Top Seven Tips for Writing Articles on the Internet

by Judy Cullins

Online readers love information, but be sure your information is crisp, clean, clear and concise.

1. Keep your paragraphs short, even a line or two. Online readers will ignore long batches of words in long paragraphs, whether in an ezine or at a Web site. That costs the author a lot of book sales. Respect readers who want material short and sweet.

2. Write tips in their correct format. First, use a verb as a command. Follow it by the cost of not doing it. Then, end with a positive comment. Use this three-sentence formula to bring the curious to you.

3. Make your heading compelling. If you haven't tested it on associates, or haven't edited it at least five times, it says "lackluster." People will delete it or click on to something new. Which one will you read? "How to Write an Article," or "Sell More Books by Writing a Short Article?"

4. Get to the point quickly-in the title and the first line. Keep your introduction down to a sentence or two, the same for a conclusion.

5. Tell your readers what you want them to do. They are waiting for your magic formula to make them richer, healthier, or enjoy great relationships. Make your copy strong, clear, and direct.

6. Target your article to your preferred audience. Not everyone will want your information, so include your audience in the title or introduction. When you focus your information, you write more compelling, focused copy that your readers will love. They will reward you by checking to where your book is sold.

7. Eliminate all superfluous words such as adjectives and adverbs like "ly" and passive verbs. Because of a lack of effort, novices ruin their work with sentences full of "is" and "was" linking verbs instead of bold verbs. Neither books, nor articles will sell with these "slugs."

Keep these tips in mind, so that your article will bring folks to you, your service, your Web site, and your products.

Judy Cullins: author, publisher, book coach Author of Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Your Book Online and Write your eBook or Other Short Book-Fast! http://www.bookcoaching.com/products.shtml Subscribe to FREE ezine "The Book Coach Says..." mailto:Judy@bookcoaching.com
 

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Why you should create and publish your own articles

by David McKenzie

"But I'm just an affiliate. I haven't got time.
I shouldn't have to write articles. I can get all the good content I want from my affiliate programs."

That's usually true, but more often than not your visitors are after unique content. Writing your own articles can often be the most powerful marketing weapon you use.

Believe it or not, your visitors actually want to read what you have to say at your site, not what other people have to say. They are looking for independent content that perhaps supports or refutes something they read on another site.

Besides, they may have already read all the articles written by other people you feature at your site elsewhere on the internet.

While it is perfectly reasonable and beneficial to feature "other peoples articles" at your site, you should also feature your own.

Here are 4 reasons why you should write some of your own articles:

1. It is unique content that distinguishes you from about 90% of all other affiliates. That's the percentage of affiliates not writing articles!

2. People need content. For their web site or for their newsletter people are always in constant need for new, fresh content. This means articles that you write can be featured on other people's web sites and in other people's newsletters.

When this happens you get additional visitors back to your site. And these visitors may in turn feature one of your other articles at their site or in their newsletter. Before you know it you are in 50 newsletters and on 100 web sites!

3. Visitors will stay at your web site longer because there are lots of articles to read. This gives you additional opportunities at getting more click throughs to your affiliate programs. You could feature links to your affiliate programs on each page you have articles.

More affiliate click throughs translate into more commissions.

4. You have given your visitors an instant feeling of trust. If you just featured other people's content then you are just a face in the crowd.

However, when you feature your own content, you immediately 'stand out' and people are more inclined to trust you. If people trust you, then they are more inclined to buy from you.

For an affiliate, good content makes a site. Don't just use other people's content. Start featuring your own articles. If you keep adding your own new articles on a regular basis then people come back to your site again and again.

David McKenzie is the author of a new e-book titled "How To Write Free Articles and Market Them With a $0 Marketing Budget"
http://www.brisney.com/how-to-write-free-articles.htm or email to: mailto:brisney@brisney.com

Write for Publicity

by Shelley Lowery

If you're looking for a powerful way to get free publicity and build your credibility at the same time, then writing articles may be your answer.

If you've been on the Internet for a while, you've probably subscribed to a few ezines. Many ezine publishers will include an article written by a guest author. At the endof the article are a few lines of text about the author referred to as bylines or resource box. These lines of text are basically just an advertisement for the writer. They usually contain a couple of lines about the author and a web address.

The writer gives the publisher permission to publish their article, free of charge, in exchange for the publisher including the author's bylines.

By writing articles and allowing them to be freely published, your articles will have the potential to be viewed by millions of Internet users. They may be published by several ezines with subscriber bases of a few hundred to several thousand. In addition, they may be displayed in ezine archives or on high traffic websites.

