By
Bill Platt on July 21st, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Website Content | No Comments »
I spent most of this weekend updating one of my side-project websites. To be frank, it is a site I built with HyperVRE. While the HyperVRE product is pretty good, it is not ideal for big websites. So long as you are sticking to 10-page websites, this is a good product. But the site I have working on is a 500-page website.
The problem with the HyperVRE comes to light when you are working sites in excess of 20-pages. It takes a long time to compile large sites, and updates and template changes can be very painful and time-consuming.
This is where I have been with my 500-page website, that I built in just a couple of days using the HyperVRE package. It simply takes too long to update with minor changes. What I did was to decide to hand-repair the site and convert it to my own operating system platform, so that future repairs and tweaks could be implemented easily. (If you are wondering, I believe that this may someday become a stand-alone product, but I am a bit too busy to aim for that just yet.)
So, my adapting of the website has been made much easier with my php knowledge. But, I am still having to edit each article display page and put it into my new template system. I have cleared about 100-pages in the last 12 hours, so progress is good. I only have 400 pages to go….
So here is my point.
I have been looking at each of the individual articles, as I am morphing them to the new system. Far too many of these articles from a wide variety of article directories have lots of problems. I am going to document for you here the major problems I have seen, so that you can prevent yourself from getting caught like a lot of these writers have been caught - fluttering in the wind, with their article marketing campaign in ruins.
Resource Box - General Notes - The whole point of putting articles into circulation is to get your link out on the web, in newsletters and on websites and blogs. Don’t forget to put your links in the authors’ resource box!
Resource Box - Link Specific - Make sure your links work! Far too many of these articles have inoperable links, because the HTML for the HREF tags are seriously hosed. Noted Tips: 1) Put a space between the A and the HREF, between the HREF and TARGET tags, etc.; 2) Make sure there are quotes on each end of the URL or not. The HREF tags will work, with or without quotes around the URL, but putting only one quote around the URL breaks the link; 3) Make sure to include a http:// version of your link in addition to your embedded keyword links; 4) Don’t put punctuation at the end of your URL, unless you are including just the domain name, with no deep links (links to pages within your website). Even if you are linking just your domain name, I solidly recommend that you do not follow the URL with any punctuation.
Use The ENTER Key Sparingly - You should only use your ENTER key to break paragraphs, and then use it twice, to put a blank line between paragraphs. DO NOT hit ENTER after every type-written line. It will hose the proper display of your articles — and it is really hard to fix at the webmaster end. (I actually did just delete some articles, because they were so full of mistakes that I did not want to invest the time to fix them.) If you absolutely have to… hit ENTER at the end of each type-written line (strongly recommended against), make darn sure that you hit the SPACE key before hitting the ENTER key. Some directory sites will strip your extra ENTER keys out of the text, but those same sites will fail to put a space in there for you at the end of the line. The result is wordsthatrunintoeachother. This is damn annoying to the webmaster who has to choose whether to delete your article, OR fix your mistakes.
Sub Headings
When you are including a sub-heading in your text, you should make sure that you do two things: put a blank line between the subhead and the next paragraph, and always cap the first letter of every word in your subheading. Extra Note: If the directory will let you include BOLD html, then be sure to bold your sub headings.
If you are going to put a numbered list in your article, please put a space between your number and the first word that follows it. It looks like crap if you don’t.
If you are putting an unordered list in your article, please separate list items with a blank line between them, unless you are going to include the LIST ITEM html coding.
—
If you are using an article distribution service to get your articles out onto the Internet, then you generally have three kinds of choices:
- Do-It-Yourself Software;
- Low-cost and mostly Do-It-Yourself distribution service;
- The Phantom Writers Article Distribution Service - full service.
Why do I mention this? For one, I own The Phantom Writers. But, I am not mentioning this to brag. The reason I mention this is because with my distribution service, we actually provide a full-service operation. We will put your articles together for distribution, and our team of experienced people will ensure that everything is working as it needs to work. We make sure all of your links are formatted properly and working. We also make sure that all of your T’s are crossed and your I’s are dotted.
My point, if the people whose articles were in my automotive website were distributed by us, instead of someone else, the multitude of problems I saw today would never have been, because my staff would have made certain that your article distribution went off without a hitch.
