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.

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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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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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Some claim that beginning an article by selecting the title first is best.  The title should grab your potential reader and customer. Advocates of starting an article by thinking of a title first, argue that unless you have a good title in mind, the body of the text will not flow naturally.

They believe that your focus will ramble and so will the body of the article. They argue that your content will skip from topic to topic without a logical flow. Consequently, your readers will loose interest and leave.

The title must be SEO sensitive and therefore keywords and keyword phrases are the first thing one should focus on.  Search for keywords and phrases that a customer will likely type in a search. Only after you have found good keywords, do you formulate the title. After that you can create the content and populate the content with keywords and phrases.

Others suggest that you create content first. They argue that you can be walking down a park lane and see a worm.  Out of the blue or maybe out of the dirt, you get this crazy idea about the possibility of selling something to do with worm farming.

Learn the craft of Article Writing CLICK HERE.

Ideas come from everywhere and anywhere. If you carry a notebook, you jot down some ideas. If you don’t carry a notebook, you promise yourself that you will remember the great ideas that came to you.

You rush to your computer and the words come pouring out. Now you have several hundred words of wonderful sales worthy content. You find key words and a product that fits your content.

Still, you have no title. After you have the content and said all that you have to say, you select the title again based on keywords or long tailed keywords.

Which method is better? Does it matter?  No.  So long as you ultimately submit an article with good content and SEO optimized, you have done the work.

I prefer to concentrate on the content first, and then I select an appropriate keyword title. My logic is that I choose a topic I want to promote, do the research (dig in the dirt, so to speak) and while fresh in my brain, I write the content.

I then do keyword research and modify my content to accommodate the keywords. Only then do I give my article a title. Others do it differently.

No one way is the right way. What matters is that you complete the task of article writing. Whatever way works for you.

Just do it!

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Yet, there are subtle pitfalls that new and seasoned website content writers and blog writers overlook. This article identifies four pitfalls to avoid when writing good quality content.

As an article writer you cannot just write whatever you want. As an article  writer, you must be aware of what the reader wants to read when they go over the article.

If they see things that they find to be inappropriately placed in the article, they will most likely scrap it and move on to find another that better fits their expectations.
Avoid these four simple oversights when writing your website or blog content:

*Poor Research

Make sure that any fact you publish can be verified. You have promised your reader that you have the information he is searching for. Don’t let him down. Do your due diligence. Research your material.

*Poor Outline

Do you want your reader to feel lost? If your article jumps from one topic or idea to another, your reader will soon tire and go elsewhere. His brain will go on overload trying to make sense of an incoherent article. I’m sure you would not want that.

Learn  how to become an expert article writer Click Here!

*Poorly Constructed Sentences

One of the basic skills of a writer is, of course, sentence construction. This means that a writer must know how to create sentences, spell words and observe parallelism.

Sentence parallelism refers to mixing word forms and phrase types that confuse the reader. Here is an example of a lack of parallelism, ‘Dave loves to ski, to bowl, and hunting.” As opposed to, ‘Dave loves to ski, to bowl, and to hunt.’

Sentence construction is important, as it is the main tool in getting the message across to the readers. If in the first few sentences, the structure is already difficult to understand, the reader will find no use in reading the entire article.

*Using $10 Words

It is in our nature to want to impress others, but using big words in an article only intimidates and alienates your reader. Samuel Johnson, British author and critic, said, “Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.”

Besides that, do you want the reader to move away from your article to pick up a dictionary? I doubt he will do that. More likely, he will leave and read a different article.

There are many other things that a reader would not want to see in an article. Try avoiding the problems listed in this article and increase your readership.

If you want to learn how to best get your articles written and how to get more readers, visit this sales page. It is by far the best article writing coaching course on the market.

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Do you have the copywriting skills necessary to convert your articles into sales? You can learn to write better articles with just a few copywriting skills. This article suggests learning the skill of copywriting to skyrocket your sales.

Here are three tips you can use to get you started.

Emotional Words

Use emotional words. Use words that excite like ‘fascinating’ and ‘electrifying’, words that fire images of romance like ‘passionate’ and ‘magical’,  and words that paint visions of pleasure like ‘ecstasy’ and ‘gratifying’. These are just a few of the categories that will motivate your reader to continue reading. I am sure you can think of other types of words that will create images in your reader.

Leading Questions

Ask leading questions. Ask the reader a question and answer it for him. “Do you want to make money, now? Of course, you do.” That is an example of a question and answer. Raising a question prepares the reader for a response. By answering it immediately, you have given him a response confirming what he already knows. It directs him to your logical conclusion, which is to buy your product.

