OK. So let’s move on to the those other two ways you can get yourself some KILLER articles.

Paying Someone Else To Write Your Articles For You.

Here are some tips on how to get articles that are good and effective written for you.

1. Strictly specify how many words you want in the article. 200-500 words is best. Remember, that if you specify 200-500, odds are the articles will end up a LOT closer to the 200 word mark than the 500 word mark! It may be a good idea to specify 300-500 words in order to get a 300 word article.

2. Strictly specify the keyword density of the article.  Keyword density is simply the number of times your keyword phrase is used in the article DIVIDED BY the total number of words in the article. Therefore, if you have a 300 word article and your keyword phrase is used 10 times in it, your keyword density would be 3.33%.  10 DIVIDED BY 300.

2A. You want your keyword density to be between 2% and 4%.  If you get much above 4%, the search engines will think you’re just trying to SPAM the article and penalize it.  If you get much below 2%, the search engines won’t think it’s very relevant and tend to ignore it. You also MUST be sure that the keyword phrase is used in a natural way in each and every instance.  You can check this by reading them out loud to yourself.

You’re doing this because you want to use the article to lead the reader into another action…going to your website…clicking on an affiliate link…reading a review…watching a video.  All of these are actions that can make you money.  If the article sounds REALLY bad and SPAMMY, chances are the reader won’t do anything but click away!

3. Specify How Much You’re Willing To Pay.  This is just common sense. Tell them right up front how much of a budget you have for this project so you can save yourself…and the freelancer…some time and effort.

4. Specify How Quickly You Want The Articles and How/When You’ll Pay.  Quicker = higher cost!  Also, you need to let the freelancer know how you’ll pay them…PayPal, etc…and when you’ll pay them.  You’re smart to ask for a sample article before you agree to do business.  Then, if every thing looks good, you can agree to pay ½ upon agreement and ½ when the job is done.

You can count on paying between $5 and $10 per article.  Since you’ll need 30 articles, you may want to write some of them yourself and have others written for you or just bite the bullet and dip into that building fund we established in the 2nd post.

If you watch what you’re doing and use some common sense, having others write your articles is quicker, but costs more.  Trading money for time!

Use A Program To Write Your Articles.

The first one is called Instant Article Wizard Pro.  It’s fairly unique in that you merely type in your keyword phrase and it goes off into a database of articles and, in about 15 seconds, you have an article to preview and edit.  Then, when you have it sounding like you want, you merely copy and paste and move on to the next article.

The resulting articles may take 5-10 minutes to edit, but they read extremely well and carry a good keyword density ratio.

PLUS…if you check the article you just made with CopyScape, it’ll pass with flying colors!

If, like many, you have difficulty with editing the article once you put it together, Word-Flood is another great program that you can use to make this a drop-dead simple process. The best part about Word-Flood is that they are offering a 14-day free trial so you can try out the software for 2 whole weeks before deciding if you like it or not. I’m convinced that you will!

Those are the 3 ways to get articles for the critical part of your marketing efforts.

Obviously, the absolute best is to write them all yourself.  But, at least now you have some alternative methods that will still work for you and your sites.

NOW…let’s see what you’ll need to do with those articles.

First of all, you have to remember what you’re trying to accomplish with the articles so you fully grasp the whole process.

You’ll be posting 10 of your 30 articles to the BIG FOUR article directories.  That’s where site owners come to get fresh content for their sites if they don’t want to use original content. You have to remember that a TON of site owners believe that MORE IS BETTER instead of going for quality original content like you’re learning to do. Just check where their sites are listed in the search results and you’ll be GLAD you’re learning to do it the right way!

The article directories I HIGHLY recommend are:

1. http://www.ezinearticles.com/
2. http://www.goarticles.com/
3. http://www.articledashboard.com/
4. http://www.searchwarp.com/

Sure, there are 100s maybe 1000s of others but the 4 sites listed above will get you the most traffic.

If you would like to submit to more than just the 4 mentioned above, here is a resource that gives you the top 50 article sites sorted by Alexa rating and it also shows Google pagerank. This list is usually updated on a monthly basis:

http://www.vretoolbar.com/articles/directories.php

Each one of your articles will have a RESOURCES or BIO Box down at the bottom. You’ll need to put that into each article by the way.  It’ll read something like:

“This article was written by YOUR NAME, an up and coming expert in candle holders. Did you find these tips on cleaning your candle holders useful? You can find out a lot more about candle holders by going to http://www.candleholderinfo.com where you can also get a FREE book on cleaning candle holders.”

NOW…if you’ve written a good article, the people who just read that article stand a pretty good chance of clicking on that link and showing up at your site.

REMEMBER…there very well may be 100s of sites that have your article available to THEIR viewers…AND, maybe, sending them to YOUR site!  See how that works? It draws traffic to your site.

When they get to your site, the new visitors will see more articles on candle holders…a review of a certain type of candle holder (that you just HAPPEN to have an affiliate link for), some tips and tricks…the whole suite of information you just wrote (or had written for you).

YOU CAN GET AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC FROM ARTICLE DIRECTORIES…BUT THAT’S JUST A PIECE OF THE STRATEGY!

DON’T POST YOUR ARTICLES TO ANY OF THE ARTICLE DIRECTORIES JUST YET…WE’LL GET TO THAT IN A LITTLE WHILE!

Looks look at the next piece.

Most people stop after they’ve submitted their new articles to the directories…that’s just leaving money on the table!

YOU’RE going to go one BIG step further in order to drive even MORE traffic to your site.

You’ll be posting 10 of your original 30 articles to your blog as well.  Don’t worry, we’ll get to the blog in a post or two!

Several people have taken a close look at how the search engines rank a site and figured out that good keyword research and good ORIGINAL content are the keys to getting a good ranking quickly.

Well, here’s the next step.

Search engines…especially Google…LOVE blogs. By their very nature, blogs supply ORIGINAL CONTENT as people post to them.  It’s that simple!

Additionally, since Google owns Blogger, it REALLY loves a Blogger blog! So, you’ll post 10 more of your articles on your Blogger blog…along with that critical RESOURCE box leading back to your main site.

You’ve just added a whole new lane of traffic that goes right to your main site.  THAT’S POWERFUL!

So…your articles look like this if you put them in graphical form.

See how that works for you?  You have TWO streams of traffic PLUS the traffic your site naturally gets because of the original content you have on it.

Suddenly, you’ve given searchers THREE WAYS to find your site rather than just one.

So, by now, you’ve laid out all the traffic signs that say, “COME VISIT MY SITE!” and laid them out in a very intelligent way that will ACTUALLY attract people there.

You’ve done MUCH more than the average person who throws up a site and then wonders why they aren’t getting any traffic.

You KNOW you’re gonna be getting traffic to your site…

OK…In the next post we’ll figure out how to make some money with that traffic!