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Welcome to the 71st episode of the 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan Podcast – today I’m joined by Steve Shaw, founder of the popular article submission service SubmitYourArticle.com. Steve’s been involved in online business for 10 years now so he’s got a lot of knowledge to offer.

Steve Shaw

In this episode we discuss:

• Steve Shaw’s background
• What article marketing used to be like a few years ago
• What’s changed over the past few years
• The duplicate content penalty – fact or fiction?
• Formatting your author bio
• Keyword phrase selection for articles
• Article writing style
• Coming up with ideas for articles
• Minimum and maximum article length
• Whether or not pen names are a good idea
• How many articles you should submit
• The future of article marketing
• How SubmitYourArticle.com works

Here’s the full Steve Shaw interview transcript:

00:00 David Bain: Welcome to the 71st episode of the 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan podcast. Today I’m joined by Steve Shaw, founder of the popular submityourarticle.com service. Steve! Many thanks for joining me.

00:13 Steve Shaw: Thank you, David.

00:14 DB: Excellent! Now, you are trained in Information Technology and went on to work for big companies I know but I presume that you had some kind of entrepreneurial seizure and decided that you’d rather work for yourself and set up online businesses.

00:28 SS: Yeah! It was… It was partly, partly came out of boredom in my last real job, I guess. I was working for an IT company based in York and they didn’t really have any projects on so I spent a lot of time surfing the Internet and it coincided with the birth of my first child who’s now worryingly, nearly eleven years old so [laughter] but she was quite poorly for her first year and I wanted to be home a lot more than I was able to really with a job. So the two coincided and I was really looking to work at home and then I found a way to work online which worked really well for us as a family and me so, yeah.

01:10 DB: Great stuff. So how did you actually get into article marketing because you certainly seemed to be better known for that?

01:18 SS: Yeah, I started… I mean my first sort of foray into the world of self-employment, I guess was working as a developer for people in the States really who came across to me by my first rudimentary website. I had some software on there that enabled people to put pop ups easily on their website and somehow that became quite viral and it got the attention of certain internet marketers in the States. So they got in touch about me doing some programming work for them. And out of that I started to see what they did which was just really developing a product and then sell it multiple times.

01:55 DB: Right.

01:56 SS: And I liked the sound of that so I started to put my own software together to sell online and I found article marketing as result of trying to work out how to market those software products and realized quite critically it’s not just case of building something and then people will start buying. You got to put the work into market it and article marketing, I found that really effective for getting the word out and that just started to really increased traffic to my website.

02:26 DB: So what kind of year was this?

02:27 SS: This goes back to the early ‘naughties’ of 2001 or 2002 was when I really got started.

02:34 DB: Right.

02:35 SS: And Submit Your Article was launched around 2003-ish.

02:39 DB: Okay, excellent! So you’ve been in the business for a long time and certainly, you must have seen an awful lot of changes. What would you say the difference… The main differences are now compared with what article marketing was like perhaps seven or eight years ago or so?

02:58 SS: I think it takes a lot more articles out there to start making an impact. People always want really, really quick result with anything really and they expect overnight success. In the early days of article marketing because very few people were doing it really because it was such a tedious process to go around to different article directories and submit your content. You had to be pretty committed to do that and there wasn’t as much content out there really, but since the development automated tools like Submit Your Article, there is a ton more articles out there. So it takes more work to raise your head above the parapets as it where, with your content but the rewards are certainly still there for those who have again, committed to produce the content and to do the leg work that it requires really.

03:50 DB: Right. Okay. I remember recently, it was perhaps three or four years ago, I was submitting just something like one article a week to Ezine Articles and I’m using a keyword phrase within that and that was enough to rank for reasonably competitive keyword phrases actually. But obviously, the strategy has got to be a lot more thorough and integrated with other types of marketing now I suppose.

04:13 SS: Yes, yeah absolutely yeah. We’re finding that you have to… Well, you don’t really have to submit as many as much as content out there but we have tools for example that allow you to have one base article and have every article derives from that piece of a new version of the article and it helps with the link building and such. And I think as the amounts of content has grown that has comes out of article marketing, Google has become more sophisticated in their methods trying to work out what content comes from where and how to rank sites as a result. So you need to be more sophisticated in your approach than was the case three or four years ago as you say.

05:01 DB: And do you think it’s important to get your articles on lots of different sites?

05:04 SS: Yes, absolutely yeah. I don’t think you can really get the same results from just having an article on Ezine Articles anymore and as they used to. It’s… I always see it as, if you’re going to write a book, you wouldn’t just put it in one book shop; but you want to get as many eyes on it as possible and the different publishers frequent different websites and different websites would have different levels of prominence in the search engines for particular bits of content. So, the more widely you can distribute content, the better really because you’re going to get more eyeballs on it and you can built up more links especially if you’re using tools to reduce the amounts of, not duplicate content but the amount of articles that exist in exactly the same way on different websites. You can get them on there using different versions.

05:59 DB: Okay. You mentioned duplicate content there. What’s your opinion on Google’s opinion of duplicate content at the moment and what do you think are the best strategies to actually get ranked in as many places as possible?

06:14 SS: Yeah. There’s quite a myth really about duplicate content that it’s in some way kind of damaging to websites if you start having the same content everywhere linking back to your sites, that’s going to damage you. And that’s not the case at all. It’s more of a case if you have kind of the same article on 30 different websites, Google isn’t going to give you kind of the credit for 30 links because it’s basically all the same content. So they kind of… They’ll find one and treat that as the most prominent source of that content and treat that as kind of the main link to your site. In terms of duplicate content on your own website or content you might have on your own website that exists elsewhere, it’s certainly important to have content that’s unique as well and that really kind of adds value to the internet space, really.

07:07 DB: Okay. So it’s more important to have a unique content maybe on your own site, but when you’re distributing content elsewhere, as long as you’re getting the content out to decent relevant places, it doesn’t matter so much that it’s duplicated basically on other sites.

07:21 SS: It doesn’t matter at all now. And in terms of your own site, it’s certainly fine to have some content that also exists elsewhere, that’s perfectly sort of normal. And in terms of content, that’s syndicated all around the web like press releases and content from RSS feeds and that sort of thing. It’s kind of expected that a certain proportion of content will exist elsewhere as well. But to get sort of real value, it’s a really good idea to try and get some real unique value on your own website, too. It gives the real value to your website and Google kind of recognizes that and will rank your website accordingly.

07:59 DB: Now, what would you see as a main benefits to submitting articles? Would it be SEO, would it be clickthroughs from the links in your author bio, or perhaps syndication benefits?

08:12 SS: It’s all of them, really. I mean, I see the main benefit coming through SEO improvements that you get from all over, all the inbound linking and such, can really kind of boost your SEO. And as you get higher up the search engines, you can get a lot of traffic from that. But you’ll also get clickthroughs from the articles themselves. This is… Some people kind of expect huge amount of clicks to come through every article that they send out there, and then they send out a couple of articles and they expect an avalanche in traffic as a result. It doesn’t really work like that. It’s really a case of once you have quite a few articles in syndication out there, then the traffic does start to build up. And as you get more sort of consistent in your article marketing, you also start to be recognized by certain publishers who are kind of looking for content in their particular niche. And you might end up with relationships with certain publishers while you’re published more regularly. For example, I have two or three columns in offline publications now as a result of kind of consistent article marketing efforts, so all of that helps, inbound traffic, too, and just general kind of credibility of your business and your own reputation online as well.

09:31 DB: Excellent. So, it’s just a tool to help you build up and demonstrate that you’re an authority in your niche effectively.

09:37 SS: Yes, absolutely.

09:39 DB: Oh, and the keyword phrases, choosing the right keyword phrases for your articles is obviously important. How do you recommend people go about selecting the keyword phrases that they use in their articles?

09:51 SS: It’s pretty important to do some keyword research. I always say that’s kind of the foundation of article marketing. It’s not something you just kind of dive into and start producing content on anything and hope to get good results. It’s… Keyword research is kind of the foundation, really. And to do that, I’d suggest using Google’s Keyword Tool which is really easy to use and very effective. The URL for that is a bit convoluted, but you can just search for Keyword Tool on Google and it should be the first result that comes up on the page there.

10:23 DB: Sure.

10:25 SS: What people are looking for are really sort of two lists of keywords. One consisting of the main keywords for their website that they’re hoping to kind of rank well for. And they tend to kind of have higher competition levels and they have higher traffic levels as well. So there’s a higher reward for that. But because of the higher reward, obviously more website owners are kind of going after that gold as it were. And your second list of keywords are the longer tail keyword phrases where you tend to get lower competition and there’s also kind of lower traffic for that as well. But it means that because there’s lower competition, the individual articles that are written kind of around those longer tail keyword phrases can rise to certainly on the first page of Google quite often, having gotten quite a lot of clickthrough as a result. With the list of main keyword phrases, the keyword phrases that you want your site to rank well for, what you do with article marketing is link back to your website using those keyword phrases, and that helps Google to understand what your site is about really because you have those words in the link. It tells Google what your site is about and it tells visitors who clickthrough what to expect really when they get through to your website. And I’d really advise to kind of have between sort of three to five of those and cycle between them so you get fairly naturally looking links all over the web. You don’t really want to just kind of focus on one and get every link using the same phrase, because it ends up looking very unnatural and it’s not going to be very effective if Google thinks you’re doing something unnatural.

