Small Business Marketing | Getting Great At Article Writing

By Marketing Buzz

This article looks at what and why small and medium sized business owners need to do to turn their ideas and dreams into reality by actually using article writing to grow their business.

Using article writing as part of your business marketing can generate traffic to your website and increase your income and exposure for you and your business.

In this article I'm going to look at why article writing is one of the easiest ways in which to market your business and why it needs to form part of your ongoing marketing mix.

If your business has a website, a blog or an online shop then article writing is for you. You can have the best website in the world but without regular visitors and traffic to your site then it's not really worth having on online presence at all. And there really is only 2 ways to get traffic to your site – you pay for it (pay per click, banner advertising, affiliate schemes, directory advertising etc) or you get free traffic (optimization in the search engines natural or free listings
being the main way).

Don't get my wrong paying for traffic can really work and pay per click advertising is great as it gives you instant results and if you can convert visitors to sales then it can make you and your company money.

HOWEVER, you can get even better results by being listed high in the natural search engine listings (or SERPS) and article writing can really help with this.

When people use a search engine like Google they are presented with numerous listings based on what they are searching for. The sponsored (or paid) listings appearing at the top and down the right hand side and the free or natural listings appearing on the main page. Pretty straightforward yes? But what am I telling you that you don't already know?

Well did you know about the 70/30 rule?

The 70/30 rule means that 70% of visitors to a search engine will click on a free listing rather than a paid for listing who just get 30% of total clicks. This means that even if you run highly successful pay per click campaigns over two thirds of people searching for your product/company/service could be going elsewhere unless you appear high in the free listings.

Now if you have a large marketing budget then I'd recommend investing in search engine optimization (be careful though as there's thousands of so called SEO experts out there who make big promises without delivering).

However if you don't have a large budget then article writing can really help you move up the rankings, establish you as an expert in your field and mean you get traffic, visitors and sales for little time and money.

Marketing done well can transform your business from an also ran to leaders in your particular field and size of your budget doesn't have to hold you back. Be smart with your marketing and article writing and watch your business grow – JUST DO IT!

About The Author:

Mark Burdett is the owner of The Marketing Buzz. For information on The Marketing Buzz and their range of small business marketing services visit http://www.themarketingbuzz.co.uk

Article submission

By John Soares

How To Put Your Targeted Customer In A Buying Mood

1. Know your targeted customer. You must have an intimate knowledge of his wants and needs. Ask yourself:

a. "How does my product(s) benefit my targeted market?"

b. "Why should my targeted customers buy from me?"

c. "How will I fill my targeted customer's wants and needs?"

Once you have answered these questions, start writing your web copy. When you think you are finished, get an unbiased person(s) to read it and give you constructive criticism. When you think you have excellent web copy, move on to # 2.

2. Now take a closer look at your sales copy. It MUST make your targeted customer think:

a. "Hmmm..I really need this Product X" AND

b. "Gee, I wish I'd found this Product X six months ago".

Does it make you think those thoughts? If you have any doubts, get a few more unbiased persons(not the same ones!) to read your web copy. Ask them what thoughts come to mind as they read it. Don't stop rewriting until you hear your reviewers echo "a" and "b" above.

Do this properly and you can be sure that your targeted customers will have these positive thoughts too once they read your web copy.

Now let's move on to # 3.

3. Your potential customer is now in a receptive or buying mood. This is exactly what you want! Your customer will think you are giving him valuable information, as opposed to a sales pitch. Work hard to keep that positive impression. Now that your potential customer is in a buying mood...

4. It's decision time! Your customer MUST feel that he is making up his own mind. He will then justify his decision based on his wants and needs. Once your targeted customer has completed this step, your chances are excellent that he will place an order. Now for the most important thing...

5. Explicitly ask your customer to order your product. Make it VERY easy for him to do so. If you sell your own products, be sure you can handle credit cards, or at least online checks. The less time your new customer spends in the ordering process, the less time he has to change his mind!

6. Offer further information that your targeted customer can read online. He may not be ready to order your product today, but he may order after he reads your more detailed sales material. Remember, your potential customer may just need a little more convincing for him to become a buying customer!

Best of luck and many sales to you!

About the Author:

John Soares
Persuasive Web Writing Makes The Web Sale!
http://www.persuasive-web-writing-means-higher-web-sales.com/article_annbiz.html

More Tips for Better Writing

By Tim North

Your readers judge you on the way you write.

This applies whether you're writing advertising copy, a college or business report, a web site, or the next great novel; and it is these judgements that will determine the success or failure of your venture.

For example, would you buy a book if you flipped through the pages and saw spelling errors? Probably not. Such errors would detract from the CREDIBILITY of what was written. Similarly, the Internet is full of web sites offering to tell you how to write fantastic advertising copy that will triple your sales. The irony, is that most of these site look like they're written by an illiterate. You know the ones: spelling errors, poor grammar, ridiculous punctuation, and way too many exclamation marks.

Good, solid writing skills are necessary whether you're writing for business, college or fiction. In this article, I'm going to look at a frequently misunderstood area: hyphens.

Yes, it sounds dull; I admit it. Wait, though, before being tempted to put this article to one side, and test yourself with these real-world questions.

Q1. Why do many dictionaries list "infra-red" with a hyphen, but "ultraviolet" without?

Q2. Why does only the first of the following sentences need a hyphen?
We will discuss public-safety issues.
We will discuss issues of public safety.

Q3. Which of these is the preferred spelling:
co-ordinator or coordinator?
mid 1990s or mid-1990s?
selfesteem, self-esteem or self esteem?

Are you certain of all your answers? If not, read on, and we'll cover some simple guidelines for using hyphens. (You'll also find the answers to the questions above.)

SEVEN SIMPLE TIPS FOR USING HYPHENS
-----------------------------------

1. The prefix "self" is nearly always hyphenated; e.g. self-esteem, self-image, self-conscious.

2. When the prefix "ex" is used to mean former, it is always hyphenated; e.g. ex-wife, ex-premier, ex-treasurer.

3. Most of the time, prefixes don't need a hyphen; i.e. most dictionaries list "coexist" not "co-exist."

4. We do sometimes use a hyphen after a prefix, though, if the main word is only one syllable; e.g. infra-red. By comparison, ultraviolet doesn't need a hyphen (according to most dictionaries) because the main word is not one syllable.

5. Use a hyphen after a prefix in order to separate a doubled vowel; e.g. pre-empt, de-emphasise. There are some exceptions, though. Most modern dictionaries spell "cooperate" and "coordinate" without hyphens.

6. We tend to hyphenate compound words only if they come before a noun, not after. For example, we write a "public-safety issue" with a hyphen, but "an issue of public safety" is written without one.

7. Use a hyphen after the prefix if the main word has a hyphen of its own; e.g. non-customer-focussed approach.

Armed with these simple guidelines, you'll soon be using hyphens like an expert. Good luck! :-)

About the Author:

Tim North (info@...) is the author of "Better Writing Skills" -- a 200-page, easy-to-understand, downloadable book that will give you a competitive edge.

You can DOWNLOAD A FREE CHAPTER that's full of practical hints and tips from http://www.betterwritingskills.com

How To Measure The Effectiveness Of Your Article Marketing Campaigns

By Bill Platt

I frequently rant on Internet marketing and some of the gurus who try to bend your ear. Why? Because many of these so-called gurus trash everything that makes sense in this Internet world,
especially when they realize that they cannot make money from the techniques being recommended.

I don't preach marketing concepts solely for the purpose of selling my products and services. (If you happen to buy my products or services, then awesome, but that is not my point when I share information from my SEO and other marketing campaigns.) I preach the concepts that I have used for myself successfully. Either you can trust me and test the things I recommend, or you can listen to the gurus and drown yourself in pity, when you realize you are not finding the success you seek.

I present things in such a way that anyone can actually go out and try my suggestions on their own, with or without my help. I want you to at least try what I suggest. I don't want you to try once, but I want you to commit yourself giving the suggested methods a chance to work for you.

Yes, I preach article marketing in connection with building link popularity value for your website (and I operate an article marketing company). But, I am not the only article marketing company out there. So, it remains possible for you to employ my article marketing techniques, without actually using my services specifically. (If you want to use my services, great, but you don't have to do so.)

Frequently, new customers come along and say, "Bill, I am going to try this once. If it works out for me, I will be back." My response is often, "Dude, you are selling yourself short, when you do something just once!"