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If you are struggling with high fuel prices and trying to figure out how you will be able to pay for your online advertising endeavors, please consider getting a copy of my ebook, “How To Increase the Fuel Mileage of Any Vehicle.” By utilizing the gas-saving tips and gas-saving strategies I recommend, you should easily be able to improve your fuel efficiency by at least 30%! In these days of $4 per gallon gasoline, 30% will add a whole wad of change back into your monthly budget… just enough to enable you to build your income streams, so that maybe you won’t have to worry about conservation next time around.
—
Bill Platt 405-780-7745 - 9am to 6pm CST
By
Bill Platt on July 14th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
In this age of article spam, including links within the body of an article is difficult to accomplish, depending on how you are distributing your articles.
If you are relying on a bunch of article directories to get your articles to publishers, links in the body of an article is nearly always a guaranteed article killer. 80% of article directories prohibit links in the body of the article and for good reason.
Most article directories prohibit this practice, because so many people abuse article marketing, in an effort to spam the article directories and search engines. They simply miss the point of article marketing, by missing the idea that article marketing is an excellent tool for getting human readers to their website to buy what is being sold.
The new breed of article marketers who entered the marketplace in circa 2005 had been told by the so-called guru’s that the only point of article marketing was to generate links to one’s website, for SEO and link popularity purposes. So new article marketers started coming out of the woodwork, trying to shove as many links as they could into the articles they were distributing. The biggest mistake these folks made was to shove numerous links into the body of the article, with little or no regard for whether readers would enjoy reading that article.
What was missed by the so-called gurus and their students, was that those people who were finding great success with article marketing in 2005 and before, were focused on telling good stories to attract human visitors to their websites. They knew that getting the link was important, but they also knew that in order to get more links, the writer needed to tell a good story.
Article directory managers were annoyed at the junk that was pouring into their directories every week, so they started seeking out methods to quickly identify the trash. The one identifying mark that really stood out was that 90% of the article marketers who were putting links into the body of the article, were those people guilty of submitting those most trash articles to their directories.
Article directory managers did realize that 10% of the articles with links in the body of the article were great articles, but they also knew that the other 90% were pure trash. Granted, they knew that they would be losing a few good articles each week by prohibiting articles with links in the body of the article, but they also knew that they would be ridding themselves of a huge portion of the garbage that was being sent to them.
Strictly as an effort to manage their own time, article directory managers put an end to articles with links in the body of the article.
The only reason one should ever consider putting links in the body of their articles is when they recognize that those links might prevent an article from being published in some sites, but at the same time, it might make the article more attractive to others.
The first trick to getting an article out there with links in the body of the article is to distribute your article only through article distribution sources that allow such a thing. The second trick is to only provide links that support the story you are telling, and to avoid using self-promotional links in your article.
There are some article distribution channels that permit links in the body of the article, although the strongest recommendation is to only include links that support the story being told.
If you only provide links that add to the value of the article, then the chances of certain publishers printing your articles is greatly enhanced.
For those of you who pay attention to the articles that I write and distribute, you will note that half of my articles have NO LINKS in the body of the article and half DO HAVE LINKS in the body of the article.
I do this because I want to be able to reach publishers who appreciate links in the body of the article, and I want to reach publishers who prohibit links in the body of the article.
I only include links when those links add real value to my story. And I switch formats, so that I can reach a much larger audience through diversity in writing strategies.
When all is said and done, whatever formats you utilize in your articles, the most important consideration is to always give your readers real value. When you have learned to do that, you will also find success in your own article marketing endeavors, like those before you have done.
Bill Platt - owner of The Phantom Writers.com Article Ghost Writing and Article Distribution Service
By
allen on July 7th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
All of it, says Chris Knight.
This is the same thing we’ve been saying for a long time now. PLR articles are useless. Word for word, idea for idea, I could not have said it better myself:
Non-content spammers but well-meaning newbies will ask this question: How much must I change or rewrite my article so that your content filters won’t reject it or suspend my account? The answer is all of it. Seriously, don’t rewrite your own articles. Just create new ones. It’s not that hard. 
You can do it.
