Online Article Writing Success

New European "Cookie Law" to Effect EU affiliates?

2011-03-09T10:00:00.001Z

I saw this on the UK news yesterday. The European parliament is implementing a new privacy law (from 25th May) that will require websites to get "explicit consent" to track users via cookies.

My immediate thought was that any affiliate marketers that target the European markets will need to adapt to this somehow, otherwise affiliate tracking cookies will be useless.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12677534

Your thoughts?

Marketing Your Marketing Articles Through RSS Feeds

2010-04-09T13:21:00.000+01:00

Article marketing and marketing your articles go hand in hand. Any articles you write for your own income (and not for clients) will need to be marketed online to ensure they reach the top of the search results. In general this means getting backlinks, sharing your work with your social networks and writing more articles to promote your other articles at venues such as Ezine. But what about using RSS feeds for online marketing?

Many of the article publishing sites allow you to easily create an RSS feed of your latest articles and therefore, submitting these feeds to RSS aggregators may be one method of marketing your articles that you have overlooked. Hubpages makes it very easy for writers to create a multitude of RSS feeds to promote their work, so if you haven't signed up yet you might want to give HubPages a try.

You may have seen at the top of this blog that I'm currently taking part in the 60 Day Challenge on Hubpages. The 60 Day Challenge involves writing 30 articles in 30 days and then spending an additional 30 days marketing my own articles, as well as the articles written by the rest of the group. The group article marketing is being achieved through the promotion of RSS feeds (as well as other methods which I will be writing about when we get to that part of the challenge).

I know the basics of RSS. I know how to create a feed and I know some places to promote them, but to be honest my knowledge of RSS feeds and how best to use them is limited. This was one of the main reasons that I decided to take the 60 Day Challenge; so that I can learn more about this method of article promotion.

I've also been thinking for a while about the potential benefits for article writers to join forces and work together to increase everyone's revenue and traffic, so this challenge has come at just the right time for me. I don't think I could have thought up such a great way for a team to build on each other successes, and so many thanks to sunforged over at HP for coming up with the idea of the 60 Day Challenge.

We are just at the end of week one and still in the writing phase, so there is not a great deal to report yet. I will be adding to my Making Money Online Challenge Log daily, but I will only be adding my traffic levels and earnings from Adsense and Amazon on a fortnightly basis. Hopefully we'll see both rising and that marketing articles through RSS feeds proves to be a good method of promotion!

Writing for Money - Writing Articles Online

2010-01-01T10:38:00.000Z

Writing for money is one of the best ways to make money online and almost anyone can do it with hard work, patience and a willingness to learn how to write for the internet. There are so many get rich quick schemes out there that promise thousands of dollars a month if you just buy this or that product, but they are nearly all scams. One thing that isn't a scam though is writing for money. Making a living writing online has taken off big time in recent years and for good reason. Writing articles online is one of the best legitimate ways of earning money working from home and around your other commitments.

Money will never come without work, but the best thing about writing for money, especially writing articles online, is that once the article is written it is there forever. It will continue to earn year on year if you choose evergreen topics to write on. You can guess what an evergreen topic is - one that people will be searching for for years to come. So while you don't get paid immediately for your initial investment of time, just one article posted in the right online venue and written in the right format, can earn hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in it's lifetime.

A fellow writer at HubPages called Nelle Hoxie, has made $7,500 in 9 months at Hubpages writing sales pages for Amazon and Ebay products. How does she do it? She works hard and consistently, and she has a sound knowledge of how writing for money online works. Nelle has recently shared her secrets on writing articles online for money and it's well worth reading her article if you're serious about making money online too.

How I Made $7,500 in 2009 with HubPages by Nelle Hoxie

Nelle isn't the only one making serious money writing articles online at HubPages either. Whitney05 recently broke the $1000 dollar a month threshhold. Broke a Personal Ads Record

There's Sunforged as well. A very experienced internet entrepeneur who has a wealth of information to share and he shares it freely. He's up to earning $100 dollars a day at HubPages. First $100+ day from HubPages

If you feel your fingers itching to get writing and want to see more $$$ in your bank account then maybe writing for money is for you too. Check out HubPages and see what you think. It's free, it's fun and the supportive writing community will help you on your way.

Articles PR - Increase PageRank, Backlinks and Traffic

2009-11-10T14:23:00.003Z

The term "articles PR" can have three distinct meanings and to prevent any confusion I'm going to explain each of them here.

Articles PR and Internet Marketing
First off, writing and publishing articles online has several very important benefits for your business and online marketing strategy. Article writing is a fantastic way of getting high quality backlinks to your blog or website especially if you know which article sites to post them on. (I'm going to provide a list at the end of this post.) Publishing articles with content related to your blog or website will also increase traffic and through the backlinks you include, increase your site's pagerank. This is especially so if your backlinks are anchored with your websites keywords.