12:09 DB: Okay, great stuff. I’d like to talk a little bit about content writing style as well. There are lots of different options out there. Perhaps you can tell a story, perhaps you can be more factual driven. Is there any particular sign of article that is most effective when it comes to getting you traffic back to your site?

12:31 SS: I think either style can work well. It depends a lot on your niche, I think. Some niches are kind of better adapted to kind of storytelling and others tend to be more factual based, but either, you can mix and match between the two styles really and that’s perfectly fine. The one thing I’d recommend is for people to remember that the articles tend to be read online. The people have kind of lower concentration spans and there’s also lots of things kind of going off around and like new emails coming in and different websites popping up all over the place [laughter] and that sort of thing. And you really got kind of quite a short attention span of the person reading. So you need to make it very readable. And that involves kind of very short paragraphs, lots of bullets points. You don’t want big chunks of text on the screen because people just won’t read it at all and they’ll be very… They’ll have their attention diverted very easily and kind of dive off somewhere else. Just to kind of ensure good readability of the article, it should read very well. It should have good levels of quality and just spell-check it as well. I think quality is kind of becoming more and more important, not just from the point of view of publishers who might potentially want to publish your work but also from Google’s point of view. They can check the quality of readability and spelling and such to some degree, and that will affect the power as well of your inbound links.

13:57 DB: Of course, Google had a fairly significant change to its algorithm quite recently to try and focus on lack of quality and take that out of its search engine listings. So that’s a very important area that you mentioned there. Is there any aspects of the Google algorithm change that you think people should be considering in relation to article marketing?

14:25 SS: Yeah. I think before the change, it was very easy for people who had a lot of different niches to kind of put out very low-quality articles and hope to get a result from that. And I think the real implication of Google’s change was that it’s important for articles that are going out there to have a level of quality to be effective for people. The low-quality stuff is going to be filtered out more and more. Just from looking at EZine Articles response to that by Google, they’ve purged a lot of articles from their article directory because they saw their own kind of traffic take a bit of a dive. And they kind of linked it back to a certain level of quality in some articles on their website and they’ve kind of removed all of those. And to get the results from article marketing, you need to make your article really stand out from the crowd and to make it really… You need to provide some real value to people reading. I think before the change, people tended to write for the search engines and didn’t really think about the end reader at all, and the real implication as far as I can see is that you really need to be thinking more and more out the end kind of user or the reader of your article. The real person is going to get the value out of it rather than just trying to prepare articles for links and such.

15:45 DB: And a lot of people in business will be thinking that their own particular niche is quite a dry area for coming out with good content-rich material to use for article marketing. People would perhaps, just can’t come up with good article marketing ideas and ideas for articles. Are there any tips that you can perhaps offer people to come up with article marketing ideas and ideas for content?

16:16 SS: Yeah. I mean it’s a really common kind of problem in a way that people struggle to come up with the ideas and it’s perfectly normal for that to happen. But the interesting thing is that once you start writing articles, your brain kind of does a bit of a switch and you tend to kind of find ideas all over the place and they tend to come to you more and more the more that you write. Apart from that, some more ideas to think about; firstly listen to your customers and to the people who visit your website because quite often they’re kind of your best source of content ideas and they’ll tell you what they want to know about. They’ll kind of put in customer support inquiries about how to do this and how to do that and your answers to them can often form the basis of great articles. Then of course, you’ll be able to refer future inquirers too that they can just go and read the article that would answer their question. Blogs, if you have a blog on your website, apart from the SEO benefits, they’re a great source for ideas for just that reason. If you’ve got posts out there, people will comment and they can often ask a question. I know a lot of the ideas in the articles I put out come from the visitors to our own websites and to the blog and response to comments that I’ve put on there.

17:37 SS: A great idea is to kind of think about what the 10 most common questions are regarding your particular niche, and you can have an article that answers each one of those. List articles are a really great idea where you can have articles in the formats such as 7 top tips about something or 10 steps to do something. It’s interesting because once you have that kind of article you can then expand each of those tips or each of those steps into an article of its own right. And you can also use what we call article templates which kind of give you the foundation of an article. Some examples might be the dinner party reply-type template which is really… If you’re at a dinner party, people tend to ask what you do, and you can write an article around that kind of concept, introducing people to what your niche is and what you kind of do and what would put them in that niche. You can also use a beginner’s guide templates where you kind of introduce your niche to a complete beginner. You kind of think about what somebody would want to find out if they didn’t know anything about your particular niche. If your niche is fishing, for example, you really introduce it to somebody who knows nothing whatsoever about fishing. There’s an interesting historical figure templates where you can kind of look back through history, find a historical figure, find like a quote from them, and kind of try and relate it back to your niche, and you can talk about that and develop an article from that. It’s important to remember that articles are generally fairly short, 400 words minimum really which is, I mean, only kind of four or five paragraphs really, so it’s quite easy to kind of build up an article from that kind of thing. Another great idea is to kind of use a top mistakes template where you think about what the common issues are people face within your niche and what typically goes wrong for people, the main mistakes that people make, and you kind of go through those mistakes and rectify them within the article and put people right.

19:47 DB: A lot of excellent tips there. You mentioned 400 words minimum. Is there any kind of maximum that you’d advise?

19:54 SS: I generally recommend a maximum of 800 words really because if you get beyond 800 words, it tends to be too long for quite a few publishers to want to publish for EZine editors for example, they tend to want fairly short articles. And above 800 words, people don’t really have the attention span again to kind of read an article much longer than that. And a secondary reason for that is you can get more benefit if you split up a longer article. If it gets above 800 words, you’re probably better off trying to split it up into two different articles and getting the benefit from both articles rather than just one article out there.

20:33 DB: Okay. And in terms of writing your articles, would you always advise writing your own articles, or is there a scenario where it would be appropriate to outsource the writing of your articles and actually distribute the articles under your own name even though someone else’s has written them?

20:54 SS: Yeah. Both can work very well. I think it tends to be more effective if you are able to write your own articles because obviously kind of you’re the expert in your niche and it will come across in a better way perhaps. The one thing people struggle with article marketing is consistency and it can mean if you’re struggling to write the articles each week and do everything else that’s required within the business. You won’t actually be able to take advantage of everything that article marketing can offer. And in that case, it can be wise to outsource the writing. And if you want to do that, I’d really kind of advise to work with somebody on a regular basis so they’ll really get to know your business really well and can write quite easily in the end of different topics on your niche. And if you got ideas, you have somebody to forward ideas to share future writing.

21:48 DB: Are there any places that you could recommend to potentially find outsourced writers?

21:53 SS: Yeah. There are quite a few freelancer-type sites. There are sites like Guru.com, oDesk.com is really good to work with, Freelancer.com as well. There’s also a great site called Textbroker.com, and that’s pretty easy to use. You basically just input the requirements for the article you’ve got. You might want to kind of focus around a particular keyword or on a particular topic, for example, and you can just put in your requirements, and put in the order, and then within sort of a day or two, you’ll get the article back. It tends to be from different writers who provide the content but the quality I find is very good, and you can actually specify in the order the level of quality that you’re looking for.

22:42 DB: And what if you got a reasonable budget and you’re wanting to get quite a few articles written out to promote a fairly big website that you’ve got? And would you, in that circumstance, submit articles promoting the same website in multiple pen names?

23:02 SS: I generally not recommend that really because people… There’s probably no sort of big reason why not, but I always kind of think it’s better to stick with kind of one pen name relating to one niche because people… If they see quite a few articles on any article directory, you can kind of click the pen name and kind of see a list of articles from the same author and that kind of thing.

23:23 DB: Right.

23:23 SS: And it’s a bit neat to just kind of keep it from the same pen name. But I guess there’s no real reason why you couldn’t do with a few pen names out there.

23:32 DB: There’s no issue at all with using pen names, though?

23:34 SS: No, no. There’s no issue using pen names at all. There’s no… Lots of people, for example, have businesses in different niches and write under different pen names for different niches just because they don’t want their own name, for example, associated with a different niche because it might confuse somebody who’s reading an article and clicking through, and reading articles about all manner of different topics on article directories, for example.

23:59 DB: One thing that a lot of people don’t get right is the resource box. What, in your opinion, is the best way to format the author bio resource box?