As a person who has only written one article, you are just one in thousands of uncommitted, wannabe article writers. Your article may very likely be overlooked, because the publishers do not yet know your name or why they should care that you are writing articles.

When publishers have seen your name, 3, 4 or 10 times, then they are more likely to open your articles to see if they like your writing style and to see why they should pay attention to your message. Once publishers begin to pay attention to what you write, then publishers will open more of your articles, and perhaps publish your articles more frequently.

When you do a one-time out article, you are riding solely on a prayer, for success. (I am not in the prayer business - please see your pastor for that service.) But, if you can commit yourself to ten articles, your chance for article marketing success has been improved tenfold.

The first thing that needs to happen for article marketing to work for the promotion of your website is for you to create great content that other people want to publish. Then you must get noticed by the (ezine and website) publishers that will want to publish your articles. Once you have an audience, don't let them down --- keep giving them more content so that they can turn to you always.

To express this point, let me share a couple names with you. How many of you have heard of Willie Crawford? Willie has written and distributed 123 articles through my program, and he has 140,000 search results for his name in Google (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22willie+crawford%22).

My friend Clinton Douglas IV has written and distributed 36 articles. Google credits him with 17,500 mentions in the Google search results for his name (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22clinton+douglas+iv%22).

Both of these gentlemen suggest that they rely primarily upon articles to build their presence online. Of course, Willie is somewhat of an exception, since he has his fingers in so many pies. But, Willie still attributes much of his success to article marketing.

When it is time to measure your article marketing success, you should never go to Google's public search results and pull a simple search for your name or a link:yourdomainurl.com search. You should not even go to Yahoo's Site Explorer to find the same inforamtion.

Instead of relying on the public records for inbound link counts, you should register your website in Google's Webmaster Tools control panel at: http://www.google.com/webmasters

On the public side of Google, my site shows 33 inbound links (http://www.google.com/search?q=link%3Athephantomwriters.com) and Yahoo Site Explorer credits me with 1,478 inbound links. But, inside of Google's Webmaster Tools, I have +10,000 inbound links according to Google's records. I am not going to divulge exactly how many inbound links I have (according to Google's Webmaster Tools), but even I was surprised by the strength of my link counts.

The fact is that Google will only show you a really small sampling of the inbound links for your website, and while Yahoo is more free with this information, they also fail to show anything more than just a small snippet of the number of links you will actually have for your website.

So, if you are truly interested in learning the value that you created with your article marketing campaign, you absolutely have to login to Google's Webmaster Tools to get to the truth of the matter.

But, building links is just one facet of a successful article marketing campaign. There is also the reputation you build for yourself when you teach your readers something of real value in your articles. There is the consistent traffic you can receive to your website when your article is published on a website that has a regular audience. And there is the surges of traffic you can receive to your website when your article is published in a large newsletter.

I have always tried to play straight with folks, so please take this advice as it is intended. If you are only going to do one article to see where article marketing can take you, spend your money on paid advertising instead. But, if you really believe that those of us who have written hundreds of articles do so, because this marketing method works, then make a serious commitment to seeing an article marketing campaign through to success.

About the Author:

Bill Platt has been providing article marketing to his clients since 2001 at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com/ He offers ghost writing and article distribution services. With lots of experience writing articles that attract publishers, readers, traffic and sales to his website, Bill wrote an ebook to share the secrets of his article writing success that can be found at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

Or read his blog at: http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/

How To Inspire Yourself To Write Articles Others Will Want To Read

By Bill Platt

Anyone engaged in writing articles for offline publications or online business has occasionally struggled with the question of "What to write?"

Methods To Help The Average Person To Start Writing

Maybe I am just an overly optimistic person. I have always believed that anyone committed to writing an article can write an article. The problem is that most individuals simply do not have the belief in their own skills and insight. That is the reason why we ghost writing lot will always have a job. As long as there are people who doubt their own skills or insights, I will always have a job.

One of my good friends, Clinton Douglas IV(http://www.thephantomwriters.com/recent/author/clinton-douglas-
iv.html), learned the lesson of understanding that he had his own abilities and skills that he could utilize to write his own articles. He learned that he could turn his insight into literature worth reading, by simply calling his favorite ghost writer on the phone (me) and sharing his thoughts on a topic. He was always amazed how it seemed like I could read his thoughts and mind and put his thoughts to paper, even the thoughts that he did not mention specifically to me.

Most people simply don't have a favorite ghost writer on the other end of a telephone call. For them, they should sit down to the computer and type and type and type, with little to no regard for proper spelling, grammar, or storytelling. The first draft should always be used to get one's thoughts out of the brain and down on paper. Spelling, grammar and wording can be fixed during the editing process.

My friend Clinton utilizes this technique on occasion too. He wrote an article one time, by just spilling his brain onto the page. He wrote from his heart and got his thoughts all out of his head. When done, he sent me his final draft for editing. Sure, there were many words that were fixed, a lot of bad grammar that was corrected, and wording that was massaged, before we found the final product. Once written by him and edited, we put his
(http://www.thephantomwriters.com/free_content/db/d/3:10-to-yuma- lessons-learned.shtml) "3:10 to Yuma" article out on the World Wide Web. Almost immediately, my friend Clinton started receiving compliments for his story. Many said it was very inspirational.

I believe in your ability to write your own articles, even if you do not.

Even if you can never bring yourself to write your own articles, that is fine, since we professional ghost writers are happy to write for you.

How Professional Writers Find Inspiration

When it is time to sit down to write an article, we professionals sit down and start reading. Inspiration is a thought that comes to our mind while we are reading information on our target topic. Our thought is never to rewrite what other writers are talking about. Instead, our inspired thought is often an extension of the words we read that were penned by our peers.

How many times have you been reading something written by someone else, and you felt that the author should have ventured off on a tangent that he or she left hanging? Inspiration often occurs rght here in this moment, at that very intersection of this thought.

Once you know the question left unanswered by another writer, then you will have found your own direction and inspiration for writing your next article.

Answer The Unanswered Question and More...

When you want to use articles to promote your online business, it is not enough to answer the unanswered question. You actually need to venture a bit further afield and to ask yourself one very important question: Is the person most likely to buy your product or service also interested in having this question answered?

When you write for promotion purposes, you should always try to speak to the hearts and minds of the people most likely to buy what you are selling. If your potential clients are asking the
same questions as you are, then you know what questions you need to answer for your readers. It is in answering questions important to your customers, where you will begin to find real success using promotional articles to promote your business.

Help your customers answer questions they want answered, and they will help you to earn the sales you need to keep your doors open to others.

Final Note About Inspiration and The Writing Process

This article began as a blog post, written in a blog I contribute to weekly:
http://articlecontentprovider.com/article-marketing-blog/2008/06/22/where-does-inspiration-come-from/

I often write a blog post as my first draft of an idea. Then I massage the message to make it worthy as a promotional article, an article to be read by a larger audience.

Sometimes my first draft is an answer to someone who asked me a question about my service. I answer his or her question from the hip, then I copy-and-paste my answer to a word document and massage the copy for a public audience.

Many times, this first-draft, second-draft process has helped me to create some of the very best articles I have written. Due to the fact that my original article draft is put together as an answer to a question that one of my potential clients had, it permits me to write an article that answers a question that many of my other potential customers may also be thinking.

In answering questions for the larger audience, I have found great success for myself in article marketing. Given a little bit of motivation and commitment, you can make my processes work for you too, to build your own success online.

About the Author:

Bill Platt has been providing article marketing to his clients since 2001 at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com/ He offers ghost writing and article distribution services. With lots of experience writing articles that attract publishers, readers, traffic and sales to his website, Bill wrote an ebook to share the secrets of his article writing success that can be found at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

Autoresponders Are a Publishers Best Friend

Article by Bill Platt

How many times have you subscribed to a new ezine (online newsletter), and then when the first issue of the ezine arrived, you were scratching your head as to how your email address ended up on the list? Our lives are often so tedious that little details often slip right from our memory.

The point is this. If it happens to you, you can rest assured that others have the same experience as well.

Sometimes when this happens to us, we just unsubscribe from the list after that first issue. We cannot remember what compelled us to subscribe in the first place, and the first issue of the ezine does little to rekindle our initial enthusiasm for the ezine.

As publishers, autoresponders can serve us well. When used correctly, autoresponders can strike while the iron is hot, cementing the subscription for the new subscriber.

