Ok, I know the title sounds a bit odd, but I’ve done something over the weekend that I should have done months ago. I’ve finally moved my very first website, The Prompt Writer, to a new server and set it up in blog form. I want to thank my buddy Garry Conn for his help in this, as I was ready to lose my mind.
I started The Prompt Writer in December of 2003 after sitting down and filling 3 notebooks full of ideas to write about. I knew that there was no way I was ever going to use them all myself, and I also knew that there was a lot of people out there who were looking for ideas as well. So I decided to pass them along, as a courtesy for all the kindness the writing world has shown to me. Little did I know that I’d still be giving away writing ideas some 5 years later.
About a year ago, I went in to update the site when I realized that my login info wasn’t working, and I couldn’t get in contact with the people who were hosting my site. The site was still live, but went for a full year without an update. Also, I had become a member of this wonderful world we call blogging, and found a thousand and one other things to write about. But, my first site was still on my mind and I wanted to get it back up and running as well.
So, I did it. For awhile, I was beginning to think it was hopeless, but then Garry came to my rescue and made everything better again. Thanks Garry, you saved the day, again!!! So now, instead of a traditional website, TPW is in blog form so I can update it much faster than before. Also, I’ve added all the old prompts from the previous site. If you check out the site, you’ll notice a list of pages in the sidebar. Each page is a list of writing prompts for that category. For instance, on the page called “Titles”, you’ll find a list of titles that you can use at your disposal. Cool, huh?
That’s the main reason there were no Sunday Seeds yesterday. I’m thinking of phasing that section out on this blog, and doing something similar on TPW, but I’d like your imput on the idea first. Do you want me to keep doing the Sunday Seeds? Or would you rather see something else over here? Any ideas?? I’d love to hear them.
I invite you all to check out my new and improved site. I’m very happy with the overall look and feel of the place, and hope to make it a wonderful resource for all writers. If you have any ideas about what you’d like to see there, just let me know by leaving me a comment either here or there. I’ll get it one way or the other.
Hello everyone!! I’m sorry for not posting for awhile or for even saying good-bye. I had to go off and play Boy Scout for a week at camp. As a Scout Master, I get to enjoy getting out in the great outdoors. As a mom, I get to go play with the bugs and the poison ivy. Whoo Hoo!!
Anyway, the trip did me a load of good. I find a lot of great things to write about while I’m at camp. Everything from creating adventure stories, to coming up with great ideas for campfire meals. Getting out there in the real world makes it easy to come up with creative writing ideas. You’d be surprised at the amount of topics you can come up with while on a vacation.
My challenge to all of you is to do the same. This summer, while you’re on vacation, or just spending a weekend at the beach, really take a look around you. Not just the usual visual stuff, but everything. The way the air smells, the way the light reflects off the water, or even the sounds around you. Everything about your vacation or trip is fodder for a great story.
You’ve heard the old addage about stopping to smell the roses, right? Well, I think you should stop to smell them, feel them, and really pay attention to them. Are they just red roses, or are they maroon roses with dark edges? Use all your senses while out and about. You won’t believe how much you’ve been missing.
I found a really cool site that I just had to pass along to everyone else. It’s called Blogger Jobs, and it’s a pretty neat site. Just like a normal blog, you can sign up for the RSS feeds and get updates every time the site posts a new job opportunity.
Some of the jobs posted here are basically blogs looking for writers who want to add their Google Ads code into their pages, or split the ads between the blogging host and the writer. Some ads are for real companies looking to hire someone to run their blogs for them.
One of the cool things about this site is that bloggers can post their mini resume’s to the “Bloggers For Hire” section. Now mind you, Blogger Jobs isn’t hiring, but they will help you get your name out there so anyone who is might find you. Also, you’ve got to read their TOS for submitting yourself into their database.
I found a couple of offers that sounded like good opportunities, and I’m giving them a shot. I can’t say whether or not their going to be worth it, but it never hurts to try. As time goes on, if they work out, I’ll be more than happy to let everyone know. If not, then I’m sure not going to send you guys over there.
There are some cool blogger jobs out there, and as blogging becomes more popular, more companies are looking to hire bloggers. Are you a blogger in need of a blogging job? Go check out Blogger Jobs and see for yourself. I’m not promising miracles, or even that you’ll land the job you’ve always wanted. But they have tried to add a little something for everyone.
