Definitions

Traditionally, spinning has been and is associated with articles that are gibberish. I have read material on the web that can only have been written by a robot, or perhaps by a third grade foreigner attempting to learn to read and write English. The results are much less than acceptable. In fact, they are abominable.

If that is spinning articles, then it should surely be banned from the web. It is quite obvious that no human ever looked at the article before it was published on the web.

I can only conclude that the article was composed by one of those automated non-human spinning services. Although, I have never used spinning services and I can only speak from my observation. And, my observation is not quantified.

It appears as if the material is generated by substituting synonyms for specific words or by substituting phrases. The results seem to be generated without human intervention.

Another definition could be that of rewriting an article with some human intervention. The author selects specific words or phrases and allows the software to generate articles based on those substitutions.

Again, human intervention is limited and the results often require significant editing to make the article ready for web publication. Of course, some article marketers may be only interested in SEO and publish the material “as is” resulting in sometimes nonsensical verbiage or at best second or third grade reading material.

If the definition of spinning an article falls within either of these two definitions or methods, then I must agree with the naysayers and ask that all such work be banned from the internet. This is where the debate fails to distinguish between the traditional limited definition and a definition that is more universal.

Repackaged Articles

Few can deny that they have “repackaged” an article to save time or to quell a writer’s block. Rewriting or repackaging an article is acceptable.

A publisher-editor of a well known and popular article directory once said, “Repackaged, rewritten articles on the same subject are hardly ever 100% unique.” He also said, “… the use of existing articles reworded or not, is not an issue.”

Given that even repackaged rewritten articles are hardly ever 100% unique; would it be far fetched to describe those articles as spun articles? I think not.

So the hotly debated spinning issue comes down to what kind of spun articles are acceptable. It is not whether or not articles should be spun; it is rather how they should be spun and how they are used. That spun articles are acceptable is a fact. The quality of spun articles and their use are the issues.

Now that we have established that rewritten spun articles are not an issue what remains is a debate over the quality and use of those articles.

Two Schools

Obviously, there are two schools of thought. One school believes that spinning is wrong, bad, spamming, and black hat. The other claims that spinning is useful, not spamming, and good for SEO.

The first school holds their view simply because of their limited definition of spinning. I doubt that not at least one of them have written on the same topic more than once. That they have, regardless of whether they used an existing article as a template or not, they put a new or different twist on the subject and in that sense the article was spun.

Fully Automated Services

One method is to use a spinning service. You submit an article to this service and they generate spun articles which then you can use or not. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, most often, the results are abominable.

Automated Human Assisted

Another method uses software that takes an article and replaces words that you identify with synonyms. This gives much better results than the first method. However, the results are still very often less than acceptable and require significant rewrites and editing to make them worthy of publication.

Human Generated Auto-Assisted

There is a third method that does generate high quality, informative, and unique content. In its strictest sense, this method is one of rewriting an article. The author rewrites the original article on a sentence by sentence or paragraph by paragraph basis. An article with a sufficient number of paragraphs can be rewritten paragraph by paragraph. Human automated assisted tools will yield countless high quality unique articles.

With the magic of randomizing software and the truth of mathematics, thousands of unique articles in the eighty plus percentile of uniqueness can be created. Even the closest of scrutiny would find it difficult to determine the originals.

What is the problem? How are properly rewritten articles spun or not spun, not be valid informative quality articles? Negative responses elude me.

Learn to rewrite your articles with quality content with human generated auto-assisted software.

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Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper

I remember my grandmother reading that book aloud. It has stuck with me all these years. Maybe it’s one that you were fortunate enough to have been exposed to.

That little engine’s chant, “I think I can, I think I can, …” is burned into the psyche of more than one generation along with “I had a dream” and “Ask not what your country can do for you …”

I would ask my Mom or Dad, “Can I do this or can I do that?” I no sooner finished asking the question when they would respond with another question, “I don’t know. Can you?”

Of course, what I meant to ask and should have asked was, “May I do this or that?” I was asking for permission using the wrong word. They knew what I was attempting to express, but they were teaching me a powerful lesson.

They were pointing out that only I knew whether I could. They would allow me or not allow me but, only I could. If you are parent, you may have done that too. They were also teaching me that using some words loosely does not always get the desired result.