If your ezine has been around for a while, or only for a few issues, seriously consider taking the time to compile a "Best Of" issue.

Be certain to list subscription instructions near the top of your "Best Of" issue, and also ask people to forward it to their friends.

Your "Best Of" issue should be placed into an autoresponder email address, and then given away at every opportunity. The moment the issue is ready, you can notify your subscribers of the existence of the issue. In the ezine information area of each issue, you can also remind subscribers that the "Best Of" is available at such-and-such email address. Ironically, some of your subscribers will download your "Best Of" several times.

The most important reason for building the "Best Of" issue is not for the benefit of your current subscribers, though most of them will appreciate your making it available to them. The best reason to implement the "Best Of" autoresponder is for your new subscribers!

When someone subscribes to your ezine, they will receive their "Welcome to My Ezine" notice. As they are reading the "Welcome" message, their enthusiasm is bubbling over. Waiting for that first issue will be tough unless there is an invitation to receive their first issue NOW.

In your "Welcome" message, you should let them know that if they would like to get started right away reading your ezine, then they should send a blank email to your autoresponder address for the "Best Of" issue.

New subscribers will gorge themselves on your "Best Of" issue, and they will remember your ezine when the first new issue arrives in their mailbox. If the "Best Of" issue was precisely what they were looking for, you can rest assured that they will eagerly open each subsequent issue of your ezine, with delight in their hearts.

If you do not have the ability to set up autoresponders on your own domain, one company that offers a free autoresponder service is: http://sendfree.com/

If you take the time now to implement the "Best Of" autoresponder, the rewards will most certainly be long-lasting. Remember, the best time to get a new subscriber to fall in love with your ezine is when their interest is the highest --- at the very moment they subscribe to your ezine.

About the Author:

Bill Platt has been engaged in article marketing since 1999 and has offered his services to others since 2001 as a article marketing service provider. He offers article ghost writing and article distribution services, to his clients, many of whom have been with him since early 2002: http://www.thephantomwriters.com has written an ebook to teach people how to be as successful with article marketing as he has been. Bill's Article Marketing ebook has received many excellent reviews.
http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

Top Seven Ways How Writing Articles Can Explode Your Business

By Nikki Mhlanga

The importance of attracting highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be overemphasized. Routing web traffic to your site can be your only means of survival, especially in the very competitive ecommerce world. Getting a high search engine ranking can be very difficult. Fortunately, there is plethora of website promotion strategies you can use to drive traffic to your website.

There is a wide variety of strategies you can adapt, from paid advertising to affiliate marketing. However, most of these techniques require payment. Nevertheless, there are ways to promote your website and increase your web traffic without spending anything.

Writing articles is one of the best web site promotion strategies you can use, and they can be very effective. How, you may ask, can writing articles help improve your web traffic? Here are the top seven ways in which it can help explode your business.

1. Reach more people When you write good articles, you must share them with other people, and attract traffic to your site in the process. You can post your articles in your website or you can submit them to other sites such as e-zines and online publishers. By submitting your articles to these sites, you give exposure not only to your ideas but also to your website. Simply include a link back to your site or include your information in the resource box. With this, you get exposure and free advertising as well.

2. Free Advertising Submitting your articles to other websites presents an opportunity to advertise your website without paying exorbitant fees. Although you should avoid marketing language in your articles and make it informative and useful to your readers, you can always include your site's link in the resource box. In addition, by making your article relevant and helpful to your readers, you are making a good impression for your website, which could ultimately lead to a visit and hopefully a purchase. Good quality content in an article is far better and more effective than a few lines of ad space.

3. Gain High Search Engine Ranking Create a new web page for your article in your website. Optimize your article to make it search-engine friendly. Use top-ranked keywords and Meta tags that can give your website a high search engine ranking. As soon as you upload your new webpage to your server, search engines will spider through it and you can gain an increase in search engine ranking. Remember that search engine optimized content is a very effective strategy to gain a high ranking in search results.

4. Increases Link Popularity

Instead of looking for other sites who would want to establish reciprocal links with your site, you can simply submit an article to other sites. Just do not forget to include a link to your site in your resource box. When these websites pick up and publishes your article, you automatically get a link partner. Link popularity is one of the factors used by search engines in determining search engine rankings. Make your article especially useful and appealing, so that more websites will be encouraged to publish it.

5. Optimizes your site for improved search engine ranking

By making your site keyword rich, you can greatly improve the search engine ranking of your site. Remember that keyword density is one of the most important factors that search engines use when determining the search engine ranking of site. However, you should always provide relevant, useful and pertinent information. Avoid the temptation of overusing keywords just to gain a high ranking as this may turn off most web surfers. Relevance and quality is still the most important things to consider when writing articles and it will be doubly useful to your site if you make these articles search-engine optimized.

6. Establishes a Good Impression and Reputation

By writing excellent, original and relevant articles, you not only give your site exposure, you are also creating a good impression on your prospects. Encourage more people to visit your site and do business with you by establishing an impressive reputation through your articles. Be seen as an expert in the field and your will ultimately gain more customers eager to do business with you.

7. Enhances your credibility through references and testimonies

Certainly, your articles are going to receive feedbacks and testimonies when you publish them in e-zines and free article sites. Record these positive feedbacks and comments and use them as promotional material in your website or in any of your advertising efforts. Your credibility will be greatly enhanced by these feedbacks, as it will create a good impression on your prospects as well as your existing customers.

Original, relevant, useful and pertinent articles are important tools you should utilize to improve and explode your business.

About the Author:

For 3 Easy Steps To Make Money Online, Visit: http://www.smart-homebiz.com/pips.html

How to Use Your Articles To Create Ebooks

By Maria Marsala,

Who would have thunk it? You've completed several written articles on the same topic - a good idea if you want to become known as an expert. Now you want to turn those articles into a money making ebook. But how to do it? What's next? What do you need?

You could simply take your articles, jam them into a PDF file, and call it an ebook. However, if you want your ebook to reflect your professional, credible self, and get you "this" much closer to creating a "book", then follow the steps below:

1. Start with a word processing program, such as MS Word.

2. Place all of your articles in an order that will make sense to a reader.

3. Make sure that concepts flow. How? One key step is to remove redundancies that occur because each article was originally free standing.

4. Find ways to connect the first article to the 2nd article. A copywriter or editor can easily do this.

5. Leave lots of white space on each page. At least one-inch right and left margins because it makes the page easier to read.

6. The font size for the text on the page should be at least 11 or 12 points. This is especially true if your ideal clients are over 40 years old. Many people use Arial or Verdana for ebooks since it's easier on the eyes than Times Roman.

7. You want pictures or illustrations scattered throughout the document. However, you don't want to use the clip art that came with your computer. First that art is for personal, not commercial use. Secondly, you want to look professional and not thought of as cheap. There are low cost graphics for sale on the Internet for you to use.

8. Titles and sub-titles should be a much larger font than the text. Don't underline titles because people will think that they're supposed to click on them; instead, use bold, color or italicize them. You can even use special fonts, like Tahoma for titles.

9. By formatting your ebook like a professional, it will be easier for you to turn it into a book! How? Read the next few tips.

10. Create an eye pleasing cover page for the ebook, and a cover that looks like a book cover, for use on your web site. Add pictures within your ezine but remember, you don't own clip art, and you can't use it for monetary gain. Have your designer add graphics that you own.

11. The first few pages after the cover should be numbered with roman numerals. --Page ii is for testimonials from clients and those who have read and used the ebook. --Page iii is your publisher information page with copyright information. Open a book and you'll see this important page! --Page iv can be used for acknowledgments of others that you'd like to mention. --Page v tells others how to use the ebook. --Page vi is an Introduction to the book, written by you or someone else.

12. NOW comes your ebook, and it is numbered, 1, 2, 3 etc. Make sure you include: --Then comes the table of contents which can link to the pages the topics are placed. --Within the ebook be sure and invite readers to visit your web site. --In an appropriate place of your ebook, maybe in the middle, offer a special on a product that the reader of the ebook may enjoy. --Again, to get people to your web site, place additional resources on a page on your site and link from the book to that page. --Create a "Call to Action" on your next to the last page! Again, the goal is to get your readers to your web site. --Don't forget to create an all about you and your company page ... with your picture!

13. Next convert your ebook to PDF format, making sure that all the links in the ebook are clickable.

14. Research shipping cart software or programs to use to sell your product online.

15. Consider creating an affiliate program for your product and let others help you market your product in return for a commission.

