Essay Online

I like article marketing and find it an enjoyable and profitable way of promoting my websites. I never plan articles, the ideas just come out of the blue from something I have seen or heard. Once I start writing the words just flow, but before I write an article there are two things that I consider.

1. Why am I writing the article?

2. Would it be of any use to webmasters for their sites or for newsletter publishers?

It does not take rocket science to figure that I and every other article marketer am using articles to benefit our own promotions, but they will be of little benefit to us if we do not produce quality articles that others will actually want to read and use.

Owning my own article directory I have read thousands of articles, many of which I would never use on my other sites or in newsletters and many I have declined for various reasons. Let us consider the rights and wrongs of articles starting at the beginning.

Attention Grabbing

Your title is your headline, there to grab attention and many people never look past the first 2 or 3 words. I could have called this Sheep Do Not Mix With Article Marketing Success but I want people who are interested in article marketing and not sheep to read it. Another type of title that will not grab me is The Top 20 Tips For Passionate Sex. It would be more likely to create interest if it was Passionate Sex My Top 20 Tips.

Writing Standards

Spelling and grammar are important. You are promoting yourself and your business and you need to present yourself as professional to be taken seriously. I write my articles in Word first and use the spell checker. I sometimes fall out with it because I am English and prefer not to use Americanised spelling.

If you have problems with writing but good information the answer is to use a ghostwriter or copywriter. There are plenty of good writers advertising on the Internet and personally I think that one good quality article will do more for your business than 10 poor articles.

Know Your Subject

Good advice for writers is that they should always know and understand what they are writing about or their articles have no credibility. I was gobsmacked last week to read an article about my own country that I knew to be very ill informed and by somebody I suspected had never set foot on our shores. The guy could not even spell Britain right and as his misspelling was in the title he sunk without trace before he even started!

Original Copy

The best and most memorable articles are purely original, thought provoking and offer different viewpoints to a subject. Some writers submit zillions of slightly changed articles about the same subject over and over; yawn. They are boring and eminently unreadable after the first one or two. There are exceptions where writers are providing updates and news about their chosen subjects. I would use those articles for my sites.

Lists of quotes from the bible for instance are not original articles. At least 90% should be your own work and quotes only used as a point of interest not as the whole article. Submitting articles on behalf of others is suspect, how do readers know whether you have filched them or not? Plagiarism, not worth going there, eagle eyes and google will find you out!

Advertorial Blues

An advertorial is an advert written in article form. They carry no unbiased information or advice that would be of any help to anybody interested in that subject. There are plenty of places to advertise for free on the Internet, so trying to fob adverts off as articles is unfair on directory site owners or visitors who want to read articles not adverts.

Link Usage

The reason most of us use Article Marketing for promoting our businesses is to place links to our websites in the author resource boxes usually placed at the foot of articles.

I like to maximise the potential and use the up to 3 links usually allowed. Many article directories allow active links, but some do not. A problem can arise when articles are automatically submitted if the script the site uses strips the html. I prefer to submit manually mostly and then I can activate the links myself or just put my website address if the site doesn’t accept html links.

Links within the articles are unacceptable on most directory sites, but as you get 3 chances in the resource boxes there is no point trying to cheat.

All Keyed Up

You will be asked to provide some keywords for your articles so choose wisely. Study your content and consider what somebody who might be interested in your article is most likely to enter into the search engines. A poor example is if you are writing about search engine optimisation and your title is SEO, Internet Business Bread And Jam, you would not use jam and bread as keywords unless you wanted to attract hungry people. Apart from that your articles credibility takes a nosedive if you do not know what a good keyword is.

Readability

Finally, your article should not be repetitive and should be interesting. Short paragraphs make it easier to read, text talk makes it more difficult. All capitals in the article body or title are a no no, they only stand out in the sense that the reader feels shouted at and nobody wants to feel like that.

I hope that you have found this interesting and useful and that we get lots more quality articles to read.

