an unreliable source of knowledge. Additionally, lack of substance will block your road to profitable referrals.
Do the research and/or draw from your knowledge and experience to illustrate. Your stories and real life examples will meet your reader’s need for practical information and connect with their emotion. It’s a known fact emotions will move people to action. Whether you desire them to act by signing up or making a purchase, add substance and improve your reader responses.
6. Make it web professional. Create a more web professional look by using short sentences then format your page to approximately 65 characters per line. Long stringed sentences that stream from side to side of the web page look visually unprofessional. Select a layout for your article from several short article formats that include the how-to, tips list, question-answer, problem-solutions and interview.
Make your introduction and summary short but do add one. Your web readers don’t want just a list of boring facts and information. They want to connect with you by reading your personable introduction and practical tips with a definite ending or summary. Remember excited readers become enthusiastic buyers and enthusiastic buyers will refer your product or service to all their friends.
7. Use your keywords. Thread your keywords throughout your short article as naturally as possible. Otherwise your copy will sound stiff and dull. To gain visibility on the search engines, your site must be “indexed” by their robotic software.
In its most basic form, they must be able to compare the code, keywords and other Meta tags with the actual content of the site. From this they reach a conclusion regarding the context of the site. This and other factors will affect how well your copy or website places in the search engines.
You may use these guidelines for all kinds of web copy. The same elements of using keywords, making your article professional, adding substance, keeping it short and making your copy scannable will improve the quality of your articles. Practice the above simple principles and write winning articles to distribute on the web everywhere.
Do you want to stay ahead of the pack in the race for the top Google rankings? Visit: increase web traffic. With increase web traffic now you can quickly and easily get first spot on Google every day, without wasting another dollar ever again! Start increase web traffic, time for you to be first on Google!
