Posts Tagged ‘articles’

Why And How To Write Articles

March 4, 2009 - 6:03 pm

When it comes to SEO and a stream of long term traffic to your site there really is only one way to go.

Articles are the best way to ensure that you have constant links to your site circling the web with a one time only input from yourself. And the best thing about article writing is that it doesn’t cost you a penny &ndash in any currency.

Here’s how it works:

-make a list of the things that you know enough about to be able to write a helpful and informative article on.

-Brainstorm the points that the article needs to cover,

-choose 3 or 4 main points and write a few sentences around them that can qualify them as ‘valuable content’

-put all that together into an article of around no more than 800 words (you don’t want to bore people away) 500-600 is best practice.

-close your notebook and leave it for a couple of days.

Why? Do you remember when you were in school and the teacher always used to tell you to ‘make sure you read over your work.’ Well they were right. If you submit your article straight away you will inevitably come back to it later and think to yourself that this sentence doesn’t make sense or that you could have worded that better. If you give yourself some time away from it and then come back with ‘fresh eyes’ you will be in a much better position to objectively critique your work.

Once you are happy with your article copy you will need to submit it to article and ezine directories so that editors and site owners can pick it up and use it as content in their own sites.

There are two ways to do this.

a) You can manually submit your article to your preferred sites which means that you will have total control over who your article goes to or

b) You can use automatic article submission. Submitting your article automatically will save you hours once you get going as you will only need to submit your article once and the website or software that you use will then take over to add it to thousands of lists.

The choice is yours but it’s pretty much a no brainer…

Make sure that you close each article with some information about yourself which lets people know that they are free to use your article and also tells them a little about you including a link or two to your own site(s). This is known as a signature box.

Along with providing good quality content a signature box is the whole reason for you writing the article as it will let people know that you are a leader in your field and where they can find out more about you and your business.

Once your articles start to circulate you will find that the number of visitors to your site will grow and so, therefore, will the revenue you make.

Articles are a great way to position yourself as a leader in your field, so be sure to write about what you know about. Don’t try to make things up as people will be able to tell and you will not be taken seriously.

The more articles you publish, the more links you will have to your site and the better your search engine ranking will be and your bank balance.

Happy Writing

Denise Hamilton

What Makes A Heroine?

March 2, 2009 - 12:27 pm

Wow I knew I put this question off for a reason.

How to even begin? First, she has to be strong. I don’t even mean strength wise; she has to have a strong constitution. Grit, personality, doesn’t take anything from anyone, basically Emerald La Roe From my first book. She didn’t take anything from no one and stood on her own two feet. Which of course if why her and Max didn’t make it. You know Alfa male werewolf and all.

Emerald was beautiful in her own way, yeah she had a sinful looking body, with fire red hair and green eyes, but that’s when her outer beauty stopped and her inner beauty came out. She was strong, self-assured, relied on no one and took care of everyone and everything her own way.

A different character of mine Shayla is your basic blonde blue-eyed fairy. Ok so she does have the looks on the outside but she is developing into a strong and capable Queen. Next is Jacqueline from Vampires Revenge, she is short, Dark hair, and I forgot her eye color. Well that’s bad, but it’s her new inside that counts. She was a willowy fainting pushover that was an innocent in everything. Now though she is tough as nails, and well just don’t make her mad.

So I guess I choose independent women, who may or may not be a classic beauty. But by the end of the book they are, just from the character they become. Yeah Shayla is a 10 by some standards, and Emerald thinks her body belongs on a lady of the night, which may or may not be a good thing. And Jacqueline so far is a classic beauty, well in her Vampires Eyes, not so much anyone else’s.

So does beauty count? Yes I’m afraid it does, maybe not the same stop your breath beauty, but a subtle beauty nonetheless.

Personality counts more! It always has and always will. It does not matter if she were super model material, if she was not a woman we would call best friend or want to be ourselves then she would never make the cut.

So how do I create my heroine, simple I don’t I have no idea what they will look like or anything else about them until the story begins to unfold. I may decide they look one way before the first word is wrote and change it before the end of the first page.

