Article Writing - Get Yourself Organized!

That’s great – so you get the main draft down, tweaking it until you can’t do any more with it. Now what’s next, you may be asking? How do I get my article onto the web? If it’s your first attempt at submitting to an ezine directory, here are some pointers which can help make the whole thing easier.

Firstly, you’ll need to sign up as an author to the directory of your choice before you can submit anything. Sign-ups are free and only take a couple of minutes to complete. You’ll need a valid email address and a username. There’s the option to supply further details on a Profile page, so that your potential readers can get to know you a little better. You can usually upload a photograph of yourself too, if you want. You may need to supply a pen name, but you can stick to your name if you prefer.

Once you’ve signed up and have received a confirmation email from the directory, you’re free to start submitting those articles. Before you head straight to the submissions page, I’ve found that organizing my articles and anything relevant to them saves time and frustration, so here’s my strategy for hassle free article submissions:

• Check out the author’s submission guidelines. Each directory has its own rules on article length, layout etc and you’ll need to ensure you adhere to these if you don’t want to receive a rejection email! Most directories like articles to have a word count of around 400 but some will accept as low as 250

• Once you’ve read the guidelines thoroughly, you can type your article up into Word (or whichever word processor you use), keeping it in the preferred layout of the ezine directory.

• Open up a new Notepad document. Copy and paste the entire article into this. We do this because the formatting used by Notepad is acceptable by the directories, Make sure you save the Notepad document with the title of your article

• On the Notepad document, above the complete article, I type in the following, leaving double spacing between each for ease of reference:

• My bio information, which will be used to fill in the resource box at the bottom of the finished article. This includes not only personal information about myself and my online business but also links to the relevant website and/or blog

• A list of all the relevant keywords for the article. These will be needed on the submission page. You can source these keywords yourself by using a keyword tool but most directories will list them for you, which you are free to use

• You will need to write a “teaser” piece about your article. This is simply a short keyword-rich article summary in about three sentences, no more

• You can date the Notepad document if you want – this can be useful in the future if you need to know when you actually wrote the article rather than when it was submitted or published

• Make sure you save the Notepad document! Then minimize it on your desktop whilst you log onto your chosen ezine directory

• Once on the article submission page, it’s simply a case of copying the text from the Notepad by highlighting it, then pressing CTRL + C, then placing your cursor inside the relevant box and pressing CTRL + V

• Once all the information is on the page, you have the opportunity to preview your work – this is where you get to see how it would look “live” on the web! Make sure you spell-check your article – bad spelling and grammar are not good for your online image and it’s amazing how many people just don’t bother to check their work before submission

• You can then either save your work as a draft, so that you can go back and work on it before submitting or, if you’re happy with it, you can hit the “submit” button and send it on its way. You’ll get an immediate on-screen acknowledgement.

One last tip: if your article is accepted and published, you’ll get a unique ID link to the published page. Make sure you copy, paste and save this onto the relevant Notepad document, then you can add this link to the bottom of the article when you re-submit it to other directories as this will get you back-links. You can also put the ID onto your website, if it’s relevant, or post it on your blog.
If you organize each article you write onto a Notepad document as I’ve explained, you’ll have all the relevant information at the touch of a key and you’ll save yourself valuable time and trouble in your article submissions.

All that’s left then is to wait to hear if your article has been accepted which normally takes a few days- but don’t sit around waiting to hear, do yourself a favour and write as many articles as you can. Be prolific and be organized!

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