Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

At the end of every year, all the radio stations do their top 100 countdowns. Don’t you just love them? Well, in this article, I’m going to do my top 10 countdown of the 10 most important things when it comes to writing an article. We’re going to start with number 10 and work our way up to number 1.

At number 10 is flow. You want your article to have a steady flow from start to finish. For example, in this article, we’ve introduced the fact that we’re going to do a top 10 countdown and then we went and actually counted down from 10 to 1. Everything flowed naturally as it should.

Number 9 in our countdown is research. Now, in the case of this article, the actual research was from my own experience from writing articles. But what if you’re not too sure about a subject? Well, in that case, you want to make sure you research it completely so you don’t end up sounding like an idiot.

Moving on to number 8, we have variety. You don’t want your paragraphs to all start with the same word. That gets monotonous after a while. Notice how, for the first three things in this countdown, I found a different way to start each paragraph. This is very important to keep from boring your readers.

Lucky number 7 is grammar and spelling. I don’t believe I even have to mention this, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t check their grammar and spelling when they write an article. This gives the impression that you’re unprofessional.

Our sixth most important thing, when writing an article, is credibility. I don’t care what it is that you’re writing about. You MUST have some credibility. Mine? I’ve written thousands of articles and have made a good amount of money from doing so. Therefore, I must have some idea of what I’m talking about.

We’re halfway through our countdown at number 5…resource box. If you’re going to write articles for the purpose of making money, you want a solid resource box at the end of it in order to get people to go to your site. If the resource box is weak, all the writing in the world, no matter how good it is, is wasted.

Taking the number 4 position is syndication. Look, I don’t care how good your article is. If nobody sees it, it doesn’t do anybody any good. So you MUST concentrate on syndication…getting your article circulated around the Internet. Submitting to article directories is a great way to do this.

Just two notches from the top spot, at number three, is the summary. People have short memories. So at the very end of the article, you want to summarize the main points so that they don’t forget what they are.

It was a real hard decision, but coming in at number 2 is the title. I was going to make this number 1 for a long time but have decided against it for a very good reason. When you see number one, you’ll understand. Your title has GOT to be captivating or people are not going to want to read the article…no matter HOW good it is.

Finally, we have number 1…subject matter. Folks, this is the ball game. I don’t care how good the article is or how good you think your title is. If you’re writing about something that few people care about (such as underwater pole vaulting) you are NOT going to get readers…period.

There you have it folks…the top 10 things you MUST know about how to write an article that people will read, enjoy and respond to. Hopefully, this article fit the bill nicely.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an article marketing failure? Get a copy of the ONLY article marketing guide you will EVER need at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/insidersecrets.html and become an article marketing expert TODAY!

I received a nice little surprise in my mail box the other day. It was an Ezine Articles tote bag. I wasn’t sure why I had gotten it until I read the little note that came with it. Well, in this article, I’m going to tell you why these were sent out, but more importantly, I’m going to include a little lesson on article marketing that I hope you will take to heart.

Okay, so why did the tote bags go out? Well, according to Ezine Articles, they went out to the top 150 people in the article writing challenge that they have going on right now. At first I though, “wow, this is cool” but then as I started thinking about it, I realized something quite alarming and this is where the lesson comes in.

I’ve only been writing about 2 articles a day since this challenge began. That’s not really a heck of a lot of writing. I used to write a lot more many years ago. And yet, with just 2 articles a day, which comes down to about 30 minutes or work, I am currently in the top 150 writers. When you consider how many thousands of authors this article directory must have, that’s alarming.

But here is the lesson and please listen very carefully to it. If just 2 articles a day puts me in the top 150 authors for ALL possible niches, imagine if you just wrote 2 articles each day for your ONE niche. Do you think that doing this just might put you so far ahead of your competition that you could actually dominate your niche with NO problem?

