AaronTurpen.com

There are basically three general perceptions on the concept of article marketing in general, which apply to you whether you’re using it as a strategy to promote a business or a writing career.  These three thoughts are:

1. It stinks and is a total waste of time and will only earn you a bad name.
2. It’s awesome and is the best way to promote your business for free.
3. A mixture of both 1 and 2.

Personally, I’m a proponent of the third school of thought.  I have used article marketing in the past as an effective marketing method and I have been told that I’m a “spammer” by prospective clients because of my article marketing.  The trouble here is not the articles themselves or even the concept of article marketing, it’s the perception people have of it and some of the less-reputable venues out there that are promoting it.

For the professional writer (or writer-to-be), I can think of no more effective way to showcase your abilities than to write articles for distribution.  After all, if you’re going to make a business and career out of writing, you should focus on promoting your writing itself.  Right?

Article marketing is simply writing an article on a given subject and then giving it away for free reprint in online venues (websites, newsletters, and so forth) in return for having your byline (author’s bio) and link included with the article when it’s published.  There are literally hundreds of thousands of article marketing websites out there and the concept has been around since the early days of the World Wide Web.

How I’ve Used Article Marketing in the Past

I began article marketing in 2000 as a way of promoting my then-fledgling Web design and development business.  When I took the business full time in 2001, most of my clients were found via a mixture of article marketing and freelance job sites.

My article marketing at that time, more importantly than the indirect marketing afforded by the articles for reprint, became a road towards creating my first newsletter in 2002: the Aaronz WebWorkz Weekly Newsletter, focused on small business concerns on the Web.  That newsletter grew to almost 10,000 subscribers over two years’ time and spawned a second newsletter, which was more popular: Aaronz eBay PowerSellers Newsletter.  Those two newsletters had over 20,000 subscribers combined and were published weekly for about three years.

I was writing two or three articles weekly for them, still focused on Web design and development (as well as eBay sales and marketing).  I would publish my written articles in my own newsletters first, then submit them about a week later to various article distribution sites around the Web.  Usually at about the same time the email-published newsletter was published online.

This allowed me to have unique content for the search engines for about a week, establishing me as the originator of the article, and then distribute it for re-use by others.  Today, this model may not work as well with Search Engine Optimization methods, but at the time I was doing it, it was considered cutting edge marketing.

How I Use Article Marketing Today

To be honest, I rarely use free reprint sites or distribution points any longer.  They’re time-consuming, give little measurable payoff, and are over-populated with the latest spammers: article spinners.  These are people who take an original free reprint article (or hire someone to write one), add alternate words/phrases, and send it through software that makes “unique” articles by the dozens out of one written article.  This passes search engine muster to be considered unique (and thus new), even though the article itself is definitely not unique or new.

Article distribution sites are packed with these spinned articles and are therefore generally useless.  Any actual, unique content submitted to the site will be lost very quickly in the crowd.  Even if your content is of higher quality, it’s not likely to get seen by those searching through the reprint site.

So today, while I rarely use article marketing in that sense, I do use blogging on a large scale.  I am the owner of over a dozen blogs currently and am writing regularly for 6 of them.  With the others, I am either paying someone else to write for them or (more often), I am reprinting content from the other blogs I’m writing original content for.

I have also participated in several “content swaps” with other blog owners.  Both myself and the other blog owner will write something original and give it to each other for first publish rights.  I will publish his or her article on one of my blogs (with attribution and link-back, of course) and they do the same with mine.  Then, about a week later, we reprint our own articles from the other person’s site with full link-back attribution.  This creates unique linkage between the sites, fresh content, and great cross-promotion to our respective blog readers.

Paid Article Marketing

Another venue for article marketing that is still legitimate and not crowded with spammers is paid article distribution.  In this model, either you the author pays to have your article listed or (more often), those wishing to publish your article must pay a fee to gain access rights to do so.

The payments screen out nearly all of the spammers and most of these sites have paid editors and reviewers who put human eyes to articles for editorial acceptance before offering them for sale.  I have used two or three of these sites in the past (and continue to do so, occasionally) and have residual sales of articles that were originally written five, six, even ten years ago.