24:09 SS: Really what you’re looking for, two to four sentences. It’s fairly short; above 400 characters and it’s too long really. So it’s a very short blurb, really. What people tend to look for, you need your name in there generally, may need a bit of information about yourself even if it’s to say you’re the owner of a particular website, a little bit about your business. Generally you need to provide a reason for people to click through so you provide your link in the resource box, a link or two, and you give people a reason to click through. It might be like a free report that you’ve got on your website or just further information that kind of enhances the information you’ve given in the article. That’s probably about it, really. You can write it to make it kind of flow on from the article quite naturally so you don’t give away everything in the article but kind of leave a little bit for people want to find out a bit more about and you can kind of suggest that people click through to a website in a resource box in order to do that.

25:17 DB: Okay. And your resource box is the opportunity, of course, to leave a link to your site as well and get your long-tail keyword phrase back to whatever page you want to on your site. How many links would you advise?

25:30 SS: Yes. Generally you’re only looking at about two links in your resource box. We limit it to two for articles going through our service and that’s generally what publishers want. If you have more than two, it kind of tends to fill up the resource box with just ends up looking like a pure link. You don’t want it kind of look like a link spammer but keep it natural, so just provide a link or two. As you said, one of those links can be kind of the all-important link that contains your main keyword for your site and you link back using that.

26:06 DB: Okay, great stuff. What would you say is the average amount of articles that people would submit per week or per month at an ongoing basis?

26:15 SS: What we recommend is for a website, the people submit about eight or so a month, but it is generally in line with what you’d expect to publish on a blog. For example, if you’re doing a blog, you’d generally look to kind of do two or three posts a week, and it’s a similar kind of routine with article marketing.

26:33 DB: Okay, so eight a month. In terms of article marketing model, is there a consistent strategy that people should follow in terms of type of content, a certain sequence of writing? Should people perhaps try and sit down and write all their articles once a month for the whole month submissions or do you find that there’s no best way to do and it just depends on the individual?

27:04 SS: I think it does depend on the individual. I tend to find it works well if you do it in batches of articles, but each to their own, really. It’s certainly a good thing in terms of maintaining consistency, which is very important for article marketing to ensure that you kind of have a regular slot when you’re actually doing the article writing.

27:28 DB: Also I’d like to cover the blog networks a little bit as well, because I’m aware that a recent addition to the Submit Your Article service was the facility to distribute your article to a few different blogs as well. How does that work and what are the benefits of that?

27:46 SS: Yeah. It’s really without doubt when you’re submitting articles to article directors and hoping that kind of niche websites are going to come along and search out your content and put that content onto their websites. It’s kind of the more niche-focused websites like blogs. In that way, you kind of get the most link power from simply because they’re going to be more related to your own website. If you have links from kind of generic article directories, they’re not as powerful. So really with our blog network, it means that you kind of skip past that and you’re getting content immediately performed to niche-focused websites, then those links have higher value going back to your websites. And it also kind of benefits the blog owner too, because they’re linking to related and useful resources from their blog. It tends to boost their own SEO too. What we offer is something called Naked Articles as well through our service, which is really an article which is kind of stripped of its resource box and any other author attributions. So it’s just kind of the title and the body of the content and it looks very much like so the normal blog post that you’d expect to get on the blog. And but you have the benefit of links within the body of the article itself going back to your website. So they’re more powerful because the links are kind of higher up the page and they’re all going to be sort of keyword-based links so you’ve got keywords and the anchor text linking back to your websites. So it’s a very powerful sort of linking way to get powerful links back to your website from these blogs.

29:21 DB: Now, article marketing has been around for a while, but do you think it will still be around as an effective common form of internet marketing in, say, five years’ time?

29:32 SS: I do actually, yeah. Because at the end of the day, content is kind of what makes the web go round. I think article marketing has always been kind of a component of an internet marketing strategy. It shouldn’t be seen as something on its own as kind of magic bullet. But it’s a very effective part of an overall strategy that people can use and I don’t think that’s going to change. It’s about getting your content out there and connecting with people then finding people who are interested what you’ve got to offer by syndicating your materials around, you’re going to do that very effectively. It ties in very well with social media for example. If you start writing articles regularly, you can then do tweaks on the articles that you’ve written. You can kind of put links up to your articles on Facebook and so on, and it all ties in very nicely. What I tend to recommend people do in terms of kind of a broader strategy is to write content but to put that content onto their own website first, onto a blog. That’s what I’d recommend and for them to then re-purpose that content as articles that they’ll then sort of syndicate for article marketing purposes and kind of bring back, take advantage of that content, start bringing back links as well. So it’s really kind of as kind of a what I see as kind of a central hub of a broader internet marketing strategy. Once you’ve got consistent content going out there, you can then do so much more with it, social bookmarking and so on.

31:04 DB: Do you do anything else with your articles? I’m thinking perhaps making them into PowerPoint slides and creating a video out of them and perhaps adding audio? Have you experimented with that at all?

31:16 SS: I have actually, yeah. I’ve been self-experimenting over the past few months with converting articles into video and into audio, producing kind of a podcast fusion, the articles as the basis of that. It can also work the other way around, of course. If you’re writing reports or if you’re doing a PowerPoint presentation, you can then do it the other way around too and kind of convert that content into articles that you can then syndicate. It can work very, very well both ways around.

31:49 DB: Or perhaps record a podcast and get it transcribed. [laughter]

31:53 SS: Yeah. That’s a great idea. Yes. [laughter]

31:55 DB: That’s a method that I find pretty useful for producing good written content that you can put on your blog as unique content obviously as well.

32:09 SS: Well, just on that note, some people find it difficult to write articles but they find it a lot easier to kind of speak articles as it were. A lot of people can use something in the States, I don’t think it’s available here, called Google Voice. You can kind of call up a number and somebody will transcribe that but the concept is easily extensible. You can just kind of record what you’d want an article to be written about and get somebody else kind of put that into proper article form.

32:40 DB: Obviously we mentioned that your service is called SubmitYourArticle.com. Do you want to maybe go into a little bit more depth about exactly how that works and how it benefits article writers?

32:52 SS: Sure, yeah. We have an extensive network of publishers that we submit to. So it’s not just article directories like Ezine Articles and various other sort of high-profile article directories. We have loads of those as well, but we also submit content through our own email list, which consists of Ezine publishers and other websites who are kind of looking for articles and content in particular areas. We’ve already mentioned the blogs that we submit to too and our own article directory gets a lot of traffic as well with nearly 25,000 visitors a day now on the website. So it’s fairly prominent. So really in terms of our users, all they have to do is kind of write the article and then plug it into our system. And then we take care of distributing that content for them to our network of publishers. We have editorial controls for each article that goes out. So every article is kind of manually reviewed to make sure it kind of… It meets our guidelines and that’s for our members’ benefit because quite often we can spot issues with the article that would prevent its publication. It’s also for the benefit of our publisher network, so they know that they’re getting quality content from us and that kind of attracts other publishers into our network too, and also more benefits to our members in the end. We also allow people to kind of trickle out their submissions naturally, so if you want your article to go out over a 90-day period, for example, you can do that and it will gradually go out over that time to our whole network. And so it can work better than just kind of blasting it out in a day or two. We also allow… We also provide a feature called Article Leverage where people can… Set up variations for each article that they have in the system. So for example, you might have different variations for your article title and you can use… There’s two versions of it, really. One is where you might see a sentence then you can write another version of that sentence and so on. Or you might see your resource box and you might write another two or three versions of that resource box. When the article is going out, we then construct a fresh article based on all those variations. So it reads perfectly normally and naturally but it’s a different version of the original article. We also provide something called Text Spinning where you can use special syntax within the article itself and that allows kind of a much greater control over the level of variation and it could mean the uniqueness of the end article can be a lot higher too, for higher link building. So that’s probably kind of a broad overview of what we offer.

35:44 DB: That’s excellent. You’re obviously very passionate about and knowledgeable about article marketing there. So I think you’ve offered an awful lot of great tips there and certainly SubmityourArticle provides a great service as well. I’ll tell you what… I mean, shall we finish up? If you could possibly give maybe just one or two quick action steps that people could take. We’ve provided an awful lot of information there, but what could people do just to simply start article marketing today? What are the first steps?

36:19 SS: I think the first step is just to write something, because the blank page and the first step is always the hardest bit. So just start writing about anything that you know really, and you’ll find that it naturally starts to flow, and you’ll gradually get into the groove. It can take… Expect it to take a few articles before you really get comfortable with it and that’s just to be expected, so there’s nothing unusual if it doesn’t feel particularly natural when you start doing it. And so that’s kind of the first thing to start doing. And secondly look at the keyword research and start doing a bit of keyword research. Make sure that you’re very clear about what you want your site to rank for because you kind of have to have a name, for article marketing, you have to kind of know what you want to get out of it. So work out where your rank now for those keywords, where you want to be and start sort of aiming towards that by using article marketing to set up those links back to your website and start driving your rankings higher.

37:18 DB: Excellent stuff. Well, Steve, thank you very much for joining me today. It’s been a very useful I’m sure for a lot of people.

37:26 SS: Oh, thank you very much, David.

