Re: Publishing Articles

> I need to publish some articles and the service I am currently using is
> not getting me results. A few places I can post them myself would be nice.
> Can anyone help?

What kind of articles are you writing? What is the service supposed to do for you?

=================note for new marketers==============
(putting this down here because I realize some of you may want more explainations)

One of the things that the "internet gurus" recommend (and some real internet gurus as well) is to write articles and get them published on the Net and that this will drive visitors to your site. It can work, yes, but there's some bear traps there that the "gurus" don't mention because they don't know them.

(Note: "guru" to me is someone who has a site proclaiming their expertise, but who is simply reselling and rewriting the Same Old Stuff that everyone else is. Cory Rudl was a true guru. I'm not going to name the fake gurus, but they're thick on the ground. You see some of them show up here, asking for help marketing their book on Super-Marketing.)

Now that we got THAT out of the way...

Let's look at this from the viewpoint of the author and the viewpoint of the website.

Website: they're looking for content. You, the author, can provide that to them but if your article is one of about 713,000 articles on "making money through multiple streams of income" (a number I got through googling for those terms), then the chances that they'll grab your article are slim-to-none unless you happen to have a very very unusual angle that's specific to their site (like "Dawg Dazed - how a dog-oriented website makes money through affiliate incomes")

Your article is even LESS likely to be picked up if it's just a rewritten ad for whatever you're selling (unless you know the webmaster.) Or the webmaster might (this HAS been known to happen) glom onto your article and rewrite it as their article.

Newsletter: Lots of eyeballs here, but if the newsletter that you're in is a neverending stream of articles-that-are-really ads, you've just wasted your time writing the article and wasted effort getting it placed there. If the newsletter owner runs one type of article (say, motivational) constantly, then the chances that your single article will produce results for you is almost zero. Your article works best if it offers the newsletter readers an interesting and new angle (like one that I read and remembered on writing book chapters for textbooks... followed their advice, got a contract, and the newsletter got a loyal reader who occasionally buys stuff.)

Archives: Article archives are good, but again you're competing for topic. If there are 50 other articles on this topic, the average chance of your getting picked is 1 in 50.

Announcements: I think, frankly, that unless you have a big name or a very hot or unusual topic that it's another waste of your time to have your article submitted to an announcement service. Your announcement may stay on the top of the list for 1 day, and then it's gone off the top of the page and who knows if it will ever surface again. Eventually it will be dropped off the list.

Sooooo... what's the author to do? Ahh, Grasshopper, it's not hard but it's not blindingly obvious.

You, the author, need to do some pre-planning. Some of those "article services" just blast your articles out to boards (like this one, where they get nuked and the owner vows to never have anything to do with you or your product).

You need to know:

* WHO is your target audience?
* WHAT benefit are you offering them? If the benefit is "come to my website and buy my stuff," then maybe you better rethink the idea of writing articles. Folks can see through that, and greed really isn't one of the attitudes that draw people to you.
* WHERE is your target audience hanging out?
* WHAT are the focuses (foci, if you want to be nicely academic) of those sites?
* WHY approaching that website and linking back to yours is a Great Idea for everyone. Remember, as a writer you're fostering a partnership. It's not "publish my article because I'm so insightful and marvelous." Websites will pick you up if you have a very tight focus, a novel approach, and are genuinely helping people.

Then you have to prepare YOUR site.

Articles like this also work as blogs -- let a website publish it for (say) a month as an exclusive. Then publish it in your blog (yes, that's what blogs are good for) and link back to the website and tell the web owner you've done this. As you interact on boards, link to your blog in your sigfile. After interacting with a board owner and developing a relationship with a board owner, offer them an article for their archives.

People will read an article by a friend and will consider buying from a friend on Internet. The conversion ratio here is several hundred times better than from Le Drive-By Article.