All Entries in the "Article Writing" Category

A Rinse-and-Repeat Formula for Article Marketing Success

Online marketers are always looking for Rinse-and-Repeat Formulas to drive their online promotions. Article Marketers are no different.

But most people who attempt article marketing are unable to Rinse-and-Repeat, primarily because they do not understand article marketing well enough in the first place.

Article marketing is an advertising model that is NOT advertising. Rather, it is a form of advertising – using Information Marketing at its core.

Information marketing in its purest sense is creating information that people want to buy, then marketing the information as a product available for sale to the public.

Article marketing is a slight variation of the Information marketing model… Instead of creating information to sell, writers create information to serve as an anchor for an advertisement that is similar to a classified advertisement.

The Advertisement Is Anchored By The Article Content

Following the article is what is called the Author’s Resource Box, also known as the About The Author information. I prefer the term Author’s Resource Box, because its purpose goes beyond telling the reader About The Author…

I develop my Author’s Resource Boxes (Classified Advertisement) to serve five very clear goals:

1. One short biographical sentence.
2. A strong call-to-action to deliver the reader to my website… (as an advertisement for my website)
3. An opportunity to apply hyperlinks to keywords important to my website… (for example: article marketing services)
4. Brand my website name in the mind of the reader.
5. And protect my advertisement value, from people who “do not know how to” or “choose not to” publish my Resource Box with the anchor text links… (I provide the actual URL of my website in plain text format, to accomplish the last two goals.)

The Author’s Resource Box / Classified Advertisement that follows the article is the author’s payment for creating the content and making it available to online publishers – for free.

The information in the article is the anchor that is provided to get people to read the advertisement that follows the article – in the Author’s Resource Box.

People, Who Write Articles, Charge According To The Value They Create For Customers

To hear a lot of wannabe online marketers talk, the value of article marketing is in creating a volume of articles to deliver a volume of links to one’s website…

I do call many self-professed gurus “wannabe online marketers”, because they have a tendency to advise people on things they have never done for themselves…

I have seen professional gurus tell people that they can get articles written for them for $5, yet those people offering this advice typically pay $40 to $500 an article to have THEIR articles written for them…

Yes, it is possible to find people to write articles for $5 each, but it is not possible to hire skilled or talented writers at that rate…

Real writers know the value of their work, and they do not write for peanuts… People who are willing to write an article for $5 often lack the talent and creativity to write well; they also realize the value of the work they produce and charge accordingly…

The professional online marketing gurus, who tell you that you can hire writers for five dollars an article are stating a truth, but they are not telling you the secret of THEIR success… The professional online marketing gurus did not get rich hiring people willing to write articles for $5 an article… Nope, they hired really talented writers to write their articles, and they paid what they needed to pay to get the articles written by talented writers.

Successful Publishers Choose Content Based On Its Value To Its Audience

There are thousands of online publishers, who struggle to make ten dollars a month… Other online publishers make tens of thousands of dollars a week…

The difference between the people who make $10 a month and those that make tens of thousands of dollars a week is a willingness to give their audience what its audience wants…

Publishers who are willing to publish anything on their websites fall into one of two groups…

1. Those who will be out of business in one or two years; and
2. Those whose websites are underwritten by other profitable ventures.

Publishers who are really successful online understand their audience, and they strive to give their audience the content that their audience wants to read…

Successful publishers are those who define their audience, by carefully selecting the content they publish…

Unsuccessful publishers are those who try to be everything to everyone…

People are creatures of habit… They find websites they enjoy visiting, and they continue to visit those websites, until those websites no longer answer a need for them…

The general public is no different than you… You have certain websites where you like to go on a regular basis, and you will continue going to that website, so long as the website continues to give you the content you want to read… You also have certain newsletters you like to read, and you will continue to read the same newsletters, until which time those newsletters stop giving you the content you want to read…

To understand your website’s audience, you must look into the mirror to understand yourself… You must understand what you do and why you do it, and when you have come to realize the truth of why YOU do things, you will be on the road to understanding why OTHERS do the things that they do…

If you want to understand how to be successful online, study those who are already successful, and gain an understanding of what they do and why they do what they do… Then mirror their actions…

Successful publishers follow one of two business models:

1. They charge readers to get the content they want…
2. They let readers get the content for free, and they get advertisers to pay for access to the publishers’ audience.