Alluring Titles

Write an alluring title. You have just a few seconds to capture a reader’s attention. You can have the greatest content and the best copywriting techniques at your disposal, but without a captivating title your article will go unread. Use those emotional words mentioned in the first tip. If you can combine emotional words with your keywords, not only will your reader want to read your article, but the search engines will tag your article and you will get even more readers.

Gain the skills you need and learn more here.

This short article is not at all exhaustive of the techniques and tips used in copywriting. If you are serious about making money with article writing, Don’t delay in learning the art and skill of copywriting. Learning this skill will dramatically increase your sales.

These three tips alone can improve your sales, but there are many more.

If you are serious about improving your writing skills, and I expect you are, because are reading this, I suggest you owe it to yourself to use a training and coaching course on copywriting and begin your copywriting journey.

Learn how to use copywriting in your articles, gain the knowledge you need to quickly increase your sales,click here.

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Here are three MS Word tools to improve your articles.

1. Check your spelling – This seems obvious. Still many do not use their spell checker. If you use a plain text editor to create your articles, you can easily overlook even the most common of spellings.

Simply copy your text from the plain text editor, like notepad or word pad, and copy it to your word processor and do a spell check. You will be surprised at the misspelled words you may have overlooked.

2. Write at a fifth to seventh grade level. – Use the MS Word Spelling and Grammar checker found under the Review Tab at the top of the MS Word page to determine the age level that you are writing for. After selecting the spell checker and completing the spell check, it will ask you if you want to continue checking the rest of the document.

Respond with yes and a box will pop up called Readability Statistics. At the very bottom of the box is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score. You want that score to be between fifth and seventh grade level. Most of your readers will read at that level. If it is a higher grade level, edit with simpler words.

3. Passive sentences – That same box will also give you the number of passive sentences in your article. You want to keep this at a minimum. You should keep passive sentences to no more than two or three for every five-hundred words. There is nothing wrong with passive sentences and there is no hard fast rule to the number of passive sentences you should use. But, you do want to make your sentences action oriented to help the reader move easily throughout the body of your article.

Learn more about copywriting here.

We have looked at three tips that you can use to improve the quality of your articles and ultimately salability of your articles. Keep in mind that content is king and no tools can create unique quality content like you can.

Quality content and good copywriting skills are necessarily a must. Let MS Word do some of the work for you. Use the three tips and your quality will improve.

Are you writing good content and still not getting the traffic you need to make sales? The solution is in copywriting. Add copywriting  skills to your quiver of techniques and your sales can go nowhere but up.

If you are serious about improving your article writing and maximizing your sales learn the art and skill of copywriting.

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Besides being sometimes preferable, passive voice can also be profitable. Here are three reasons for choosing passive over active voice.

• Variety
• Emphasis
• Keywords

Variety

Active should be the predominant verb voice that you use throughout your article. It does help the reader understand what you are trying to say. It forces sentences to be more concise.

However, an article that uses active voice exclusively can be too staccato and sound like a monotonous drumbeat. Inserting an occasional passive voice sentence in your article writing will add some variety. In fact, in some situations, you may not have a choice or it would be awkward to use active voice.

Example (passive): “It is written, ‘Thou shall not use passive voice’.” I do not know if anyone has ever written that statement or not.

To change it to active would be awkward. “God, Shakespeare, somebody wrote, ‘Thou shall not use passive voice’.” The passive sentence has a certain mystique or quality that the active one does not have.

Emphasis

Another opportunity to use passive for emphasis is this example. Suppose you are writing an article on reasons why active is the preferred voice to use. One reason could be:

Example (passive): “Visuals are created in the reader’s mind by active voice.” Here the emphasis is on the reason, visuals. To change it to active: “Active voice creates visuals in the reader’s mind.” It is your choice.

Keywords

Here is where using passive is most profitable. As you know, emphasizing keywords in your article writing is critical to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As in the previous example, in the passive voice, you can bring those keywords to the forefront in your titles and in your opening paragraphs to capture the reader’s attention.

Example: Let us suppose that your keyword is “apple jelly”. In a title (passive): “Apple jelly is made from good apples.” To change it to active: “Good apples make good apple jelly.” But your keyword, “apple jelly”, may not be read because it is not at the forefront.

Do not abandon passive voice just because your teacher or some computer program tells you it is not the voice of choice. In some cases, it may be the voice of choice.

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