Writing Articles To Promote Your Website

February 24, 2009 - 12:18 pm

Writing articles is an excellent way for you to get free publicity. The techniques for writing articles are numerous and beyond the scope of this article. That is why writing articles are one of the most utilized Internet marketing media today. Many marketers know that writing articles are great and powerful methods to marketing online. Although writing articles are very easy to do once you know how, getting someone to show you the tricks can be the hard part. Both the press release and writing articles are two important steps on the road to internet marketing success. I think speaking and writing articles are effective ways to keep your name out there. Writing articles are one of the oldest forms of advertising on the internet.

A quality web site should contain at least some original content. Articles make great keyword-rich content for your site. Duplicate content is penalized in the Google search engine results and many other search engines are following. Creating effective web content is a skill that is built over time and experience. Good articles are content rich. The best kept secret of traffic is still the secret of good content. Because content is still superior on the internet, writing articles provides you with a major piece of leverage online. Providing the content the search engines need is a virtual gold mine for entrepreneurs. Content is superior, this will never change on the internet. Writing web content is much like writing articles. Many people don’t realize that a website needs good content to work. Try to focus most of your time getting good content for your web site.

Here are some article writing tips. Article containing guidelines and tips for writing articles, online magazines, white papers, tutorials, educational and corporate are excellent articles to write. Here are some other writing tips to increase traffic to your site. If you don’t like writing paragraphs, you could make it a ‘Tips’ article, here is an example, 5 ways to improve your golf swing, then list the 5 good ways. The following are some good tips to master the technique of writing articles. Create a list of keywords your target audience would use to find information on your topic.

Many successful Internet marketers have found out that one of the best ways to drive traffic to their websites is by writing articles. One of the best ways to get traffic to your site is by writing articles and placing the link to your site in the author’s bio-box at the end. Nevertheless, there are ways to promote your website and increase your web traffic without spending anything. The second best way to bring free traffic to your website is writing articles. The simple answer is that it takes time to write articles, submit them and get targeted traffic to their websites. Turn words into traffic is something everyone can do to grow and expand their online business by writing articles. You can get reasonable amount of traffic by writing articles. Ever wonder how some people seem to generate traffic at the click of a button. Don’t forget about all those back links to your website, this is very important when building link popularity. Online articles may be the single best way to get traffic to your web site.

Writing articles are a great way of positioning your online business. One key point to remember, one article will not do it you need to continually submit articles to all of article sites. One strategy to use is to submit one article per week. By the end of the year you would have submitted 52 articles.

Writing - Job Or Hobby?

February 1, 2009 - 1:40 pm

Writing is a part of everyone’s life. Every one of us has had to write an article, a composition or a letter to a loved one, at least once in our lives. In schools, it is as common task as learning how to count or memorize multiplication tables. Yet as people grow old, some continue on to write until old age while some completely shun writing as if it’s a burden one needs to keep away from as much as possible. The difference between who you are among the two is how you answer the question, “Is writing a hobby or a job for you?” The answer you give could tell you of your perspective of the written form of art.

Job or Hobby?

When does writing become a job then? Some may think that when you get paid then it becomes work. But why then did the great poets of times past who died miserable, alone and broke continued to write until they were on their deathbed? By this example alone you could deduce that writing may still be a hobby even if you are great author as long as the passion and the love for writing is there. But once other factors affect that passion for writing then it’s a different story altogether. Apparently, some great writers have been burned out at least one time in their lives because of the pressure to beat the deadline, the anxiety of having to please the readers and the dreadful idea of not living up to the expectations that surrounds a best-selling writer.