Remember that even 8 x 5 1/2 books only need 64 pages to be bound! If your ebook is more than 30 pages in a Word Document, chances are you've also created a book!

Congratulations. You've completed your ebook!

Now, you're ready to price and promote your ebook.

About The Author.

©2006 Maria Marsala. Helping women business owners accelerate profits and improve productivity -- quicker, by providing one-on-one kick-butt, No BS, practical business and marketing coaching, consulting and training. Check out our services and products and save time and maximize your success. Join "No BS Business Advice Ezine" to receive your audio and 2 reports now. www.ElevatingYourBusiness.com

The Skinny On Article Directories

By Bonnie Jo Davis

Article directories (also known as article archives) are searchable on-line databases of articles contributed by multiple authors. The goal of an article directory is to collect articles on certain topics and offer them to publishers to place on their website, in their e-zine or in print. Each article directory has unique guidelines for both authors and publishers. The benefits of submitting your articles to directories are numerous and include:

1. Most directories give you a separate page for each article and some publish your photograph along with your articles. This allows an author to promote their articles without needing a website of their own.

2. Directories are a magnet for publishers. Most publishers are looking for specific articles on a specific topic and they are more likely to find such articles in a directory rather than in an individual e-zine that offers reprintable articles.

3. Many directories allow you to edit your articles and change your by-line as many times as you want.

4. Some directories offer a news feed that automatically adds your new articles to dozens of websites.

5. Article directories may have a good search engine page rank that that makes them ideal for providing a one-way link to your website.

There are hundreds of article directories on the internet. I am constantly searching the internet for new directories to add to my list but I have found that I receive the most benefits from older directories. Over time I have discovered a few directories that I absolutely love that I visit for submission and for research. A few of these are:

Alumbo! Magazine - This on-line magazine doubles as an articles directory and offers a free membership that allows you to submit articles in some very interesting categories such as ecology & environment, love relationships, paranormal & divination in addition to the normal business and career topics. Alumbo permits you to choose more than one topic for your article and often suggests additional topic pages where your article would be a good fit.

Article Alley - Allows you to register as an author for free and submits your articles across a network of sites. Allows for update of author profile, editorial access to your articles and a unique web page listing all your articles.

BPubs.com - Although this is a business site only it does accept articles in a wide variety of business subcategories. Google(tm) visits often because it knows that BPubs.com adds fresh content from many authors every day.

Constant Content - This is a unique article directory that allows you to sell or give away your content. You must register prior to submitting your articles in many different formats - all of which are editable at any time.

EzineArticles - Owned and operated by one of my favorite article submission experts, Christopher Knight. This directory offers more submission topics than other directories and much of the enhancements done to the site are based on author and publisher feedback. When I submit an article to this directory I receive more attention and traffic than I do from any other submission site on my list.

IdeaMarketers - You absolutely must register for a free author's account at Idea Marketers. Topics covered include business, holiday, lifestyles/self-help, technology, Christian, home/family/parenting and marketing. You are provided with a professional looking author's profile that includes your by-line and your picture after completion of a lengthy form.

Establish yourself as an expert in your topic area and take advantage of the many benefits of adding your content to every established and credible article directory. You are guaranteed to be delighted with the response you will receive from publishers who find your articles in the directories they frequent.

About The Author,

Bonnie Jo Davis has over a decade of experience in article submission both on-line and off. She offers an article submission service and membership site for serious article marketers. Visit http://www.articlesubmissionsites.com%22>article/ for articles, e-books and submission sites.

Types Of Work At Home Jobs

By Stephen Kreutzer

There are many options for someone wanting to work at home. The many types of work at home jobs means there is something for everyone. A person must first define what type of work at home job they want to find. This will make finding a work at home job easier.

Sales jobs are one of the biggest work at home options. There are direct sales jobs where a person maintains an inventory and sells the items. A good example of this type of sales job is
cosmetic sales Then there are sales jobs where the person sells products that are then shipped from the main company. Most often these types of jobs are referred to as affiliate programs. There are also opportunities to sell through online auctions. A different type of sales job is on the phone. The typical telemarketing job is becoming a popular work at home option. Sales are not for everyone, but those who work in sales find there is amazing money making potential.

Another work at home job type is customer service. Many of these jobs are on the telephone. The typical work at home customer service phone job involves answering incoming calls from people wanting to order from catalogs or off a television ad. Customer service can also cover such niche jobs as psychic reader positions or adult phone line work.

Writing is becoming a great market for work at home jobs. The market for website content is booming and many people are finding this type of work at home job suits them well. There are also resume writings positions and advertising writing. Writing work at home jobs cover a large range of industries and open up many possibilities.

Typing jobs are becoming popular as well. For many of these positions experience is required because they are in set market areas like medical or law. Typing jobs are most often called
transcription. There are not many opportunities in a work at home typing position for someone without training.

These are four great examples of types of work at home jobs. Almost any job can be done from home with the technology available today. There are so many choices that a person having a basic idea of what they want to do is going to have an easier time finding a work at home job.

About The Author:

Stephen Kreutzer is a freelance publisher based in Cupertino, California. He publishes articles and reports in various ezines and provides home business tips on
http://www.ezhomebusinessideas.com.

Where Are Your Articles Being Published?

By Bill Platt

There are a few article directory software programs in the marketplace. Some are great, some are good, and some stink to high heaven, for the writer and for the website owners.

In an ideal world, all article management software would be easy- to-use for the webmaster. Also in an ideal world, the submission process would be fast and easy for the writer. But, this is not an ideal world.

In today's article hungry marketplace, there are literally hundreds of websites where you can submit your articles.

Three Types of Article Directories

There are three kinds of article directories:

* Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reprint
* Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reading
* Article Directories Inside of a Website, with Articles Available for Reading

With these different kinds of directories, you will find different categories of webmasters. This distinction is more important than you think.

* Corporate Owners
* Independent Online Business Webmasters
* Hobbyist Webmasters

Personally, I own two article directories. One has nearly 2500 articles in it, and the other has nearly 5000 articles in it.

Both of mine are of the first type, Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reprint. But, I am not a corporate owner.
I am an independent online business webmaster.

The reason why the type of owner is important is that the type of owner will determine where your articles will be published today AND tomorrow.

Corporate owners have a bottomless supply of web server space available to them. In the corporate category, these directories are the most important:

* http://www.ezinearticles.com/

* http://www.goarticles.com/

* http://www.ideamarketers.com/

* http://www.uniterra.com/

Directory Owner Budgets

Most new article directory owners have a small budget for web hosting, and therefore, they have a limited amount of web server hard drive space.

Most of these new directory owners have jumped into their website with both feet hoping to cash in on their Google Adsense revenue.

After a few months, the truth will crash them into the wall.

On http://www.articles4reprint.com/, I have more than 4500 articles live. I have another 1000 articles pending my approval. Generally, it takes 30 seconds to approve one article. So, the
articles currently pending on this site will require an investment of another 8.5 hours to bring up-to-date. One day a couple of weeks back, I spent 19 straight hours approving articles on this site. I am not going to stop taking submissions to this article directory site, but it does require a lot of my time to maintain.

Perhaps I am exceptional. I will spend the hours required to approve articles, but will the next person?

I started this site with a basic account. I have had to upgrade my web hosting package three times to be able to continue accepting articles to the site. Will the next person make this kind of commitment?

The payoff for operating a website like this one is the Adsense revenue developed from hosting such a wide range of content on the website. In the case of the http://www.articles4reprint.com/
website, I am currently generating only $40 per month on my Adsense account. Will the next person consider this a fair trade of time for money? Likely not.

I Know This Is My Business, But Don't Take My Word For It

At various times, I submit articles to various directories. The distinction of "at various times" is actually important. Websites that were accepting direct submissions from me six months ago are no longer accepting submissions from anyone.

Writers want to believe that they can just crank out hundreds of articles, generating hundreds of links back to their websites. Sometimes they can, and at other times, they cannot.

It comes down to this. Every website where I submit articles has a human moderator at the other end of the transaction, and they have the right to choose what materials they will use and what materials they will not use. Each webmaster can also consider whether the time required for the approval process will help their bottom line.

These big article directories no longer accept articles from anyone. Also shown is the last date an article was added to the site.