I submit articles to a lot of article directories and through .isnare.com. A lot of the articles are my own, but most of them are ghostwritten for clients. Isnare and other article directories do an ok job of tracking how many views your article has had at their directory, but that’s where it stops.

Plus, once you submit to any article directory, how do you know where else that article was reprinted? Clients ask me about this all the time.

Sure, you can search for your article title in Google and get a lot of results and sift through them to find which search engine listings are your article and which are just web pages that are related to the same phrase used in your article title, but is that the best method for tracking how well your articles are doing out there?

Submit and forget is the normal approach taken to article marketing. You just keep producing new articles and have “faith” in the system and that your articles are getting widespread distribution. For years, this was the approach I took to article marketing as well.

Since then, we have developed ways to do more with the content that we wrote or paid to have written for us.

For starters, those old articles you own and have already submitted are still good, useful content. You can continue to distribute them to other article directories they have not already been submitted to. You can offer them to be printed on other websites for a link back in your bio. You can break them into parts and reuse them on your blog as part 1, part 2, part 3, and so on.

The content you wrote or paid for still has value beyond the one time they were submitted to directories. How many articles do you have on your hard drive right now that you could be using?

Another method you can use is to place a tracking or serial number into each article. Use something unique as an identifier. Something with numbers and letters. Before you develop your serial numbers, search them in google and if you get a no results page, your serial number is perfect.

You can place the serial number into the actual body of the article or into your author bio. Anyone reading the article will ignore it, but you will be able to search Google for that serial number later and you will start getting results that are your own.

With this method you can track which article topics get the widest distribution, track which websites and blogs reprinted the article after finding it in article directories, and which distribution method got you the most bang for your buck.

Stop guessing and start tracking and you will improve your article marketing results tremendously!

Writing articles is a very effective way to get one way links to your site as well as to have people learn more about your website or service. However, there are ways to do this that can make you more successful versus have your articles be overlooked and not considered.

Shane Pearce has written the Lazy Man’s Guide to Article Writing which outlines some helpful tips. I was first impressed with his tip that when you submit your article to an ezine publisher or a webmaster, that you can offer him to use his own affiliate link in place of your own. For instance, if you have written an article on motivation and have a link to a clickbank ebook on motivation and goals, you can offer the publisher that he use his own affiliate id instead of yours. What this means is that the ezine or website publisher will be getting a free article already written with a link that may give him some monetary income. You still would have your own information in your resource box at the end, so people can click to your website as well. Think about what the website publisher you write to will get out of the exchange and find a way to make his or her life easier.

Other tips he gives are to read frequently asked questions to find out what people want to know about in terms of popular topics. Shane discusses how to make a viral ebook based on a faq niche that can be passed around. If there are frequently asked questions on a topic that is a sign that the topic has an interest as well as the fact there may be an interest in some guide or tutorial.

Also I like the sample autoresponder examples he uses as well as different ideas for a signature file at the end of one’s article. I think he is very good at showing how to integrate a couple of affiliate links without being pushy. He recommends sending people to opt-in to a mailing list as part of your signature file.

Another section I found useful discusses how to create checklists and use them both for your website and in articles that lead back to your website. People like checklists. Shane discusses how to use these. They also help break through writer’s block or paralysis because you can have a list of steps .

There are ideas given about utilizing both 2-tier affiliate programs and residual income programs that will help you keep you earning as your articles circulate around the net. Shane gives some interesting suggestions on types of sites that work for this.

I also like that Shane gives an example of a flop he did of an unsuccessful attempt at marketing. He analzyes it and compares it to something someone else wrote he feels was better expressed. It is a very interesting study covering various ways to get your articles noticed and published. I publish articles regularly but learned some valuable tips from this ebook.

You are sick of duplicate content? Welcome to the club. What should you do different than 95% of article writers on the net?

Article directories and the web in general have been flooded by a tsunami of junk content on just about any topic you can imagine.

However, a great deal of this content does not contain anything useful and is pure advertisement or keyword stuffing. This type of content will hardly get read by anyone.