Searching for the Reasons Why One Writes

So then how do you keep the passion to write a love letter, the fervor to churn out poetry and essays, or to still beat the deadline without having to feel that writing is a heavy burden? How do you make writing a productive exercise and still to still call writing a hobby? There are many ways to respond to the posed questions above, but the simplest and most efficient way is to ask yourself, to ask that writer within you what reasons you have that you bothered to continue writing in a journal, a daily diary or on pieces of paper around your flat when in fact no one asked you to. Searching the inner soul could produce many definite answers for you. Maybe you view writing as a way to blow steam off on bad days, or maybe you chose to write your dreams because you want to preserve a memory of yourself, afraid that when you get older, you would somehow become this senseless, disconnected person. Or maybe writing for you is a form of release or expression.

Whatever the reason is, you have to ask yourself if you still have it in you and if the tides of time have not washed away that passion and the reason for that passion to write. If you could answer that positively, then you’ll always be able to view writing as a hobby, as an activity that you will always cherish to do no matter what is going on in your life. A true writer will always write because of internal reasons, whether you are a novice playwright, a successful novelist, or a child who keeps a diary.

Blogging Beyond Leaps And Bounds

January 30, 2009 - 3:05 pm

Blogging is a passion and the same time an opportunity to get places. People who often find themselves searching for identity and purpose would be surprised at how blogging can make a difference for them. Indeed, it is something worth checking and people who love to write about anything should very well check it out.

And now for the one qualifier. Content may be king, but content alone is like a figure-head king who talks a lot but doesn’t get anything done. For the monarchy to be effective, you have t actually write good and appropriate content.

The first step to write a marketing blog is to set your goals and know why you blog. What this means is that you have to understand that a blog is not an open invitation to post sales material and self congratulatory tripe. The purpose of your blog should certainly be to inform, but it is also an opportunity to communicate with your clients. Search engines may like blogs because of constantly updated content, but customers have come to trust blogs because they feel like this is a chance to “get to know” the company &ndash not subject themselves to more mindless sales material.

When you are writing content for your blog you need to keep a few things in mind. First of all, a business blog, while not exactly creative writing, is not really technical writing either. Everyone has their own style and, depending on the subject matter of the blog, different styles are appropriate for different industries. But in general, a blog should be written in a more conversational tone. This will help you avoid the marketing-speak that can otherwise creep into a valid article.

Next, make sure that your grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills are regularly exercised. All you have to do is spend some time visiting forums or reading blog replies to know that most Internet users don’t have the best grammar or vocabulary in the world. This does not, however, mean that you can allow your blog to slip down to the same level. You are being held to a higher standard as a content publisher than you would be as a normal visitor. And visitors will recognize poor grammar in others, even when they don’t practice it themselves.

Now, what do you write about? Obviously a marketing blog is going to be heavy with articles about products or services. This is the perfect place to discuss your new endeavors, as long as you remember to keep it a discussion. People can get advertisements anywhere. They don’t need them and, more importantly, they don’t want them from your blog.

Ideas are hard to come up with these days because every writer wants to be unique in order to stand out and it seems like someone has already conveyed your idea to a site or several sites. Even if you write about something different, sooner or later someone will copy your work. Also, there are times when you do not feel like writing but you have to produce something at the end of the day.

If you have faced any of these situations, what can you do about it? You can browse online to get ideas. There is nothing wrong with having the same topic as someone else as long as you tackle it on a different angle.

How Can A Website Help Your Business?

January 24, 2009 - 9:10 pm

Maybe you are looking around for new ways to advertise your work, whether it’s a book, freelance writing, new software program, or possibly crafts, a website may be just what you need. A website can get the word out about your product. You can use it to write a simple Blog about you and your product or a full article about how you can help someone else.

There are many ways to set up your website from simple WYSIWYG, to more advanced HTML graphics, however what way you decide you will find the right one for you. The basic WYSIWYG is the easiest to use and have many basic templates preset for you to use. These templates are designed to get the most space per page without slowing the loading process down. You will find different colors and layouts, where you can have photos on different parts of the page and the writing from above, to below, or even on both sides of the picture. The pictures themselves can range from ones included in the templates, to your own personal pictures, so be creative and have fun designing that special web page hassle free.