See, it doesn’t really take a lot of work to be the best of the best. I’ve proven it with steady effort each day, even though 2 articles daily is by no means a lot of work. Truth is, most article marketers out there are lazy and are lucky to write 2 articles in a week, let alone a day. Those folks will usually get the dismal results. The ones who write consistently get the best results.

I guess this shouldn’t come as a surprise to you, but I needed to show you this with actual proof. I never expected to be in the top 150 with just 2 articles a day, but yet here I am.

What could writing 2 articles a day do for YOU and YOUR article marketing efforts?

Think about it.

It just might be the reason why you’re not getting the results that you’re looking for.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an article marketing failure? Get a copy of the ONLY article marketing guide you will EVER need at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/insidersecrets.html and become an article marketing expert TODAY!

I get a real kick out of article marketers. I’ve been doing this long before article marketing was even a term. What gets me is all the myths that get propagated all over the Internet in regard to article marketing. While the title of this article is a little tongue in cheek (I honestly don’t know how many myths there are or what number this one comes in at) but syndication and duplicate content theories are enough to make me want to pull my hair (what’s left of it) out of my head. If you’re worried about syndicating the same article all over the Internet and any penalties that you’ll get, you might want to read this article first before you drive yourself crazy.

Okay, in a nutshell, the theory is this. If you write an article and submit that one article to many directories and/or sites, Google will only index ONE of those articles at best and at worst, will totally erase you from the face of the planet because you have the same copy of that article at 100 different sites. This is such hogwash that I don’t even know where to begin to debunk it. So probably the best way is to give you something to look up at Google and see for yourself that this is the biggest piece of misinformation that article marketers have been perpetuating since article marketing begin.

What I want you to do is this. Go to Google and type in, in quotes, “Affiliate Marketing Tips – Is it Unethical to Promote Products You’ve Never Tried?” It isn’t the greatest example in the world, but even for such an obscure article title as this one, take a look at all the syndicated copies of this article. It doesn’t appear that anybody was penalized just because the same article was published at multiple sites.

But think about the ridiculousness of this argument. The reason that article directories exist is so that site owners who are looking for content can take content from the directory and put it, unaltered, on their OWN site. If there was a penalty for doing this, what would be the purpose of syndicating content? There’d be none and article directories would essentially go out of business as there would be no use for them.

Google itself has come out and said that there is no duplicate content penalty unless you are taken the same article and republishing it at multiple locations on the same domain in order to trick the search engines into thinking there is more unique content at THAT site than there really is. But other than that, if you have an article and want to publish it, unaltered, at 300 different sites, knock yourself out. Nothing bad is going to happen and, in addition to that, you’ll get some nice backlinks in the process.

One of these days, I’m going to have to write a book. “The 2,837,987 Myths Of Article Marketing” and sell it for $97.77…plus tax.

Have to make sure the government gets their share.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an article marketing failure? Get a copy of the ONLY article marketing guide you will EVER need at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/insidersecrets.html and become an article marketing expert TODAY!

Is Article Marketing As Effective As It Used To Be?

Well, there you have it…the $64,000 question as asked by many an article marketer these days. And with good reason. Having been an article marketer myself for many years now, I have seen the good and the bad, the highs and the lows and just about everything in between. I have seen a once shining industry littered with more trash than a New York City street after a parade. No…it’s not pretty out there.

I have seen article directories come and go. You’d be surprised at the number that have closed up shop over the years. Of course most of them weren’t worth squat to begin with…so nothing really lost there Read the rest of this entry »

I get a real kick from talking to other article marketers. Everybody has their own little system. Some are simple and others are more complex. Well, this article is going to put all these systems into perspective because ultimately, I don’t care what kind of article marketing system you use. The results that you will get will greatly depend on the niche that you’re targeting.

Let’s first take a look at a couple of systems that people use. First, we have the very simple article marketing system. This is where the marketer writes one or more articles a day, submits them to one or several article directories and then calls it a day. It doesn’t take very long. In fact, you can probably write a good four articles and submit to half a dozen quality directories in less than two hours. For some, it will take longer. That’s one system and it’s very simple.