Most online publishers follow the second model…

To increase the websites’ or newsletters’ revenue, the publisher understands that he or she must increase the number of eyeballs reading his or her content regularly…

The more successful a publisher becomes, the more important it becomes to be very choosy about what content is published…

Quality Breeds Success…

As explained in the previous section, successful publishers require high-quality content to keep the attention of their readers and to increase the number of people wanting to read the publication…

Granted, there are thousands of websites that will publish anything, and I do mean ANYTHING…

But publishers who have no editorial guidelines tend to be publishers, who will soon be out of business…

If you rely upon crappy content for your article marketing endeavors, then you are relying on using article marketing to build links that will not have any long-term staying power…

Unsuccessful publishers often go out of business when the website owner must pay for another year of web hosting or domain registration…

Crappy links on crappy websites often have a really short lifespan, so the work that you do today will have little value beyond today…

However, if you get high-quality articles published on high-quality websites, you can acquire links that could survive online for many, many years. I have articles that I wrote in 2000 that reside on websites that still send me traffic a decade later…

The moral to this story is that a $5 article will get you some links for SEO on websites that have a limited lifespan, but high-quality content will get you links on websites that will survive the test of time…

If you spend $40 to have an article written and it delivers traffic and link popularity to your website for ten years, then you have already go more value than you got from the $5 article that gave you a few links for a year.

Rinse-and-Repeat Article Marketing

There are five essential elements of a successful article:

1. Title - There are people who suggest that you should put your top keywords at the front of your article title, but I don’t subscribe to that methodology. I do include my target keywords in the title, when I can, but an article that is well-optimized for the search engines is worthless if it does not get published… The #1 goal of your articles’ title is to get the article opened!! You must present a title that is going to get the attention of publishers and readers; you must present a title that is going to compel a person to at least open your article to see if they will want to read it…
2. Opening Paragraph - The title got your article opened, but now you need your reader to read the article… Tell your reader why they should keep reading your article and read it to its conclusion… Any reader who does not reach your website from your article is a “missed opportunity” to sell your stuff… Show people why it will be in their best interest to finish reading your article…
3. The Article Body – The article body must meet the promise of the Article Title and the opening paragraph… The article body must retain the interest of the reader to the last word… The article body must tell a story people want to read, and leave them wanting more… The article body must successfully carry the reader to your Author’s Resource Box… When finished reading, the reader must be happy to have read the article…
4. The Authors’ Resource Box – Jeff Herring wrote a great article about how to construct an effective Resource Box here… The Authors’ Resource Box needs to transition the reader from your article to your website, by offering a compelling call-to-action to get the reader to go to your website… Tell who you are, but don’t go overboard… People do not care who you are – they only care about what else you can do for them…
5. Your Landing Page - You should never try to sell your products or services in your Authors’ Resource Box. Instead, you should try to get the reader to your website, where you have an unlimited number of words, videos, pictures and testimonials to tell the real story of your products or services. Few vendors have the ability to sell a product or service in 500 characters, so you should use your Authors’ Resource Box to get the reader to your website, where you will do the real selling…

Tell A Story People Want To Read

Often, the difference between someone who will try to write an article for $5 and the professional writer who understands the value of his or her work can be defined simply…

The person writing an article for $5 will “beat around the bush” for five hundred words, without ever actually saying anything of any real value to anyone… The person who works for $5 an article is just putting words on a page so that he or she can be paid…

The person who demands $40 to $500 to write an article is a master of story-telling… He or she will tell a story that people will want to read, and therefore a story that publishers will want to publish…

The authors who tell a story that “people are happy to have read” will find their articles on more high-quality websites, and they will find more people visiting their websites, as a result of having read the article…

Words on a page only please search engines, but a story on a page will also attract readers…

Interestingly, most online marketing gurus who advise hiring people to write $5 articles also fail to tell another truth – they fail to point out that articles that pass real link popularity to a website must have link popularity to pass on to your website…

People don’t link to articles that are nothing more than “words on a page”, but people will link to a story that needs telling… Just like with Jeff Herring’s article linked above; his story is worth sharing with you, and as a result, it has gained its own links from people who do not know Jeff personally… (I have never met Jeff Herring or talked to him by phone or email. It was an honest recommendation for a great article written by him.)