Let me explain....let's say your main website or blog is selling catfood and you are trying to get a high search engine results position for the term "gourmet catfood". What you need to do, is write articles relating to that keyword and then when you post the links to your website at the end of your article, you make sure that the clickable text is the phrase "gourmet catfood". Never, ever use "click here" or "read more"! Always make the link anchored with your keyphrase. Google absolutely loves these types of links so use them whenever you can to increase your pagerank and push yourself up in the search engine results pages.

To create anchored text links use the "a href" html tag. (I can't post this tag here without actually creating one, so click here to see the format of this simple tag.)

Determining the PageRank of Your Articles
If you came to this blog because you searched for the term articles PR to find out what PageRank your articles have in terms of what authority google gives your articles, then it's very easy to do. If you want to check you can use this tool to check your articles PR.

It takes a while to get a good PR for your articles, because one of the factors Google uses to determine pagerank is how long it has been published on the web. So don't feel disheartened if your page has no PR or a low PR of 0 - it should increase over time if it's of good quality content and posted to an article website with good PR itself.

Articles PR and The Best Article Websites to Post on
This leads me nicely onto the last meaning for articles PR. I can't tell you exactly how many article publishing websites there are out there, but there are plenty! Have a look at my article websites directory for a list of some of them.

There may be many article writing sites on the internet but they are not all created equally! Choosing where to post is as important, if not more important, as what you post. In the most simple terms you want to post your articles on high PR article websites rather than low PR sites. This is because, the the higher the PR of the site the more authority google gives to the links pointing to your website. So for example, links from infobarrel.com which has a pagerank of 4, will not be as good as links from hubpages.com which has a pagerank of 6.

These are the article pubslishing websites with the highest PR:

Scribd - PR 8
eHow - PR 7
Squidoo - PR 7
HubPages - PR 6
DocStoc - PR 6
EzineArticles - PR 6
Helium - PR 6
Associated Content - PR 6

Each of these article websites have their own merits and drawbacks and some such as hubpages and squidoo can also generate extra income through adsense and affiliate programs on your article pages. My best suggestion would be to write 5+ articles at each of these sites that point to your main website or blog and watch your pagerank and traffic shoot up! If you don't have time for all this writing then paying someone else to write for you is a good option - check out my website SEM Article Writer to learn about what a professional writer can do for you.

Understanding article marketing and articles PR is easy when you know how. Feel free to leave your comments and thoughts and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

DocStoc Debacle Resolved

2009-10-21T09:23:00.001+01:00

Hats off to Docstoc for their very quick response in dealing with this article theif! Within 24hrs the users stealing and publishing articles there were removed, as was all the content they had stolen.

I may even consider signing up with them now!

Tackling plagiarism and copyright issues is a constant battle for the online publisher and can take up so much time. Apart from this very bad experience, in most instances when I have sent a polite email to the website who has posted a copy of my work, they have removed it and simply left a description of the article and a link. This is one example of where article theft can be a real bonus because it actually creates a welcome backlink - Good stuff!

Article Thieves Steal Copyrighted Work

2009-10-12T14:18:00.001+01:00

Well it's been a busy morning and not in a good way! A user (or maybe many users) of the website docstoc.com has stolen thousands of HubPages articles, including about 2/3's of my own. So most of the time I thought I'd be spending writing this morning, has instead been taken up filing DMCA reports both at docstoc.com and Google adsense.

I imagine all the article sites will be facing this issue today because it looks as though this person or persons has not just simply copied and pasted articles by hand, but has used some sort of computer software to retrieve articles from the net to be stored in a local computer file. These files are then automatically uploaded to docstoc.

Can't say I'm a fan of docstoc at the moment! To be honest I'd never heard of them - it's another revenue sharing site which is a good thing, but they don't seem to have any system in place to prevent this kind of blatant plagiarism. Some of the articles are copied several times there under different user names!

If you are wondering whether your work may have been stolen I suggest going to http://www.docstoc.com/and typing your titles in their search box. If you do find you have your writing stolen use their DCMA Reporting Form and also report to Google using their online form.

A Directory of the Best Article Writing Websites

2009-10-08T11:55:00.007+01:00

There are absoultely tonnes of article writing websites out there to choose from, so choosing where to write is an important decision. Some article writing sites, such as HubPages, Xomba and Squidoo, offer revenue sharing through adsense as well as the opportunity to sell through other affiliate programs. Others do not offer revenue sharing, but can be a good option if you want your articles distributed around the net. Also known as viral marketing, this is a good option if you're looking for one way backlinks and extra traffic.