The people that produce this type of content I call article zombies. Their content does not have a soul. It does not inspire you or give you anything useful. They just bore you to death.

Before you start writing about a topic please make sure that you:

Have something meaningful to share

This does not need to be insider knowledge about a certain topic, but maybe an interesting opinion, a different view - some aspects not everyone already knows.

Know your target population

Before writing an article, know who your audience will be. Would you go on stage with your eyes shut? You need to know who you speak to. What are the interests of your audience? What pain or problem do they try to avoid?

Write for people - not search engines

SEO may be your initial motivation. But remember: There are more humans than search engines. Real people will read your article. If they don’t like what they see do you think they will click on the link in your resource box?

Read your own words aloud before sending or submitting it somewhere

Too often you write something, but when you start reading it aloud in your own voice - it sounds stupid. If that’s the case it probably is. When you make the transition from words in a computer to spoken voice - this is the first reality check for your train of thoughts and your narrative style.

Do not recycle existing articles

I know everybody tells you to take private label articles and rewrite them. My advice: Don’t do it. If you start rewriting somebody else’s article it will lose its own voice without getting your personal style into it. What you end up with is just a piece of text without a soul.

Have a strong feeling about what your are writing

This feeling does not always have to be positive. If you are mad at something - write it down. If you disagree with somebody else’s article - great - write down your view. If you feel fascination - your words will be fascinating, if you are sad - so your words will be.

But if you feel nothing your words also won’t have emotions.

So now let’s get into the right mood and produce some really good content for your website - but first of all - for your visitor. Your visitor are human beings. Offer them what you would offer to a visitor in your home: The best you have to offer.

Writing for some people is the toughest job you can ever ask them to do yet given the right write tools and circumstances anyone can actually write high quality articles with a little bit of work and practice. There are in fact seven tools every writer actually needs regardless of whether they are writing a novel, a science document, a University assignment, a web article or journal for the local paper. Without these tools you will find it very difficult to succeed.

Tool #1 - Book and Pencil

The Book and Pencil is one of the most important tools you will ever use. I carry a book and pencil where ever I go so that I do not miss out on the ideas I have, words that I have heard and the visuals in front of me. The key advantage of the book and pencil is that when you see something or have a good idea, you write it down so you do not forget.

For example, while I was in bed last night I was thinking about a new article that I could write. This article in fact because I wanted to help new writers. The first thing I did was to jot down the title in my book and then the seven tools I believe every writer should have.

I actually have two books I use for writing, a little A6 size pad that fits in my wallet and another journal size A4 book for writing more detailed information. Whenever you a walking around a shopping centre or out to dinner, use the little A6 wallet book to write down words you hear and phrases you see so that you can use those in your writing. Often people you come across from other states or countries will use different phrases to say the same thing, and often those phrases can be sexier than your own and may inspire more readers to read your material.

Tool #2 - Dictionary

No writer can survive without a dictionary. I still have my Macquarie dictionary I got when I was in Grade 2 which is some …(a slight pause here to realise one has gotten old) … 30 plus years ago. However, if you are just starting out there are lots of really cool online dictionaries out there for free now. Alternatively, I also recommend visiting a book fair held by Charity Groups. In Australia, Lifeline holds a book fair every year and you can actually buy bags of books for a dollar and very often they will have a couple of thousand dictionaries there for just $1 which is really cheap.

So, why do we need a dictionary? Actually for two reasons, the first is to make sure we spell the words correctly and for all the techno geeks who say, but the computer can do that, let me inform you, not all words in the electronic dictionaries are correct and there are lots of words that do not exist. The second reason, and this is the most important reason, the dictionary will tell you the meaning of the word, which helps ensure the word you are using is the right one for the context of your article.

Tool #3 - Thesaurus

This is one of the most awesome tools for writers. A thesaurus allows you to look up a word and to find a better word to use than the one you used. So here is a really good exercise. I have used my thesaurus to locate more appropriate words for that previous sentence so here is the result …

The Thesaurus allows you to hunt for those words that are more appropriate and improve the sound of the language in your article.