The more advanced web site builders use different styles and products, one being the HTML page. HTML can be extremely hard unless you have had previous experience or courses. However, our friends at Microsoft have come up with Open Office Document. In this program accompanying the Microsoft Word, Works, and Suites you will find a simple and elegant way to build your web pages off line. There are a multitude of templates, backgrounds, designs and more. Another great aspect is that you can set you pages up completely off line linking them together, so when the time comes to publish your web pages you are only a few clicks away.

There are several other programs available and most websites will have some kind of page builder included. No matter which way you decide to go you will find an exciting way to get your news out to the Internet world.

Article Marketing Success And Sheep Do Not Mix

January 19, 2009 - 9:26 pm

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.

Procrastinators Anonymous (PAA)

December 21, 2008 - 9:02 am

As you probably have already guessed, I have a problem. I am seriously battling with procrastination and I think I’m doing very well so far. You see, the good news is that I am not ashamed or too afraid to admit it, and neither should you be. I bet you’re saying to yourself right now, “I don’t have a problem.” Well I am here to tell you that there is hope for you. We will overcome this, together, but the first step towards recovery is being able to admit the problem. To make it a little bit easier for you, I will go first&ndash‘Hi, my name is Siobhan and I am a procrastinator.’ You see, that wasn’t so bad. So, are you ready to admit that you should be doing something else right now besides reading this? Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us; literally.

Wouldn’t that be something if there really was a Procrastinators Anonymous Association (PAA)? The thought sounds good, but I’m not too sure about how good of an idea it would be to actually start one. I can already foresee a few hurdles with having a PAA; for one, members may keep postponing the meetings for no apparent reason. Another thing is there would probably not be enough room to hold almost every single person in the world. Let’s face it, we all procrastinate. As a matter of fact, we are all experts at it and lucky for us it isn’t as bad as is made out to be.

As a writer, procrastination gives me a chance to think about my book while I’m doing something else in place of writing it. What better way is there to make use of all that time other than using it to contemplate new ideas, fine tune details, and get everything just right before I actually sit down to write? I once read somewhere that the biggest procrastinators tend to be very creative and intelligent. I am in no way making excuses for my procrastination; instead, learned to just appreciate and accept it.

It may sound crazy but I believe that the rest of the world also loves it when I procrastinate. Suddenly, everyone seems to get my undivided attention. My dog gets walked for a few extra minutes, phone calls get answered, and even missed calls get returned. It also seems to be the times when my stomach talks to me more than usual and the best songs come on the radio that I just can’t resist singing along to. The even crazier thing about it is I only procrastinate like this when it comes to writing. I don’t know why I do it, but it always seems to happen. I became curious and asked some other writers, artists and creative people if they experience anything similar. To my surprise, I was not alone. That is when I decided to write off my procrastinating tendencies as a trait that all writers and artistic people are just born with.

As a person who thirsts for knowledge, I did some research and found out that writers are known to procrastinate. Many well known writers are considered to be some of the biggest procrastinators. Inspiring isn’t it? If you really think about it, procrastinating can indeed be useful and necessary at times because it allows the writer to let go. Sometimes when you hold on to an idea too tight or try to force creativity, it seems to pack up and take a vacation somewhere, leaving you frustrated. But when you just let it go, it comes to you as naturally as feeling the warm sun against your skin. It’s no different than trying to remember that name that on the tip of your tongue. As long as you spend wrecking your brain trying to remember it, it never comes; but the second you stop trying and just let it go, doesn’t the name blurt out of your mouth as if you weren’t even trying to remember it in the first place? Some things are just unexplainably strange.

So now that I have admit my problem, which in essence has turned out to be not much of a problem at all, can you admit to being a procrastinator and accept the rewards and benefits that come with resourcefully killing time? I know one thing; it may have taken me 20 hours to write something that could have possibly been done in less than an hour, but who is to say that I would have came to these conclusions that fast? I want to give a special thanks to those four chocolate chip cookies that I ate, the glass of milk that helped wash it down, my supposedly housebroken dog for making “mess” on the floor, and my computer for acting up and erasing those much needed files. I am a procrastinator par excellence.