Even though there are a number of ways to promote your website online and get targeted traffic, nothing comes close to article marketing in terms of effectiveness and cost. The thing about pay per click ads is that not everyone is able to do it or feels confident enough to do it. Yet the nice thing about article marketing is you can get fast results, depending on variables, if you are willing to learn how to do it, put forth the effort and make your life a little easier by using a submission service like SubmitYourArticle.

Try using a submission service like SubmitYourArticle

All you need to do is put your time and effort into it to see long term profits. Let’s have a look at a few article marketing strategies you should be using…

Are you submitting to the 2 most popular article directories?

It is true, and has been for a long time, that when you create articles you will submit them to popular article directories for publication. There are literally tons of article directories of all shapes and sizes, and you can publish articles in these directories to promote your sites. There are two in particular, ArticlesBase and EzineArticles that are extremely popular because they are powerful directories. There are many article directories where you can submit automatically by using software, but the larger two directories tend to frown upon using automation. This will allow you to target even those directories that are niche specific. We would discourage you from using software to do this because each directory is different and you can miss important steps. However, account setup is a onetime requirement, and then you are pretty much good to go from there.

Do you have an effective title and article summary?

To be sure to put a solid summary piece together, make sure that you’re using a title which has been proven to work, and that your opening paragraphs are not weak in any way. If someone is interested in your article, they will do a quick scan of the beginning and see if it grabs them. The summary is very short to begin with, so it does not take much time at all to produce a powerful or interesting summary. Never include any hype words in your summary because that will turn-off many people. But there is nothing wrong with stirring the imaginations and curious nature of people in the summary and closing paragraph of the article.

The introduction paragraph is extremely important because you must let people know what is in store for them in the rest of the article. After you have written enough articles, then all of those considerations will be second nature.

Have you fully defined your article topic?

You simply must write your articles so they are centered around one particular topic of the article. Remember, you’re trying to appeal to people and not a generalised mass. When you appeal to people you’ll encourage interaction. There are many things that are important with article writing, and focused content writing is one of them. It all really has to do with making your articles easier to be understood. If you are in doubt about this, then simply run a test for yourself and compare the results. If you are writing about losing weight, then you do not want to switch over to making points about gaining muscle, for example. A lack of focus means you are allowing your mind to wander while you are writing, and that can be very dangerous to conversions.

In summary, article marketing will only give you results if you keep applying theses article marketing tips and add your own twist to the method. Creativity and novel approaches to marketing and advertising are part of the fun. If you constantly give people what they are looking for, then you cannot help but be successful.

Whether your aim is to write content for your website or create posts for your blog, fast writing techniques will make your article marketing more productive and help you get the most out of your efforts.

Can you train yourself how to write fast?

Pretend you’re doing a test!

Writers generally will do many different things to speed up their writing and get the most leverage from their writing. One thing you can do is to pretend you are being test. It might sound stupid, but it does the trick. You need to imagine that you’re writing a test and you need to finish it on time, or else you will lose your grades. When you begin with this mindset, you generally will write fast because you feel pressure to finish it on time. Apply this method the next time you begin writing your content. You’ll be happy with the results.

Write fast and edit later

As a wise writer, you purpose should be to write a fast draft and go later for editing. It can be very appealing to stop and make error corrections while you are writing. But, this can wreck your flow and make it even harder to get back to your broken speed. The best way to deal with this problem is to look over your notes, let the information sink in and then write. This way, you will not encounter any problems with sticking in substitutes at any time.

When it comes to the small mistakes like spelling and grammar, don’t touch them until you have finished. Everything can be taken care of when you proof-read your article and correct all the mistakes.

Give yourself an incentive

Last, make up your own set of rules and continue to use them. Tell yourself that you will reward yourself if you can finish ‘x’ amount of articles in ‘y’ amount of time. This reward could be almost anything. For instance, tell yourself that you will go to dinner if you can finish up your articles by the deadline.

This could be anything you want – as long as it motivates you and pushes you to take fast action. There is no good reason why this plan should not work for you. Also, you can use this time to make a promise with a friend or family member. Tell them that you will complete your content during a particular time period. When you have to report to someone else, it is a lot easier to pay attention to what you are doing, get in the zone and stay on target. You know that you will be held accountable for reaching your goal. So, this is a great motivation tool.

In summary…

There are many different methods you can use in your quest to discover how to write fast, as long as you’re willing to experiment to find what works for you. So many writers could benefit from increasing their productivity and writing far more content, but often they don’t try different methods that could help them achieve this. Of course, if all this writing still doesn’t appeal to you now’s probably the time to head off to oDesk to find an outsourced writer!

Outsourcing can seriously help to take any online business up to the next level. Regardless of your outsourcing needs, there are many sites available, such as Elance and oDesk, that make it easy to find the right professionals for your projects. But what are the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing?

Find good outsourced writers on oDesk

It doesn’t matter what the scope of your project might be, you can easily find the right people to complete it for you. Even though it sounds simple enough, outsourcing is about the details. If you can focus on honing your project’s details, you’ll find your objective is much clearer.

Determine whether your costs will return the profits you require

Firstly, before you invest any costs in your business, you should determine whether your costs will return the profits you require.

This is the reason why it’s important to begin small when outsourcing for the first time, to ensure the quality of work you receive. If you aren’t familiar with an outsourcing team yet, be a little cautious about giving them bigger projects until you know more about them. For example, if you are looking out to outsource your articles to a freelance content writer, have them write an article or two, before you hire them for the full project. Remember to be clear with your communication to your outsourcing agent so they understand your project. So be very clear when it comes to the scope of the project and as well as the schedule. To ensure there’s no miscommunication, write everything down clearly exactly how you want it. As long as your outsourcing person or team knows exactly what’s required, you have a better chance of receiving the work you wanted done the right way. If your instructions are vague or aren’t clarified, your project could be turned in less than the quality you hoped for.

Get everything in writing

However, it’s important to get everything in writing. This is because once the project begins all types of things on your service agreement could affect the price, project scope and delivered items and change. So you should clearly communicate with the service provider, about the payment or schedule, and get their confirmation in writing. This will ensure that they understand and agree to any such changes. Any emails between you and your service provider should be saved. This is for the event they are needed later. The more cautious you are in this area, the better.

Even though outsourcing is not too difficult to understand, you should know exactly what you are doing. If you’ve never outsourced a project before, there will be some mistakes that you will make. But, this is how you will see your mistakes, learn from them and grow stronger. We have learned that by researching outsourcing advantages and disadvantages in the beginning, you can get a proper start.

Whether it’s about creating content for your website or your blog, you will need to produce original material each and every time in order to maintain the quality. There are probably topics you can write about off the top of your head without consulting any other sources, because you know so much about them already. But what if the topic you’re targeting is something you have no knowledge about? That’s when your researching skills come into play. If your goal is to produce outstanding and original content, you or your trusted outsourced writer have to go beyond the obvious when it comes to doing online research.

Find good outsourced writers on oDesk

Find information relevant to a wide range of topics on popular article sites

Looking at the Internet, you realize that it is nothing more than a large database of information that is offered in various formats, despite this, most of the content available is in text format. So, when looking into how to write good articles, you can use the knowledge you garner from reading the various content available on the Internet that is pertinent to your niche. You can find information relevant to a wide range of topics on popular article directories such as EzineArticles.com. All that is needed is for you to identify the main points after going through a few articles you’ve chosen. Just write these main points down somewhere so you can later refer to them when writing your content. Twitter can also be a good place for research, as you have millions of users posting tweets on every imaginable topic by the second. Being one of the most visited sites on the internet, you can find postings on any subject that people talk about. If you haven’t used Twitter lately, you may not realize how many well informed people use it and frequently update their status with relevant facts in all different niches. By following the most helpful Twitter users in your niche, you can have a convenient place to look when researching for a post or article.

Social networking sites will also prove an invaluable research resource

Social networking sites will also prove an invaluable research resource because there are plenty of communities where people interact and discuss various subjects. To continue your research and find individualized data that stems from the different experiences people have had, you should consider joining these communities and interacting with their members. The goal of social networking is for people to get to know each other on a personal level, which means that the data you obtain will prove invaluable to your research since it is highly targeted.

Effective research is a first step to creating content that generates results

In conclusion, this article clearly shows that effective research is a first step to creating content that generates results. The only time people actually want to read articles, and also suggest that their friends do so as well, is when they find something unique. Therefore, if you want to write better quality articles, you need to spend more time researching and expanding your knowledge of the topic you are tackling.

The 52nd edition of our podcast brings you part 2 of week #17 from the original 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan. This video gives you some article marketing tips.

The recording is taken from our original 2007 seminar. At the time it sold for £399 as part of our 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan home study package. Now, for the first time we’re giving it away for free via our internet marketing podcast.

Why are we giving all this great video content away for free?

Although these videos still offer a lot of great tips, internet marketing methods change over time. We’re going to be launching a brand new version of the plan soon, and we’re sure that by sharing these original video recordings for free, you’ll be persuaded to jump on-board when the new paid-for version launches! Stay tuned to our newsletter to find out more.