* http://www.article-emporium.com/ - December 2005
* http://www.articletime.com/ - December 2005
* http://www.learnthis.info/ - August 2005
* http://www.family-content.com/ - May 2005
* http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ - April 2003

Many smaller directories have also stopped taking articles. In most cases, the websites show that they accept articles, but you never realize that they are not printing your articles until you
look or until you hit the Submit button on the Submission Form. Or, you can continue submitting to them, never realizing that you are wasting your time, until you go to search the website for your articles.

http://www.articlefinders.com/ says that they have a monster backlog and they are not taking new articles until they get caught up.

http://www.marketingtroll.co.uk/ seems to indicate that they are still accepting articles, but they have not published a new article since May of 2005.

Folks, I could go on forever. I could literally show you hundreds of directories that seem to be accepting articles, but they have not published any new articles in months or years.

Generally, Mailing Lists on the Major List Servers Deliver Better Results

Article distribution email groups on Yahoo and Google generally provide good results, but they fall into disuse almost as frequently as web article directories.

Here, I will show the subscriber count of the Article Distribution Group, the last time an article was published through the list, and the URL for the list.

1003 - September 2003 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublisher/
560 - September 2001 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublish
2002 - December 2000 -

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/articles_archives
752 - June 2005 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeWrites
474 - December 2000 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The-Article-Depot
465 - August 2003 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WriteQualityContent

The following article distribution group is active, but there is no moderator to review your posts:

1390 - June 2005 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReprintArticles-Paradise

(the only people who can submit to this list are those who were not moderated at the time the list owner disappeared.)

In Conclusion...

If you are distributing your own articles to a house list, check back from time to time to make sure that they are actually using your articles. Always verify your results. Don't waste your time
submitting articles to people who will not even look at your articles.

About The Author :

Bill Platt is the owner of http://thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl

How To Take The Pain Out Of Publishing Your Ezine

By Silvia Hartmann

99% of all ezines are not "being a reporter" on current events; that is the first and most important thing to understand.

This means that you don't have to be publishing your ezine one day before the "deadline" of when you've decided you'll be sending it out, and going into a great tizzy over the whole thing.

Most ezines are highly topical and related to a business, a market or futher products and services of one kind or the other, and their function is to keep customers in touch, as well as to convert interested parties into customers.

This gives you a constantly "rolling" audience of old hands and newbies, and an ebb and flow of subscribers and unsubscribers.

There are certain evergreen topics in any context that you can always write about, and write about over and over again, from many different angles, and it will always be interesting and well received.

This is the key to successful ezine publishing.

It's not so much about "news", but about enjoyable content - and that can be as old as the hills, including a 2000 year old quote from a Roman senator; if it is interesting to your target audience, it is applicable, and it can become an ezine article.

With that understood, the production of an ezine can change, and it can become far more manageable.

Tip 1: Prepare a number of issues in advance so you have at least 3-6 in hand and ready to go, all the time. That's what columnists do so they don't go mad and explode from the stress of constantly trying to beat deadlines.

Tip 2: An ezine does NOT need more than ONE GOOD ARTICLE, tip, suggestion etc. In this day and age, people do not sit around with email as though it was the Times Magazine. Too long and too much content, and they'll put it aside for later, and later never comes as you well know with your own email.

Tip 3: As you're the publisher, you can have a flexible schedule. Base your ezine on something manageable, weekly, bi-monthly, but be flexible within this to suit yourself and take things like public holidays, major events in your market like the SuperBowl or the Olympics into consideration.

Tip 4: You can have a "news space" in your ezine which you can fill with news, or leave blank and just send out the prepared column you have already waiting to go. You don't always have to
have some amazing news item in every newsletter, that's way too stressful (and probably even too much for your audience!)

Tip 5: Make it as easy for yourself as possible! Don't go mad over mail merging or complicated html formatting if it's a challenge - it isn't necessary. There are people having fantastically successful newslists and ezines who stalwardly send in plain text, without any bells and whistles, but the content is good and it's appreciated all around.

Tip 6: Remember your floating audience and go back to basics every third newsletter. Advanced subscribers never mind going over the basics again, and it's essential for the new subscribers. So this may be YOUR ezine No. 266, but how many people were even there for the first 100?

Tip 7: If you are planning to have a commercial newsletter that carries advertisements, include advertisements right from the start and as a matter of course. It is the easiest thing to add a short advertisement for a book on http://amazon.com/ with your own affiliate link in the "ad space section", even if you have only 3 subscribers at present. Then, it is there, and later, when you have 3 million subscribers, you can rent out a space that already exists without disturbing your recipients or changing the format.

Tip 8: On that topic, pick a format and stick with it. That makes it MUCH easier to prepare and send newsletters on a regular basis and takes the stress right out of it. Something like: Personal greeting - Advert - Article - News - Advert, for example. That way, you just need to fill in each one and that's easy. Customers also LIKE a format they can trust and it relieves THEIR stress, just the same.

To sum up: Make it easy for yourself with pre-prepared, ready to go, ready formatted ezines that just need a "season's greeting" or a short topical comment to make them right up to date. Have a number of them in hand so you can take a holiday when you want to; keep it short and sweet and stick to a simple formula.

That's what the professionals do and if you do the same, you'll find having a top quality, interesting email newsletter or ezine that goes out on time, a breeze.

(c) Silvia Hartmann 2006

About The Author:

Silvia Hartmann is the author of MindMillion
and the creator of the amazing 60 Second Wealth Booster series
to increase intelligence, reduce stress and exercise the
wealthy brain. You can take part for FREE at
http://MindMillion.com/60/

15 Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

By David Riewe

There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use:

1.) Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to "Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts" by http://TNL.net

2.) Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.

3.) Submit to Google's Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google's Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.

4.) Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.

5.) Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.

6.) Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.

7.) Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?

8.) Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.

9.) Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like "I agree." Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder "who wrote this?"

10.) Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.

11.) Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.

12.) Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.

13.) Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.

14.) Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.

15.) Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like http://Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or "tags" that everyone interested in that tag can see.

Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

About The Author:

David Riewe - Internet Marketer and Publisher
http://www.free-online-course.com

Article Directory, Anyone?

By Gina Capatar

Yes, it's the hype of the century; everywhere you turn you'll see and hear of article directories sprouting like mushrooms. There's practically a new article directory site being introduced in the World Wide Web almost every second.

It is probably because of the usefulness of these kinds of sites to the general public, to the webmaster and to people/products needing exposure. An article directory has it all!

Talk about having free resource on almost any topic imaginable. Article directories hoard articles ranging from DIY's, Xbox launches, inspirational quotes, love and relationships advice, beauty tips, iPod's latest, personality quizzes, legal guidance, resource on divorce, gay and lesbian concerns and even on the extremes, issues concerning terrorism. It's like having a wiki of what everyone knows and thinks of.

The usefulness of article directories to the general public is outdone by its worth to a marketer. An article directory is a free and an inexpensive way for an internet marketer to promote his/her product or service by just writing helpful and useful articles and making use of the resource box to promote his/her goods. It can be done by any marketer in just a matter of hours or minutes for some. You don't have to be a whiz at writing, all you have to do is share what you know and that'll be effective enough. A word of caution though, don't waste your time writing Press Releases because your chance of reprint is 0-0.1%. Article directories don't like them and worst, readers of articles hate them.

What about the value of article directories to the people who own them, a.k.a the webmasters? Why are webmasters opting to shift from their usual projects to create an article directory?Simple! Article directories exemplify the best kind of website that Search Engines love the most. Article directories are teeming with fresh content everyday, and they are constantly updated. Not to mention, the keywords crammed into each article are simply divine especially when you are affiliated with Google Adsense. There is no other kind of website that can par with having an article directory.

I have seen and watched the ever increasing popularity of article directories; there was a time when there were just about 20 or 30 article directories found on the internet. Before, only a few took the time to diligently pursue the creation of these directories and only a few were brave enough to pay for hosting and domain services just to become repositories of what people have written about. They were among the first to recognize the benefits and advantages of having an article directory.

Among the first article directories were:

Ezinearticles.com
iSnare.com
GoArticles.com
ArticleCity.com

By now, most likely, they are handling hundreds or thousands of articles submitted everyday and reaping the rewards of being the firsts in the most promising field of article directories.

With all these and probably more, I'll say, "Article Directories, anyone?"

About The Author:

Gina Marie Capatar owns an article directory site containing articles for women http://allwomencentral.com. She has also been a part of http://www.isnare.com where she got ideas to build her own article directory.

How To Build An Adsense Empire Using Private Label Right Articles

By Stephanie Hetu

Private label right articles are hot at the moment. Why? And how they can help you increase your Adsense revenues?