Then you have those folks on almost the opposite end of the spectrum. They will hire people to write dozens if not hundreds of articles each day for them. These articles will be submitted to hundreds of directories of which some will give them decent traffic and others will just provide them with backlinks. But their efforts don’t stop there. They’ll also repurpose these articles by combining them into reports and using those reports to get people to opt into their lists. They may even turn those articles into video articles and submit them to YouTube and other directories.

So as you can see, there are a number of things that you can do as an article marketer. Well, I’m telling you straight out that it almost doesn’t matter what you do if the niche you’re targeting is either ultra competitive or doesn’t have enough demand to make a hill of beans difference.

If a niche has little demand, there is almost no point in writing many articles. There probably isn’t much competition and the chances of getting a page one, first slot ranking in the SERPs is pretty good. One article can bring you all the traffic you’re going to get…however little that traffic might be.

On the other hand, if the niche you’re targeting is super saturated with the top sites showing PRs of 8 and 9 and PPC budgets of thousands of dollars a day, it is doubtful that even several hundred articles is going to bring you a top spot. Case in point…I have written close to 2,000 articles related to making money online but you won’t find any of my sites up near the top of the SERPs. The niche is just too competitive. So I find my market through other channels in addition to article marketing.

By all means, put as much work as you want or can into your article marketing campaign. But if you’re the only one competing for a handful of keywords that maybe get 2,000 searches a month, don’t expect to get rich off the niche…no matter how much you write.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an article marketing failure? Get a copy of the ONLY article marketing guide you will EVER need at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/insidersecrets.html and become an article marketing expert TODAY!

One of these days I’m going to wake up in a land where article marketers actually develop something called a brain. No, I’m not going to name any names in this article but I am going to call out a particularly bad piece of advice that I am personally sick of hearing. If you don’t like when I go on a rant, don’t read this article.

Okay, so what’s the rant I’m going on today? What’s this bad piece of advice? Well, somebody over at one of the forums I frequent started a thread today telling people that they shouldn’t submit articles to article directories and that they should only put them on their own sites. This person’s reasoning? The articles on his own site rank better than the ones that the directories.

So where do I even begin to trash this absolutely horrible bit of advice? Let’s start with this fact.

Some people, believe it or not, do NOT find your articles through the search engines. They find them because they specifically go to these article directories looking for articles. They could be looking for them for a variety of reasons too.

For starters, some people actually look at these directories as authority sites. They trust the articles that are there figuring that if the directory approved of the article it must be good. Now, while this isn’t always true, the perception of many people makes the end result what it is…many articles being found through directories.

Then you have those folks who look for articles to put on their own site simply because they were taught that putting content on their site will help them rank better. So they look for good articles in these directories to help achieve that end. What does this do for you? Well, some of these sites have a pretty high PR. This means a powerful backlink for you as well as possibly many eyeballs actually seeing your article. It’s called syndication and one of the main reasons FOR submitting to article directories.

Finally, and this is the part that these people don’t get, a brand new site has no chance in hell of outranking a powerful article directory…at least not in the early stages of its development. So sure, you can just put up all your content on your own site and ignore the directories. Let me know how many months it takes for you to finally get a foothold in the search engines, especially if you’re in a very competitive niche.

To ignore article directories entirely is foolish and about the worst advice I’ve ever heard in regard to article marketing.

Directory or your site?

Do both young serf…do both.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an article marketing failure? Get a copy of the ONLY article marketing guide you will EVER need at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/insidersecrets.html and become an article marketing expert TODAY!

I’ve never been one to pass up an opportunity, especially when it comes to article marketing. I’m going to talk about a current opportunity that I am currently taking advantage of but not for the reasons that you might think. Sometimes all we need is just a little motivation to get us to do what we should have been doing all along. This article explains.