I’ve missed the past couple of Sundays, but wanted to make sure that I got your seeds out to you this week. We’re in the full swing of things for the season. The local pool is open for business, tourists are beginning to filter into town, and all the flowers are in full bloom.
So, this week, I’ve decided to plant our seeds around all the fun stuff people do during the summer. I hope some inspiration sprouts from them, and it blooms into something fantastic.
1.) Keep a travel log on your vacation. Write about all the things you see, all the people you meet, and everything in between. When you return home, write about it in a blog, or turn it into several articles.
2.) What was your favorite thing to do during the summer, when you were a kid? Did you go to the pool, or did you spend your time near a lake?
3.) Are you and your family traveling on vacation this year? Is the rise in gas prices making your travel arrangements for you this year? Write a post, using as much detail as possible.
4.) How do you and your family and/or friends relax during the summer months? Do you all get together and have a barbeque or do you pack up your stuff and go camping? Give a detailed report of a typical weekend event for you.
5.) If money was no object, what would be your idea of the perfect vacation? Would it be a romantic vacation on a desert island, or a family vacation to a theme park? Let your imagination run wild with this one.
There are your seeds for this week. I hope you find a lot of things to write about, or at least something to inspire something else. Have fun and happy writing.
The following post was written by one of the most intelligent bloggers I’ve had the pleasure of meeting; Mark Mason. Though the article is intended for bloggers and Internet marketing, I believe it’s also something every writer should read. Mark has written a few great posts on Article Marketing, but I think this is one of the best. It’s renewed my interest in submitting some of my work to article directories. This article was originally posted on GarryConn.com, and is reprinted with permission from both Garry Conn and Mark Mason.
What Is Article Article Marketing
Greetings People Of Conn!
Mark Mason here from MasonWorld.com with a guest post (thanks Garry).
When Garry Conn announced the competition against John Cow, I was excited to hear that Garry was building a site that would eventually go up for sale on sitepoint. You see, there are two things that create value for a site: traffic and conversions. When Garry picked Credit Card Debt as a niche, I knew he picked a winner.
(Note for the record that I tried to get Garry to put up a hamburger recipe site).
A Winning Strategy
Conversion is all about how to change traffic into dollars. For the credit card debt site that Garry built, there were three main ways to accomplish that: adsense revenue, affiliate lead programs, and the site mailing list. Garry’s site design is highly optimized for these three earning modes. I know Garry has covered these in previous posts, but I mention them here because my observation is that having three independent revenue streams is a great idea. Never put all of your hamburger patties on one grille, so to speak. A fourth revenue stream, information product creation, would be great if the contest were longer.
For conversion to matter, you need traffic. And here, Garry is also on the right track. His choice of an SEO optimized theme (which he designed) coupled with fantastic content centered around keyword-optimized tags means that Garry’s contest blog has a great foundation for organic traffic for years to come. Garry is an Adsense guru and knows this part of the business well. He also knows well that building traffic takes time and backlinks. That where I come in.
Let’s Talk About Article Marketing
Before I get started I want to clear one thing up — Article Marketing is often confused with “bum marketing,” but they are not really the same thing. It all seems obvious to me now, but I remember having a hard time getting a clear description of article marketing. So, I’d like to offer you what I consider the key ideas behind article marketing, and talk about how you can use it to kill a cow. If you want to know more about article marketing, I am going to point you to my five favorite resources at the end (which are great, but not required to become an article marketing guru or a cow slayer).
So, what is Article Marketing?
Article marketing refers to a traffic generation method that depends on submitting informative “articles” to sites called “article directories.” These articles generally consist of an article body that has generally useful information, and an article resource box that contains links back to the author’s site. This technique is sometimes mistakenly called “Bum Marketing.” Actually, as pointed out by Josh Spaulding, Article Marketing is one of the tools that Bum Marketers use (so named since it is so easy even a bum could do it.) (Getting the bum a laptop and a high speed internet connection is a social problem that is beyond the scope of this post.)
Good article directories have great traffic and strong Google page rank, so publishing your information there increases the chance that people will see and read what you have to say. Additionally, article directories allow people to copy and republish their articles, provided the article is unchanged and the resource box is preserved. This means that your article with your links could end up on multiple sites with lots of exposure. That means lots of backlinks and click-throughs to you. If you can convert that traffic, you can make money.
