Hi welcome back, glad you found the Blog interesting enough to come back, if you subscribed to my RSS that way you will get told when I post straight away. Andrew Peel

Having established article marketing is one of the ways to earn extra money. The next question is how do you tell people you are an author?

So you have written your article, submitted it to the article directory and you get the email you have been waiting for. It says, ‘Your article has been accepted and can be found here’ [followed by a link].

If you chose a good article directory such as Ezine.com you have the advantage you can link Twitter and Facebook to your account. Then as soon as your article is published a Tweet is sent and updates your Facebook status.

Next you should consider using your Blog to advertise your article. This takes a little recycling of your article. You need to avoid duplicating the headline it needs to be at least 30% different. This is for Search Engines, they need to see the post about your article and the article as different. That way there will be a link between your Blog and the Article Directory and the other ways round. This adds to the relevance of the article because a related Blog has linked to it.

If you belong to other social networks then use a service like ping.fm where you can enter a single status update and it will update all your social networks. There is now a Wordpress Plug-In that does the same thing as soon as you publish the post.

Your post should introduce the topic and give a ‘teaser’ outline of the article content and end with something like ‘read the full article here’ as a link. The teaser can be based on your article introduction however again should be at least 30% different.

So now you know the idea behind headlines, how much to write and how to publicize the article. All you need to know to start to improve your ways to earn extra money with article marketing.

Andrew Peel

Using article marketing to increase your ways to earn extra money is effective. Many people ask ‘But how much should I write?’

An article is different from a Blog post. People are visiting the article directory intending to do research. That means they have set aside time to read your material. However they will want to read more than one article. So if you make it too long they will lose interest and move on.

I ’skim read’ an article to see if it’s worth reading. So what am I looking for? A good headline (which we have already discussed), context – what am I going to learn, new facts or techniques that I can take away and apply, what I can expect if I apply the lessons from the article?

I would advise a minimum of 500 words and a maximum of 775 words for the average article. If you find yourself writing a lot more that’s fine. Simply split your longer article into two or three shorter ones and say they are part of a series, Part 1, Part 2 etc. This has the added advantage of enticing the reader back to read more of your content.

So now you know the basic length of an article you really have no excuse boost your ways to earn extra money and become an author.

Andrew Peel

Being a successful entrepreneur means maximizing the ways to earn extra money. One way is by article marketing.

I have been using article marketing for over a year now and find it is an excellent way to:

• Demonstrate any areas of expertise you have
• Introduce people to your Blog or social networks
• Eventually drive traffic to your business sales page

The reason is so many people are using the Internet as a means to carry out ‘due diligence’. Due diligence is the research someone does before deciding to set up in business. The stages of due diligence involve;

• Checking the market – is it too competitive, are the returns good on average?
• Checking out well known business models in that market – who are the industry leaders, what are the start up costs, how long have the leaders been around?
• Checking who to go into business with – many business opportunities have several representatives this is the process of homing in on which person to team up with?

So you need to position yourself as an expert and Leader with your business opportunity. People trust independent sites like Ezine.com where thousands of articles are posted for a simple reason. It’s a high volume site, has rules about what authors can include and focus on content as opposed to allowing a sales pitch.

If you can be established as an Expert Author on Ezine.com for example then that is independent verification you know what you are writing about. This helps build your credibility.

One of the hardest things to do in Article Marketing is to get your headline right. You can write the best article in the world, however if the headline fails to catch the reader’s eye then it will sit unread.

There are several ways to come up with good headlines here are a few ideas;

• Hold a ‘brainstorming’ session where you simply write down headlines that come to you on a topic in a Notebook then refine them later
• Lists – such as ‘the 10 things you need to know about xxxxx’ are always popular
• Questions – we are hard wired to be inquisitive so phrasing a headline as a title gives it a better chance of being read
• How to – most people are using the Internet to find answers to thing or use social networking. The proof of this is the fact that Google a search engine is one of the biggest players on the Internet

So to boost you ways to earn extra money consider article aarketing and get started on those headlines.