Jeff’s article has gained its own link popularity, by merit of it being a good story… As a result, Jeff’s article will pass real link popularity back to his website, because it has real value for readers and real link popularity to share…

Article Marketing Does Not End When An Article Is Distributed

Ty Cobb was the greatest hitter in the history of baseball… His batting average was .367… In other words, he only got one hit for every three at-bats…

If the greatest baseball player in history cannot bat 100, then I would be a fool to believe that every article I write will be a winner…

Fortunately, enough of my articles produce profits that article marketing is a profitable endeavor for me…

I start the article marketing process with great content… (you be the judge of that – have you enjoyed this article so far?)

Then I distribute the article using my article distribution service.

This is where I diverge from most article marketers…

Most article marketers write and distribute an article, then forget about it and move to the next article… I don’t…

For me, article marketing begins after distribution…

I find out who thought my article was good enough to be shared with their audience… Then I start to market my article on those websites…

Once an article is published on a website, I start setting up Social Media links, Social Bookmarking links, and even more back-links to my article on someone else’s website…

Then I start writing my next article…

While working on my next article, I keep an eye to the statistics on previous articles… I want to know which articles produce traffic and sales for my website…

When I find an article that produces sales for me, I step up the promotion of that article…

I step up the marketing for that article, to help that article produce even more sales for me…

I build even more links to that article, by linking to it in forums, blogs and other articles… I advertise the article where it is placed on my website or someone else’s website… I do SEO linking for the article that is generating sales for me…

I continue to produce links to articles that generate sales for me… I send as much traffic as I can to the article that is producing sales for me… I squeeze that article for every penny I can squeeze from it…

The article marketing process starts with writing and article distribution, but it never ends there… I market all articles at a basic level to see if the article will produce sales for me… And when I find an article producing sales for me, I market that article for years…

Article marketing requires for me to create content that I hope will find publication on lots of websites, then providing it to publishers for consideration through one or more article distribution services… Yes, occasionally I use more than one article distribution service, because while I can get an article to tens of thousands of online publishers, the other guys might be able to reach people that I am unable to reach…

But for me, article marketing never ends after distribution… Once the article has found publication on a website with an audience, I consider it vital to market that article to the best of my ability…

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If you enjoyed this information, you will find that it just scratches the surface of what I have included in my ebook, “How To Use Article Marketing To Positively Impact Your SEO Efforts“, available for sale on my website, http://thePhantomWriters.com/

My name is Bill Platt, and I have been involved in Article Marketing since early 2000.

10 Newsletter Content Ideas

#1. Make an Ideas List

If you’ve been writing articles for a while, you know your brightest ideas don’t usually come to your mind when you need them. Actually, you usually get the best ideas when you’re doing something else and thinking about another thing.

But everything changes when you decide to sit and write an article… you get the writer’s block. You really need a good idea for your next issue… but your mind doesn’t help a bit.

The solution is creating an idea list. Whenever you get a bright idea, just add it to your list. After a short time, you’ll have a list full of creative ideas for your next 20 issues at least. So whenever you want to write an article, you simply take a look at your list and choose an idea you feel like writing about.

I’ve been using this technique for almost a year and it has really helped me write better articles faster and easier!

#2. Do a Little Keyword Research

Find out which keywords your target market are searching in search engines. Then write an article about it. So not only you will provide your subscribers with the exact information they’re looking for, but you may also get a top ranking for that article in search engines – which will bring you lots of targeted traffic for free.

Wordtracker is an essential keyword research tool that I always use to get many keyword ideas and find out how many times people have searched for them. You can use it at: http://www.wordtracker.com/

#3. Ask Your Readers

To turn your subscribers into loyal readers and win their trust, you should provide them with the exact information they’re looking for.