You will notice that I substituted the word “better” for “improve” and rewrote the statement using words that were descriptive to outline what you were trying to achieve like “hunt”, “more appropriate” and “sound of the language”. When you are writing the thesaurus can be a fantastic and fun tool to help you dramatically improve the language of your documents or articles.

Tool #4 - Digital Recorder

As a writer the digital recorder has become a mainstay of our industry. The digital recorder allows you to simply speak into the recorder and record parts of your article without having to laboriously (notice the use of the descriptive term … my thesaurus is working overtime today) write it down. One thing you might want to consider is purchasing a PDA that includes a digital recorder and the ability to write down notes and take phone calls so that you are not carrying a million and one devices. The new PDA’s I have bought for my team actually have software that is voice activated so that when they have an idea or want to add to a previous message you can do so without having to press any buttons.

Probably the most common profession that uses the digital recorder is the legal profession. My lawyer uses one every single time I go into a meeting to tape his notes and letters I am going to receive and get charged a fortune for.

Tool #5 - A Good Library Of Books

Look the number ONE tool every good writer needs is their own library of books. A good writer will also be a good reader and the more you read the better your writing will become. I now have in-excess of 10,000 books in my collection and growing. My library of books range from fiction to non-fiction, research journals, magazines and much much more and I am building an even bigger video selection as well.

Why?

Well the more exposure you have to the various writing techniques and languages by the citizens of the world and the more refined your own technique will become. Further to that you need to gain a solid understanding of what technique is appropriate for the medium and the audience you are writing for. For example, the style of writing I use for articulating articles for the web will be of a more relaxed nature and more personal than for a document I might be producing for a corporate organisation. To be a really great writer you must be able to be flexible in the style you use dependant on the type of document or article you are writing.

Great writers are not born, they create themselves through practice. When I was at school, even through to high school I was a terrible writer but as I have practiced more and more (with the help of my mum), my writing has improved 100,000 percent and I know the more I write the better I am getting at structuring the article and making it flow and the faster I can write.

The library of books will be a great source for research as it will allow you to see how different writers structure their sentences, the sort of words they use how they describe experiences and use descriptive words like adjectives in their sentences. When you are building your library, do not get caught into the trap of buying just brand new books and to be honest that is an expensive way to start. Like I said before, visit places like the Book Charity Fairs and second hand book dealers and often you will find bags of books for just $1. I recently went to a Lifeline Book Fair and we bought bags of books for $1. The more extensive the library of books you have, with styles from the past and the present, the more effective, fantastic and outstanding your writing will become.

Tool #6 - Quality Music

Everybody has heard of writers block and I am not really sure there is such a thing, but some days I do find it harder to write then others. However, one way I overcome this problem is by listening to music that will help entice the creative element of my brain. The music I have found that is really good for this is baroque music which is played at 60 beats a minute.

Briefly, research shows that baroque music at 60 beats per minute causes your brain to produce more alpha [calmness] waves. This happens on both left and right sides of your brain.

This simply means that you calm down and relax, in a way similar to when you whistle a happy tune, or when you daydream. This “alpha” state of mind is ideal for learning, creativity, or just relaxing. It is used in schools all over Australia. A quote from the teacher of a remedial class here in Australia: “It seems to slow them down so they can think.”

I have seen corporate trainers improve the effectiveness of training sessions dramatically by playing Baroque Music during a session and the creativity really comes to the forefront. A colleague uses the music as background for his memory training seminars and swears by it because recall and creativity are improved.

Tool #7 - A Good Computer

Nobody in the world today can seriously survive a writing career without a good computer. If you are going to be writing professionally for a media house, newspaper or magazine, you will need a good computer as they will not accept your copy without it being in electronic form. Gone are the days where a writer would produce their manuscript in hand written form and send it to their editor. Those days are well and truly over.