While the income isn’t great (at the scale I use it), I do know of some professional writers who make a huge portion of their regular income through this model.  It’s an easy way to sell articles without hunting down publishers, since they effectively look for you.  Payment per article is not always high (some of mine sell for as little as $1), but unless you’re selling full ownership rights, that payment can compound over time as several publishers purchase publishing rights.

So article marketing is alive and well, but like everything else on the Internet, it has evolved and changed with time.

There is one skill, above all others, that is the most important and vital skill every good writer needs.  For most of us, it’s also the most boring of tasks and the hardest to force ourselves to accomplish readily.  That skill is proofreading.

Proofreading (also called “proofing”) is a very necessary process and great writers (or at least steadily employed ones) are often marked by their ability to proof their own work and hand editors and publishers ready-to-print material.  These writers are, in most editor’s view, true professionals.

Here are some examples of how quality proofing can make-or-break your career – or at least your ability to get in print.

I work with an editor at a well-known online site regularly.  I submit work and she usually accepts it or asks for simple revisions (another info source, a change of wording or removal of a corporate name, etc.).  We’ve worked together for nearly a year and she’s never once returned something for grammatical revision.  After she’d approved four articles in a row without comment, I asked her if she was happy with my work.  She responded that it was top quality and I was one of the few she worked with that required little supervision in terms of staying on subject and grammar/readability.

Curious, I asked her to elaborate and she used a well-known person who occasionally writes for the same site as her example.  This person is a medical doctor and holds two PhD’s in related fields.  She said that despite this, the written pieces he submits are horrible.  “His on-target and general flow are great, but his grammar and total lack of punctuation are painful to read.  I spend a lot of time cleaning up his submissions.  If he weren’t a ‘special guest’ to the site, I would have asked that he be kicked to the curb long ago.”

In another instance, I was bidding on a job writing a handful of technical articles based on Microsoft software for someone’s website.  He’d narrowed it down to me and one other person and suggested a “write off” where we would each write one article on the same subject, he’d pay us both for that one article, but would hire the best of the two for the rest of the job.  We accepted and I submitted my article the next day.

After I’d won the job, I asked him what had won him over about my writing and he sent me the other guy’s submission and said, “Because with your stuff, I won’t have to proof read it and make sure it’s OK before I put it online.  His stuff is like this.”  I read through it and while the writing was good, the lack of punctuation and the huge paragraphs and large number of misspellings were the obvious work of someone in a hurry.

What you’ll find as a writer is that you’re more likely to have your work accepted, to win the job you’re bidding on, and to win over your editor to get the extra assignments or better payments if you are a professional.  A big part of that is making sure you’re proofreading all of your work and submitting only high-quality, top-notch stuff.  Each time, every time.

The following is a fun little Reading Test and proof primer from Udder Buffoonery:

It appears that the Udder Buffoonery website has gone the way of the Dodo.  Oh well.

“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” -Lord Byron

Today, I’m going to step away from the business aspects of professional writing and look instead at another aspect of putting words to paper: as a theraputic.

Many writers, especially of personal journals and fiction, are tortured souls with a lot to deal with internally.  Hemingway would go into bouts of severe depression and usually come out the other side of it with a new novel.  Stephen King describes his writing as a “need” in the same way a heroin addict describes their habit.  Ann Frank likely found much solace in her enclosed, fearful world by putting pen to paper. Benjamin Franklin said:

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.”

Many psychologists and psychiatrists have realized the healing benefit of journal writing.  It’s also likely that many writers are drawn to the business of writing (especially fiction) as a means to vent or deal with their inner psyche. In fact, studies have shown that those who write on emotionally-difficult issues in their lives generally not only experience better well-being, but can actually become more physically fit as well.

Culturally, many peoples have noted the benefits of journal writing.  It’s encouraged amongst many cultures and religions world wide, including the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), in many public schools, amongst Jews, and in the Japanese culture.

So writing does have some great benefits beyond the business income and the learning and education that goes with it.  Remember that as you write your articles, website copy, personal journal, poetry, novel, and friendly emails.  Writing is communication and, as humans, we are all creatures of social interaction and putting words down is one way we do that.