The easiest way to find out “what” exactly they want to know is simply adding a “Ask the Editor” section to your newsletter. Soon you will receive lot of emails from your readers asking you for advice about various topics.

You can choose the most common questions and problems and write an article about it. So you’ll get lots of great article ideas for your future issues. What’s more, your readers will love your newsletter for providing them with the exact information they need!

#4. Study Forums where Your Target Market Hangs Out

More and more people participate in forums these days. One of the reasons is because you can get professional advice for free. And this is exactly what makes forums a great place for you to get bright ideas for your newsletter content.

You simply need to go to the forums where your target market hangs out. There you will discover many of the most common questions and problems your target market has. So you can write helpful articles about them.

#5. Browse Article Directories

There are many article directories available online. You just need to browse related categories to your newsletter topic and take a look at article titles. They will inspire you and give you awesome content ideas for your newsletter.

Here are some of the largest article directories…

* http://www.articlecontentprovider.com/articlesubmit/ *http://www.ezinearticles.com< /a> * http://www.goarticles.com * http://www.articlefinders.co m * http://www.articlecentral.co m * http://www.article-direct ory.net * http://www.articlesfactory. com * http://www.connectionteam.co m

#6. Review Other People’s Products

You might know many great books, software programs, and services that will benefit your newsletter readers. So why not write an honest review about one of them to help your subscribers make the right decision?

What’s more, you can join their affiliate program and earn a commission from every sale you make via your affiliate link. This can make you a lot of money because if you provide your readers with a honest review about a useful product, many of them will buy the product and you’ll get a commission.

Just remember your role as an affiliate is NOT to sell. It’s the most common mistake affiliates make. Selling is the duty of the merchant. Your role is PREselling. It means warming up your visitors and putting them in an open-to-buy mindset.

#7. Interview an Expert in Your Field

People like to hear success stories and learn how successful people have reached to where they are now. You can interview successful people in your field by email or phone.

Well-known experts are usually very busy, so they won’t accept long interviews. In general, the more famous an expert is, the shortest your interview must be or they won’t accept it.

The experts you choose to interview should not necessarily be very famous – like multi-millionaires. They hardly accept to let you interview them. You can interview an ordinary person who has been fairly successful in your field.

#8. Write How-To Articles

You can write how-to articles about almost anything. People love how-to articles. Here are some sample titles…

* How to Go to Sleep in 3 Minutes * How to Cure Your Headache in 5 Minutes without any Medicine * How to Look 10 Years Younger.

#9. Give a Certain Number of Tips, Ideas, etc.

People love articles that promise to give a certain number of tips – like this article . These articles are also easy to write. For example you can easily find 3 tips about any topic and turn it to an article. Here are some title examples…

* 5 Tips on How to Deal with an Overbearing Boss * Top 10 Questions to Ask in an Interview * 9 Creative Home Business Ideas to Start with Less than $100

#10. Use Guest Articles

Don’t feel like writing an article or just don’t have the time? No problem. You can publish someone else’s article in your newsletter for free. I’ve introduced some large article directories here in this article in Idea #5.

Since it’s much easier to copy and paste a written article than spending time on writing your own, you may be tempted to use guest articles as your main article in many of your issues. But do yourself a favor and don’t do it too often. Let me explain why…

What’s the goal of your newsletter? Isn’t it to win your prospects’ trust and prove your expertise to sell them your own products or affiliate products? So if you don’t write the majority of your newsletter articles yourself, how can you prove your expertise?

# Final Thoughts

I hope this article helps you get creative article ideas for your newsletter. But if you haven’t found a good idea yet, don’t push yourself too hard. Don’t point a gun to your mind and order it to give you a great idea or you will shoot.

After all, it’s YOUR mind. It’s what has always helped you in your business… and your life. So be kinder to it. Relax and take sometime off. Go outside and let your mind rest for a while. Don’t even think about your newsletter.

Then get back to this article and try to find a good idea. If you get an idea for your next issue, well done! I’m happy for you!