The 51st edition of our podcast brings you part 1 of week #17 from the original 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan. This video gives you a guide to article marketing strategy.

The recording is taken from our original 2007 seminar. At the time it sold for £399 as part of our 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan home study package. Now, for the first time we’re giving it away for free via our internet marketing podcast.

Why are we giving all this great video content away for free?

Although these videos still offer a lot of great tips, internet marketing methods change over time. We’re going to be launching a brand new version of the plan soon, and we’re sure that by sharing these original video recordings for free, you’ll be persuaded to jump on-board when the new paid-for version launches! Stay tuned to our newsletter to find out more.

The audio version of our interview about article marketing with Jonathan Farrington is only available to Inner Circle members. If you’re already a member, click here to listen to the interview now.

Jonathan Farrington

DB Now my guest today is Jonathan Farrington. I first became aware of Jonathan round about a year ago. Jonathan started submitting articles to one of our websites, a business articles directory called buildyourownbusiness.biz. Now at that time I hosted a podcast that highlighted the top five articles submitted each week and almost without fail, Jonathan managed to have at least one article included in the top five. So I’d like to find out a little bit more about exactly why Jonathan has been so successful in harnessing article writing as a form of internet marketing. Good to talk to you again Jonathan.

JF Hi David.

DB Hello and thanks for joining me. Jonathan I’d really be grateful if we could possibly begin by telling everyone just a little bit about your background?

JF Yes, of course, well after university my father was fairly keen for me to go into farming and I rallied against that. My initial employment was as a chartered surveyor or working towards becoming a chartered surveyor but I mean just briefly. I’ll share this with you, I was working within estate agency, real estate, and I noticed that all the guys that were in sales were obviously earning far, far more than we poor training surveyors.

DB Hmm-hmm.

JF So I moved into sales and then after that I started my own real estate business and then I guess I moved into corporate life, probably five years after that into IT. So my background really is IT, Telecoms and Finance, predominantly at board level. I’m always best leading because I do, I’ll use the word again, I do rally against authority so it’s always best if I’m boss.

DB Right, okay, quite a few entrepreneurs naturally do that I suppose.

JF Yeah, I think that’s right and then when I came back from Kuwait in about 1992, where I’d been with Andersons rebuilding the IT infrastructure I decided at that point that I was going to have my own show and then finally in 1995 I formed the JFA Group. So the JFA Group is now twelve years old.

DB Right.

JF And, as you know, what we’ve really been doing is selling our solutions through a network of consultants and associates globally and it’s gone very, very well.

DB And were you aware of the internet in 1995?

JF No.

DB (Laughter).

JF No I wasn’t, I mean I have to admit, you know that I was pretty slow to catch on. I mean I’d got people around me, I’d got partners around me that were very IT aware and very bright cookies but I myself, was quite slow to catch on but then I’ve always been a fast learner. And once I did get into it then I was keen that we made the most of it.

DB Excellent, okay, so was there a particular moment in the last few years where you suddenly realised, ah, ha, the internet’s the place to be?

JF A defining moment you mean?

DB Absolutely, yeah.

JF Yeah, a bit like on the road to Damascus.

DB (Laughter).

JF No I can’t look back and pinpoint for you a specific moment when I saw the light. I know there was one but I just can’t recall precisely. I think it crept up on me gradually and then I became convinced.

DB Okay, and so you’re extremely proficient at article writing, why article writing?

JF Well, once I decided on my exit date from the JFA Group, which as it stands at the moment is going to be at the end of 2008, although I will give you an exclusive. I may well advance that date with all the exciting things that are that are happening. JFA’s been a lot of fun but some of the things that I’m now getting into are, are very very exciting, so once I decided on the exit date I then thought okay, what am I going to do? I knew I wanted to write and I knew in order to write books, I needed what publisher’s call a platform.

DB Right.

JF And it, it stuck me that the, you know, one of the best places to start would be to write articles and create a presence if you will.

DB Hmm.

JF And make people aware of, or to assist people to become aware of me and so I decided to develop the JF brand and article writing was clearly one of the most important things that I could do that would help that along the way.

DB Excellent, so did you already have a backlog as it were of articles that you had already produced or were these articles that you’d produced as and when you actually required to submit them to various article directories?

JF Well, it was a combination David. When I started JFA in ‘95 I had to start writing my own programmes, otherwise I was going to be dictated to by, you know, I’d have had to get into bed with another sales programme provider.

DB Hmm.

JF So I took the tough choice and I started writing and I’ve written 300 programmes and along the way, when you’re writing training courses you need to have what I call extras that you hand out during the course. So from, almost ’96 I guess, all the way through to 2007, I’ve always written–but last May when I started submitting on a more formal basis…

DB Hmm.

JF I began writing again you know, more regularly, so it’s been a combination.

DB Okay, okay, and you obviously really enjoy writing?

JF I love writing. I love sharing my experiences. I’ve been very fortunate as someone once said, every year of your life Jonathan, it’s more like a complete chapter in everybody else’s life. It literally is like that. I mean I could probably write 55 chapters, or whatever it is. So it’s been an exciting life and it’s what I call the journey and you will know and you’ll remember that. Yes, it’s just drawing on experience and getting out of my head and writing about it and I’ve been very, very fortunate because a lot of people have said very very kind things, which has spurred me on to write even more.

DB Excellent. So do you feel that possibly because of your predominant focus on writing, on writing excellent articles you’re perhaps not spending enough time on other aspects of your business?

JF Well I’m very fortunate to have a group of very good people and I’ve laid very strong and solid foundations down and they’ve always known that there was going to be an exit date for me and…

DB Right.

JF And as it stands at the moment I get wheeled into the really important things and I’ve delegated, I hope wisely and so nothing is being left to chance.

DB Excellent, well it sounds like you’re a very good strategic player as well then, a good planner for the future.

JF Well I am a good planner yeah; I’m also a very good chess player by the way.

DB (Laughter). Okay that might have something to do with it (laughter).

JF Yeah.

DB Right. So how did you go about choosing which article directory to promote your articles in?

JF Well I read somewhere on the internet, just prior to my first article submission, that one should balance the books. One should go for article communities that will give you a very high readership but are far more generalised but at the same time, seek out specialised business and sales and marketing sites that will give you greater presence, and that’s precisely what I did and so I chose Ezine Articles because they were, and probably still are the largest; I think they’ve got 50,000 authors…

DB Hmm.

JF And then I looked at specialist sites, which is where I found you, you will remember.

DB Yes, absolutely–buildyourownbusiness.biz.

JF (Laughter).

DB But that seems like a while ago now, about a year ago you started submitting there.

JF Yes, it was in May, yeah.

DB On a very regular basis yes, I was quite impressed at the continual quality of the articles that you submitted and hence our conversation today of course.

JF Indeed

DB So have you tested any automated article distribution services compared with manual submission or have you, have you always actually manually submitted either yourself or have got someone to do it on your behalf?

JF Well, I’ve always done it myself and I believe in manual submission; I like the control that it gives you. Now I’m not suggesting that there aren’t good automated products out there but I’ve been advised away from it and as a consequence I’ve steered clear.

DB Okay that’s interesting. Have you known people that have tested that and haven’t had good experiences then?

JF No, no, well I haven’t known them personally.

DB Hmm

JF But I’ve read other people’s experiences. I’ve also read cautionary notes that appear on the article directive’s themselves, advising you not to use automated software.

DB Hmm.

JF I was quite naïve when I started and it’s been a very, very steep learning curve, so I’ve been anxious to accept all the advice that I can receive.

DB Excellent, Excellent. I think that’s a very pertinent point actually because I’ve had several conversations with people recently and quite often the constant theme is, if it’s easy to do then lots of people will be doing it and if lots of people do it, it’s not necessarily going to give you a good result, so…

JF Yes

DB A, a bit of hard work is obviously worth it in the long run and I think you’re good at proving that.

JF Hmm.

DB So is there any particular length of article that you actually try and make your articles?

JF Well I suppose the average is around 700-800 words.

DB Hmm.

JF I have submitted articles with 350 or 400 and I’ve also submitted articles with 1250 but I think anything above that you’re going to lose your reader’s concentration. I think, you know, medium sized, high power articles seem to be the most popular.

DB Right, okay, so if you were to write an article now, do you generally try and make it between 700 and 800 words, or is it more important to focus on the content and simply do something in-between 300 and 1200 words and get the right quality of article?

JF Yes, I tend to go for the latter…

DB Right.

JF I’ve written long articles and then précised them down and I’ve always felt afterwards slightly frustrated that I may have lost something from the total message.

DB Hmm.

JF I think the important thing is to concentrate on what you want to say without getting carried away.

DB Okay, okay and do you get many people visiting a site like Ezine Articles and reprinting your articles and telling you about it?