Andrew Peel

I came across this excellent article from the Aweber Blog. Are your words scary? Find out more.

The correct use of words is crucial in your arsenal of ways to earn extra money

Lets face it we are all in business for one thing – the bottom line – or profit. What we decide to do with that profit, keep it, give it away, create a charity are different uses of the money. However the bottom line is we need clients to generate income. When you run an Internet based business your words are very important. Unlike face to face business there is no opportunity to correct a misconception in your message.

I came across an excellent article on the Aweber Blog today that demonstrate the power of correct word choice. The question they pose is, ‘Do your words scare people away?‘. Read and enjoy.

Andrew Peel

When you decide Internet marketing is one of your ways to earn extra money do you always mean what you say?

Integrity is one of the key ways to earn extra money

Being an Internet marketer means you are entering a competitive market. With the growth of Facebook and Twitter everyone thinks of the Internet as one of the easier ways to earn extra money.

The truth is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. We read of overnight successes caused by a YouTube video going ‘viral’. Going viral means your content gets seen by many people who then tell other people who tell other people etc. So traffic to your content grows at the rate of a virus.

That is the best way to market and what you should be aiming for. However there is another form of ‘virus’ in Internet marketing that is on the increase. It’s called the ‘daily email’. Now this can be in your Inbox or now just as frequently on your social network such as Facebook.

I have now taken a clear stand on this new virus. If I subscribe to a Blog or connect to someone on a Social Network I will count daily messages from them as unwanted ’spam’. The fact I have accepted a request to become a Friend is no licence to ‘pester’ me on a daily basis. One message is week fine.

This ‘battering ram’ approach to Internet marketing is ultimately self defeating. The key to Internet marketing is knowing your target audience and providing solutions.

If you doubt the wisdom of my stance imagine this. You go into your favourite Grocery store and they ask you for say your phone number ‘just for promotional information’. You like the store and they have given you good service so you give your phone number. Then every day after that last visit you get a phone call from the store with ’special offers’. I guarantee you will soon add that number to your ‘blocked callers’ no matter how good their product.

When people subscribe to your Ezine or connect with you on Facebook they expect you to treat that connection with integrity. This means no abuse of the information and their lifestyle.

So if you currently have daily emails set up or send a daily Ezine or event to people on Facebook do so very carefully. Be honest with people who go to your Fan Page and say you will be sending daily tips and events. Also give people the chance to opt out of daily messages yet still remain connected.

Remember when a person gives you their personal details this is your first test of your integrity. If you use an email autoresponder then your emails will automatically have an ‘unsubscribe’ option. Using the unsubscribe option only takes a mouse click and you have lost a potential client. Email and messages are a great way to develop a relationship with potential clients; they are also the easiest way to lose their trust.

Andrew Peel

I was recently asked to do a post on how to use Twitter effectively as one of your ways to earn extra money.

This post is about how you can build Twitter into your Blogging strategy. To cover the whole subject of using Twitter would (and does) take a book. Twitter is growing faster than Facebook did when Facebook was at the same stage in its lifecycle.

Originally people referred to Facebook and Twitter as Social Networks. After being on Twitter for over a year and having c13k Followers, I have refined my views on Twitter. Facebook is a social network yet Twitter is a social party. Facebook has ground-rules and generally accepted ways of behaving. Twitter is much more dynamic, some would say chaotic.

Up to now the social media marketing (SMM) gurus have said is all about making relationships. I went along with that. However the practicalities of developing a relationship with more than the normal number of people a person would know offline leads to people misusing SMM. (This is supported by the fact many gurus are extremely choosy who they Follow however are happy to have tens of thousands of Followers.) Average users end up shouting their message at their SMM connections and hope the message sticks. This has been referred to as ‘the jelly (jello) effect’. If you throw enough jelly at the wall some of it will stick. As a method of communication it is inefficient. It takes a lot of jelly and a lot of effort and you are unaware how much will ’stick’ to your audience.