But if you still can’t seem to come up with anything, no problem. Just send a message to your readers and let them know you won’t publish your newsletter this week/month.

And remember… your happiness, your health, and enjoying your life is what matters the most. You don’t have to write your newsletter until next week, next month… or even next year. Your newsletter is just a small part of your business… and your business is only a small part of your life.

Wish you happiness, health and wealth!

Ladan Lashkari

About the author: Ladan Lashkari is a respected Internet marketing expert, and the owner of http://www.FreeNewsletterIdeas.com/ where you’ll find free newsletter templates, creative newsletter ideas, honest reviews, and helpful resources to start your own highly profitable email marketing campaign.

ArticleContentProvider.com provides newsletter content to tons of satisfied customers.

Is Rewriting Your Article Like ‘Spinning’?

What is the difference between rewriting and article spinning? Not much really, but when I think about article spinning I think about one of those software programs that take your article and rearrange the sentences so that they don’t really make any sense any more. It’s a terrible way to rewrite an article because a part of the writing process involves making each sentence contribute to the meaning of a paragraph and making each paragraph flow into the next so that you have a cohesive article about one topic that addresses a specific question in the reader’s mind. If you simply rearrange the sentences then you end up with a jumbled mess.

Rewriting an article means taking the basic concept and rewriting toward the same goal from scratch. It’s like writing a completely different article except the two articles are about the same thing and use the same keywords. See the difference?

Whether you call it rewriting or article spinning, the main thing to consider when you take an existing article and repurpose it with different language is how much of your article contains duplicate content with the first. Ideally you don’t want a single sentence to be duplicated. If you rewrite your article well then you can avoid that pitfall. If you simply “spin” it you might leave something out – or in, I should say.

What about you? Do you spin your articles or rewrite them?

What Are Natural Language Articles?

Natural language is a term the search engines use to describe a certain type of writing that is not SEO-centric, but that contains search engine benefits. There really is no magic trick involved and it’s not some of kind of mystic rocket science. Natural language writing attempts to writing article content and SEO content is a way that is natural for humans to read, but with the added benefit of search engine-friendly content. It is still rich in keywords, but not necessarily keyword-centric.

The way to write natural language articles is to write them as you would anything else. Just write with no thought of SEO. Then run through a second time and add a few keywords in the most natural places where you might find them. Don’t overdo it. You don’t need that many. I’d say maybe one instance of your keyword for every 100 words in the article. That’s really all you need, and possibly not that many. I’d put the keyword in the first sentence and the last sentence and two or three more times in the article. And make sure you have it in your article title. When you add the keywords to the article content, make sure you place it in the context where it would read naturally to a human reader and not draw undue attention to itself. If it does draw attention to itself then take it out and put it in somewhere else instead.

Natural language writing is still SEO, but it involves writing in a natural way rather than a forced SEO way.

Who Edits Your Articles?

It’s important to do a little quality control on your articles when you write them. Having been a writer and an editor for years (I used to edit a weekly newspaper), I’ve come to the conclusion that even editors need editors. It’s important to get a second set of eyes on every article that you write so that you don’t send stuff out that you find embarrassing.

At Article Content Provider, we use an editor as a part of our writing process. When you order articles from us, we assign them to a writer then an editor looks them over and if a rewrite is necessary we make sure that happens before you ever see the article. We also check each article with Copyscape to ensure that the articles do not borrow lines and phrases from already published works. Plagiarism can kill your reputation faster than just about anything.

So it’s important to keep an eye out for human errror. We take article editing as seriously as we take article writing and you should too. If you write your own articles, have someone else in your organization look them over before you submit them for publication.

What’s The Best Article Writing Style?

When it comes to writing style, new writers often try to wing it. But you should give careful thought to your style. Do you write in a straightforward, direct style or employ humor? Do you write dramatically powerful prose that attempts to get a reaction from your readers? There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to writing style. But it does need to sound natural and keep the reader reading. It should also be appropriate for the subject matter.

Writing style can go a long way to developing new readers and to getting new visitors to your website. When you develop your style do so with the end result in mind. What do you want your readers to do? How do you want them feel? What actions do you want them to take? And what writing style will best reflect your own personality and business interests?