JF It started off at about 0.5% but I think now the figure is closer to 2% of readers download and re-print which, I’m told is, is quite good.

DB Right, okay.

JF So, I’m very happy with that and on average my articles are read by a about 350 readers per article, that’s what we’re running at at the moment, which is quite good.

DB Okay great stuff and do you get those statistics directly from the article directories themselves?

JF Some provide you with the amount of reads that you’re achieving or the amount of hits if you will.

DB Hmm.

JF Others don’t and I’m not sure that it’s that important but it’s useful to know.

DB And in terms of formatting the article itself, do you always provide an introduction summary of what the article’s going to be about?

JF Yes, I go back to my schooldays and my English Master, who sadly incidentally passed away last week.

DB Oh.

JF Absolute brilliant English Master. Always taught me with essays, have a very strong beginning.

DB Hmm.

JF Put the meat in the middle and then finish strongly as well and I’ve tended to take that forward with my article writing , inasmuch as I tell my readers what I’m going to tell them, then I tell them, and then I tell them what I’ve told them.

DB Okay, excellent advice. Obviously writing for the internet could be very different compared with writing a book–writing hard copy format. Do you alter your writing style; for instance, make shorter paragraphs when you’re writing for article submission directories on the internet?

JF Yes, I think that’s a very important point David, I think it needs to be short and punchy whereas with a book and I’m discovering this now of course because we’ve got a plan for five books by the end of the year, whether or not we achieve that, we shall see. That’s not just me on my own of course; there’s a couple on my own but the other three will be with this group of people that I’ve formed an alliance with, the top sales experts.

DB Okay.

JF But, sorry I digressed a little, yes, the answer is keep your paragraphs in article writing short and punchy.

DB And subheadings are they worthwhile?

JF Oh yes I think so, I think people can easily identify with what you’re about to say next if you use subheadings.

DB Now, what’s interesting is quite a few different article directories have different policies in terms of accepting HTML within the articles themselves.

JF Yes.

DB And that’s obviously a reason to hand submit articles.

JF Yes.

DB Do you have any standard way of doing it in terms of not using HTML or using HTML in subheadings or using HTML on other areas of your articles?

JF I use it sparingly, I’m still a novice with it but I understand what I need to understand and I think it does add to the visual aspect of an article, and I think well, you know, if I’ve taken time to learn it then these article sites really ought to allow me to use it. I use it sparingly.

DB Okay.

JF But as I said, it does add to the visual aspect and for me it’s important.

DB Right right. Now you’ve obviously taken the time to write an excellent article with 700/800 words or so.

JF Hmm.

DB Short punchy paragraphs, subheadings. How do you go about choosing your article title?

JF Oh, well I try to catch attention.

DB Hmm-hmm.

JF I try to use something that’s really going to compel the potential reader to want to get into the article and read it; it’s a bit like my blog, as you’ve seen, I try to make it really punchy and really attractive but at the same time, spell out what the article’s about.

DB Now obviously we’ve heard about your background as a business consultant dealing directly with businesses, speaking business language.

JF Hmm.

DB Do you use business language in your articles or would you recommend a more personal style?

JF I think it’s got to be a combination. I think if your readers are business people, if you will, if they’re CEOs and Managing Directors and Chairmen and Sales Directors and what have you, you’ve got to use a language that they understand. I think this is important in all walks of life, you know, I think we have to use a language that the person with whom we are communicating understands perfectly.

DB Hmm.

JF But at the same time I think I have got my own relaxed style and I like to use it. So for me I don’t even think about it, I write as I speak, or try to, and it’s worked.

DB Excellent. Now one of the biggest benefits of course of submitting articles to various articles directories is you get an opportunity to have your own author biography at the end of each article.

JF Yes.

DB Approximately three lines or so of summarising what you’re about.

JF Yes.

DB What kind of format do you use for that author biography?

JF Well, my author-bio’s are usually very, very brief and very, very simple, and they provide links back to group site, to my personal site,to my blog and recently of course, Top Ten Sales Articles. I think you can overdo it. I think that if your article, has been well received and the reader has enjoyed it, they don’t need to read all about you, they’ll click on the link and then they’ll go and read all about you, cos they’ll want to read more about you in depth and there just isn’t the space within a typical bio box to do yourself justice.

DB Okay, okay, that’s interesting. Quite often article directories will allow you to have up to three different links within the author-bio, you’ll actually often link to three different websites within that bio.

JF I do, yes, I always make use of of the number of links allowed, it makes sense.

DB Okay and then do you often link to internal pages within your site, or is it mostly the home page?

JF Occasionally I do, but typically I’ll invite my readers to come to the site and see the site in its entirety. If the article that I’ve written is linked to another article that the reader might enjoy…

DB Hmm.

JF Then I might do that, yes.

DB Okay, okay. So it’s a lot more about focussing on readers than focussing on search engines?

JF I do yes and whether that’s the right thing to do I’m not sure but I tend to; I’m very keen to build up readership.

DB Excellent. Oh I think that’s the right thing to do when you’re focussing on long-term growth.

JF Yes.

DB Certainly, it’s easy to pick up quick readers in terms of search engines but whether or not they’ll actually stick with you is another matter and obviously if you’re wanting to build up a business then you have to to focus on long-term growth.

JF I couldn’t agree more David.

DB So, we’ve talked about you’re author-bio, keyword links…

JF Yes.

DB Do you often use keyword links? Do you research what keyword phrases that you actually use in your author-bio’s, or do you simply target readers again?

JF Again, David I target readers. I do think about keywords in titles.

DB Right.

JF But I very rarely think about, well I’ve never thought about keyword cramming within an article. There are certain words that I will always use that are sales, and business, and management related, and leadership related but I’ve never sat down and thought, ah, okay, now I’ve got an article, what keywords should I add because I just fear that if I started doing that then I’m just going to detract completely from the quality of the article.

DB Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, I think another, you know, pertinent point is for when you start focussing too much on keywords you’re not actually doing the work you’re good at which is writing excellent content.

JF Yes.

DB And if you get away from doing that then you’re starting to play a dangerous chasing the search engine game instead of actually chasing your customers.

JF I couldn’t agree more and in fact I think that’s advice, I’m certain that’s advice you gave me right at the beginning and it’s advice that I’ve taken on board.

DB Excellent, excellent. So obviously you write every single word of content yourself.

JF Yes.

DB Is there a time in the future you ever see yourself outsourcing article writing to someone else?

JF No, never because I think if you do that you lose your style, you lose your character; you lose the personality of your work.

DB Hmm.

JF And you know for me, writing comes from the head and it comes from the heart and whilst I can imagine meeting people that could write far better articles than I could it wouldn’t be me.

DB Hmm.

JF And, and it’s rather like you know, promising to go out on a date with a girl and sending your brother, why do that?

DB (Laughter). That’s an interesting perspective, yes. Okay, so always yourself. How many hours a week then do you focus on article writing?

JF Well, I have to confess that since March it’s been far less, because of course as you know, I’ve been heavily involved in the launch of Top Ten Sales Articles and that’s taken an awful lot of time to coordinate but prior to March though in the period of May 2006 to March 2007…

DB Hmm

JF I would typically write between twenty and thirty articles a month and the time I would allocate to that typically would be a day a week.

DB Right okay, a day a week so that’s, your talking about, six or so articles a day?

JF Yes but you see I’ve got into a routine with it. The first thing I do is decide what I want to write about that particular week and so I come up with a, you know, a subject if you will.

DB Hmm.

JF And then I whiteboard it and I brainstorm all around it, and I write down everything that I know about it and everything that I want to say, and everything I want to share and from that I typically produce four, five six, seven or even eight articles.

DB Right okay, that’s an excellent way of doing things.

JF Hmm.

DB Obviously you do an awful lot of analysis on various article directories in terms of which article is more popular, more read.

JF Yes.

DB Is there some kind of pattern that you’ve noticed in terms of titles or article lengths or article content that would generate a higher amount of readers?

JF In certain circumstances, yes I have with certain sites. One particular site, which isn’t yours, I’ve noticed that if I submit an article to the sales management section, it receives about 25% of the reads that it would do if I put it in sales. Now, the difficulty is that I’m not allowed to submit to more than one section.

DB Hmm.

JF Now that tells me, maybe it tells me two or three things. Maybe it tells me that sales managers believe that they’ve arrived and therefore they don’t need to develop themselves further, which is a complete nonsense. Or it tells me that sales managers don’t have time to read articles. Or it tells me that particular site isn’t attracting sales managers and sales managers in fact, are going to more specialised sites. So I’m pursuing that one and I will find out.

DB Okay, good stuff. Now I’ve been told in the past that it’s quite a good idea to write articles in the form of top five this, or top three this. Have you, have you trialled that as being effective at all?

JF Yes I have and I haven’t really noticed any difference but I tell you what I have noticed, if you add “how to” at the beginning of a title.

DB Hmm.

JF You’ll double your readership.

DB (Laughter). Well I think that tip’s worth the call in itself! Yes, ha ha.