So what does this story have to do with article writing? I have read many sales pages and articles and noticed that very often the author uses the word ‘can’ when using the word ‘will’ would do better to get the author’s desired result.

What do you as an article writer want? You want the reader to click through and read another page or read a sales presentation. By using the word ‘can’ instead of ‘will’, you are giving the reader a chance to question whether he or she can do whatever it is that you are you asking him to do.

For example, “You can learn to speak fluent Mandarin.” As opposed to, “You will learn to speak fluent Mandarin.”

In the first, the reader has an out. He has a choice to make. It is easier to see in the negative. He can say, “No, I cannot. I can’t even spell in English, let alone Mandarin. I really can’t do it.” Is it that he can’t or that he won’t (will not)?

In the second example, “You will learn to speak fluent Mandarin.” You are not giving the reader an opportunity to question himself. You are telling him that it is a done deal. You are telling the reader that by taking your course or buying your product, he will have Mandarin.

The choice factor does not exist. It may be a subtle play on words. Nevertheless, it works.

As powerful as the three-letter verb ‘can’ is, it does not match the power of the little verb ‘will’. As I said, it is most powerful in promotional articles, the pre-sell article.

But, it does work in any context. Try it in your article marketing. I think you will find that it changes the sense of your promotional articles and makes them more powerful and more convincing.

Are you just starting your article marketing career? Learn how to write, submit, and market your articles, all under one cover. Writing On The Web: A Newbies Introduction To Article Writing is a road map to start your article writing career.

Learn from my experience. My book will show you the way to beginning your career in internet marketing.

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Article Writers and Truck Drivers

Let’s look at the truck driver first. A truck driver’s first and primary objective is to deliver his load, his merchandise to a certain destination. That’s why he gets paid. That seems pretty obvious. Independent long haul drivers take on any and all kinds of merchandise from one destination to another. On the other hand, truck drivers that work for one company deliver whatever it is that the company sells.

Underlying that main function of delivering a product to a customer, a truck driver’s main responsibility is to know how to drive. You may think, “Well, that’s pretty obvious!” But is it? Think for a moment. Basic and fundamental as it may be, without that knowledge, without that capability, the truck driver wouldn’t have a job.

Most likely, the truck driver first learned to drive as a teenager. He has the basic skills to perform the job of truck driving. He knows the rules of the road, how and when to shift gears, when to brake and when to accelerate. And, he also has to keep abreast of how to use the latest innovations like GPS and short-wave radios to help get to the customer faster.

Oh, and one other thing, the truck driver doesn’t sell anything. His job is to deliver what the customer wants, a new stove, a new cell phone, or a truckload of lumber.

Hopefully, you are beginning to see the parallels between truck driving and article writing. The internet marketing article writer’s primary job is to deliver information to a destination, to his reader.

He also learned his basic skills early on, probably in school. He knows, or should know, where to place a period or a comma, how to spell (well, most of the time), and he too must keep abreast of the latest innovations, like social media and other distribution methods to get to his reader.

How does he get paid? It depends on the type of writing.

A freelance magazine article writer gets paid by the number of words he writes. An internet article writer does not get paid by the number of words he writes nor the subject he writes about. He gets paid, like the truck driver, by delivering what the customer wants.

Article writers are like truck drivers in that they too do not sell anything. So, like a truck driver, an article writer needs to give the customer what the customer wants.

Article writers/marketers must be able to convince their readers that the information given will satisfy the readers’ wants. Make no mistake there is a place for writing sales copy, but that belongs in a sales letter.

It is also true that all article marketing articles contain some selling qualities, but it is more in the form of convincing the reader that the article satisfies what the reader already wants. In other words, the ‘want’ pre-exists in the reader and the article confirms that the desire can be fulfilled now.

You may ask, “Well then, what is an article marketer?” That is a different story and we’ll talk about that some other time. For now, when you write your articles remember the truck driver.

If you are a new article writer and want to get started on the right foot without confusion and with simple straight-forward plain English check out my new training e-book, Writing On The Web.

Photo by Rennett Stowe@Flickr

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Informational articles are just that. They provide information. They are the “quality content” we hear so much about. Filled with facts and figures they give your visitor food for their brains and subtly lead them to your call to action. I use them to populate the bulk of my websites. They give visitors valuable content.