On your computer you will require a few pieces of software to make your computer worthwhile. The first thing you will need is an Internet connection, without it you will not be able to email your copy and as I said all media houses, newspapers and magazines today require their writers or journalists to produce electronic copy. You will also need a good word processing software application. If you can afford it, I strongly recommend Microsoft Word 2003 simply because of the quality of the spell checker and built in Thesaurus. I also recommend this version as you can now use the speech recognition software in the application to dictate your article into the computer. Many years ago you had to actually buy third party applications, like Dragon Speak.

The last thing as a writer you will need is a good printer. Do not scrimp on printers, because as a writer you will probably find it is easier to review you work printed out, so buying a cheap printer will normally cost you 3 times as much as a slightly more expensive printer. I recommend to all my clients to buy a laser printer over an ink jet when you are writing as a laser copy is less likely to smudge when you write notes on the copy.

To finish off, writing can really be a really fun and exciting career or simply something to do in your days off, but having the right tools will certainly make life a lot easier for you. Here are the seven tools every writer must have:

Tool #1 - Book and Pencil

Tool #2 - Dictionary

Tool #3 - Thesaurus

Tool #4 - Digital Recorder

Tool #5 - A Good Library Of Books

Tool #6 - Quality Music

Tool #7 - A Good Computer

Think journaling is old fashioned? Think again. Are you having a hard time getting started on your article writing? Combine writers block with journaling to spark your article writing frenzy.

Journaling is a powerful tool for brainstorming ideas, keeping your writing skills sharp, and for storing ideas and notes for future article pieces. To make the most of your journal, I suggest the following 4 tips to all article writers, beginning through advanced.

1) Get the right tools. I love shopping for notebooks because there’s such a wide variety available today. Looking for a journal with flowers and other fancy designs? Try Barnes and Noble or Borders bookstores. Wal-Mart and office supply stores sell functional albeit less expensive journals. Make sure it feels good in your hands. Too small and you’ll breeze through the pages too quickly. Too bulky and you won’t take it with you for fear someone might snicker.

And, don’t forget your writing utensil. Your pen options are either rollerball or gel. I use a 0.38 Uniball pen. I’ve only been able to find them in OfficeMax. I adore the fine point but they do tend to run out of ink faster than other pens. Use what you like best. If you hate to smear ink, or are clumsy like me and get gel all over you hands, shirt, and pants then stick with a ball point. Or, better yet, get a pencil. I don’t use pencils because I tend to erase too much.

2) Make it a habit. This goes without saying. If you want to be successful at journaling, you have to journal. Pick a time and spot where you can write everyday. Then just do it. Stay away from your computer so you won’t be distracted by everyday business.

3) Fire your inner critic. I used to think that all writing should be critiqued, reviewed, and revised. Once I let go of my inner critic, I began to enjoy journaling. Many times I pen random thoughts that would have been lost otherwise. Journaling should be inspirational, not drudgery. For those of you who are perfectionists, this step will be harder to do. Don’t write on your computer. When you see the autocorrect marks lighting up your screen, you’ll be tempted to make corrections. It’s less tempting to use paper and pen.

4) Use your journal for article fodder. Can’t think of anything to write? Flip through older journal entries. I guarantee it won’t take but a few minutes to find and idea or inspiration to get started. I purposely review journal entries to find new article ideas.

Journaling is an exercise to help you let go of yourself and break through any writer’s block. The important point to remember is that there is no wrong way to journal. Try to journal at least once a day. Don’t think you have anything to journal about? Write down your daily to do list. Sometimes just getting something on paper will get your mind working. You never know until you try. Have fun, enjoy the time, and get writing!

Ok, so you’re passionate about your website, you love talking about your subject and you’re excited to share your knowledge, information, and maybe your products and services with the world. But how do you share your enthusiasm with your readers without coming across like you’re making a pitch? How do you sell your products or services without ’selling’ them.