JF No seriously, it absolutely works but the difficulty is, you know, you can just, you can overdo it.

DB Hmm.

JF I mean, I submitted six articles in a day once and they all started with, how to, and they were all massively read.

DB Well.

JF And I though well, yes but you can’t keep doing that.

DB Huh-huh, huh-huh, well I, I suppose as long as everyone else doesn’t keep on doing it then you can keep on doing it.

JF Well that’s true, yes.

DB (Laughter). Known as ‘the how to man’, yes I think.

JF Yes (Laughter).

DB Great Stuff. So, are there any other we’ve mentioned Ezine Articles and obviously the article directory that I own buildyourownbusiness.biz but…

JF Yes.

DB Your specialisation is obviously sales management and leadership but…

JF Yes.

DB But within those genres…

JF Hmm.

DB Are there any other article directory submission sites that you’d specifically recommend?

JF Oh yes most certainly, you see I think my experience is interesting and it’s probably typical. I started off as we’ve discussed earlier, submitting to just a small handful of sites and then I thought okay, if I want to get wider exposure, you know know wider coverage.

DB Hmm.

JF Maybe I should submit to more and at one point, for a very short period of time, three to four weeks, I found myself submitting to 150 article sites.

DB Ouch, and you were doing all that manually yourself?

JF Yes, and

DB Wow

JF It was, and I had this massive spreadsheet with different colours everywhere and you just wouldn’t believe it, it was ridiculous, so I immediately cut down to about 20 and now I’m literally down to about six, and those six are; you’ve mentioned Ezine, you’ve mentioned your own, Build Your Own Business. Over and above that the sales specific business specific article communities I would always recommend would be Salesopedia…

DB Okay.

JF The Sales Community.

DB Hmm-hmm.

JF Now I would add a caveat to that, neither of those two accept general submissions; you really need to write to the editors and convince them that you’ve got good work. Eyes on Sales is very, very similar; The Side Road is another very good sales expert site but I guess if you were going … if I mention two of the more generalised sites it would be Buzzle and Idea Marketeers, who both do a very, very good job but outside of that group I do not venture any more.

DB Wow, okay that’s interesting.

JF Hmm-hmm.

DB They on the whole, tend to be more specialised article directories for focussing on sales and leadership.

JF Yes.

DB If someone is obviously writing articles in their area of expertise or…

JF Yes.

DB Or in their specific industry…

JF Yes.

DB Would you recommend the predominant amount of article directories that they actually submit to, to be industry specific related?

JF Balance it, my advice would always be balance it. Go to some of the larger more general sites, again we’ll mention them Ezine, Buzzle, IdeaMarketeers.

DB Hmm.

JF You’ll get a good readership.

DB Hmm.

JF But if you want to reach out and you want to appeal and you want to be read by people from that specific industry…

DB Hmm.

JF Then do find specialist sites.

DB Excellent, okay. So are you still in the process of researching new article directory sites you can possibly submit to?

JF No I don’t, I’ve settled on the ones that I’ve developed a relationship with, like our relationship.

DB Hmm.

JF You and I have an excellent relationship, we don’t just talk about article writing and I have the same relationship with three or four of theother CEO’s, and that’s important to me. Occasionally someone will write to me and say, we’re launching a new site can you help us, will you submit an article and I perhaps will send one or two.

DB Hmm.

JF But no, I should add David, there is one article community that I have missed out, which I’ve just remembered which is Best Management Articles.

DB Right, okay.

JF And and a guy there called Ismail Thabi, who really is doing a very, very good job and like you working very very hard to make the site professional and he’s succeeding.

DB Good stuff, good stuff. So obviously all your article submissions have, have led you on to devising your new business yourself called top10salesarticles.com can you possibly tell us a little bit about the concept behind that?

JF Well, yes, as well as writing I like to read, I like to learn, I don’t think you’re ever too old to learn something new and I discovered, like I know many other people do, that I was spending so much time going round all the different sites trying to find articles that I really wanted to read, that would teach me something, that I would enjoy.

DB Hmm.

JF And it really was quite a considerable time invested and then I began to speak to other people and they said, yeah, you know, we’ve got the same problem. We do exactly the same. So from that I thought okay, let’s see if we can encourage more people to write. Let’s bring the very best, the top ten articles each week into one central location. Now in order to judge those I wasn’t sort of egotistical enough to believe that I could judge all of that on my own.

DB Hmm.

JF So then I contacted fifteen sales experts, business experts, management experts that I’d had some communication with and I brought them together and they all said, oh yes absolutely, let’s do it and so I formed an adjudication panel, we launched on April the 15th, and I have to say the response has been quite staggering. To the point where we’ve now created a new company called Top Sales Associates and from that we hope will begat Top Sales Vacancies, Top Sales Programmes etc etc In other words, create somewhere where people can come and don’t have to do their own research, they can come and really see, read, view, and enjoy the best.

DB And has it been more work than you actually initially thought it was going to be. (Laughter)

JF Yes.

DB (Laughter)

JF But as you well know, I’ve got an excellent team supporting me and I ported over a couple of them from JFA Group because I need to work with people that I can trust, that are bright cookies and I’ve achieved that and yes, I mean it’s been far more arduous than I first anticipated but I will add to that and say it’s been far more fun, and far more exciting, and the excitement just increases by the day.

DB So it’s certainly been worthwhile?

JF Been very, very worthwhile and you know, having closer contact with this panel of experts and then, having closer contact with our sponsor, who you know yourself, Nicky Owen from the Sales Activator has just been such a motivating experience, I’ve really, really enjoyed it.

DB So what you’ve done is you’ve become an expert within your field, you’ve started submitting articles within that area and then because of that, you’ve created your own article directory that in effect has been extremely niche Top Ten Sales Articles. Would you actually recommend other businesses that aren’t specialising in internet marketing to create their own article directories?

JF The word that I would highlight from everything that you’ve just said is niche. I think that niche is important. I think that when people try to do too many things within one site, or become too general, I think you lose your effect.

DB Hmm.

JF I think that another of the reasons that we are niche is because whilst we do retain within our archives a brief summary of each article, we send readers back to the originating sites, so we’ve created a relationship with the article communities themselves. We are sending readers to their site and equally, by promoting our product they’re sending readers to us. It’s very much a co-operative, no brainer exercise.

DB Mmm, hmm-hmm. In the future do you think Top Ten Sales Articles will actually generate good revenue by itself via mostly sponsorship? Would that be the future of business direction?

JF Yes it’s got to pay for itself because I’m certainly not going to fund it forever.

DB Hmm.

JF But through sponsorship and through selective advertising.

DB Okay.

JF Sales related products, without competing with my team of experts, it will generate sufficient income to pay the salaries of those that are working on it and then in the fullness of time, it will become part of the Top Sales Group and yes, I mean, I think in two years time and I’m pretty certain you’ll agree with me on this; it will have considerable value because it is niche and because it is fresh and it’s constantly updated and it’s yeah, it’s just great.

DB I mean I think that’s an excellent point, niche; it means that if someone wants to replicate that business model they shouldn’t go out at too much of a tangent they need to stay close to their existing core business model and actually evolve that and play to their advantages that they have at the moment.

JF I couldn’t agree more. You’ve got to play to your strengths and I think that goes for everything in life and stick to what you know but don’t be frightened to challenge paradigms and find out what you don’t know. It’s rather like when I was at school the only sport on offer was football, cricket and athletics and now the choice is hockey, badminton, squash, sailing and goodness knows what. I never had the opportunity to discover whether I could sail until much later in life.

DB Hmm.

JF And I think that illustrates my answer perfectly.

DB I’ll tell you what I was just thinking then, I think the internet allows you to become even more ultra specific in terms of market segment than you could ever possibly have dreamed of being ten years ago. To use your example if you wanted to concentrate on squash ten years ago, nowadays you’d probably concentrate on how to actually hit or return shots in a certain style.

JF Correct.

DB And that would be your specialism, you’d become the best in the world at that tiny tiny little niche.

JF Well yes, I think you’re absolutely right and do you know the maxim I work with David is, somebody’s got to be the best, why not me? Why not us? You know, and keep working to improve and just constantly work at it.

DB Now you’re recording a podcast yourself with Top Ten Sales Articles. Is that something you would recommend other people that have their own, perhaps offline businesses at the moment, thinking of getting into to article writing. Would it be worthwhile them doing some kind of audio, audio broadcast of their articles?

JF If they’re comfortable doing it, not everyone is, not everyone is confident about talking with other people, feeling comfortable talking live as it were, I know it’s recorded but you understand what I’m saying; rather than writing about it, where you can make constant changes.

DB Hmm.

JF If you believe you’ve got a personality and you’ve got sufficient knowledge about the subject to be able to play it from the hip if you need to.

DB Hmm.

JF Then yes, by all means do it because some people prefer to listen than read but my advice would always be, put it in written form as well.

