On Getting Articles Published

It's one thing to write insightful and well-crafted prose, quite another to navigate the business of writing - actually getting published and making money from your craft. Most of the ideas for this post come from The March/April issue of Writer's Digest, which attacked theme: Your Economic Survival Guide. Lots of great stuff here. I'll center in on ideas for getting articles published.

1. Build Relationships. Maybe you meet writers at socials or writers' conferences. Offer to take them to lunch to ask for advice. If you've written for someone before, keep in touch! Keep a good client list. If you came through with a good article last time, they're more likely to take your idea next time. Submit to them regularly.

2. Understand the Market. Perry Perkins makes a full-time living writing articles. At first, he wrote articles and used Writers Market to try to find appropriate places to place them. Then, he took a different approach. He spent several days reading through Writers Market, cover to cover, studying it. This knowledge can become a brainstorming list to dream up articles a certain publication might love. Then he could write queries based on what magazines were looking for, rather than trying to taylor his articles to fit their purposes.

There's an interesting parallel to Warren Buffett's advice to a young person wanting to learn how to invest like him. Basically, he told him to start like he did, studying every publically traded stock in the United States. The person objected - there are thousands of stocks! To which Buffett replied, "Start with the A's". I think Buffett's point was: if you want to pick the best companies, it helps to understand how they compare with other companies. The more companies you know and understand, the better decisions you can make.

Writing is a skill. But we sell our writing in a market - an industry. The more thoroughly we understand that market, the easier it will become to find the perfect match for our articles, and to propose articles that would be the perfect match for specific publications.

3. If your writing is good, then it's a numbers game - put out lots of submissions. Trying to move up from making a partial living to making a full living, Perkins upped his submissions from an average of 2.5 per day to 15 per day (assuming a five day work week). It worked!

4. Query big, well-paying publications first.

5. Don't put hours into an article until you know someone wants it. Query first.

6. Know the publication, giving editors what they want, when they want it, how they want it. You know this by studying their guidelines for submission and reading their publications.

Leftover Questions

I've written article for magazines, but have never done extensive article submission. Do most magazines accept multiple submissions? I suppose that since Perkins recommends hitting the big publications first, they he's giving them a week or a month to respond before submitting the proposal to lesser publications. How long do you give the major publication? And if there are 10 lesser publications, do you send out those 10 at the same time? What if more than one wants it? Do you write two similar, but different articles?

If you have answers or suggestions, please let me know.

Using Articles to Market Books

Surely I could get more mileage out of my articles. I typically put them in the members' sections of my two sites, post them on my blogs, and use them in my newsletters. But after I've spent so much time researching and crafting an article, shouldn't I take a few more minutes to get the article out there somewhere, providing incoming links from the far corners of the Web and helping my Google rankings with key words? That's precisely what a lot of marketing experts suggest.

According to web marketing guru Ralph F. Wilson, "Those who find success with article marketing don't just write one article, they write and submit one a week -- or two or three. Done well, article marketing works very well." (From How to Support Your Site through Article Marketing.)

Here are some suggestions I've run across on submitting articles to free article sites, where people read articles and follow links back to my sites, or where blog owners and journalists find articles to put in their blogs and e-zines.

1. Submit only to about five top article directories and some niche sites. Don't use software to submit to hundreds of directories. Google will see that as spam and penalize your search engine position. Few people go to the lesser directories anyway. Look for the current top directories, as ranked by Alexa and Google. Here are five of the top article directories. I checked their Alexa ranks today (lower numbers are better):

http://ezinearticles.com - Alexa Rank: 132

ArticlesBase.com - Alexa Rank: 424

http://www.associatedcontent.com/ - Alexa Rank: 518

GoArticles.com - Alexa Rank: 1609

ArticleDashboard.com - Alexa Rank: 2965

SearchWarp.com - Alexa Rank: 5800

2. Write short articles: typically between 400 and 750 words. (See what each article directory recommends.)

3. Hyperlink to your site and/or book (see how many links the site allows) in your signature (not the body of the article.) Hyperlink from key phrases you're targeting, not just the url. Search engines rank hyperlinked phrases higher.

4. Format it allowing plenty of white space, using devices like headings, subheadings, bullet points and bold for key words/phrases.

5. Choose your key words carefully. I like to find them here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal . Use them in your title and your first sentence. But don't use them too much. Google's algorithm also accounts for synonyms. And your chances of getting ranked highly for a mega-searched term like "Money" are slim. (Everybody's trying to capture them.) So consider choosing some words that still get a lot of searches, but aren't out of your league.

