Free Articles For Your Web Site

By Richard Lowe
Posted Thursday, December 2, 2004

Do you subscribe to a few ezines? Or are you like me and you subscribe to an obscene number of ezines? More ezines that you can possibly read even if that's all you did twenty-four hours a day? If so, have you noticed that some articles appear in more than one ezine?

Or perhaps you've surfed the web and noticed a really great article which has an author different from the webmaster. Some sites even seem to have whole collections of these articles by many different articles.

What's going on? Well, there are some not-so-secret stashes on the web which actually contain hundreds if not thousands of articles that you can reprint on your web site or in your ezine (and even in an ebook if you want). The only cost is to also include the "resource box" of the author.

A resource box is a few lines of text, similar in concept to an email signature. This box contains a short advertisement or biography, a link to a web site and perhaps a link to join a newsletter. Usually they are four to six lines long, although eight or nine lines is also common.

How do you take advantage of this phenomenon? You simply subscribe to one or more mailing lists set up for precisely this purpose. Once you do so, you will get several articles per day (usually) in your inbox which are available for reprint.

If you find an article which is useful, you simply add it to your publication along with the resource box. Don't change anything at all unless you get written permission from the author, and be sure to send a quick email to him letting him know you've used his work.

Viola! Instant, useful content for your publication! That's literally all there is to it.

Okay, so what does the author get out of this? He gets a small amount of advertising and a link to his website. That's what the resource box is all about. The hope is that occasionally someone will read the article, find it interesting, and click the link to go to the authors website.

By the way, I personally consider it a little tacky to ask the author to exchange links if you publish his article. You see, you are already getting value by obtaining free content for your publication or web site. The author is getting a link and a small ad. That's the exchange.

So where do you get these articles? There are a number of sources:

Lists with specific topics:

(http://www.egroups.com/group/aahome) - Home and family articles (http://www.egroups.com/group/aahealth) - Health related articles (http://www.egroups.com/group/aageneral) - General articles (http://www.egroups.com/group/aainet) - Internet articles (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/littlewebsitethatcould) - Web articles

General article lists:

(http://www.egroups.com/group/article_announce http://groups.yahoo.com/group/articles_archives) (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublish http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Content) (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/publisher_network http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PublishInYours) (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SubPortal http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The-Article-Depot)

There are also some web sites which offer the same services.

(http://certificate.net/wwio/)
(http://ezinearticles.com/)
(http://web-source.net/articles/) (http://www.connectionteam.com/) (http://www.ideamarketers.com/)
(http://www.marketing-seek.com/( (http://www.womans-net.com/)

Simply visit these sites and follow the directions to receive your articles.

I must say that I really like this form of exchange, as I believe it is much better than your standard link exchange. The author gets to provide something of value to other webmasters all over the internet, and in return gets a link. To me, this type of sharing is what makes the internet such a great place to be involved with.

I would like to thank two authors who wrote articles on this subject. By reading their works I discovered these lists and began my own contributions, which I hope are of benefit to others. Lynne Schlumpf, whose website (http://www.littlewebsitethatcould.net/) is one of the best around, and Sheryl Ellis, who is the webmaster of (http://get-me.to/TrueCrime), and has written a few very good and humorous articles on the subject.

About the Author
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge. Web Site Address: (http://www.internet-tips.net) Weekly newsletter: http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.htm Daily Tips: internet-tips@GetResponse.com