Here is my directory of article writing websites:

HubPages
About.com
Ezine
InfoBarrel
Associated Content
Squidoo
Xomba
Triond
Helium
eHow
ArticlesBase
Buzzle
GoArticles
Scribd
Bukisa

For an excellent article written by a guy named Hal Licino which tells you in exact detail how much you can expect to earn from various online sites read here: Actual Figures: Exactly How Much You Can Earn on Each Pay to Write Site

Where to make money by writing online

2009-10-01T16:27:00.006+01:00

If you read further down through my posts you'll see reviews of some websites where you can make money by writing online articles. Those sites offer a revenue sharing system based mainly on google adsense. As well as revenue sharing sites to write at, there are also legitimate freelance writing websites offering you the chance to bid for real writing work including copywriting, copy editing, proofreading, website content, translation, blogging and article writing. Here are a few of them:

Elance
Odesk
PeoplePerHour
Guru

The advantage of writing online through freelance writing websites and article publishing sites is that you can work full or part time depending on your other commitments, which is great for anyone looking to work from home. No office politics to contend with either!

Writing at Helium

2009-09-29T14:22:00.000+01:00

Helium - This is a site I haven't used before and personally am reluctant to use! I've heard some very mixed reviews from good writers that have written there. Some report making good incomes from their articles posted at Helium - around $1,000 per month for around 100 articles, which is definitely worth having, but many are unhappy with the unexplicit nature of the revenue share system and the fact that once you have posted an article to Helium you only share the rights to it.

On their FAQ there is nothing explicit to tell you what share of the revenue you get (other sites will tell you 50% 0r 60% or whatever the share is). They say the site works like a co-operative and all members share in the profits. I'm all for co-operative working and co-op business (used to work in that field), but I do wonder if everyone is equal in Helium's system or if some are more equal than others! Some of what I've heard would suggest that the latter is the case.

The other aspect that I don't feel comfortable with and puts me off writing for Helium, is not having the complete freedom to do what I want with my article once it's published (it is mine after all!). You can post your article to other sites if you want to, but only one's that accept duplicate content. You will never have exclusive rights to your content. Another thing is that once you've published your article on Helium it's there forever - you can't remove it - ever!

This last fact gives me the eebie jeebies about the ethical standpoint of the company, especially after they say they are like a co-operative. My work, is my work and I want to do with it as I please! This is why it's very unlikely I'll ever write for myself at Helium. If a customer wanted me to, of course I would, but not for myself - it just doesn't suit my personality.

That's not to say Helium wouldn't be good for you. I think it does depend on how you view your writing, what you want from it and how much of an issue ownership is to you.

Content Sharing Websites

2009-09-27T12:21:00.001+01:00

Here's an article I wrote recently on effective techniques and strategies to promote your articles. It includes a write up of 10 content sharing websites. Content sharing websites are basically places on the internet where you can post links to all your articles, websites and blogs. They're good for increasing internet traffic and getting one way back links. See what you think.

Writing at Ezine

2009-09-27T10:59:00.006+01:00

Ezine - Google loves Ezine articles! You'll often see them come up on the first page of Google's search results. I think the main reasons for this is that Ezine has been around for about 7 years and one of Google's page rank criteria is the longevity of a website. Like HubPages, Ezine also has a pagerank of 6. Also, all the articles are reviewed by humans to prevent spamming and poor content. This means there's a delay between writing you article and getting it published of around 7-10 days.

There's not a great deal to do with an ezine article except write text. No adding of photos or videos etc. But that's ok. I personally use Ezine to market my other articles and websites because the one way links from here are juicy. You get to put two self serving links in your resource box, though they do need to be in HTML.

Another good thing about Ezine is that your articles can be relatively short, with a minimum word count of 250 words, you can write one article in half an hour. I can churn out about 6 Ezine articles in a day, whereas my hubs take me a good 4-6 hours each.

Websites for Writing Online - HubPages

2009-09-27T10:12:00.010+01:00

There are loads of websites for article writing online to choose from. If you're thinking about starting an article writing business from home, already writing articles or maybe you want to promote your website or blog by writing marketing articles, there are a load of choices of online writing sites.

I'm going to give you the low down on some them here and tell you about the advantages and disadvantages of each.

HubPages - This is my personal favourite website for writing online for a lot of very good reasons. The way you can lay out your article or hub as they call them, is easy to use and they look wonderful. Add pictures, videos, news feeds, link boxes, Amazon & Ebay products.

Not only that but you get 60% adsense revenue share on each of your hubs once you have signed up for an adsense account! You can also earn from promoting Amazon & Ebay products. The Hubpages community is helpful and friendly. It has a page rank of 6, so any articles you write here are indexed quickly by Google and given a lot of serps (search engine results position) kudos. As with all online writing and publishing endeavours, it take a good while and lots of quality writing to make a decent income, but many people do. Check out my profile page at Hubpages.