Today it’s just one article directory, but that’s how it usually starts. By this time next year there will be a half dozen more article directories instituting the same policy. Why? Because e-zine publishers and webmasters don’t want the same rehashed content that all of their competitors have. It does them no good. They can’t monetize it, they can’t rank with it, and it doesn’t benefit their readers. Therefore, it doesn’t benefit the article directory. And what doesn’t benefit the article directory doesn’t benefit you. So you might as well write your articles from scratch.
“But what if I can’t write?”
No problem. Call a ghostwriter. Not only will you get fresh, unique content, but you own it and you can use it, re-use, and distribute it as many times as you wish - all for the same price. That’s the nature of work for hire. We work for you and you own the content. If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right. In other words, learn to say the alphabet with the letters P, L and R.
“So, how much does a ghostwriter cost?”
By
allen on June 27th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
I hear (and read) people saying article marketing is free all the time. I’ve said it myself. But it really isn’t true. There is an expense.
Even if you write and submit all of your own articles, there is a cost. It might take you 10 minutes to write an article and 10 minutes to submit it to a handful of directories, but that 20 minutes of your time is an expense. How much is one hour of your time worth? Have you narrowed it down? You should. And if your time is worth $60 per hour then you’ve spent $20 on article marketing.
When it becomes more costly to spend your time on article marketing than it is to pay a ghostwriter and article submitter to do it for you, that’s when you should consider outsourcing. $20 a day for article marketing is $600 a month. Are you spending that much of your time on article marketing? If so then it might be time to consider outsourcing that work to a professional who knows how to get results.
Judging the cost is more than just crunching numbers and converting your time to dollars. There is also the opportunity expense of effectiveness. Are you getting results from your articles?
By results, I am not talking about sales. That isn’t the purpose of article marketing. Your purpose is to drive traffic so that your website closes sales. Are you doing that? Are publishers picking up your articles? If not, you should find out why not. An article that sits in the article directory for five years and is never published by anyone else isn’t doing its job. Maybe you need to figure out what you’re doing wrong.
Sometimes article marketing is most costly than not doing it because the business owner is doing it wrong. With the proper consulting you can turn your business around and get the article marketing you deserve. Why not take the right steps to do that today?
By
allen on June 24th, 2008
Posted in Article Submissions | No Comments »
Excellent article:
By Bob B. Hamilton
Once you have content and articles for your website and for your online marketing strategy you have to submit them to article submission sites and articles directory sites. These sites help to give your content the exposure that it needs in order to get the word out about your product, service, or interest. They also generate traffic towards your websites.
There are a couple of different ways that you can submit articles to these types of sites. One way is manually. It can take a long time to submit to all the article directories and submission sites that are available. Another way is through the use of software. There are both advantages and disadvantages to using software applications.
The advantage is that software speeds up the process. You can submit to a number of sites at the same time. You do not have to spend money on a separate individual to take care of this task for you. You can take care of it yourself.
The disadvantage is that using software can be time consuming because of the actual process of using it rather than the speed of the outcome. It can be confusing to use and some of the software applications are not designed to be user friendly. The second issue is the fact that articles can only be submitted to so many sites at a given time. This is because the search engines will notice a large amount of submissions coming in all at the same time. This usually causes the content to be flagged making it ineffective.
To overcome this disadvantages consider outsourcing to a person or company. They can not only generate the content but take care of submitting it to all the sites. All you have to do is approve the content. This can be a great help. The disadvantage is that it requires a fee for creating the content and then another one for submission or you have to purchase a package. While outsourcing offers a great number of advantages for your online marketing business. If you are looking to reduce overhead and can create the content or have it created and then submit it yourself you can save money.
One of the advantages of using software is that you can use it yourself. On the other hand it can be difficult to learn how to use. Using software saves money, but can take a great deal time. Using a company or person allows you to create content and then have it submitted all at the same time. They know how to submit and where it will be most effective. The down side is that it costs a fee to do this.
There are a number of advantages and disadvantages whether doing something yourself or outsourcing it to others. However it is usually a good idea to outsource. Even though there is a fee involved you usually have the opportunity to avail yourself to professional services without the additional issues of hiring, taxes and benefits. The choice is yours. Follow the path that works best for you. Both software and outsourcing are viable options for your online marketing business when it comes to article submission services.
To your article marketing success!
Interesting in learning more about this topic? Download my free ebook on internet marketing.
