Cause and Effect
April 30, 2008
“Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is the “unique selling position” in your market? Luck will not propel you to success. Understand the “cause” of your market’s problem by knowing your target. Solving their problem is the “effect” they are looking for. Corporations have entire departments dedicated to finding out who buys from them so they can hone in on that market segment. They do that by profiling not only who buys from them, but who is their competition. Successful marketing campaigns listen to their market. It’s about connecting a hidden desire or an expressed desire in a market, a target market. Your job is to identify where those minds are, find them and then connect with them. You don’t have to be a corporation. It’s your job to do your own research and it’s available to you through your competition.
How to Create Characters that will Make Your Readers Cheer
April 30, 2008
How to Create Characters that will Make Your Readers Cheer
by: Caterina Christakos
Imagine baking a chocolate cake with bakers chocolate and no sweetener. You would have a cake with no flavor, yet somehow manage to leave a nasty taste in your mouth.
The same can be said of characters who haven’t had been fully developed and spiced up a bit.
A hero or heroine with no history or depth will leave the same acrid taste in your reader’s mouth. He will open the book to sample it and never sink his teeth into it again.
Before writing your book create an outline of each character.
This should include:
- character’s history
- likes and dislikes
- best friend
- worst enemy
- biggest problem
- hidden strengths and talents
Then take a few pages and develop a full profile on your character, even if many of these details will never be seen in your book.
Why is this important?
If you don’t know your characters, your readers never will.
Worse yet they will come off as flat and uninteresting.
Ex. Matt went to school. He got into a fight with Peter and was sent into the principles office. They later made up and learned the meaning of getting along.
8 Sources To Research Awesome Article Topics
April 30, 2008
Writing articles is by far the most effective online promotion strategy I’ve come across. If you can write good, readable, original content, you can easily put yourself far ahead of the pack in your field of interest.
But article marketers and new article writers are often stumped for topics to write about. Finding topics that appeal to your readers can be time-consuming but well worth the effort.
Here are no less than eight awesome ways to research your market and find newsy topics that attract loads of traffic and the interest of your target audience.
1. Keyword Research Tools
To write an article that will get you a significant amount of traffic, you need to write about topics that people are searching for.
You also want to know which terms your target audience uses while searching, so you can use them in your article title and copy and increase the chance of being found by search engines.
Two excellent keyword research tools you should always use to research article topics are Wordtracker and Overture’s Keyword Inventory Tool. http://www.wordtracker.com http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
2. Newsletters and Trade Journals
Ten Tips on Writing and Creativity
April 29, 2008
Ten Tips on Writing and Creativity
by: Emily Hanlon
1. Don’t think. Creating a story or book has little to do with the intellect or language when we first begin. Our best ideas will emerge as a spark or image. Like dreams, they will make little sense. Followed, they will hold the key to the creative unconscious.
2. Creativity is cyclical. You cannot and will not be creative all the time. What is full must empty and what is empty will fill. Creativity has its own internal rhythms. Learn to listen to yours.
3. Nothing kills creativity faster than criticism. Don’t share your work-in-progress with people who are critical or those whose opinions leave you vulnerable, no matter how much you love them. Good critiquing should leave you inspired, not deflated.
4. Spend time listening to your inner critic. He or she is not comfortable with the risks demanded by a creative endeavor. By becoming aware of the foul jabber of your inner critic, you can see how your own mind puts up roadblocks to your creativity.
5. Being a creator is risky business. Don’t underestimate the tremendous emotional and psychic risks the journey demands. Learn to push ahead even when you are afraid. Learn to love the risk.
Break In With Fillers: The Best Market For New Writers
April 29, 2008
Break In With Fillers: The Best Market For New Writers
by: Shelley Wake
Interested in breaking into writing or breaking into a new area? You can’t go past writing fillers. Fillers are one of the most overlooked opportunities in the freelance writing world and offer one of the best opportunities for new writers.
Fillers Are In Demand
I’ve spoken to hundreds of editors and been told over and over again that fillers are the one thing they never get enough of. Most publications tend to publish more freelance fillers than they do freelance articles. Yet, they often receive 100 times more articles than fillers.
This is a gap in the freelance market that you can take advantage of.
Fillers are a Great Place to Get Started
Many publications are careful about publishing feature articles from writers they don’t know. Even if your article is good, an editor might decide not to publish you because they don’t know you as a writer. This is especially true if you don’t have a lot of experience or any clips.
Resource Box Rules: Winning Tactics
April 29, 2008
Lets face it people use articles to send traffic to their websites. But if their resource box is lousy and not worded right they will get minimal, if any traffic. Thats a fact.
“So,” you ask, “what kind of resource box do I need?”
You need a resource box that is attention grabbing, heart stopping, world jolting…. Okay, so maybe thats a wee bit of an exaggeration!
What you really need is a resource box that is short and snappy that asks or tells your prospective customer to take action.
You shouldn’t make your resource box (also called an Author’s Bio, About The Author, etc…) very long. You don’t want to bore your reader with all the details of your writing career.
Sorry to sound so harsh but on the internet people want to be entertained and enlightened. They will only read what interests them.