Now imagine becoming a Follower of mine on Twitter. Your tweets will become mixed up with all my other Followers plus people you are Following, the number of updates every 30 seconds becomes large (about 126 in my case). In fact I never read Direct Messages in Twitter now. There is just so much spam. I do respond to an @Andrew_Peel which is a tweet directed to me because a person has taken the trouble to try and ‘talk’ to me.

The use of Lists does help now. I am beginning the process of putting my Followers in different Lists, this will be a long process for me. However if you are new to Twitter I encourage you to use Lists and add each new Follower to a List. Then you can listen to the conversation in each List.

The art of using SMM is to ‘listen’ first. You need to see what your target audience is talking about. Then you can think how your expertise would help them. Now you have a system for aiming your ‘jelly’ at a specific section of the audience and you can be sure they will get much more of your ‘jelly’ on them.

Your aim is to become an expert, a micro-celebrity if you like, by producing quality content that will help people. Link your Blog, Video Marketing and Article Marketing sites to Twitter. Set them up to tweet about any new content you produce. This means your titles have to be good enough to catch a Twitterer’s eye so they feel compelled to click on it. This all has to happen in 30 seconds.

Bringing it all together Twitter is the place you get people to ‘know about’ you. I am firmly convinced your Twitter following can get so big there is no way you can have a meaningful relationship with all those Followers. This is if you define a relationship as a two way process. However if you define a relationship as accepting your expertise and using it to provide valuable content/information then you can provide a meaningful experience for your Followers. I welcome your comments.

Andrew Peel

So you have chosen to Blog as one of the ways to earn extra money. How do you CAPTCHA quality comments?

I decided to make this Blog a DoFollow on the basis that givers gain. I have made some good contacts since I made the change. One thing you need to bear in mind when doing the same thing is what DoFollow really means. It means that because Google have slapped a lot of standard sales pages people have moved to using a Blog as their made ‘hub’. Now I have a Page Rank 3 Blog with higher than average traffic. So if you place a comment on my Blog that means you get a ‘backlink.

A backlink is good for you because it helps raise your Page Rank. I am happy to do this where people are taking a genuine interest in what I have written. That’s how the DoFollow community works. You leave a valid comment on a DoFollow Blog and I give you a valid backlink.

The issue of spamming has become a problem. There are two issues:

• Automatic spammers using scripts to post rubbish comments
• Human commenters who clearly have failed to read the actual post and add no value to the Post

The aim is to capture genuine comments. Spam filters have a problem because the major one Askimet works on the basis of people marking comments as spammers. People’s definitions of spam vary. I have defined what I think a spam comment is in my Comment Policy. So I have decided to moderate every comment myself. This does take some time and I find that 90 – 95% of the comments are spam.

I have come across a CAPTCHA system for my comments that is based on objects instead of that weird writing so many CAPTCHA systems use. It’s called Ironclad CAPTCHA and I will be monitoring how well it works.

My advice for Bloggers who have concerns about how Askimet inappropriately marks Spam then try using a CAPTCHA system to improve the quality of your DoFollow Comments.

Andrew Peel

More and more people are using Blogs as ways to earn extra money. Many have heard if you leave a comment on another Blog it will get you on page 1 of Google. True however only if your comment is useful.

Each day I check the comments people have left on my Blog. None of the comments left on this Blog are published automatically – period. This is my Blog and my reputation on the line so I moderate or ‘check; every comment. Some days there are 30 comments to check. You may think that is a lot of work. Well the surprising thing is it’s actually very easy. Because 95% of the comments end up in the trash. Why? Because this is the type of comment many people write and think I will accept – ‘Hi, I really like what you have written here. I have bookmarked your site’. It’s quite obvious they have given no thought to what I have written and simply looked for a post in their market area and then done a ‘cut and paste’ comment.

So if you want to waste your time and have all you Blog comments end up in the trash follow the above approach. However if your really see Blogs as one of the ways to earn extra money then be respectful. Read the post think about it then make a comment that adds value to the discussion. That way it’s a win – win, the Blogger gets decent comments and you get more potential traffic to your site.

Andrew Peel

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