There are literally hundreds of article directories, the most famous of which is eZineArticles. (As an example, you can see one of my articles about Credit Card Debt.) The fact that there are hundreds of article directories opens up the possibility of submitting your article to many directories and multiplying your exposure. (There can be downsides to this, however, as we will discuss below).
Two Sources of Traffic
The beauty of article marketing is the possibility of two complementary sources of traffic. This is a key point that is often not understood. When you initially submit your articles, if they are well written, you should expect that they will be spread and read. If you write an effective resource box, those same readers will want more information and click the links in the box.
This simple idea generates immediate traffic to your site. In the case of the Connpetition, Garry is already seeing some of these click-through (even though out article marketing efforts have been modest due to resources).Eventually, as the article ages, it may fall lower in the article directory as it gets buried by newer articles on the same topic. This usually means that click-through traffic from articles will fall off as a function of time. Sometimes articles go viral and the clicks keep coming, but this is not usually the case.
Not to worry. Now your article has spread around the net with links to your site at the bottom. Google sees these (correctly) as backlinks to your site. Done properly, these backlinks can help you rank for the pages that the links are pointing to. So, while your direct click-through traffic is falling off, your organic search engine traffic will increase. Pretty cool, eh?
A word about content and keywords
There are lots of things to think about when you are writing articles for article marketing. Most importantly, you need to have a keyword strategy for the content on your site and the content in your article. It may not make sense to directly compete with your own website, for example. Rather, you may want to choose keywords for your articles that complement the content on your site. Garry is a keyword guru, but I will give you a simple example of what I mean here.
For example, if you have a site on “butchering cows,” you may want to write an article for article marketing on “castrating cows” knowing that people interested in castrating cows will also be interested in butchering cows. You need to think about this carefully.
Earlier, I mentioned that you could submit the same article to multiple directories. You can, and I do. But you need a strategy for that as well to balance the effectiveness of the submission against the impact of duplicate content. Google expects syndicated content to be duplicated, but there are still tradeoffs that need to be considered (beyond the scope of this brief article).
Article Marketing Resources
As promised, here are five resources that I actually use for article marketing. I have purchased these tools myself. Don’t misunderstand me: you can be successful in article marketing without any tools. These are the tools that I personally use to improve the quality and productivity of my article marketing efforts.
Article Marketing Domination. This is an excellent eBook by article marketing guru Josh Spaulding. This eBook covers all of the details that i have glossed over above, and is a complete reference. You can do article marketing without knowing all the details, but you will get lot better results if you have all the facts. Most things in life are like this.
Article Post Robot. A tool for submitting articles to multiple sites. It is really tedious and boring to submit the same article to 50 article directories. Article Post Robot automated this process. This is not the most elegant tool on the planet, but it works very well for me on over 50 article directories (the software supports many more).
Instant Article Wizard Pro. IAW Pro is an amazing tool for article research. I just learned about this tool this week, and have used it a few times with incredible results. Basically it searches the web for research on your keywords and mashes the pieces together in reasonable sounding paragraphs. Cuts article writing time down by a factor of ten or more in my experience. Even if you have no intention of buying this thing, you have got to see the video.
Micro Niche Finder. One of the most important parts of Article Marketing (not really covered well in this article) is keyword selection. Garry and I both use Micro Niche Finder for all my keyword research.
Josh Spaulding. OK — he is not a resource, actually. He is a person - a really nice one. Josh is my “go to guy” and mentor for Article Marketing (Garry is my Blogging, Adsense, and WP Theme Guru), and Josh is also the author of Article Marketing Domination.
The Bottom Line on Article Marketing
Article marketing is a great way to promote your website, affiliate products or affiliate program. You can use article marketing to take over almost any keyword in Google (given enough time and effort). Given a longer contest, we could use this to outrank Cow on his own site just for fun if we wanted to. It is powerful vood o stuff. By writing an article that delivers value and offers a subtle mention of your affiliate product or critical keywords, you’re well on your way to getting the proper exposure for your promotion (whatever it is). Simply put, Article Marketing is a great way to promote your business online.
Death to the Cow!
Regards,
Mark Mason
P.S. No Actual Cows Were Harmed In The Writing Of This Article.
P.P.S. I actually like and respect the folks at JohnCow.com, but you would never know it from the above article. LOL
