PROMOTING YOUR WEB SITE WITH ARTICLES

By Dianne Reuby
Posted Thursday, October 14, 2004

The first two lines are my affiliate link for an e-book that I co-wrote. Next I give details of my web site, to bring in traffic. Finally, I advertise the complete list of my articles. TIP: Write your resource box in the third person - for example *Dianne created and runs* rather than *I created and run*.

What can you write about? Anything that you can! What is your site about? Do you have a hobby? A job? Experience of life? There are web sites and ezines covering any topic you can think of - and webmasters are always on the lookout for new material. From aardvark breeding to zero gravity - they want your articles and expertise!

TOOLS
You'll need a text editor program, not a word processing program. Why? Your WP program uses invisible control characters to store formatting information such as end of lines. Webmasters don't want these, as when they copy and paste them to their ezine or web page they'll cause errors. So use a text editor instead. Text editors don't give you all these formatting extras. Windows includes NotePad, but I prefer the freeware NoteTab Light, from (http://www.notetab.com/) as it has many more features. If you want a spell checker, you'll need to upgrade to the paid version.

You will also need an auto-responder. You can store your articles so that publishers can send for an automatic e-mail copy. Some article banks only display the title and outline, with a link to your auto-responder. I include the e-mail address of my *master list* at the end of every article. Both publishers, and their readers, can then send for other articles of interest to them. There are several free auto-responders on the web. I use GetResponse at (http://www.getresponse.com) - if you want ad-free e-mails, you can upgrade to the paid version, otherwise your articles will all have a short ad at the start of each one.

FORMATTING
You'll need to format your article so that it can be pasted right into a page or ezine - publishers are much more likely to use it. However great your content, having a huge editing task will stop many webmasters from choosing your work. Most ezines are formatted at between 60 and 70 characters a line. I format all my articles to 65 characters, to try and please as many people as I can.

If you have web links, include the full address, including the *(http://)*, and make sure you have a space before and after the link. That way they'll be clickable in e-mail programs and web browsers. Use *mailto:* before e-mail addresses for the same reason.

As well as your resource box, don't forget a copyright notice, such as *Copyright Dianne Reuby 2001* . (Use your own name, of course - unless you want me to get the glory!) All the sites and mailing lists below allow the author to keep the copyright - always check this before submitting to a publisher you haven't used before.

WHERE CAN YOU PUBLISH YOUR ARTICLES?

There are two main methods - through mailing lists (e-mail) and article banks (web sites).

If you belong to mailing lists, you'll know how these work -you post either at the web site or by sending an e-mail to the post address. The moderator sends out the posts to those who are subscribed to the list. When you post to a free-content list, include the words ARTICLE SUBMISSION and the article title on your e-mail subject line.

SOME OF THE MAILING LISTS I USE:

Article Announce - many topics in several lists. Choose the list(s) that cover your topic(s). Directory - (http://www.web-source.net/articles/) Subscribe - mailto:article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com

ArticlePublish
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublish)

ArticlesArchives - Internet, How-to, Small business (http://articlesarchives.netfirms.com)

EzAdSuccess - articles and ad swaps mailto:subscribe@ezadsuccess.com

Ezine Articles
(http://www.ezinearticles.com/) mailto:join-ezinearticles@ezinearticles.com

Free Content - business articles (this has a wide range of business topics)
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Content)

PublishInYours
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PublishInYours)

SOME OF THE ARTICLE BANK WEB SITES I USE:

Idea Marketers
(http://www.ideamarketers.com)

Marketing-Seek - they also send out details of your article to their mailing list
(http://www.marketing-seek.com/)

Opportunity Update - mostly net marketing (http://www.opportunityupdate.com/)

UltimateProfits
(http://www.ultimateprofits.com)

MailBiz
(http://www.mailbiz.com/mailbiz/magcat/)

WWIO
(http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shmtl)

Seed Your Web
(http://www.seedyourweb.com/)

Free Sticky
(http://freesticky.com/stickyweb/)

Advertise Online - lots of web and writers resource links, as well as articles
(http://www.advertise-online.net/)

Each site or list has slightly different rules about content - the topics it accepts, how often you can post. The things that they all have in common is that you must use the authors resource box, and you cannot make changes to any articles that you use. Most general lists and banks are strict on language and content - if you plan on adult themes, look for a specialist list.

Some of the mailing lists also send out details of publishers (webmasters) looking for articles - if you see a topic you have covered, or could cover, e-mail the webmaster. Be sure to specify your publishing rules, the title, number of words, and the target readership if the publisher has several topics. For example:

******
Title: Starting a web site This article is suitable for new webmasters. Word count: 768 including resource box, at 65 chars per line It may be reproduced freely in ezines and on web sites as long as it remains unchanged and the resource box is included. ******

Some authors ask the publisher for a copy of the ezine, or the URL of the web page on which it is used. If you store your articles on an auto-responder, you will get an e-mail whenever someone sends for a copy.

About the Author
Dianne Reuby is co-author of the e-book "First Website Builder", (http://newbieclub.com/builder/)?pramclub Dianne created and runs the Free Site Builder web site and ezine, dedicated to helping newbies create web sites with free tools, services and resources. Visit FSB at (http://freesitebuilder.co.uk/) Send for a complete list of free articles and lessons by e- mail : mailto:fsb-lessons@getresponse.com