If your article is informative and page scrolling (as opposed to page turning) then you will get a lot of people to read it, but if you lose them at the start or halfway through your resource box, you won’t be able to convert them into traffic or buyers. Why??
Simply because they will never reach any link you provide them with, they will close the page and go on to read a different article.
You can’t afford to let this happen!
So here’s what you do about it. You keep your resource box at a maximum of 5 lines long. You tell them to visit your site for more information on that subject or to opt in for their free newsletter or report.
You give them an action to take. Because as surely as you aren’t specific about what it is that you want them to do next, they definitely won’t do what you want them to.
So unless your resource box grabs them with the same intensity as your article you can kiss those prospective buyers goodbye!
Another common mistake made by newbie writers is to not make their website link an active one. This can happen when you just type www.mysite.com, instead of putting http://www.mysite.com, or whatever the full address is.
In most cases people are not going to bother to take the time to copy and paste an inactive link to visit your site.
So again make sure as much as you can that your link is working. It’s true that some article databases don’t provide this feature, but the majority of the article databases do.
Try going to the article site you posted your article on, as a browser instead of logging into your writer’s account. Find your article and test the link in your resource box to see if it works.
In conclusion I guess the best way to show you what I mean is to give an example. So be sure to read my resource box below 
Writing Articles For Profit
April 28, 2008
Writing Articles For Profit
by: Douglas Titchmarsh
Article writing has suddenly become very popular among online marketers lately. A lot of people are taking advantage of this fact to make extra money.
So just how can writing articles make YOU extra money?
Firstly the obvious answer is to write keyword dense articles on specific subjects and offer them for sale. These will be quickly snapped up by people trying to create niche market sites to sell a product within that niche. They will also be in demand with people setting up content sites to make money from Googles Adsense (you could also do this yourself as you write the articles).
Research the most popular keywords at http://www.wordtracker.com to find a niche which will give you a good idea of what to target your articles at.
Secondly, a series of articles about one niche can be placed in one volume and turned into an ebook, or course which can be sold with very little overheads. Using one or two of the articles to submit to article directories like http://www.ArticleCity.com or http://www.DEBSArticleSite.com and adding your bio with a link to your ebook salespage will quickly add some traffic and lead to sales.
Top Ten Getting Started Tips to Market Your Book and Business
April 28, 2008
Want to sell a lot more books? Want clients calling every day to find out more about your service? Most emerging businesses forget the #1 way to promote anything–the Internet. Specifically, writing and submitting articles.
These ten Tips will help you write a winning article that top ezines and Web sites will want to publish.
1. Include your non-fiction book’s chapter how to’s or your fiction’s juicy chapter excerpts in your articles. Your book coach encourages novelists as well as self-help authors.
2. Keep your articles around 200-800 words each. Remember today’s audience likes short copy. They want it one, two, three. Online writing is so different from what print magazines want.
3. Keep your article focused on just one thesis or point. That means mindmap your article or make a linear outline what points to keep before your write it. A plan helps.
4. Create a hook for your two or three-sentence introduction. Notice this one asked you a few questions to engage you.
5. Forget the old school of writing for print magazines and getting paid. Follow the Internet way– give your article away like Mrs. Field cookie samples, so people who read them and notice your signature file will want to visit the site where you sell your book.
What Is Persuasive Copywriting And How Can It Help Your Business?
April 28, 2008
Persuasive copywriting is what draws the attention of prospective customers. They see your product and are drawn it. But what makes this happen? What words can win a customer over without having them laugh at overstatements and hype? Persuasive copywriting is the style of writing that every business needs in order to get customers to purchase something.
Online, there is a large market for individuals who can write in a persuasive style. Sure, everyone has their own specific style, but the only thing that truly matters is sales. Unless the words draw the customer in and help them to make a purchase, the words are wasted. If the customer has a dollar to spend, he will spend it on your website or on another. The words that are on that page are what will make the ultimate decision as to whether the customer stays or goes. It is that simple.
But what makes the sale to the potential buyer? This information changes with the specific product. And, in all cases, it is up to the writer to determine the best method for getting the attention and securing the sale. It is not up to the business owner to do this, but up to their writer to know the right words to use.
7 Ways In Which You Can Overcome Excuses for Not Marketing Your Website by Writing Articles
April 27, 2008
7 Ways In Which You Can Overcome Excuses for Not Marketing Your Website by Writing Articles
by: Laurie Meade
Wannabe writers, are full of excuses as to why they aren’t writing yet. Many of these excuses can be changed to proactive statements with a mere switch in attitude and perspective.
How many times have you read an article, and said to yourself, “I could have written this.” Well, why don’t you?
It took me a long time to discover that my passion in life was writing. Even though, as a teenager, I filled a whole blank book with poetry, which I wrote while trying to recover from the “first love’s” broken heart type of feelings.
It wasn’t until I made it a habit to start writing in my journal every morning, that I found out just how easy it was to get the writing juices flowing. Below is a list of some common excuses writer wannabe’s make for not writing. You will find suggestions along with each excuse on how to counteract those excuses and move forward to success.
1. EXCUSE #1 I don’t know where to start, or what to write about.
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