Bob Hamilton is an entrepreneur, author, writer, business consultant and trainer. http://www.OpeningADollarStore.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_B._Hamilton
Personally, I’m partial to outsourcing.
By
Bill Platt on June 8th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
I am constantly surprised by the number of people who rant and rave about how article marketing does not work. Of course, they expect that you and I should simply take their word for it, because they said so.
They ask us to ignore the God’s honest truth that there are thousands of writers who have made tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, as a result of their use of article marketing as a promotion technique. I can attest personally to the ability of an individual to earn hundreds of thousands in sales as the result of using articles to promote their businesses - I can attest to it, because I have done it for myself.
Of course, the people who swear that article marketing does not work should be honest with the people who are reading their words… They should instead say, “article marketing did not work for me.” The most amazing part of the story is that when pressed for details, these people who claim that article marketing does not work will admit that they have only used articles once or twice! No wonder it did not work for them… They did not invest the effort required to make it work for them.
Of course, few writers will achieve substantial results from one or two articles. One must put themselves in the shoes of publishers. With only one or two articles in the marketplace, a writer is simply one of thousands of wannabe writers trying to get in on the article marketing bandwagon. But those with persistence and dedication to the methodology will stick around to write more articles (or have articles ghost-written). As more articles are published in an author’s name, the chances of real exposure for that author are increased, and name recognition brings the rewards of more articles published, which in turn will bring the rewards of more traffic and more sales to one’s website.
Article marketing is not a method that should be undertaken in half-measures and one-out attempts to see results. If you are not going to make a commitment to the long-term, publishers will not make a commitment to you. Article marketing works when publishers start paying attention to what you write, but no one will ever pay attention if you just tease the method and quit before you have given the method the chance to produce results for you.
Bill Platt
http://www.thephantomwriters.com
p.s. To learn how to get the best effort from your ghost writer or how to write better articles yourself, please consider my Article Marketing Secrets ebook.
p.p.s. To learn more about the intricacies of using article marketing to build links to one’s website, check out the article, “Whitehat vs. Blackhat Article Marketing Tips“.
By
allen on June 6th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
(Source) The more articles you have working for you, the more chance you have of making a sale.
It’s a numbers game. The more articles you write and the more articles you distribute online to article directories then the more likely you are to drive traffic to your web pages and close sales. Of course, you have to have landing pages that close sales. But you also have to drive traffic to those pages and articles drive traffic. But one of the biggest mistakes that beginning article marketers make is they just write a few articles hoping to catch a wave of traffic. It doesn’t work that way.
Patience is the name of the game. Write articles. Lots of them. Kick them out in droves. Then distribute them wherever you can. Get them out there in as many places as you can as fast as you can. You won’t get a wave of traffic overnight. It takes time. Those articles sit in article directories forever. Imagine an article you wrote five years ago still sending traffic to your website. As more and more webmasters, bloggers, and newsletter publishers pick up your articles to publish them, the more likely you are to get new traffic. As that happens, your income possibilities go up.
Remember, two things: Patience, lots of articles. Time, lots of articles. Lots of articles over time, be patient.
By
Bill Platt on June 2nd, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
People often argue that the only reason to write articles for the Internet is to gain that illustrious back-link for the purpose of influencing one’s Link Popularity with the search engines.
For years, I have been standing against this limited and short-term mindset, and I continue to argue against the Link Popularity crowd, not because I don’t want people to get their back-links, but because I realize that just aiming for a back-link is likely to leave real value and money on the table.
Here is the deal. Most people who aim “only for back-links” from their articles tend to not care about the quality or value of the article content. As a result, they tend to produce very low quality article content with no concern or consideration for the persons who will have to read the gibberish content they produce.
Here is how the low quality article marketer loses:
- Most publishers who want to use the article content, made available to them, personally review the articles sent to them and decide to publish articles on a case-by-case basis. Bad quality articles tend to be published far less often than good quality articles, even when the article is distributed through an article distribution service. Less frequent publication reduces the number of back-links that can and will be generated by an article.
- Article Distribution costs the same in time and money resources, despite the value or usefulness of the article distributed. If an article is published on only one website or fifty, the cost in time or money of distributing that article is the same. So, wouldn’t it make more sense to produce articles that are likely to be published more often, rather than less often?