PLR articles are sold as content you can call your own. This usually mean you can rework it, you can repackage it into an ebook and sell it, you can use it as is on your site and sign as if you wrote it yourself, etc. The only thing you can't do is to submit it to various article directories for backlinks. Overall, PLR articles great for webmasters because they can save a whole lot of money with them!

Think about this for a moment: ONE good article can cost you anywhere from 10$ to 20$. If you are an Adsense junkie like I am, you probably create a few new Adsense websites each month, and you pay big bucks for fresh optimized content that will bring you in decent Adsense revenues. So, a few dozens articles each month can easily cost you 500 to 1000$!

By using PLR articles instead, you can pay a fraction of the price and get tons of content for new sites.

There is a trick though. If you just take PLR content and publish it AS IS, you will not be able to get good rankings in the search engines for it. But, if you modify them just a bit, you can get fresh content for pennies.

Now, how do you use it to create a little Adsense Empire? Here are a few steps to follow:

1. Find a profitable Adsense niche.

2. Select the highest paying keywords in the niche you found.

3. Select the best SEO keywords in this niche (the easiest words you can get good ranking for).

4. Find optimized PLR articles for your keyword list.

5. Build the site.

6. Submit the site to directories for backlinks.

7. Publish articles for reprint on other sites to get tons of backlinks.

8. Add a few articles each month in order to grow your site with fresh content.

9. Start a new site!

And if you have access to a good collection of private label rights articles, you can use them to do exactly that: build new Adsense sites each months! You will save a lot of time.

To get the best out of the PLR articles, you must modify them a minimum to make them your own. This way, you will be able to get the best of both world : optimized content for your Adsense site unique content that will allow you to rank well in the search engines!

About The Author:

Who else wants 18 High Paying Adsense websites in 6 months? Discover the Ultimate Adsense Combo: High Paying Adsense Keywords + PLR articles optimized for each keywords! Limited availability, you have to act fast. http://www.AdsenseQueen.com

10 Rules For Article Marketing

By Deepak Dutta

How do you position your website to rank high in search engines? Become a knowledge purveyor by writing and publishing articles. Though article marketing is a raze for improved search engine positions, quality articles are few and far between. Search engines value quality contents to remain competitive in today's information hungry society. Knowing the following 10
rules will enable you to publish quality articles that feeds information hungry search engines.

1. Use the three Bs rule. Your article should accomplish at least one of the three Bs - espouse bright ideas, explain benefits of former ideas, or details how to bring about functioning ideas. If you are able to accomplish all the three Bs succinctly in one article, than you have truly created a high quality masterpiece.

2. Find your niche - things you are good at and subjects you like to explore. The only goal of writing articles should be to give knowledge to others. Forget about keyword optimizations,
keyword research, traffic generation, monetization or what ever you have learnt before. Research your topics and explain it in the simplest way you can. You are successful in achieving your goals if a person with little knowledge in the subject is able to understand and adopt your ideas.

3. To remain on the top of your game, you must continuously generate new ideas to write about your chosen topics. Use an RSS reader to subscribe to half a dozen feeds about subjects you are
interested in. Spend an hour in the evening to go through those feed titles and read a few articles and some interesting comments in details. Reading a few articles will keep you up-to-date and enhance your knowledge. Reviewing comments will make you aware of pros and cons of ideas discussed in those articles.

4. There are lots of techniques to generate new ideas. If you perform a Google search, you will come across a dozen or so. Select a few that best suits your personality and environment.
Sign up for Google Docs and Spreadsheet and keep your ideas online. Delicious is a online bookmarking site. Post URLs of new ideas you want to explore further in Delicious and tag them
using appropriate keywords. The benefit of online storage is that you will have access to your resources from any computer connected to the Internet.

5. Don't use commercial in your articles and don't put any links to promote your products. Write for your readers who are human. Don't write for search engines. Give information for free that benefits your readers.

6. Spell check and review every article after 24 hours of its completion. If you want to be regarded as an expert in your fields by others, don't publish anything with errors in spelling, punctuation, or grammar. Have someone proof read your article if you are unsure about your grammar skills. Read blog posts at copyblogger and dailywritingtips to improve your writing style and grammar skills.

7. Use a resource box attached to the end of the article. Don't turn it into a commercial shoutbox. It should be used to reinforce your credibility as an expert author on your chosen topic.

8. Publish in article directories. Search in Google for article directory and pick half a dozen directories to publish your articles regularly.

9. Start a blog and publish your articles in your own blogs without the resource box.

10. Combine related articles to make an e-book with an attention-grabbing title and give it away for free. Contact others and encourage them to give your ebook as bonus items with their paid products

About The Author:

Dr. Deepak Dutta, creator of the oldest online classified site: http://www.classifiedsforfree.com, has launched Million$Dig, http://www.milliondollardig.com, to help website owners build links, increase traffic, and have fun using social networks.

How to Find Free Content for your Web Site

By Kalena Jordan

I see a lot of webmasters complain in forums and chat rooms that they don't have enough content on their web sites but they don't have the means or the knowledge to find more.

There are actually many ways to obtain more web site content. You could hire someone to write it for you. You could purchase some ready made content about your site topic or you could spend some time and write content yourself. But did you know that there is a way you can get hundreds of pages worth of high quality, fresh content every day without paying a cent? There is. It's called article syndication.

Article Syndication

Articles relating to thousands of topics are freely available for syndication on web sites. Authors provide them for this purpose to gain a wider audience and achieve more back links. Generally, the only requirement for webmasters is that the author's by-line, resource box and link is included with the published article. In terms of copyright, you simply need to follow the author's publishing guidelines when republishing their article. This usually involves an "About the Author" paragraph at the bottom of each article with a sentence and link to the author's site. These syndication requirements are generally specified in the article itself.

How to do it:

1) Browse the Internet to find articles you can syndicate. I use the article announcement groups at Yahoo Groups but you can also find them at sources such as Submit Your Articles.

2) View the articles being distributed by the group and check their freshness and quality.

3) Join the email list or subscribe to the RSS feed of any article groups that seem to be distributing content relevant to your web site.

4) Check your email or feed reader regularly to browse and select new articles.

5) Cut, paste and publish the articles into your web pages, giving credit to the author as requested in their syndication guidelines.

6) Voila! Fresh, daily content.

Articles for Blogs

If the article content is to be used on a blog, there is an even quicker way to publish it. Depending on what blog software you use, you can simply forward the email containing the article directly to your blog control panel using the publish via email option and then edit the post to correct any formatting issues. The other advantage of this method is that search engines LOVE blogs and tend to index them more often than regular web pages.

I use blog article syndication quite successfully for a couple of my clients. One is in the travel industry and the other has a large wedding portal. I simply subscribe to articles on travel and wedding related topics and publish them to the blogs belonging to each client. My clients supplement these with articles and blog posts written by their own staff or hired writers.

Advantages

There are a number of advantages to using article syndication:

Relevant, Timely Content - You can choose content that is closely geared to your existing content and of interest to your audience. For example, if you sell airline tickets, publish travel articles about exotic destinations. The idea there is that persons reading travel articles might be thinking about traveling themselves and need to be reminded to book their plane tickets.

Cross Promotion - You can choose content that gives you the opportunity to up sell to your own products or affiliate products. For example, if you sell scented candles online, you could choose to publish articles about increasing the romance in your marriage and then include a link at the end of the article to your candle sales catalog (would you like fries with that?).

SEO Value - Apart from the obvious value of having fresh content regularly available for indexing, there are other SEO advantages to article syndication. Most articles are keyword-rich, meaning that they contain a lot of keywords and phrases that people might use in search queries. Publishing these articles means that your site has a better chance of being found for related search queries. One of my clients noticed their syndicated article pages ranking in the top 10 Google SERPs for target keywords within two days of publishing! You can also embed links within the articles or at the end of articles to related areas of your site using keyword-rich anchor text.

Increased Traffic & Sticky Content - It's not only search engines that love fresh content. You'll find that you'll attract more visitors when you publish relevant articles. Provided you find ways to interact with your new visitors such as allowing them to comment or sign up for your article feed, your site will become stickier and retain those visitors more easily.

