Article Writing: Can It Help My E-book Sales?
Do you have a great idea for an e-book but don’t know how to go about publishing it? Are you a do-it-yourself kind of person who likes to be in control of their business? Maybe you just want to build up some online credibility and make yourself known as an expert on your topic. Whatever the reason, article writing is a great way to get your name out there and take care of any lingering doubts about whether or not you can write that book.
In this post we’ll cover some pros and cons of article writing, what it requires in terms of time and effort, as well as strategies on how to optimize your articles for various rankings with Google.
In the SEO community, there’s been a lot of discussion recently about article writing and the benefits it can bring to your e-book. It was even dubbed a “game changer” by Russell Savage , so you know that it must be pretty powerful. It all started with a post from Darren Rowse in which he described his own personal experience with article writing and how much it had helped his ebook sales. The whole thread is full of useful advice and tips for anyone looking to get into article writing, but Darren sums up most of the benefits on page 5 :
1) Being an author, you’re considered an expert on your topic. This gives you credibility and trust right off the bat. People are far more likely to read and buy your book when they know it comes from a source they trust.
2) If you’re linking to your book, people clicking on the link will instantly be able to see how good your ebook is. You can use this to convince them more strongly that they should buy it.
3) When people have not heard of you and have never read any of your writing, there’s nothing for them to go on but the writing itself. Make it really excellent, and you’ve got a great chance of winning them over even if they don’t know you or trust you yet.
These are some very solid points. However, the only real way to find out whether article writing will work for your ebooks is to try it yourself. If you want to give it a shot, there are a couple of things you should do first:
1) Write your first article. The best place to get started is with your own ebook and/or blog post . Don’t worry about being perfect at first; instead, focus on getting started and enjoying yourself. You can then go back later and refine the article if necessary.
2) Use a service like EzineArticles . This is a great place to get started because it offers you a variety of options for types of articles, as well as all kinds of functionality tools like tracking on a dashboard, contact and block management and so on.
EzineArticles will offer you articles in one of three forms:
As a Premium Article. This is the top tier, which requires $149 or more per month. If you have this option selected, then your article will be published in the Content Box on EzineArticles.com , with your byline appearing at the bottom of each page. You will have full email distribution control, as well as being able to manage whether or not your articles are displayed on each page individually.
As a Basic Article. This requires $99 per month and includes the Premium Article feature. The only thing different is that your name will appear in the article at the bottom of each page instead of within it.
As an Ezine Article. This is less expensive than Basic Articles ($39 a month), but you will still be able to choose whether or not you want your article to be displayed on every page or just one per week (the default). Also, ezines are only visible within an ezine directory you choose.
EzineArticles offers many other great features you can learn more about on their website.
Now that you’ve figured out where to publish your article, let’s talk a bit about what it takes to write one. As with any writing, article writing requires you to focus on the things that make people want to keep reading. Things like:
1) A catchy headline that gets attention and whets the appetite for the subject matter of your post. It’s especially important for an article because it will be what attracts people from search engines like Google . There are many free tools available that can help you brainstorm headlines , such as Adwords Spy .
2) A few short paragraphs to get the reader excited about your topic and draw them in.
3) A link to your actual book right at the end of the article, promoting it and allowing people to buy it if they’re interested. If you don’t give them a link, they probably won’t click it when they go to buy your book. See above for more on how this works!
With those general guidelines in mind, let’s talk more specifically about what you need to know about making an article from scratch:
• Write a good title . You should be able to tell from the title what your article is about.
• Write your article. If you’ve never written an article before, you can use a Google search or similar tool to get started with a general idea of what it’s all about.
• Edit, edit and edit! You should be able to come up with at least a rough draft within 10-15 minutes if you go into it with no preconceived notions of what should go in the article. But don’t get too caught up in editing the next paragraph. You’ll either need to make some major changes or keep going until everything is pretty much perfect (which could take some time). Develop a critical eye for what needs to be changed, and just get the job done once you see it all.
• Make sure that everything is spelled correctly and grammatically correct. You don’t have to be perfect, but an immediate red flag for anyone reading your work will be when you sound like you have not taken the time to proofread it. This means that no matter how much time you spend writing an article, publish it as soon as possible . If possible, try to do this before you even hit the “Publish” button. Sometimes there are errors in plain view in your post which can’t be seen while proofreading. Once you hit the Publish button, it will be out there forever and people will not appreciate it if they happen to stumble across something they misinterpret.
• Take a look at your title again (this time after publishing). Does it seem like you’re promising a little more than you’re delivering? Perhaps it’s too long or not descriptive enough? If so, then hit the “draft” button on your article and start all over. This is one of those cases where perfection really does outweigh all other considerations.
• Once you are done, go back through the article for spelling and grammatical errors one last time . Do this before you publish.
Conclusion
Article writing is an easy way to add more value to your ebooks, and it can be accomplished by writing an original article, or outsourcing the work to someone else. If you engage a freelancer to write an article, they should be able to create something that will bring in traffic (and sales) to your website. If you want more traffic, try this strategy.
In any case, make sure that you don’t overload the page with links. Ideally, each page of your ebook should have one or two links leading to related sites and products (that use affiliate links).
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