Cobwebs Of The Mind: Blogging - Part Seven: Article Submission As A Tool To Extend Your Reach

Okay we now know about content, keywords, tags, categories, bots, back-links, hotlinks, a bit about the psychology and have an inkling to what viral technology and systems are. Before we get to the nitty-gritty technological stuff, (yes, you do have to know that as well and it is really fascinating at times), we are going to discuss tools to make your blog more well known and your URL all that more important and hit by those inquiring eyeballs.

I choose to start with the Article Submission possibility as it does incorporate almost everything we discussed until this moment in time. Like all the tools and possibilities discussed on here, keep in mind that Article Submission is only ONE possibility, and may not be for you. It is work, and sometimes a great deal of it, even if you are a writer, and it also takes a keen eye and watching the market.

One point I wish to make here that will piss off a lot of Article Submission site owners. Lately, they are getting very picky with what articles they will take and not take. I have never had an article turned down due to any such reasons, but Article Submission sites are NOT publishers as authors know them, are NOT literary agents, are NOT literary minded. Do not confuse articles with actual writing works. Articles are just that. Articles that you write, almost about any subject under the sun with a plus for you, which we will get into. Do NOT BE BADGERED by any article submission site that thinks they now are "real" publishers or think they can determine what is a good piece of writing and what is not. For the most part the articles presented at article submission sites are mediocre, written with an eye to just finishing a minimum word length. However, article submission sites serve a purpose in the game of symbiotic internet relationships. Just dont think when you are writing an article, that this is something you are going to present to your agent.

You see, what is of interest to you, may not be of interest to the masses. (The tired, the poor, the downtrodden, the bored - they too make up the internet and they too surf!). I am going to, like usual, give a real life example, before getting into the nitty-gritty of article submission sites.

Besides my own Article Submission site, and you are welcome to post there, Virgin Earth Article Submissions, I usually post articles at Ezinearticles.com (we will give them a free plug here). They work hard at the business of article submissions, as they should, because they make a great deal of money from it (I will explain how as well). Ezinearticles does lead the market as well where according to Alexa.com it is ranked as of the date of this posting at 622, which means they are the 622 most popular site on the Internet. That people, translates into MILLIONS of page views a day! Powerful influence.
(We will discuss Alexa and Google Page Rank in another article.)

A while back ezinearticles.com sent out an email saying that their article entitled "Want to Try on That New Hair Style Before You Get It?" had 108,898 page views! Now if you would have asked me which article would get such page views, I would certainly have NEVER even considered an article about "hair". And that is only page views on their site! Remember that. You can only write about what you know, BUT you have to write about what other people WANT TO KNOW. That is a lesson for blogging as well. You must offer something in return for someone spending the minutes reading your blog.

The Internet is full of surprises. ONLY because the human condition is full of surprises. Only because it reflects who we are and what our society is like. With all that said - let us explain just how this Article submission process works for you.

Mr. Nor Hair (remember him?) wants to get more free publicity for his site. So he sits down and writes a 750 word article on how to prevent hair loss. Mr. Hair does NOT, I repeat does NOT sell any of his products in the body of the article. This is a big NO-NO, and most article submission sites will refuse to publish an article promoting a product within the body of the article. In other words - Self-Promotion - is NOT allowed. Mr. Hair writes about the effects of hair loss on ones self-esteem. He actually spell checks it too! He then goes to an article submission site and becomes a member. All this is for FREE. (Do not ever pay any service or for any program that will submit articles for you! That is just pure crap and simply put, if you do, you are a sucker! Remember Article Submissions are Viral, and being so they should be Viral for you as well.) When he is asked to input his article, he has to adhere to certain guidelines in HTML and text format. He must put in keywords (remember those folks?) and an article summary. He also chooses a category for his article which in this case would be "Hair Care" or "Body Care" or something along those lines. All cool. Then at the bottom is a resource box. That is for you dear author. It is in this box you put your copyright and your URL's etc. Here is an example of what my resource box currently looks like.

Copyright © 2006 Ted W. Gross. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author's information with live links only. Ted W. Gross's very popular blog, Cobwebs Of The Mind contains daily updated posts and articles on technology and writing. He also owns Amor Enterprises which maintains Virgin Earth Article Submissions which is designed to accept articles about any country or place in the world. Ted Gross is also a published author and maintains a web site for his works. )

Usually you are limited by the amount of URL's you can put into the box. I use the maximum which is three. Mr. Hair has two. His website and his blog and he inputs them into the box. Voila, he previews and then submits his article on hair loss. In a few hours he gets an email that it was accepted. So far so good. Now what happens?

The article goes up on the site. Now don't ask me if anyone will read it. Obviously sites with millions of page views a day, someone is reading something. But the plus for Mr. Hair is not from the normative person coming to read his article, even if they do click on his link on the bottom. Nope the big plus comes when a webmaster or ezine owner comes to the site, and picks up the article (a fairly easy process), and puts it on their web site for content. Now if you were good students you can see right away what you got. You now have your article and its text on two other sites at least, and you now have a live backlink INTO your blog! And if an ezine owner picks this up and send it out to 2500 members of the ezine, you now have bona fide email links BACK INTO YOUR BLOG. And all the time that article sits on other web sites, it is indexed by the Search Engines, with YOUR URL IN IT! And all the time it sits at the article submission site, people are reading it and picking it up for content for their sites.

What does the Article Submission site get from this? Simple. They have Google Adwords up and people DO click on those adverts. They have affiliates and people DO click on the affiliates and buy. Do you know why? Cause like I wrote in the article on Viral Systems, the people on the site are loyal members. They are getting something for nothing so they return the favor. (We will discuss stats as well in another much later article). All sides win in this symbiotic relationship. Again some real examples:

I wrote a series of 13 articles on RSS and the technology. Lo and Behold one day I discover that there are two web sites wholly devoted to mine and a few other articles on RSS. How did I find this out? I googled my name and discovered they had picked up these articles and placed them on their site. Moreso, today I looked at my stats over at ezinearticles. And I find out that for RSS articles I am ranked at 3 out of 123 and for web development articles at 7 out of 602 and for blogging articles at 19 out of 371! Pretty good stats if I say so myself.

There is no doubt that article submission works. It may not be for you, it may take too much time. It may simply not let you be the author you truly are, as you have to swallow the "quality" for article. BUT it is a way, and for free, to increase your hits to your blog. Seriously consider it.

Backlinks is the name of the game. Search Indexing is the name of the game. And Article Submissions is one way to acheive to it.

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