Disadvantages

There are really only two disadvantages that I can think of about using article syndication. One is that the same article published on various web sites can sometimes be treated by search engines as duplicate content. So generally, a search engine will try to determine the original source of the article and index/rank that page while ignoring all other versions. If you publish a fresh article quickly enough, you can sometimes be lucky and have your version of the article picked up and treated as the *original*. The other disadvantage is that it can be time-consuming to trawl through the hundreds of new articles announced daily and choose the ones you want. You also have to scan them carefully to ensure accuracy of facts and to check if the author has used correct spelling and grammar usage. But compared to the costs of paying somebody to write articles from scratch, I think this is a very minor inconvenience.

Want to get the jump on your competition and increase your traffic? Use article syndication to publish fresh, relevant content on your site every day.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

How to chop days and hours off your article writing.

By Mark Silver

How to chop days and hours off your article writing. Ready to write an article? You even made the big step of scheduling time to do it. So here it is, and you're sitting at your desk, staring blankly at the screen. Just like you've been doing for the last two weeks.

And still no article. Despite the fact it was supposed to go out 10 days ago. Ugh.

Those weirdos who can send out an article every week. Or even more strange, those newspaper columnists that write every single day. They must be from another planet.

Ready for interplanetary travel?

We're going to "Planet Client." Okay, so that's a cornball analogy, but that's really all it takes. Too simple? Too obvious? Riddle me this, Batman:

Can you answer your clients' questions in less than 21 days?

How about less than 21 minutes? If you're standing there, in front of your client (or on the phone... heaven knows that's where I usually am), and your client asks you a question like: "My partner and I, when we make love... sometimes it's boring... and that's just weird to me. What do I do?"

Oops. I forgot to tell you that, in this example, you're a relationship and intimacy counselor. ;)

Moving right along, if that was your expertise, you could answer the question. Right then. Right there. You could get them going on the right track.

Starting to get the drift?

A thinly disguised "Q&A" lurks within your articles.

It can't really be that simple, can it? Well, there is an art to writing, but yes, a lot of it is pretty simple. Let's hit the highpoints.

Keys to Quick Article Writing

* Which questions have you answered more than once?

If two clients have asked the same question, chances are, that's a good one. If you hear people discussing a particular problem, chances are, that's a great question.

Have fun answering the question for your clients, or for your friends. Just answer it.

* Now, do the same thing in front of your computer.

Answer the question. Have fun answering the question. Bring in the same examples you used when answering your friend.

Except, instead of speaking, you're typing. Same words. Same (lack of) grammar. Same (informal, sweet, humorous, serious, profound, quick-witted, fill-in-the-blank) style that you use when speaking.

* Keep it bite-sized.

You may notice a tendency to stray into more topics. For instance, with this topic, I could stray into how to make an article amusing. Or how to bring in drama. But, I'm not. That's not the question.

The question is: "how do you write an article quickly?" I answer that question.

* Other questions are other articles.

Notice when someone asks another question. Don't try to fit it into the article. The whole question about boring sex may lead to a question of "How do I start to talk about intimacy with my partner when I feel so shy about it?"

My guess is that you may be trying to squeeze three or four articles into a single article- which is why you're writing one article a month, or less, rather than writing one every week. :)

Writing regular articles that are meaningful to your clients is a great way to build connections, deepen relationships, and help get some momentum in your business. Just answer a single question, and you can chop days and hours off of your writing time.

And then you can be just like those other weirdos who send out an article every single week, seemingly effortlessly. ;)

About the Author:

Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the globe succeed in business without lousing their hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online: http://www.heartofbusiness.com

SE Optimization For Article Writing is So Last Year

By Matthew Bredel

So, you wanna be an SEO guru. Things change at a rapid pace online. As soon as Web 2.0 was here, talk of Web 3.0 ensued. SEO was dead and then no wait! It was alive and kicking, according to the pundits. There were black hat marketers, white hat marketers, grey hat seo and the Long Tail. Did you change hats at some point in a panic? Is keyword density really that important? Is content still king? One day it's PPC campaigns, another day it's organic ranking through blogging links and then articles. Aargh! How do I keep it all straight?

Today, it can be hard to keep up with the buzz words. Once you've optimized your website, you can find out a minute later that Google has changed the rules again. What do you do? If you get too wrapped up in all the rules and jargon of seo marketing, you will actually take your eye too far off the ball and lose business and page rank anyway.

First of all, content always has and always will be king. Writing strictly for SEO is not going to get you very far for very long. Trying too hard to "not" write for seo isn't going to get you very far either. If you're worried about overdoing it with your keyword density and don't use your keywords enough, you can end up with content that doesn't come across naturally. Good, organic content is going to help you in more ways than one. First, it's going to help you get real human traffic. Secondly, it'll get the Google and Yahoo spiders stopping by.

Keeping updated on how things work with the search engine spider bots is going to help you keep your website on either page one or page two. If you can't manage this on your own, hire a pro, enrol in a course or buy a book. If you are past page two for your target keywords, your target audience probably won't find you. You also need to focus on the Long Tail and target more than just the top three keywords.

If you get your audience visiting but don't offer them valuable content, they won't stay and won't click on their "checkout" button. You have to please the robots and the humans. If you
overdo SEO you won't please the humans. You could also tick off the robots and get blacklisted. If you try to be an underachiever and ignore SEO, you could miss out and be stuck on page seven.

For those who have done a lot of seo articles, it's a great idea to stop writing seo articles for a while and focus on something else. Did you know that forum participation and blogging can be really effective at helping you with your PR? Diversify your seo strategy a little! Social book marking and tagging are another area of seo strategy that can truly help you bring up your readership and ranking of your site and increase your sales.

About The Author:

Matthew is the creator of TheWebReviewer: http://www.thewebreviewer.com - Work at Home Reviews, & NetWebVideo: http://www.netwebvideo.com - Home Based Business Free Membership. Matt currently resides in Southern California & is married with two children and has been an internet marketer since 2006.

Provide Informative Free Articles To Increase Traffic & Return Visits To Your Website

By Robert P. Williams

People access the internet seeking free information and they expect that information to benefit them in some way. Useful free information can lead to purchases by your website visitors. It is in your best interest to provide such information.

Know that this type of informational marketing must be done with well-written, relevant, and optimized content articles.

When you provide free information to your customers you are providing a sought after service. Additionally, you can demonstrate that you are a well informed source on the topic matter at hand. When applied properly, your articles will place well in the search engines because your articles are considered relevant to search inquiries. Keeping your content fresh will get the continued attention of the search engines. It'll keep your customers coming back too.

Websites that offer fresh, constantly updated, relevant information optimized for key words usually rank high with the search engines. This is how the search engines are designed to work.

Consider that search engine spiders are constantly seeking new information. They index and catalog what they find adding anything new they discover as they collect data. They utilize the information on your site to determine how relevant it is to the search inquiries they serve which is reflected in your website's page rank.

In simple terms, the search engines will catalog and index the pages on your site for commonly mentioned words and phrases. Please note that these words and phrases are scrutinized according to percentages. Redundant keyword or phrase use is considered key word stuffing and results in a penalty. It's a kin to spam. The search engines like naturally occurring organic use of keywords and phrases.

When an inquiry is made for a search term, such as "quick and easy gourmet dinner recipes" for example, the engines will reference their database for websites containing that particular phrase and display what they consider to be relevant results.

A website that exclusively features "quick and easy gourmet meals", contains volumes of information on this topic and is constantly updated with fresh subject matter content gets the competing edge over other websites offering similar information. Remember, the content must be relevant and useful to your visitor and distinguishable to the search engines without over doing it.

Many website owners make the mistake of creating content for the spiders that are crawling the website for data. They do not take into consideration that most visitors will determine within 5 seconds whether or not the information presented is worth reading.

People are attracted to ease. Make Your website experience easy for them. Pages should download fast. Information should be easy to find. It should also be easy to comprehend in addition to being useful to them.

Keep you information fresh. Keep your paragraphs short. Avoid distracting graphics. Use bullets and make your information scanable. Help your customer find what they are looking for easily and quickly.

Remember the most valuable customer you have is your repeat customer. Give them a reason to keep coming back. Constantly added new information will do wonders for you and your customers. You want to avoid the "been there, done that, next" response on the part of your website visitors as well as the search engines.

You can also use reciprocal linking in your website content. Considering that most people surf the web going from one interesting link to another. You can get "lateral" traffic by creating a mutually beneficial linking arrangement with other topic related websites.

Let's say your website specializes in "quick and easy gourmet dinner recipes". Could you contact a webmaster who owns a website that specializes in "fast low calorie desert recipes" and arrange to make some of the content on each website refer to the other? In essence you would be serving your customers better and helping each other increase website visits.