On the other hand, promotional articles emphasize selling, more like sales copy. They are more like copy writing. Although these articles have “quality content” their intent is to satisfy or quell an emotion like fear, lack, or love. The bulk of their words are intended to convince the visitor that no other option exists than to sign on the bottom line. I use these as the index or landing page for my sites.

I was reminded that all that matters is the bottom line. Whether you construct informational articles or promotional copy, at the end of the day only the number of conversions is what counts. Let’s face it, we are article marketers and selling is what we do.

Nevertheless, I still have reservations about populating my blog sites with strictly promotional material. If someone is searching for, say, “tractors on farms” and I have a website with that for a domain name, I would think the searcher most likely wants hard information about tractors on farms and not a sales pitch for the latest John Deere model.

That is not to say that in the course of that article I wouldn’t allude to or link to my John Deere sales page. I would. After all, I am trying to earn a living from my article writing.

If I had a website “TractorsonFarms-dot-com”, and filled it with nothing but articles on how much more fun you could have buying and using my tractor for the summer hayride, or how you could win the annual state-fair tractor race with my tractor, or how much better it is than driving a mule, I guess I would have a very entertaining website and come to think of it I might get some sales from it.

As opposed to a “TractorsonFarms-dot-com” that has lots of info about tractors, specs, how to best use them, maintain them, etc. I can see that those visitors looking for free information would flock to the site and maybe buy or maybe not.

I can see that the verdict may be up in the air. But in the end, it’s the bottom line. I’m beginning to think I might buy from the entertaining site. Hmmmmm.

What’s your opinion?

Click on the links to learn more about the art and science of article writing and copy writing.

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You log in to each directory separately and it seems as if every directory has its own set of formatting rules, anchor text rules, html rules, and resource box rules. It’s a madhouse.

What can you do?

You want to submit to as many different directories as possible. And then, there is the issue of duplicate content. As you well know, some directories will not accept articles that have been submitted or published elsewhere except for your own website or blog.

That issue makes a case for spinning/rewriting your articles. If done correctly your articles will never be labeled as “duplicate content”. Read this article, “Spinning an Article – A Tool to Increase Your Traffic”.

I do not condone article submitters that automatically submit your article to 1000+ directories. In the first place, just what are the directories that are being submitted to? Are these directories just adsense farms? What is their page rank?

Second, I have no knowledge or control over the formatting and content that actually is published. I am too much a perfectionist to allow the slipshod submission of my content to any directory. When submitting to article directories I want control of the content.

Thirdly, it is an insurmountable task to keep up with the changing requirements of each of these directories and I do not trust that one type of formatted submission fits all the different requirements of every directory.

And finally, every directory has a different set of categories to categorize your article. If it’s placed in the wrong category, it will never get read.

It takes manual intervention to properly submit your article to a directory. Anything you can do to automate the process will save you hours of work.

Any program or software that tells you that all you have to do is push a button and presto your article is submitted to hundreds or thousands of directories is misleading you.

If you have ever submitted to multiple directories, you know the effort and time needed to do the task.

Listed below are 25 directory sites with PR2 or better.

articlesbase.com PR6 few ads

buzzle.com PR6

ezineArticles.com PR6

goarticles.com PR6

helium.com PR6

promotionworld.com PR6

isnare.com PR6

articlebiz.com PR5 fewest ads

articlecity.com PR5

articlealley.com PR5 few ads

searchwarp.com PR5

articledashboard.com PR5 few ads

articletrader.com/ PR5 few ads

ideamarketers.com PR5

articleclick.com PR4

articlesfactory.com PR4 few ads

articlesphere.com PR4

articlecompilation.com PR4

articlefeeder.com PR3

amazines.com PR 3

articlerich.com PR3

articlewarehouse.com PR3

free-articles-zone.com PR3

web-source.net PR3 few ads – techie directory

ultimatearticledirectory.com PR2 few ads

Not all directories are created equal. Just because a directory has a PR6 does not mean that your article will bring you traffic or link juice from this directory. The home page of that directory may have a PR of 6 but the articles within it are most often ranked with a PR of “n/a” or “0″.