- Articles are viewed by human readers as a testament to the company who produces it. Poor quality articles reflect badly on the companies who commissioned those articles. There is an old adage that says, “You only get one chance to make a good first impression.” If an article is the first exposure a potential client sees in reference to a company, and that article is poorly written, then the company who produced the article will have shot their first, best opportunity to attract a new customer to their website.
The difference in cost of creating a good quality article versus a poor quality article can usually be measured in an extra ten to twenty dollars, and it costs more for two reasons. One, it takes more time to produce a good quality article. And two, the person qualified to write that better quality article is usually a bit more skilled than the person who only writes gibberish.
Let me propose to you a scenario. Try this out for yourself. A lot of times, article marketers will spend $10-$15 to have an article written and they will spend another $5-$40 to distribute that article on the world wide web. For the average article marketer, the process costs in the range of $15-$55 to create and distribute one article. But the average low quality article will only generate 20-30 links. However, if one were to simply double their article writing budget, spending $20-$30 to have an article written plus the distribution cost of the article ($25-$70 to write and distribute an article), it is very likely and very realistic for an article to generate in excess of 50-60 back-links.
Yes, simply by doubling the cost of writing and paying the same amount of money for article distribution, the average article marketer can in fact generate at least twice the number of back-links to their websites. By paying double your current rate for having articles written, will only increase your overall costs of writing and distribution by a mere 27%, and yet the better quality article will generally produce double the number of links that the cheap article will produce.
Think on that.
Bill Platt - owner
The Phantom Writers Article Distribution Service
By
allen on April 21st, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | 1 Comment »
Article marketing is one of the most powerful methods of marketing. You can get great traffic long term for little cost. If you do it yourself then the cost is absolutely free. But what does it mean to do it yourself?
Do-it-yourself article marketing is when you write the article and submit it to directories yourself. It can be very time consuming to do this. Should you do it?
If you have a limited budget then you might find it difficult to pay someone to write and submit your articles for you. On the other hand, if you are busy building your business then you might find it hard to spend the time on this necessary activity. What should you do?
I recommend starting slow. Write one article per week and submit it to one or two directories. Do this for a couple of months and see what kind of results you get. Then step it up a bit. Try writing two articles per week, or submit one to five directories instead of two. After another couple of months you’ll want to step it up again. During this time you should be tracking your results. Are you getting traffic from your articles? Are your articles getting picked up by e-zine publishers and webmasters? If not, you need to find out why and make some changes to the way that you are writing the articles.
When your DIY article marketing starts paying off, take the income that you’ve gained from your efforts and put it toward outsourcing. Let’s say you sold one of your cool $99 widgets. Take the $99 and pay a writer to write some articles then you distribute them to your directories. As your income increases you can start writing more articles. You’ll also be busier fulfilling orders and taking care of business so you’ll have less time for the article writing and marketing. As your income goes up and you spend more time running the business, outsource more and more of the writing and submission process. Eventually you’ll be able to pay someone to write an article a day and submit that article to several directories. That is the ideal.
By
allen on March 31st, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions | No Comments »
Jim DeSantis has some excellent tips for article marketers. His four mistakes not to make is a must read:
- Mistake 1. Writing with the wrong motives.
- Mistake 2. Failing to take advantage of article marketing as a promotional tool.
- Mistake 3. Publishing content that is mediocre or that attempts to redirect your reader to a sales page.
- Mistake 4. Submitting illiterate articles.
There’s not much I can add to that, but I’ll try.
On mistake No. 1, your motive for writing, as Jim says, should be to provide useful information. If you don’t have useful and valuable information to provide then you shouldn’t engage in article marketing.
Article marketing does have advantages for publishers, however. You aren’t just giving information away for free. You are using information to sell more information. Your links in the author resource box allow you to drive traffic to your website to sell the information or sign people up for an e-mail list. Take advantage of the tool for all it worth.
Mediocre content doesn’t sell. Outstanding content sells. Provide your target audience with the best information you can, in your articles, on your website, in your e-books, and everywhere you publish.
Finally, if you are going to engage in article marketing, do it intelligently. There is no excuse for bad grammar and oodles of misspelled words. It’s your image. Protect it and it will serve you well.
Learn More About Article Marketing