As you can see, providing useful information to your website visitor is what the internet is really about. Utilize this principle to help convert more of your website visits into purchases and repeat visits from your customers and the search engines.

About The Author:

Robert Paul Williams is the Editor of Work At Home Business Website. Come Browse Our Free Article Library and Stay Informed with the Latest Legitimate Home Based Business News, Success Tips & Strategies. http://work-at-home-business-website.com/Articles.php

Writing And Blogging For Your Business

By George Meszaros

The key to online marketing is quality content. To get ahead of your competition, you have to be prepared to write well. The ability to write well is an advantage in terms of social media marketing and search engine marketing. In addition to written content, Video and audio are effective online marketing methods.

The best online marketers are experts at getting other spread the word about their products or services. Dedicate yourself to provide remarkable content to empower others to help you get the word out about your business. Take advantage of the inherent viral make up of Internet.

Write Articles

You can significantly increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise. Be sure that your articles are informational. Don't waste anybody's time with commercials disguised as articles. The key to successful article writing is to provide value. People will notice when you have something of value to say.

Articles deemed valuable are; posted on article directories; e-mailed in newsletters, embedded in e-commerce site. In most cases, the author receives a link to his website. The links help in a couple of ways. One, they generate traffic to the site. Second, links help to improve your search engine results. The more links you have pointing to your site the better. Search engines view links to your site as a vote of confidence. The more links you have pointing to your site the more valuable your web site becomes.

You can contact website that might benefit from your articles, and offer your articles. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. Articles offer an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds, or even thousands, of links to your site over time.

Practical Example: As you become a prolific author of articles related to your service you build reputation. Through your articles, you enable you customers to find your website indirectly. A business owner may find one of your articles while searching for marketing advice online. After she reads your article, she may click the link to your site from within the byline. Because you have already provided her with value, she is more likely to become a customer.

Start a Business Blog

Your business blog is one of the best ways to get others to link to your site. A blog is less formal than an article and more conversational. You have the power to make your industry interesting to your readers through conversational writing. Theblog is not about you. It is about providing value for your customers. If you offer outstanding content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site's link popularity. Remember, links are good.

Practical Example: When you blog you are elevating your status to expert level. People would rather buy from experts than sales people. Provide valuable content to your visitors, and they will spread the word. If you have a blog about fly fishing, your readers are more likely to buy from you than another business that simply lists fly fishing equipment on their site. In addition to becoming customers, they will recommend your business to others, in essence become your unpaid external salesforce.

About The Author:

George Meszaros with http://www.webene.com

Free Article Submission Directory, And Article Submission Software

By Peter Nisbet

A free article submission directory is your free pass to the stars. If you write or purchase articles for your own website only, then you will be losing out on what the whole world of article marketing can offer you. Article marketing is probably now the most widely used traffic generation strategy on the internet and if you are not using it you will likely fall behind your competitors.

Article marketing is a strategy involving the submission of articles to online article databases called Article Directories, and these too are growing by the day. However, not all article directories are equal: more on that later. For now, let's think on what gains are to be made by submitting your article to a directory. This might be a piece of work that has taken you days to compose, or you may even have paid for it. Why, then, should you submit to a directory so that everybody can read it for free.

What you have to consider is why you wrote it. Why did you write that article? Was it to sell and make money from it? Unlikely, since there are a lot of writers better than you are that fail to achieve that. Was it to provide content for your website, perhaps even devoting a specific page to it as I have done here? That is the main reason for people writing articles.

True, good writers write articles to submit to article directories, but that is not the major use for them. Statistics show that most articles are written as content for web pages. So why? Why only write for your own web page? Why NOT write for article directories, when your article will be published on a number of websites that article directories, in essence, are? In fact your article will be published on a lot more directories than you submit to due the relationship between various groups of directories that interchange articles.

Don't you realise that you get a one way back-link to a web page of your choice from every directory that accepts your article? Not only that, but if a reader likes what you wrote, they might copy your article to their website and provide you with another one-way link. If you know anything about Page Rank and link density, you will understand just how important and valuable a link to your site without any reciprocation is in internet marketing.

So far, we have discussed links and Page Rank: we haven't even thought of the benefits of the links to your page web pages that readers can physically click on to visit your page. The traffic that article submission can provide is immense.

Here is my Number One tip. Write an article, or purchase one from an article ghostwriter. Make a few changes to it, or even purchase two versions from the ghostwriter, one for submission and the other for your website. Then submit the article to as many article directories as possible, and create a web page for your own version of the same article (that should contain some extra information).

Direct readers to that web page, and not only make your offer on it, but provide an opt-in form so that visitors can register for your newsletter or whatever you are offering in exchange for their first name and email address. It might all sound simple, but it takes some work. Once done however, it can be effective.

About The Author:

Pete is an ackowledged expert on his subject and http://www.articleservices.com.articlesubmission.html provides further information on article directory submissions.

Article Promotion Tips And Traps

By Prakash Jain

A great way to get highly targeted traffic plus relevant one-way backlinks to your site is through writing and submitting unique articles. Submitting these articles to free article directories or other websites that accept article submission will reward your website with valuable visits and backlinks.

Your article submission will reap visitors, so make sure you keep your website content easy to read as well as relevant and useful to your viewers. When search engines decide who to give the highest ranks to, they look at and weigh a few different factors. These factors include links, but also content as well. Search engines have a tendency to place the websites with the best content at the top of the rankings list.

The whole reason to submit articles to directories in the first place is to generate a bunch of one way links pointing back to your site, which will in turn increase your daily traffic. Free article directories love your article submissions - if you give them an article/content they reward you with one-way links.

Make sure your articles are as effective as possible. Don't forget to put your name at the end, and take credit for your articles. Place the URL correctly in the resource box in order for it to get counted properly - you wouldn't want to be making all your submission efforts in vain.

Spend time when planning the short pitch that your resource box gives. Create a strong call to action so that people will want to click to visit your site - give them a good reason to click. If your resource box doesn't sell the idea of visiting your website or engaging in your offer effectively, some of the benefits of your article and article submission will be put to waste.

When writing the article itself, follow a few simple guidelines. Don't write in the third person narrative. Write the article as if you were directly talking to the reader. This makes it more personable, and will allow you to build a strong relationship with the reader. Give yourself credit when it's due, if you've accomplished something that is worth mentioning, do it. You'll want to create a positive image for yourself in the minds of the reader, you want their trust.

Always be sure to double check the links in your resource box. There's nothing worse than getting a great article out there only to find out that the HTML was coded wrong so the link is broken.

About The Author:

Prakash Jain Run a Articles Directory , You Can Also Find More Articles on http://www.articles-hub.com

Get More Traffic From Article Submissions

By Prakash Jain

If you are reading this chances are high that you have a website with decent graphics and a great description of the latest products. You have likely spent hours tweaking your website to make it perfect and now all you are missing is website traffic.

You need to find a way to get more people coming to your website or you won't even have the opportunity to show your product to the public. Without traffic you basically don't have a business. Lucky for you being your own web traffic promoter isn't as difficult or time consuming as one might think.

Look online and you will see that literally thousands of internet entrepreneurs are telling about their amazing experiences with article submission. They describe how you can write an article that is relevant to a product you are selling, or under a general topic that is relevant as a way of web traffic promotion. If you don't have the time to write your own articles there are services that include article writing and submission for a great price.

The best part about article submission is that you will be given a small space in your article for a resource box which is where you leave you link and make a quick convincing title that is sure to get the traffic flowing. If your article is used it will generate further traffic for you since wherever your article goes, so does the resource box with your link. This is like free advertisement.

Anyone who has given this time consuming task knows that it isn't an easy one. In fact it can be quite a job even if you are writing ten articles on something that you love, followed by hundreds of one by one submissions to article directories.

There are services available that will write and submit articles for a fee, or you can purchase article submission software both of which will help you to increase your website traffic and search engine rankings.

There are many services that offer writing and re-writing services alone as well as only submission services. Some will charge you a lower fee if you are able to provide them with the articles that you want to be re-written. Article submission software will send out your articles to over two hundred different article directories.

One of the most efficient ways to get web traffic promotion done is to submit articles in your own words with your own link to be seen by thousands of people.

About The Author:

Prakash Jain Run a Articles Direcotry , You Can Also Find More Articles on http://www.articles-hub.com