Directories generate revenue by selling ads on their sites, some more than others, or by charging a subscription for publication in their directories.

You must realize that some of these directories are adsense farms and are more concerned with their bottom line than with promoting your article. I personally no longer submit to ezinearticles because they are an adsense farm.

You will notice that I have noted those directories with few ads. Of those articlebiz.com has the fewest ads surrounding articles in their directory. The directory with the most ads is ezinearticles.

There is another alternative. That is a paid subscription to a directory. It is a good investment in that you pay them a fee and they publish your article and in some cases they promote your article.

Publishing and promoting your articles with only SEO is no longer the ideal in article marketing. You must promote through social marketing to achieve success.

Article Productions provides the tools to accomplish success in article marketing. Read my review of Article Productions at http://NewbieAffiliatesDirectory.com. I have used AP for over a year with excellent and outstanding results.

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Consider this. Google does not “index” all of the results for any given keyword. Google is aware of the listings but chooses not to list them. In that sense they are not “indexed”. Don’t discard that keyword yet. It may be easier to rank than you think.

Let’s look at an example. Using the keyword “vegetable container gardening” without quotes, search for vegetable container gardening. The Google search returns 338,000 results. So if you do a search for “vegetable container gardening” (in quotes), as of this writing, Google returns 44,000 results. That is a ratio of about 8:1. It is a formidable amount of competition. It would appear that we should consider discarding this keyword.

Before we discard our keyword, let’s look a little closer. Scroll down to the bottom of the Google search page for the keyword you chose in double quotes and you will notice that you can look at the first ten pages of Google’s results. Click on the tenth page and you can see another nine pages of Google results. Keep clicking on the last page and eventually you will reach page 66 of Google results.

Now this is where it gets very interesting. Just above the Goooooooogle icon there is this curious message:

“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 656 already displayed.”

What it’s telling you is that only 656 of the most relevant sites are displayed and for all practical purposes your true competition is 656. That is a ratio of about 515:1. That is a big difference from 8:1! It is a significant reduction in your competition. All those other returns are still in the Google database. Google just doesn’t bother to list them because Google doesn’t think they are relevant.

That could mean that the results are articles that are written by the same author posted on different sites or article directories. It could mean that the keywords are only casually mentioned on some site and do not relay any relevant information. Or, who knows what criteria Google is using to decide that the results are not relevant. The point is you do not have to compete against those other 43,344 listings.

That is not to say that you will necessarily have an easy time of ranking for that keyword, but it may be a lot easier than you think. You still have to back link to your keyword by publishing your article, promoting your website, and bookmarking in social networks. Test it out. I think you may be surprised with your results.

If you want to dominate your competition and rank your keywords, get serious with the Dominator at Article Productions.

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No magic bullet exists that will create readable coherent articles from any one article by using automated spinners. Have you experimented with automated spinners? Then you know that article spinning is for the most part a useless endeavor. Or, the system is so complicated and hard to implement that you give up using it.

What if you could create unique quality content, simply and easily? Would that interest you? It did me. Well you can.

New technology can now let you create 10-20 or more unique readable articles quickly. With this rewriting tool, you will increase your output tenfold with less than half the effort.

Many think that rewriting an article is some kind of cheating. It is not. If you are an article marketer, you know that the number of articles you publish is critical to your success. Although the words spinning and rewriting are used interchangeably, some say that rewriting is the same as spinning an article that is not correct.

Spinning an article is the random substitution of words, usually synonyms, in an article. The result is sometimes readable but often it is not. It can also be the mixing of different paragraphs or sentences from different articles to create a “unique” article.

Many writers fail to understand that you must create at least two additional versions of the entire article before you can successfully create multiple spun articles. They think that changing a word here or there or an occasional sentence will do the trick. Not so! You will not get the recommended 70% uniqueness for the spun articles.

You know, as I do, that there are free article spinners on the internet. There is old adage, “You get what you pay for.” I believe that is true.

Develop a simple system. With the original article as a template, start rewriting paragraph by paragraph. You will be surprised how quickly you can think of alternative wording for your original article.

Create two additional versions for each paragraph. This will insure a good number of quality unique spun articles. The number of spun articles generated is dependent on the number of paragraphs in the article and the number of versions you create.