DB Right, Okay. So someone just wants to put it in written form, obviously they still have an opportunity to actually feature on other people’s podcasts if their article’s good enough. Would there be any specific way you’d recommend someone to format their own articles in order to give themselves the best opportunity of potentially being featured in a podcast of someone else?

JF Well yes maybe the easiest way for me to answer that question David is to share with you what I use as the parameters if you like, to benchmark the articles that are submitted.

DB Okay.

JF And I work in two specific areas, structure and content. As far as structure goes, briefly I look at use of paragraphs. I look at spelling, I look at grammar and then I run it through what I call the bull index ratings okay, and I don’t think that needs any further explanation, other than to say, if you visit www.fightthebull.com.

DB Okay.

JF You’ll understand perfectly what I’m getting at there. In terms of content, then I would say adding to knowledge or providing a personal insight, is something that I Iook for. I then look for does it build a story with a beginning and an end?

DB Hmm-hmm.

JF Is the content related to the title? And finally I ask myself, is this a blatant advertisement or is it a genuine article.

DB Some excellent tips there thank you.

JF Hmm.

DB So what is the future of article writing in general would you think on the internet?

JF I think it’s got a fabulous future. I think you know, almost every site, every article community that you visit, you see daily increases in the number of authors. Sadly, some just write one or two articles to plug their business and then that’s it and they do no more. Some, as I’ve said earlier, are blatant adverts but there are people who are in it for the long haul, and that’s certainly always been my strategy, to build a platform, to gain recognition, to gain exposure. That was always the aim from day one and I will continue with that. I’ve had a short sabbatical but I will begin writing and submitting again before the end of May. My target is to get to 250 articles submitted by the end of June and if I’m still comfortable with that and I’ve still got the time, then I will go for the 500 by the end of the year because providing, it’s not about quantity, it never has been about quantity. If you can combine quantity and quality then it brings massive, massive advantages.

DB So obviously we’ve discussed briefly the impact that podcasts can have on, on article writing.

JF Hmm.

DB Have you ever submitted your own articles to forums or in fact, as press releases to actually try and develop different readers from there?

JF No, I haven’t yet if I’m honest, time hasn’t allowed that. It’s something that I do like to do or I would like to do rather. What I do get quite often and more often now than obviously at the beginning. I get requests to write articles for people.

DB Hmm.

JF Not necessarily as a ghost writer, in my own name, for various journals and magazines and that can be quite lucrative, and you know, you haven’t asked me this but I guess you may well do, or may want to; can article writing provide an income? Well, the answer to that is not a massive income but it can certainly provide a reasonable income.

DB Hmm.

JF If you’re any good at it because people will find you and I probably get three, four, five requests a month. Well, if you total that up…

DB Hmm.

JF Then it’s, you know it’s quite a lot because a good article is worth anything between three and seven, eight hundred dollars.

DB In terms of your own article writing .

JF Hmm.

DB We’ve covered until May; you have goals to reach something like 200/250 articles until then.

JF Well by the end of June.

DB Do you

JF Yes sorry.

DB By the end of June, sorry, okay.

JF Yes.

DB Longer term over the next couple of years do you see yourself still regularly submitting to article directories?

JF Yes I do and because I think the benefits are ongoing; it’s not something that you start and stop if you are enjoy doing it. In my retirement I’llhave plenty of time to write but I do want to get those first two books out by the end of the year, I mentioned that earlier and then three books with the rest of the team, with the rest of the top sales experts team, so that’s five in total, that’s quite ambitious. Whether or not we’ll achieve it, well we’ll have to see but certainly we’ll have a jolly good go.

DB Brilliant stuff, brilliant stuff.

JF Hmm.

DB And just out of interest is that self-publishing or (laughter)?

JF No, no no, we’ve got a couple of publishers who are interested.

DB Right.

JF With the sales experts of course we’re quite fortunate because they’ve all got published work, well almost all of them have got published work and and they’re all Amazon best sellers I think. With my own work they’ve recommended a couple of publishers who seem quite interested. What I wanted to do was to put together the very best of my blog, which will be a year old in October this year, so that’s going to be called “A Blogging Good Year”. And I’ve got “Sales Management: The New Testament”, which is a new sales management bible, which is something I’m really excited about, and then finally, “How To Become A Top Five Percent Achiever”. And you see the magic two words there at the beginning.

DB (Laughter). Now that’s excellent. What’s quite interesting there is you’re obviously article writing with a specific goal in the future in mind. You’re writing articles that can create content for an additional project in the future as well?

JF Yes absolutely, I think that you know, within your material there’s always going to be pieces that can lead onto other things. You know, you can write an article and you can think, my goodness, I could actually extend this maybe to an e-book or even to a full book; or you cluster together certain pieces of work and that’s certainly the case with both the “Sales Management New Testament” and “How To Become A Top Five Percent Achiever”. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel because if you can get an Amazon bestseller you’re just going to get a whole new set of readers.

DB Hmm.

JF And I, I’m not worried about, I’m not, certainly not worried about duplication of ideas. It won’t be exactly the same as an article. What you’re doing is you’re expanding out a whole concept and a whole idea, which is fantastic.

DB Excellent, excellent and have you actually ever published somewhere in-between? Have you published a PDF book of say 50 or 40 Top Sales Articles?

JF No I haven’t, and I remember asking your advice about this in terms of e-books, etc., last year and… but then I decided I’d go the whole hog, so I, I put it sort of into the pending part of my brain.

DB Hmm.

JF Until the second part of this year. I tend to work with a one and, sometimes two, or even three year plan and I’m quite good at sticking with that, although I have to say, new ideas come along all the time. If you’d have said to me at Christmas, Jonathan, you’re going to launch Top 10 Sales Articles in April.

DB (Laughter).

JF I’d probably have said, yeah where am I going to find the time?

DB (Laughter).

JF So I, I’m quite good because I always allow a cushion.

DB Spreading yourself yourself too thin? That’s what they say isn’t it?

JF Well, I’ve, yes you do and you’ve

DB (Laughter)

JF Got to say that to me and in a sense that you’re right but I also believe that if an idea that comes along is so exciting, why park it, why not run with it, see how it goes, test drive it and then if you’re happy with it go with it. And I always build in a certain part of my day, a certain part of my week, a certain part of my month and obviously year that’s free. So in case anything runs over I’m covered.

DB Excellent, I know now I’m only saying that of course because you said that

JF (Laughter)

DB To me as a joke.

JF (Laughter).

DB A couple of months ago, yes?

JF (Laughter) I know, I know.

DB Great stuff so, thinking about businesses that are considering article writing as a form of internet marketing.

JF Hmm.

DB What are the first things that they should do and is there anything that we haven’t talked about that we should have talked about in order to give some basic advice to those sorts of businesses?

JF I think that if you want to create greater awareness of your product, services, solutions, whatever industry you’re in, article writing can only benefit you and only last week, one of the articles that was nominated, the author sent me an email and said look, this is the business that I’m in, it happens to be IT and they happen to have some very very good products.

DB Hmm.

JF And he said, do you think I should pursue article writing, and if so, who should I submit my articles to? Well the advice that I gave him is broadly in line with all the things that we’ve talked about today; it can only be of benefit if you want to increase awareness. Article writing has so many benefits and it’s all just so positive.

DB And that’s a great note to finish up on I think actually.

JF Hmm.

DB I think that’s a tremendous amount of pertinent information you’ve offered there. I thank you very much indeed for that. If people have realised, and I’m sure they have, that Jonathan Farrington is an excellent source of information on article writing and they’d like to get in touch with you, what would be the best way of someone doing that?

JF Well, there’s in fact, three ways of doing it David. They can come onto my personal site, there’s a contact form there. I’m loath to give out my email address, as you’ll understand.

DB Huh-huh, huh-huh.

JF But they can go on my personal site, which is www.jonathanfarrington.com.

DB Okay.

JF There is a contact form as well on group site, which is www.thejfagroup.com or on my blog, which at the moment is weekly but I can give you an exclusive; from next week it’s going to be bi-weekly and then from June it will probably be daily and the…

DB Wow.

JF Address of that is www.thejfblogit.co.uk and if I may… just one small advert David? Also from late June, early July, I will be launching a leadership blog and I think I, well in fact I’ve mentioned this to you last week which is called, “Tougher At The Top”; so www.tougheratthetop.com because leadership is something I believe in passionately as you well know.

DB Jonathan thank you very much for joining me today.

JF It’s been my pleasure David and I just want to add I really do want to thank you for all the advice that you’ve given me since we first began communicating in May 2006. You’re a sterling chap and I appreciate and respect you very very much and I wish you all the best with these new projects.

DB My pleasure and likewise. Thank you.

JF Thanks David.

View the entire presentation on submitting articles below via the Slideshare website. This is an audio recording of the original 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing seminar added to the original slides.

This video on submitting articles is the eighth pillar in our series of internet marketing videos which were recorded at an early version of the 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing seminar. Enjoy!