Most ezine publishers prefer short articles between 500 and 750 words. Short "tip" articles of just a couple of paragraphs are also very popular. Articles should be formatted to 65 characters per line or less, including spaces, and written in short paragraph sections.

When you begin writing your article, avoid using your standard word processing programs, as they do not allow for proper formatting. Instead, use a text editor such as NotePad. It should already be installed on your desktop.

When you begin typing your article, use a hard carriage return (hit enter) when your text reaches 65 characters, including spaces, and leave a space between your paragraphs. This will enable publishers to easily copy and paste your article into their publication. By taking the time to properly format your article, you will increase your chance of being published significantly.

Most publishers receive many article submissions each week and only select a few to be published. Here are some basic guidelines to assist you in getting published:

(1) Make sure you follow the publishers' submission guidelines. Articles submitted to publishers that don't follow the submission guidelines will most likely be deleted.

(2) Make sure your article is properly formatted. Publishers won't take the time to format your article. They'll simply delete it and move on to the next article submission.

(3) Keep your bylines down to 6 lines or less. Publishers will not publish articles that contain excessively long bylines.

(4) Select a descriptive title to intrigue your readers. Use a powerful headline that demands attention and try to keep it all on one line.

(5) Use proper grammar and spelling. Publishers will not take the time to edit your article. Make sure you read your article several times and use spellcheck.

(6) Avoid articles that are nothing more than a sales letter. Publishers want quality content and will simply delete an article that is written like a sales letter.

(7) Avoid referring readers to an affiliate URL. Articles containing affiliate links may make your article appear to be biased and untrustworthy.

(8) Write your articles with a sincere desire to teach and inform. Talk to your readers and share your expertise.

Once you've written your article, you'll need to develop a list of publishers that may be interested in publishing it. The best way to accomplish this is to display your articles on your website. Place a subscription box on each of your article pages to enable your visitors to subscribe. This list should be used to send your new articles to your list of publishers.

In addition, you can visit some ezine sites to locate publishers who may be interested in your articles. A good place to start is eZINESearch. http://www.ezinesearch.com

Search through the database for publications that may be interested in the type of article you've written.

Another great way to promote your articles is to submit them to article announcement groups. These groups enable writers to submit their articles to an entire group of publishers, completely free.

Article Announcement Lists:

Article Announce
Subscribe:
mailto:article_announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

AABusiness
Subscribe:
mailto:aabusiness-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

AAInternet
Subscribe:
mailto:aainet-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

PublishInYours
Subscribe:
mailto:PublishInYours-subscribe@egroups.com

Articles Archive
Subscribe:
mailto:articles_archives-subscribe@egroups.com

Free Content
Subscribe:
mailto:Free-Content-subscribe@egroups.com

Make sure you review the submission guidelines prior to posting your article to an announcement group.

Here are some additional promotional resources to help you get published:

http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm
http://www.web-source.net/syndicator_submit.htm
http://www.authorconnection.com/
http://www.ideamarketers.com/
http://www.ezinearticles.com/
http://www.marketing-seek.com/
http://www.netterweb.com/articles/

Writing and distributing free articles on the Internet will be one of the best promotional decisions you'll ever make. Not only will it provide you with free publicity, but if your articles are good, you'll become a trusted professional in your area of expertise.

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of Ebook Starter - A complete ebook design kit. Subscribe to Etips, for a wealth of quality information to assist you in Web Design, Internet Marketing & Ecommerce. All new subscribers receive a free copy of the highly acclaimed ebook, "Killer Internet Marketing Strategies." http://www.web-source.net/cgi-bin/t.cgi?l=bl1
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How and Where Do You Submit Your Articles? 

Writing Articles can be time consuming. Then after writing your articles you want to submit them. Submitting them can be helful for others, by sharing your expertise.

When you do submit your articles to article directories, you also benefit with a link back from in your article or usually in your byline.

We are all very busy and may not have the time to submit our articles to all of the directories we would like to.

There are a couple of services that I recommend to help automate this for you. For a reasonable fee these services will submit your articles to hundreds of article directories. Also they may email them to interested Webmasters.

With these services, you only submit once, and the rest is on auto-pilot. This way you have more time to write other articles, or do whatever else you desire.

One such service is Submit Your Articles.  

Another is Article Marketeer

If you still would like to do it your self here's a list of article directories you can submit to manually if you choose.

http://www.EzineArticles.com   The Best?