Promoting Your Online Writing

Promoting your online writing is important. Whether you are writing articles, posts, or blogs you need traffic and with all the pages on the Internet traffic is something you have to seek to be really good at getting it. Many people understand this concept, but have no idea how to properly promote their work. Some just skip it all together, others spam all over the net hoping for favorable views and lots of traffic. Neither of these approaches are good for business. But that doesn’t mean you have to be in the dark any longer.

Write Quality Pieces.
The best place to start promoting your work is in your articles themselves. If your articles lack content, organization, usefulness, and or interest then there will be no reason others would want to read them. On the other hand, if you have quality articles and people do want to read them they will also help you promote them. This can give you natural exposure. They will link to them, share them, and some will even bookmark them. All of these things are helpful to you.

*A note about SEO. SEO has become all the rage. It is known as search engine optimization. On one hand this helps get your articles picked up by search engines, on the other hand if you get carried away then your article is difficult to be read by humans (which is a bad thing). If you are into working with SEO then you can learn a lot from a wide range of sites online, but don’t forget that a quality article is about more then just the search engine optimization and will need to be something that is easily read by online readers.

Choose your writing location.
Where you write is going to have a huge amount to do with the amount of traffic you get. If you write on a site that has little traffic and a poor way of drawing their visitors to your materials you will find that you get little traffic from the site and to your pages. On the other hand, if you write for a site that has a good amount of traffic and makes it easy for readers to find your materials you will see that you get a lot of traffic. Your blog can work in a similar way. If you choose to write on a blog domain rather then buying your own you can get traffic from that, as long as it is a site that has good traffic.

Here are some sites that I have done well with:

HowToDoThings.com
Hubpages
Associated Content
Helium

Of course there are also sites with a lower amount of natural traffic which means you have to work harder to make money with them.

Triond
Xomba
Squidoo

This doesn’t mean that the lower traffic sites aren’t worth working for. But it should be kept in mind that higher traffic sites will help you make money and promote your work where lower traffic sites are going to require more work on your part.

These are things you can do when writing your work. However, once your work is out there you have lots of options for promoting it. Here are several things you can do to help you make money from your writing.

Talk About It. Most of us have a large circle of friends and family that would love to know what we have been up to. They would love to read our writing, learn what we are doing, and some would even like to feel like they are helping us out. This makes talking about your work a great way to get readers. Some will read a few of your items, some will come back again and again, just for you. If you are a very busy person with a lot going on then set up a website as a sort of "what I am up to" type of hub. Include general information about the sites you write for, include the types of things you write about, and lots and lots of links to articles, profiles, blogs, and other items of interest. Make sure that you never ask for or suggest that people click links in your articles, at your sites, or other such things. This can get you banned with Google as well as other sites that will show the clicks as fraudulent according to algorithms that look for patterns in how and where clicks come from.
Use your resources. Most people have a huge range of resources available as place that they can draw in readers. Some don’t even realize their potential! You can add links to the bottom of your e-mails. If you set it up as part of your signature then it will be automatic and will send it out each time you compose an e-mail. This is a good non-obtrusive way to advertise. Other options include adding links to your websites and blogs (if you own any), all of your profiles (even places like mySpace, Facebook, MyLot, as well as your writing sites and such), about me pages (where ever you may have them), and even at the bottom of a post on your blog (aim for articles related to the topic and you are even better off). You can also trade links on your friends and family’s sites.
Bookmark. The big problem with promoting your work is the fine line between good promotion and spamming a site. Most of the best bookmarking sites don’t want you to promote just your work with them. They have spamming rules, but they aren’t well defined. A good rule of thumb it to promote one of your articles for one of someone else’s. Both articles should be of good quality and give readers something that is worth reading.
Articles. You can link relevant articles together. Make sure that they really are helpful links and include them whenever you write on a topic with more then one article in the topic. An example of this would be adding my article Writing Your Way to An Income Online which is here at Informative Post. It isn’t this topic exactly, but those reading this article may be interested in that very similar topic as well.
Links. Linking is where a lot of people start spamming. Knowing the difference between spam and linking is usually based on which side of the coin you are on. You can place links in a variety of places including forums, message boards, and blogs. However, spamming any place is a bad idea. Here are a few tips to determine if a link is spam or a good link.

*What are the rules of the site? Always check the rules of a site or the terms of service before even trying to post links. Some places are against them altogether, others have rules as to when and how you use them.

*Never post a link just for the link. Always make it part of the conversation and make sure that it is relevant for the conversation. Adding a link such as Easy to Make Dog Pregnancy Calenders to a discussion on Making Money or a message board about Books a bad idea. But if the discussion is asking questions about what to expect in their dogs pregnancy the article link would be a good one.

*Always include a relevant comment. Never leave just a link to your article. You want people to feel like you are a part of the discussion and that you have something worth while to say. You also want them to feel comfortable with your link. For the dog pregnancy one you could leave a link on a few of the exciting parts of the pregnancy and then say something like you can find more information here and then leave the link.
*Never leave more then one link per comment. Don’t get carried away, it only frustrates readers and is likely to make it so that no one reads any of them.

*Never start a discussion with a bit of information and then something like "read my article" and then the link. This turns people off and you are likely to get in trouble. Instead save your article for another day and start discussions for the joy of starting discussions.

*If it annoys you how people do it, then it annoys other people as well. Choose where and when you leave links carefully.

Knowing when and how to promote your articles isn’t always easy to do. Often times it takes a little trial and error when you find the time to work on it. Some opportunities pop out at you such as finding the perfect blog or finding a great discussion which fits your article perfectly. These are great times to get out there and get your feet wet. Don’t make promotion the most important part of your writing business, after all writing good articles is much more important. But promoting can help increase your traffic and your money.

By: Aiden of the Tower
Published: 09/17/08

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6 Posted Comments:

Educational

@ 12:02 pm 09/18/08 by Jannie Borg Larsen

That was a very educational article about article-promotion! Nicely written.

I noticed that you mentioned your favorite high traffic sites and that was useful information for everyone that would like to do some successful "bum"-marketing, aka free marketing.

Also, your etiquette advice for promoting in forums was insightful and showed that you really had thought this subject through thoroughly.

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@ 4:36 pm 09/18/08 by agihcam

You did a great article, this is a great tips. I was inspired with the linkages contents you have said. You have a big points on this. Many people, does provide as many links as possible on their article to get traffic to their sites.Truly, this caused readers to get annoyed especially if the links is irrelevant on the article.Good job.

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@ 6:50 am 09/19/08 by Online Promo Noob

Excellent article, very well written and informative. I will have to try Associated Content and the other sites and see how they work for me. I also agree with your bookmark strategy, very solid.

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@ 9:31 pm 09/20/08 by yourstrulyisabel

Good tips. Very informative. I am just a new blogger and you're right traffic is the most important factor to help us earn online. I could use these tips in your article and hope that it will help me to have a many visitors in my website.

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@ 7:36 pm 09/27/08 by Ette_Rual

great advice. i too have been doing a few of your tips though i have yet to feel the same. this only proves that patience is really a virtue.

high traffic is my ultimate online goal, but i think i have to 'invest' for it to be reached.

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@ 10:01 am 11/13/08 by Topper

You briefly hit on quality pieces. I think you could have gone into more depth there. In order to write a high quality article it has to not only be something of interest it has to be well written. It has to be gramatically correct. People need to put more initial though and work into articles. Once you proof read your article and make sure there are no errors then you worry about promoting. Why put out trash? There is enoug trash online already.....other than my two cents worth - good article.

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