No one likes a sales pitch and as soon as a reader senses they’re being ’sold’ they’re likely to click away from your article. Yet quite often, in order to motivate your reader to be inspired enough to visit your website, you need to give them a bit of a pitch. Here’s how to motivate a reader to action, without selling them.

The best way to motivate your reader is to provide them with a benefit. One of the reasons tips and how to articles are so popular is that they offer a reader an immediate benefit. Ten tips to make more money today. 3 steps to looking ten years younger. The secret to retiring early. These are all examples of article headlines that promise a benefit. When your article offers content that follows through on your promise, readers are going to be hungry for more information. You’ve kept your end of the bargain in your article, they’ll trust you to provide more benefit on your website.

Tap into your readers’ desires. We all desire to be more attractive, wealthier, smarter, happier, more respected etc…when you tap into these desires in your article you immediately have your reader’s attention. How does the content of your article help solve their problems and attain their desires?

For example, if your product is an accounting software program and your article is about how to balance your checkbook, you could tap into your reader’s desire to be wealthier by keeping track of their money or tap into their desire to be respected or smarter by having their finances at the tips of their fingertips. The headline might look something like this, “Ten Tips to Give You Control Over Your Finances, and more money in your wallet.

When you tap into your reader’s desires and offer them a way to attain them, you’re a virtual hero and your readers will be excited to visit your website and learn more from you.

Don’t give your reader the whole story. Write an article about 3 ways to do something and then in the last sentence of your article tell them this isn’t the whole story. Tell your reader if they want to learn more about your article’s topic, they can visit your website and learn the whole story. Note that if you are publishing your article in an article submission site, they may not allow you to plug your website in the body of your article. If this is the case, you can plug it in your author’s resource box. However, if you’re publishing the article in an e-zine or on another website, this is a great way to draw traffic to your site.

Selling in your article copy is as easy as offering valuable content and solving people’s problems. This approach also makes it easy to write copy. Tips and how to articles are amongst the easiest types of article content to write. Get writing!

Article marketing is essential to the page rank of your website. Although that is true in principle, it is not true in fact. Page rank applies only to individual pages of your website, not to the website in general. Page rank means what it says &ndash a ranking of your pages, not your whole website.

Larry Page invented the concept of Page Rank while at Stanford University and was later helped by Sergey Brin. The two of them eventually founded Google (named as a play on the word googol &ndash a very large number) and trade marked the term PageRank. It applies to the popularity of a web page based upon the number of other web pages that link to it. This applies on the premise that these links are due to the perceived popularity, or relevance, of that site to the search term or keyword being used.

Now, however, PageRank is a synthetic measurement based upon how many links a webmaster can contrive to achieve to any one page on a particular website, and has little to do with the relevance or popularity of that page. It is possible to contrive a high PageRank through a linking strategy that has little to do with the content of the page, or relevance to the keyword in question.

The emphasis that Google and other search engines gives to web pages with a high number of such contrived links, therefore, is open to question. There are indications that PageRank is becoming less important in the overall index listing of a web page. However, article marketing will never in the foreseeable future be overtaken by any other strategy in the search engine listing race.

This is because search engines are highly unlikely to relegate linking strategies to the graveyard simply because of reciprocal liking strategies. It is more likely, and might even be happening now, that links from one web page that are reciprocated with links from another are both negated. The only links that are included in the search engine algorithmic calculations will then be the genuine ones. Those that are provided by directories that do not demand a link back. Those that are provided by webmasters that copy your article to their web page as content.

In other words, it is likely that future Google Page Rank is determined by genuine non-reciprocal links that article marketing is the ideal strategy to generate. All links that the spiders see as being reciprocated will be excluded from the calculation.

Article marketing is one of the most popular methods used by internet marketers to increase traffic to their web sites and hence increase their income. However, there are right ways and wrong ways to use articles to drive business to your site. Let’s look at the right ways.