6. Write quality, timely articles.

7. Write a title that intrigues, accurately sums up the article, and contains your key words. (Good luck!)

8. Additionally, send the article to e-zine editors' Websites in the field of your topic.

Lingering Questions:

1. Would it be better to target certain major publications? Even if I got only one article in the MSN Network or a major magazine, wouldn't that link likely draw more traffic than 1000 links from article databases?

I suppose that once I submit an article to one of these free sites, many magazines will no longer want it, since they may want rights to publish it for the first time. So, if I think an article might be appropriate for a magazine with a large circulation, would I do better to submit it there first and wait until later for the free sites? Or, are the odds so slim in getting into the major magazine (and the corresponding site) that I'd do just as well submitting to free sites?

Looks like I need to read several authoritative articles on submitting articles to magazines to better estimate the odds on this tactic.

2. Is it okay to submit to all these places (including top blogs and sites) at once, or do some want first rights?

3. Let's think long-term. Let's say I concentrate on more traditional magazine/ezine publishing for my better articles. So I get some published in magazines with medium circulation and then some with larger circulations. Isn't it possible that, in a few years, my resume could include "Has written for People Magazine and AARP?" Wouldn't that be better for my long-term career, than just saying, "I put up 1000 articles on free article sites and got them put in a bunch of blogs?"

Write Feature Articles to Publicize Your Book

I just listened to a telephone seminar on this topic. Lots of useful information from successful writers and big-time magazine editors. Here are my takeaways:

1) Writing articles and getting mentioned in articles is powerful, free advertising.

• People believe articles more than ads.
  
• You're reaching readers, who are more likely than listeners to purchase a book.
• The articles have lasting power. They can remain in doctor's offices or archives on websites.
• You can use the article for blurbs "As mentioned in Womans Day Magazine."
• You can attract other media people who may read the articles.
  

2) Know the magazine you're targeting and show them you know it. Most don't. Perhaps compare your article to a previously-written article in the magazine. Call to make sure you know who to address by name as the "Articles Editor." Ask if it's appropriate to follow-up with a call or e-mail.

3) Get to know media contacts personally. Time spent face-to-face can reap rich dividends. Make it a two-way street: How can I serve you?

4) Offer all the bells and whistles. They're busy and would love an interview format, with you asking your own questions, a side bar with five tips for a broad audience, etc.

5) Offer yourself as an expert who can either provide the information or give them someone who can. Are you a life coach, psychologist, pet expert, etc.? They're always looking for experts to interview and quote. They want to have relationships with as many experts as possible. How can I put myself forth as an expert in personal money management?

• Have written a book on it.
  
• Raising seven boys.
  
• Worked with youth and trained youth-workers for 30 years, both nationally and internationally.
  
• Write resources for educators.
  
• Am an investor.
• Have done noteworthy research and fresh interviews.
  

6) If they don't want your article, it's OK to ask, "Is there anyone else on staff who might want to see this article?"

7) Show yourself as one who knows how to consolidate concepts into sound bites. Give them a brief, catchy title, a descriptive subtitle and a brief summary.

8) Tie your book into current trends and news. One expert on how to prevent dog attacks goes to Google Alerts to automatically receive e-mail alerts from breaking news, videos, blogs, etc., about about dog attacks. He then contacts the press in that area to find if they want an article by an expert on how to prevent them in the future. Was there a recent study released on your topic of interest? Tie the study into the topic of your book and suggest an article. You don't have to make the news or be the news. Rather, piggy-back on what's already news.

9) Track the impact on your book sales on Amazon.com. When a lady published an article concerning her book on caring for an Alzheimer's patient, she looked under the category "Alzheimer's" and found that she was #1.

10) Find a common link with someone important in the organization. One author wrote a book about succeeding without goals. He had heard that Oprah had succeeded without setting goals, so he contacted her to let he know he'd written a book on it. She was fascinated and interviewed him.

11) Keep learning about your niche, so that you become that most respected person for the press to call upon when they need an expert.

12) Send notes of appreciation to reporters when they've written a good, substantive article in your field. If they respond, offer them a copy of your book, your web address and phone number, letting them know that if they need you in the future, you're available. Say that if you don't know the answers, you'll refer them to an expert (This person refers to an expert about 50% of the time, getting him in good with the expert as well!)

13) Use e-mail to make your first contact with a magazine (or whatever method they request).

14) Think outside of the box concerning which magazines might be interested. One author wrote a self-help book for young people getting jobs. She pitched an article to ESPN magazine (sports) with this angle: "How many people read your magazine because they love sports, don't have the athletic ability to compete, but would love to work in the sports industry? What about an article on all the ways to work in the sports industry? They took it! Concerning my money book, I could write for a sports magazine on how sports figures have lost their money and how to handle it more wisely.