For instance, if you have only two versions of an article with five paragraphs, you will have 32 spun articles. If you have three versions of an article with five paragraphs, you will have 243 spun articles. The number of spun articles increases exponentially. Not all the articles will be 70% or better in uniqueness, but many will.

Wouldn’t that kind of productivity increase your traffic? Of course, it would. What could you do with those unique articles?  You could post them on blogs, forums, and directories. You could create PDF files, newsletters, and e-books.

Think of a reader stumbling on one of your articles on the web, clicking through to your blog or site and finding the very same article – not good. Having a unique article or post will decrease your bounce rate.

If you are a serious article marketer, you know the value of writing many articles to get traffic. With a rewriting tool like Rapid Rewriter, you can easily create many unique readable articles in minutes as opposed to hours.

Spinning an article is easy with the right tool.

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The owner of the site, Article Productions, has issued a challenge (Laurence’ Challenge – It’s A Blank Slate) to one of our members, a copywriter. It’s a contest of sorts.

Visit the site. Browse around the Article Production’s forum. It’s free. I think you will find it informative and interesting.

Admin

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I experienced a family illness that brought everything in my world to a halt. My writing stopped. I became the chief bottle washer, cook, laundry man, gardener, chauffeur, and general all around doer. You get the picture. This is not a sob story. I just want to set the scene. Thankfully, all is now better and on the mend. I decided to peek at my accounts. I had not looked at my accounts during that five-month period.

Money! There was money in those accounts. I’m not saying how much. It’s not relevant. If I quote a large number, you will think I am lying or boasting. If I quote a small number, you may wonder if it’s worth it. The point is: I was making money while I virtually slept.

When you write an article and post it with an ezine publisher or on your blog, it is there for as long as the internet is up and running. Of course, you can’t just write gibberish and expect sales. If you learn the fundamentals and are persistent, you will generate sales.

You may question my advice on persistence, since I haven’t written anything over the past five months.  The persistence I am speaking of is that of not giving up. Write! Write! And, write some more.

Here are four things that need your attention: keywords, content, education, and traffic.

Keywords

As you probably already know, keywords target your customers and optimize search engine queries. Two things that are necessary for the exposure of your article and consequently your sales. You need people to come your sales page. You need traffic.

Content

Your articles must contribute value. They must provide your reader with good and useful information. Without good content, your reader will give up and not read the entire article and follow through to your sales page. You need traffic.

Education

Educate yourself. Learn from your mistakes. If you submit an article and it is rejected, find out what was wrong with the article and correct it. Learn basic grammar. Take a course in article writing. Join forums and ask questions.

Article writing can be very profitable. Although, there is much more to address in learning the skills of article writing, the three suggestions I have outlined will get you started on the right foot. I promise that if you are persistent and continue to learn, you cannot help but make money writing articles. I am.

Traffic

Doing the first three things, will drive traffic to your site or blog and generate sales. Imagine a small town. As the town promotes growth adding souvenir shops, grocery stores, boutiques, taverns, services, etc. the town’s traffic grows accordingly. The same applies to your articles. As you increase the variety and content of your articles and as your skill and reputation grows so will traffic to your blog or website. Ultimately, your sales will grow.

If you are serious about making money writing articles and you want to learn how to write them in a way that moves readers to want to click on your promotion, I suggest you read my review of Persuasive Article Writing Secrets, P.A.W.S.. It will improve your sales tenfold.

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Expanding into other areas will help grow your business as a much faster pace and allow you to reach your goals. This does not mean that you should stop using the methods you are currently using but to expand onto using some other ones.

If you are scared of spending far to much time on learning another method, don’t be. This is a normal part of business and learning new skills will always help you grow your business easier. The more you grow your business the faster your goals are reached and the faster you can enjoy security for your family.

Set yourself up a plan to spend a few hours a day or a few hours a week, depending upon your schedule. This plan should consist of you spending that time learning a new skill, you can learn new skills one at a time. There is no need to rush into trying to learn everything at once.

Take your time and spend your allotted hours on learning as much as you can about a new skill. Then take that new skill and apply it to your business until it produces the results you are looking for. Once you have skill mastered then you can move onto another one.

Read More…Use Different Marketing Strategies with your Strategy Development

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