From Manuscript To Novel A Short Guide

December 21, 2008 - 8:35 am

What do you do now that you have finished that great manuscript? Many believe you can simply start sending it out to agents or publishers sometimes even both. However this is simply not true, just because you have created this riveting tale, you cannot send it out and expect it to be published right then. No, there are many aspects to being published and even more frauds out there, where the only goal is to con you out of your money. Filling their pockets and leaving yours empty and your dream of being published unfulfilled.

So what to do, where to turn, who do you trust, who do you ask? Well the first thing is take that perfect manuscript and reread each and every word and prepare to rewrite, if you are like many authors out there who have a hard time seeing their own mistakes then join a critique group. These groups are designed to help writers, and many have guidelines to follow so that your critique is accurate and fair. Once you have joined the group, redone your mistakes, repeatedly, finally believing you have the best Manuscript possible, here comes the hard part. Getting someone else to believe it as well.

You have to come up with a query letter that holds the readers attention using a strong hook. A hook if you don’t know is that one scene, that one line, that grabs the readers attention making them want more, need more of what you have to say. Once you have that Query here comes the synopsis, a synopsis is summary of your story highlighting plot twist and turns along with giving, a detail setting your story takes place in, generally about two to three pages in length. A word of advice when you write your synopsis, know the ending even if not exact, at least how it will end. Publishers and Agents do not want to be still guessing at the end.

Ok you have your Query, your Synopsis, your sample Chapters leading into the story, now what? Did you make sure everything is formatted properly; this makes a huge difference on acceptance to being read or thrown away before they look at the first line? So everything is properly formatted, you have researched the agents and publishers, you know who you are going to send out to, but there is one major problem who first?

Well that depends on your list, first off if you want an agent then they are the first ones to contact. A good agent will walk you through the process from, professional editing to submitting to the publisher. Agents will have Publishers they want to send to first, but you can suggest your own as well. A good agent will not charge you; they make money off getting that contract with the publisher. A good agent will keep you informed at all changes, but most importantly, a good agent will be looking out for you.

Now that we know what an Agent does maybe, you are like hundreds of other authors and do not want an agent. Well that is ok too; many go straight to the publisher. Whether you self publish or have a publisher, you need to follow the company’s guidelines and rules. Also, remember that unless you are self-publishing then the Publisher pays you not the other way around. A publisher should also have a list of events and ideas they want to use to promote the book.

No matter what way you choose to move that manuscript into a novel be sure to check out each publisher, editor, and agent on your list. Make sure they are legit, that they do not have any hidden fees, and any questions you have are answered completely before you sign that dotted line. Remember you are in charge, it is your work, and you have a responsibility to yourself, your readers, and your publisher or agent, just because the hard parts are done, do not stop. Send it out for reviews, ask local books stores to carry it, promote, promote, promote.

???…About Article Submitters

December 19, 2008 - 8:11 pm

(Article Submitter)… It’s an amazing time saver. Also it will help you stay organized. Let’s look at article marketing or submission in general.

Article directories allow you as the author to store your work and take advantage of the traffic that visits them. So Instead of directly searching for other sites to publish your articles, you can submit your articles to article directories.

There are hundreds if not thousands of article directories where you can submit your articles. It can take days or weeks to contact all these directories and fill out each submission form.

For the time you spend submitting to these directories, you could have spent it writing more articles.

When you don’t have the extra hours in a day to contact each directory and submit them by hand, you can use article submitters to automate in part or in full, the article submission process.

The Article Submitter allows you to automatically submit your articles to hundreds of article directories with a few mouse clicks.

Basically all I You to do is input an article criteria into the software, ONCE! Then, the program would automatically fill in all of the required data at each of the submission websites. Pretty AmazingUuseful and ….WHAT a TIME SAVER.

You simply click the submit button and your article is instantly submitted to the directory. Then, you can move to the next directory, go through the list, and by the time you’re finished you’ll have a hundred one way links pointing to your website.