If you are uncomfortable with writing your own articles, you can always employ a ghostwriter who will assure that the writing style employed is professional and works for your type of business. It can’t be over-stressed that writing style is a very important part of article marketing.

Article Writing Service at an Affordable Rate

Article Writing is more than just the ability to write without making bad grammatical errors or misspelling a lot of words. Our Article Writers are trained to write interesting and informative articles that are optimized for your keywords and phrases without making it obvious to the reader.

We know how to engage the reader to entice them to read the entire article. Your links are in the author bio section or resource box at the bottom of your article, so we make sure to write articles that get the reader to the bottom of the page where they can click your links and visit your website.

Article Writing Details

* 100% original text. We check all articles through Copyscape.com before we send them to you.

* You own all Copyrights to the Articles we write for you. Under Copyright law it is a work for hire.

* Your name goes on the byline and it is your links go into the resource box or author bio section.

* We do not use software to generate text. Our Article Writers are live human beings.

* We do not reuse or resell any articles written for you.

* Basic Articles are 500-700 words in length, but we can write articles of any length you request.

* American English is what we use to write your articles unless you specify otherwise.

* Articles are optimized for your keywords and phrases without appearing as keyword spam.

* Articles can be delivered in .pdf, or html Format for $5 more.

* No job is too large or too small for us. We can produce hundreds of articles for you or just one.

* Our Premium Articles are magazine quality and may include the use of graphics, more research for difficult topics, and the word count can be much larger.

Monthly Subscription Available: Consistency is the key to successful article marketing plans. You decide on how many articles you want us to write each month and we handle everything for you.

One-Time Order: Use the article order form or call us at 786-317-8774 for a free quote on any number of articles or to ask any questions you may have.

Should You Rewrite Articles You Submit To Directories?

A reader asked if I’d recommend rewriting articles that you submit to multiple directories. Generally, no. But there may be times when you’d want to.

If you write an article for another website within your niche, which I highly recommend that you do, then you don’t want to submit that article to directories. At least, not right away. This is what we calll guest blogging or guest article writing. The idea is you supply another webmaster with unique content for their website and get a link back. That’s an original article and should not be submitted to directories as it was written for the other publisher. But you can rewrite the article.

If you choose to rewrite such an article, be sure that you change it up enough that it isn’t recognizable by the average reader. The title has to change completely, though you can optimize the article and its title for the same keyword. Then you want to completely rewrite the article body. After an extensive rewrite, and you should probably run it through Copyscape to make sure that you’ve rewritten it well enough, you can mass submit it to your article directories.

Article Title Optimization

There are three really important things to consider for writing article titles:

1. Getting the reader’s interest
2. Search engine optimization
3. Keeping it short

None of these are more important than the others. They are all important. You must get your reader’s attention or they won’t read your article and visit your website. Use words that will spark a reaction. Trigger words, I call them. These are words that convey an emotion and elicit a response from your reader. Promise a benefit that you deliver on in your article.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is really simple for article titles. Use your keyword in the first three words of your article. That’s about it.

Keep it short. Don’t just write your keyword and stop there. An article titled “Basket Weaving” isn’t going to attract any readers. What about basket weaving? You have to tell your reader why reading your article is important. Remember Rule No. 1?

The key to keeping your article short is to focus on SEO and reader interest in as few words as possible. Tell your reader why he should read your article, make it optimized for search engines, and keep it short. If you can do all three then you can write good article titles.

Does Article Spinner Software Really Work?

Every once in a while I get an e-mail or run across someone who is hawking an article spinner software. I’ve never seen one to date that actually works as well as I’d need one to in order for it to be worth my while to use it. Quite frankly, I can do a better job of editing on my worse day than any computer or machine. And I’m betting most other people can too.

Does this mean that no article spinner in the world will work? Truthfully, I’m skeptical. While theoretically it is possible to create an article spinner that might actually rewrite your articles for you and not have any glaring grammatical and syntax issues, I would still rather do my own articles. I think it is a safer way to rewrite your articles and the benefits will be a lot longer lasting.