There was a time when I used to work my tail off. I’d write as many as four or even five articles a day. I was what you would call a writing machine. And then something strange happened. I started to have such success that I found out that I didn’t have to write so much anymore. So I cut back…a lot. I’d write maybe two articles a day and then some days I wouldn’t write at all. It didn’t matter. With thousands of articles already out on the Internet, I could afford to take it easy.

And then, EzineArticles came out with the HAHD challenge, which essentially boils down to writing an article a day for 100 days to win some cool prizes. Okay, the prizes are nice, but not anything that was life or death to me. I could do without. But, I realized that I could kill two birds with one stone here. I could do a little extra writing and maybe generate a little extra traffic and at the same time, maybe come away with some extra goodies. Why not? If the articles served no other purpose than to win some prizes, there would have been no point. But since every little bit of traffic helps, why not?

This isn’t a pitch to jump into the HAHD challenge, though you might want to check it out. However, it is a motivational pitch and one that I hope is hitting home. See, sometimes, like it or not, we don’t feel like working. I get those days often. So focusing on something as a reward for doing a little extra work can sometimes be enough to get us off our tails and get to work. And this doesn’t only apply to article marketing. You can apply this to just about any kind of marketing you do.

And believe it or not, there is more writing in you than you realize. A lot of people say to me things like, “I can’t think of anything else to write about.” What they’re really saying is “I’m bored writing about the same topics all the time.” Well, if that’s the case, do something about it. And a great way to conquer this problem is to look for a reason to start writing again.

Even if it’s just a few prizes in a contest.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an article marketing failure? Get a copy of the ONLY article marketing guide you will EVER need at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/insidersecrets.html and become an article marketing expert TODAY!

A big problem I find with most article marketers is that they have a very narrow view of just what article marketing is. Then, when they attempt it, and get very poor results, they blame the model instead of the way they’ve gone about it. In this article, we’re going to take a good look at this form or marketing so that you will get a better understanding of just what it REALLY is and how YOU should go about tackling it in order to bring more visitors to your site and ultimately make more money.

First, we need to look at the traditional form or article marketing, at least in the eyes of most marketers and see why it’s not as effective as it could be. For most people, this means writing an article, putting it on their blog, submitting to a few directories and then doing some social bookmarking in order to generate backlinks. That’s pretty much what most folks do. And that’s fine, if you want paltry results. However, if you want to take this to the next level, you should consider adding the following tasks. This list is by no means all inclusive but it should give you some additional ideas.

For starters, try taking your article and packaging them into short reports. You can either sell these reports or, better yet, give them away. Setup a squeeze page, collect some emails and give the report to subscribers. This will help you build a list so that, down the road, you have more opportunities to sell them your product or even other related products as you come by them. This is certainly better than a one shot send to a sales page.

Another thing you might want to do is turn those articles into videos. Whether you realize it or not, videos are very big…especially if you do your searches at Google. Many keyword phrases show videos from YouTube as the top results. Why? Simple…Google owns YouTube and therefore wants to get people to the site. By turning your articles into videos, you’ll potentially get thousands of visitors that you might not have normally gotten by just submitting your articles to a few directories.

The above examples are really just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot more you can do with your articles to generate traffic to your site. Point is, the traditional form of article marketing, at least the way most marketers look at it, isn’t going to cut it in many cases. There is a lot of competition out there and you’re going to have to write a lot of articles to get through it. But by combining this with other tactics, you will find that your article marketing efforts will be a lot more profitable.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an article marketing failure? Get a copy of the ONLY article marketing guide you will EVER need at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/insidersecrets.html and become an article marketing expert TODAY!

This article is in response to a question that was asked over at the Warrior Forum today. The question is a simple one. Does article marketing work in super saturated niches? I’m talking about the real heavy weights like weight loss, making money and so on. Well, this simple question doesn’t have a very simple answer. Keep reading to find out why.