Your article starts with the title, and this is true whether you are writing yourself or using an article ghost writer. Good ghost writers make sure that they fully understand what their client wants of an article before starting. The title should accurately reflect the content of the article, and also contain the keyword being used.

Articles should be based on a keyword since search engine optimization is just as important in an article as it is in the content of your web pages. Your articles can be listed in search engines in the same way as your web pages, even when they are on article directories. A directory is nothing more than a website containing articles as content. The keyword should be that of one of your own website pages that provides information on the article title. If you plan your article in this way, you will make best use of what article marketing has to offer.

The actual content should be specific to the keyword and be designed to tease, rather than provide everything there is to know about a subject. If you provide comprehensive information in your article, why should the reader bother to visit your web site? Make sure that your spelling is accurate and that your grammar is passable. It need not be perfect, but stay clear of fundamental errors such as subject-verb agreement: “the two women was deaf.” This is a turn-off to your readers, so try to avoid it.

Having completed the article, you must design your ‘bio’ or ‘author’s resource’ box. Most article directories allow you this facility, in which you can say something about yourself and provide the URL of your website. This should be worded to offer more information, such as “Peter has more tips how to improve traffic to your website on his web page ——–“. You should provide the URL of a page that provides the readers exactly what they are looking for, not your home page address unless that is the most relevant to the article topic. They are interested only in information.

Having readers click to your site is the first way of increasing traffic through article marketing. Some readers will be interested in copying your article and putting it on their own site. They can do this, but must keep it intact, including your resource box. So you get even more traffic from the visitors to these other sites.

However, the marketing of your article is not finished there. You should submit it to as many article directories as you can. You can do this manually, by the use of submission software, or by using the services of a directory submission service. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and it is up to you which of the options suits you best. Personally, I use a combination of submission service and software, and can provide this information if required.

Search engines, especially Google, highly value one way links from another website back to your site. Not only do you get a one way link from each directory you submit to, but you also get one from the websites that copy your articles. This is a very powerful way of building links and improving your search engine listing. A high listing provides you with the most valuable traffic all &ndash free organic traffic from search engines.

There are pitfalls you should avoid, the most obvious being that if you purchase bundles of articles you must not use these for directory submissions. They are of use only as content on your own website, and even then they are of little use due to the problem of duplicate content. Private label rights articles, which many subscribers receive from mini-site subscription sites, are the same. Unless you change them radically the directories will no allow them, and you could be banned from directories for using them without radically rewriting them.

In the long run you would be as well writing your own, when you are at least sure that they are original. Article marketing can provide with a significant increase of traffic to your web site of you are able to carry it out properly. Follow a few simple rules, then sit back and wait for all these visitors to flood your website.

You do realize that the main goal, when writing an article, is to have your readers interested in your article. You are halfway done - readers who found your article and ran onto it are surely interested in the topic your article covers. Now you only need to have something that will gain their interest even more.

I am sure that you already know how being unique is important for everything. For example, unique websites are known to succeed; unique commercials. Almost every single unique idea ascends to the throne, of course, if properly treated. So, why wouldn’t you try to achieve unique article writing style? It WILL attract your readers. And that is your goal, isn’t it?

When you develop a new style of writing (believe me, it’s not so hard), ask several readers to read one of your articles (we are going to call them “test-readers”, and they all have to read the same article). If most of the test-readers (there will always be at least one who will say “dude, this is cr*p”) say that it’s quality article, then BINGO! Bull’s eye. Now try submitting 5 more. If you get a good response, try submitting 50 more. And voila! You’re at the throne.

In addition to all of the above, I’ve isolated several guidelines you should follow in whenever writing an article:

- Note what type of publication the article is to appear in - for example, an international travel magazine for adults would require a neutral or formal register, whereas a college magazine aimed at teenagers could be written in a very informal register.

- Make sure the register you use is consistent throughout the article.

- Remember to include an appropriate title (interesting titles catch reader’s attention).

- Introduce your topic in the opening paragraph.

- Be as clear and informative as possible.

- Engage the reader’s interest throughout.