All About Publication

I know you’ve heard many times that to be successful at Internet Marketing you have to have a list. You can build your list in many ways but the quickest and most effective way is by writing articles.

Many ezine publishers and website owners are constantly looking for new and up to date information for their publications and web pages. Article writing is the perfect way to provide that information and build an opt-in list.

A lot of new and some experienced Internet Marketers get confused about the obvious use of the opt-in list. The main objective is not just to build a list of names and email addresses. Its purpose is to help you build your business by providing you with a valuable list of names and email addresses that are of good quality.

Millions of people search the internet daily for numerous reasons. The majority of them are usually looking for information on one or a variety of subjects that they just want to know more about.

Here are a few things that you should consider when writing articles to build your business:

1. Find out what type of information people are looking for and provide it for them. This can be done easily by asking the members who are currently on you list what they want.

If you don’t currently have a list you can always visit different forums to find out what people are asking for.

2. Keep in contact with the members on your opt-in list and get to know them. Obviously, if they are subscribing to your list, and staying around, they are interested in what you have to say and you have something in common.

You can ask them to recommend you to their friends, family or co-workers who have the same interests that you have and they can help you build your business.

3. Be careful not to frustrate the members on your list by constantly providing too much information by email too frequently. Though they may like to get email, try not to send too many emails too often.

You can provide the best quality information there is but if you over do it some of your members will opt-out and leave you because of information overload.

When you write articles and submit them to article directories in most cases it is free. It is one of the easiest ways to drive traffic to your website, get free advertising and build your opt-in list all at the same time.

Make your articles key-word rich about your website topic and strive to keep the word count between 400 and 600 words long.

There are times that they will be longer but make sure you check the article directories rules as different article directories have different rules about article length.

Always include a resource box at the bottom of your article with a little bit of information about yourself and include a link to your website.

You will soon build credibility and draw more targeted traffic to your website as your articles are read by others and they begin to click on the link to your website and opt-in to your list.

You will also start to get noticed by search engines and get established as other website owners begin to publish your articles in their ezines, to their list and on their websites.

So, to build your opt-in list quickly and drive traffic to your website, write good quality articles and submit them to the article directories often.

If you want an effective way to get traffic to your website one very effective way is to write articles. Most veterans of internet businesses know this, but many newcomers or those not owning websites may not know the value of articles. Articles can quench the thirst for information and knowledge. They also provide many other benefits for a site.

Articles provide an important element in the search engine rankings if they contain content that is relevant to the particular web page or the site itself. They can help place a site higher in the ranking of search engine results of keywords and phrases on a site. They also can attract more website visitors when they are linked to your site from another website or even email. Articles help give more credibility and higher trust levels to customers and potential customers when they visit your site. Would you feel better to see great content on a site? I think so, and articles can help do that.

Often articles are beneficial to both your website business and its traffic. They must be relevant to the website and are very effective if focused on the particular theme of the site instead of general topics. When readers like articles, they often tell their friends, family and others. They will recommend your site, thus helping create a larger volume of traffic. You make more sales when your traffic trusts and believes in you. Your product or services are easier to sell if the visitor believes you know what you are doing and articles can help you do that.

If you want to stay higher in search engine rankings you should have articles on your website. This is easier said than done, however, because you really do not want the same articles that many other sites have. Search engines may ultimately penalize websites with too much duplicate content on them. There has been talk of them possibly instituting some rule to keep duplicate content at bay by potentially reducing the rank of those sites that sport duplicate content, which can include articles. To assure that you will not be penalized you need fresh content or content that is not available in too many places on the web.

Unless you are good in writing it can be best to spend your time on other facets of your business. Most website owners of small to medium size websites cannot afford the necessary resources to hire professional article writers since the cost can be prohibitive. You also cannot copy other articles since most are copyrighted. It is not worth getting sued or penalized by doing such as a shortcut to writing your own articles. Is there anything you can do to get low cost or free articles?

You can get free articles. They are all over the Internet, but mind you there will likely be many others getting the same articles. This will expose you to the duplicate content dilemma. To help avoid this, look for free articles in the public domain. Because this can involve more work, unless you use software to help you, there is quite likely to be fewer people using this method than getting them from the free article directories, a main source of free articles.

In the public domain you will not have problems with copyright infringement or resultant penalties. You can copy these works in their entirety or mix and match to your hearts content. Public domain articles are articles freely given to the public. Be sure the articles you find are truly in the public domain. There are strict rules to determine what constitutes the public domain. You can do whatever you want with articles in the public domain. You can place them on your site, name them as yours, use in a report or for whatever you decide works for you. Keep in mind the articles must be relevant to a website to be effective in helping any particular site.

Another way to get free articles is to allow other sites with the same or similar theme as yours to submit articles to your site. This would be to complement your existing content. Just make sure you realize those articles will have other author’s links in their resource boxes that could direct the readers to their site. You will normally want a minimum of that as you want to keep visitors on your site. That fact makes it important to have your own articles. Then your resource box would link to your site if others had your article.

There is a downside to public domain articles. Other website owners, often your competitors, may use them as well. This could be a predicament you need to avoid as much as possible. You may have to edit them, change them somewhat, add more keywords or make other changes to make them unique to yourself.

Whenever possible, you need original articles. There are many article writers who do part time and freelance article writing jobs that charge reasonable fees. You can have good articles created that have keywords and keyword phrases to match your particular website theme. The investment in such articles could be worthwhile because you could use them for content and to help generate traffic and links to your site. You would hold copyrights to them and you can use them anyway you want, including in eBooks, reports or other information products.

If you don’t have time to search the public domain for articles there is another source for articles. They are not public domain, but are articles written for niche themed websites. Articles with limited circulation are available from a few sources on the web. The articles are written to help website owners with corresponding themes to use on their sites. There won’t be nearly as many websites using them since they are of limited circulation and not available for anyone else to use other than those who purchased them. These articles are very cost effective and easily beat trying to write your own. In most cases you could create a quick Adsense site and use the articles to make excellent relevant content much faster than almost any other way. This would be great for Adsense monetized sites or other sites where you will be making money from the site. These can be one the best sources of inexpensive articles you will find on the Internet.

All in all, articles are one of the very best ways to add content to a website. Bonus qualities for articles are potential for increased traffic to sites that use them, increased search engine traffic, increased Google Page Rank, and links to authors of the articles if they have their website links in the resource box. If you are the author articles can help boost your internet presence and recognition.

Copyright© 2006, Charles Harmon