First off, we have to define what we mean by the term “work.” Everybody has a different definition of what “works.” Some people are happy if they make an extra $50 a month. Others consider their article marketing campaign a failure if it doesn’t generate at least five figures a month. So because of the diversity of expectations, in general, I’d have to answer yes…it does work…to a degree. To what degree? Well, as somebody who has tackled both easy AND super saturated niches, I can answer that at least from my own experience and perspective. Your results may vary.

For super saturated niches, let’s be honest here. The really big boys have got the top spots locked up. You’re not going to knock them from their pedestal with a few articles. It’s just not going to happen UNLESS those articles are so SEO’d to the point of perfection and have the most killer bits of information in them. Good luck with that unless you’re planning on writing a 5,000 word master’s thesis. It’s just not happening.

However, having said that, just because you can’t get a top spot with article marketing in the super saturated niches doesn’t mean that you can’t get a piece of the pie. By simply submitting to many article directories you WILL get a number of views just from that alone. Not everybody finds articles through the search engines. Some people go to article directories looking for specific information. Also, some site owners do the same looking for articles to syndicate…even the big boys. What, you think these people write all their content themselves? So, this gives YOU a chance to get exposure through content syndication.

Having said that, you are going to have to do more than just submit articles to directories. You’re going to have to use social media to get the word out about your articles. You’re going to have to generate backlinks to them. You’re going to basically have to market your articles the same way you would go about marketing a product or service. And even with all that, there is only so much traffic you’re going to get percentage wise.

But…if the amount of traffic for that niche is off the charts, that small percentage COULD translate into quite a few monthly views to your articles. Think about it. If a keyword gets 1,000.000 searches a month and you get only one tenth of one percent of that traffic, that’s 1,000 views a month to your article for THAT keyword.

It’s NOT impossible.

So if you want to tackle the heavyweights, go ahead. Yes, it will be a lot of work, but it’s doable.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an article marketing failure? Get a copy of the ONLY article marketing guide you will EVER need at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/insidersecrets.html and become an article marketing expert TODAY!

Okay, so you’ve tackled this really great niche and decided that you’re going to write articles in order to promote it and get people to your sales page, opt in page, blog or whatever. You’ve written tons of articles and you’re getting some decent traffic. But you want to get more, so you want to write some more. Problem is, you’re tapped out. You’ve written everything there is to write about this niche. There is nothing left. And no matter how hard you strain your brain, you can’t think of anything else to write. What do you do? This article is going to take a look at this problem.

First of all, there is no such thing as “nothing left to write.” I don’t care how many articles you’ve written. There is always something else to write. The problem is, your mind is trapped in this little box and you don’t know how to get out of it. What you need to do is get outside of that box and think of new angles to write about. It’s not as hard as you think. Here are some suggestions.

At the top of my list is expanding on some of the points you’ve mentioned in older articles. If you’re writing about a “how to” niche, there are always things that can be expanded on. For example, let’s say you’re writing about web design and in one of the articles you go through the process of how to choose an editor. What you might want to do in future articles is actually do a review of several different editors and how they function. Point out their strengths and weaknesses. This sub topic alone can give you tons to write about.

Another thing you might want to do is look to see what OTHER people have written on your topic and take a contrary point of view. Let’s face it, it’s rare that you’re going to agree with everything that somebody else has to say about a subject. There has to be one point that you’re going to disagree with. Take that one point, make an issue of it, and explain why you don’t agree with it. People are doing this all the time. If you think I’m kidding, read all the movie reviews made by people blasting somebody else’s review.

You might also want to take a look at some videos on the subject that you’ve been writing about. Sometimes video can explain things in a way that articles usually miss. What you then want to do is put those video images into words. In fact, you can even write an article about the video you watched. Tell people what you thought of it and then add your own ideas to the mix.

There is always going to be something you can write about if you REALLY put your mind to it. What you need to do is get out of that little box that you’re in and start using the brains that God gave you.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Sick of not getting your articles read? Fed up with resource boxes that don’t get the job done? Want to write articles that will turn you into a killer article marketer? Get my book on article writing and marketing located at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html - This is my own book written from over 30 years of writing experience.