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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To spin or not to spin, that is the question. I am relatively new to internet marketing. I chose article marketing as my method of marketing because I like to write. That sounds logical enough.

In the course of writing my articles, I soon discovered two things. One, I am too particular about my writing. I edit and re-edit and re-edit. I know that there are article marketers that whip out ten, twenty, or more articles everyday.  To this day, I am not sure how they do it. I can see slaving over maybe ten articles per day.  But, more than that everyday?

I mean quality content articles, articles that provide information, that say something. Now I am not knocking those that can pump out twenty or more articles of good content. But, just how many of those authors are out there.

I mean really writing solid articles with usable information. Take this article, so far I haven’t said much. I have spouted about my disbelief. Have I truly relayed to you any useful information? No, I didn’t think so. I have almost written 200 words and have yet to give you, the reader, useful information. Maybe, this how and what those authors write to get such volume.

The second thing I discovered is that although content is king, volume is his kingdom. Content without volume is like a king without subjects. Without a kingdom, there are no revenues and the king goes broke.  The kingdom (volume) provides subjects (traffic, readers) which in turn provide revenue.

I concluded that there are at least four ways to increase your writing;

1. Write more.
2. Hire writers to write for you.
3. Buy Private Label Right (PLR) articles and rewrite them or attempt to publish them as is.
4. Spin your original articles.

I have already dismissed the first one for reasons I stated earlier. I am slow. The second way is too costly for me now and I fear that I would be overly critical and end up rewriting them any way. The third method I reject for the same reasons as the second. I would end up rewriting the article.

Besides, what I have seen of PLRs, the best they can do is give you ideas for articles. We are left with spinning your article. That authors spin their articles always had me wondering. Why not just write another article? Surfing the forums you hear horror stories about automatically spun articles that put out un-intelligible garbage.

Why take the time and money to input an article into a spinner only to have it come out reading like alphabet soup? And, besides all that, you are cautioned to make sure that the spun article does not exceed 30% duplicate content. Doesn’t that sound like a complete re-write? I have never been an advocate of spinning articles. It seemed to me that I would just be rehashing the same stuff over and over again.

Many article directories will accept previously published articles. Some do not. Submitting previously published articles is like a writing a syndicated column for newspapers. The same article appears in many different newspapers. Why not do the same with an article marketers article?

There is a difference. One day I was re-reading one of my articles that I came across while surfing the internet. I clicked on the link at the bottom just to make sure the link was working properly. The link worked all right, but it went to one of my blogs. Can you guess what the first post on that page was?

Yep, I had just read the same article. I found that to be annoying and, well, poor taste. I think a reader would quickly bounce off the page and go elsewhere. So, I decided to re-write the article, but I remembered that the same article was appearing in many other directories. I would have to write many different versions of that same article to give the reader some uniqueness and still convey the original message.

It was then that I became a convert to article spinning. A word of caution, most article spinners are not worth the price, free or otherwise. Be very careful, only select a spinner that allows you full control of the output and then check each spun article for uniqueness.

There is only one Article Spinner that I know of that delivers what it promises and it’s cheap! Click on that link and find out why!

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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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What comes first, article or marketing? Yes, you are right. It is the word article. It is not only because it the first word in the title, “Article Marketing”. There is an even greater reason that it comes first. Let me explain.

Article marketing is the marriage of writing and marketing. There seems to be some confusion among many writers and marketers about this tool. Marketing takes many forms. As you know, it is advertising. You can advertise in different media like video, audio, or writing. You can do it on TV, on the radio, newspapers, and you can do it on the internet.

Advertising usually requires a written script. You know that its primary purpose is to convince you to buy a product or an idea. You know it when you watch a TV commercial or read a billboard. That is what you are expecting. Copywriting is the art of writing advertising copy. It is a highly paid profession. It takes great insight and skill to persuade people using words.

Articles, on the other hand, are for the most part informational. Yes, I know they sell something as well. They educate, inform, and even may attempt to convince you of the attributes of a given subject. In that sense, they too are advertising.

The difference lies in what the reader of an article is expecting to read. Imagine reading this in an article about prostate cancer: “BEWARE! CANCER KILLS! You must see your doctor annually and check it out. Take XYZ pills and relieve your future suffering NOW!” That isn’t the best of copywriting, but then I am not very good at it. I think you get the point.

As a reader of an article, wouldn’t you expect something more like: “Medical studies have undeniably shown that cancer kills. Physicians advise and recommend that men over 40 have an annual check up. XYZ pills may provide some relief, but first check with your doctor.”

I am sure that you see the difference. The first piece obviously and blatantly is selling you XYZ pills. The second piece is also selling XYZ pills, but it at least gave you one piece of information, men over 40 should have an annual check up. You are reading an article, not watching TV.

Article marketing is unique to the Internet. It is a method used to inform and to sell (advertise). As an article marketer, consider the readers expectations and that is an expectation of information. The buzzword is “content”. Provide the reader with content. Copywriting has its place even in article writing, but content reigns supreme.

Article writing is not copywriting. Its main purpose is to inform; its secondary purpose is to sell. That is why the word “article” is first and the word “marketing” is second in Article Marketing.

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What is it that holds us back? Fear? I think fear of the unknown is what holds most of us back.

We are afraid that our website will not compare well against the thousands if not millions of websites and web pages floating in cyberspace.  Well.  Get over it!

We fear that our writing will be criticized by our readers.  So what!   Are you afraid of some unnamed critic without a face?  Your high school teacher is not watching!

Newbies, unite!  Why do so many newbies fail?  There are many reasons.  You get discouraged because you don’t make a sale in the first few weeks.  You hear all the gurus telling you that you can or will make thousands of dollars, maybe hundreds of thousands, within days of using their secret formula.  Most of those gurus have been at this for ten or more years. How long have you been at it?

Do you remember your first car? Unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, it was probably a clunker.  Were you proud of it?  Did you take your girlfriend or boyfriend for ride? Did that old clunker get you from here to there?  Were you afraid of what others would say about it?  No. You were on the road. You had freedom. You were moving.

When did you upgrade to a newer hotter car?  Probably after, you started making some money.  What is the difference between your old clunker of a car and your clunker website?  None.  You have to start somewhere.  The point is YOU have to start.

We fear that our readers will criticize our writing.  Are you afraid someone is going to send you an “F” for poor composition or grammar?  I do not mean to say that you should throw grammar or composition to the wind.  I am saying that you can express yourself much more freely than when you were in school.  Besides, that is what editors are for.  (Note the “for” at the end of that last sentence.  I think it is called a dangling preposition.  I would get an “F” for that.)

I just received an email a few minutes ago from a fellow internet marketer, David Saeger  (The Home Biz Guy) on the same subject!

Here is what he said, “Ready, FIRE, then aim … This is the operating philosophy you MUST adopt to succeed with a home based business. That’s backwards for most people who like to aim before they fire.”

In Internet marketing, that is a good philosophy.  You have to start.  You have to move.  The Internet changes daily.  What you learn today, what works today, may not work tomorrow.

Most businesses struggle their first year before they see a profit not to mention the initial monetary investment to start the business.  In internet marketing, you don’t have that concern.

Give it a year.  If after that time, you still are not making money maybe you should reconsider.  However, that assumes that you have really done something other than study and read about it.

Take action! Just do it!

I have been there. If you are just starting out, you need something that gives you a step-by-step map from someone who hasn’t forgotten the frustrations of trying to get started. Get my book, Writing On The Web and get started on the right foot!

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