This article on the 11 tips for newbies is written (obviously) for the beginning article writer.  It is not written from the perspective of an article directory that would host your article.  It’s written from the perspective of an author that has “been there, done that” and made her mistakes already… and learned from them.  After all there are a lot of great writers that at one time submitted hundreds of articles for publication and didn’t make the grade right away.

1.  Necessity vs Desire

Articles and blogs are necessary in today’s world of needing good search engine rankings.  Not what the newbie wants to hear.  Just remember what the Bible says, “there has nothing over taken you that is not common to man”.  That’s right!  All of us hate article and blog writing at times, and some of us dread the journey to pen and paper (or keyboard, as the case may be) all the time.

2.  Just Start, It Gets Easier

At first it’s sometimes difficult to get a subject or theme and to get the first couple of lines written.  Lighten up.  Once an author has a starting point and gets passed the initial thoughts, article and blog writing usually goes fairly smoothly.

The main thing is that you get started.  Pick a subject you know something about and just start.  You will be pleasantly surprised at just how easily ideasflow.  Don’t assume everyone knows what you know.  They don’t.  Will Rogers once said, “all men are ignorant, just on different subjects”.  And, so it is!

3.  Good vs Perfection

This does not have to be perfect.  That is not to say it doesn’t have to be on point or to say that it doesn’t have to be correct.  It does — or at least it should be.  But, perfection is not the goal and is, in fact, seldom possible.  Too much detail and you run the risk of losing your reader on several levels.  Too long and
most readers simply don’t have the time or interest to wade through the material regardless of how important it is.

4.  Blog Length vs Article Length

Most publishers want a minimum of 500 words per article – some will let you slide with 400 – some, maybe more.  But blogs can be much shorter.  Blogs can and should support appropriate pictures and embedded links.

Just don’t over do it.  Too gaudy or too slow to load and you’ve wasted your time and ticked off a potential reader.  Articles, on the other hand, typically cannot carry these extra touches according to the requirements of most publishers.

5.  Format

Prepare your article in American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format.  There are many tools from which to choose to get the job done. A search for ‘free ASCII editor’ or for ‘free plain text editors’ will provide one with a multitude of free options.  WordPress is a popular choice.  If all else fails simply use notepad to turn out your masterpiece.

6.  Spelling and Grammar

Once you have your article or blog post, run it through a good spell checker and a grammar checker.  Microsoft Word works well for these purposes.  Just don’t use the MS Word copy for publication of your article.  Rather use it’s suggestions to make any necessary corrections to your plain text copy.

7.  Publish and Announce

Once your blog is ready you may want to use some automatic tools to publish and announce it.  First do a search for blog hosts and select those which best suit your needs.  Join one or more and publish your Blog there.  Then search for Blog announcers and rss announcers and use them to get your Blog noticed.

Now that you have that out of the way find an article wizard that will post your articles to free publishers.  You can post them one at a time by hand if you’re really bored and have absolutely nothing else in life to do.  Using an automatic poster, you can publish to hundreds of hosts in an hour or so.  The only way to go.

8.  Patience

Now, have some patience.  Here’s where you lose control.  Many of the men and women who host articles are timely and your articles will be reviewed within 24-48 hours.  But, many others will be days and weeks down the road, so never date an article – a sure way to get rejected.

9.  Rejection – “your article has been declined”

Be prepared for most hosts to reject your articles.  Don’t take it personally.  It usually has little to do with you or your article.

Some databases routinely reject articles for spelling errors when there are none or where there is more than one way to spell a word.  And, just as in any other endeavor some hosts are simply too lazy and get so far behind, the easiest and fastest thing to do (and perhaps the only alternative) is to reject everything.  You will learn who these are over time.

Then there are those who run your articles through the sausage grinder and if they find certain words, irrespective of how they are used, your article gets no farther.  These are the people who can’t publish the Holy Bible because it contains words that offend them or their readers.  Don’t worry about these folks who are so heavenly minded they are of no earthly use.

Remember, just as in everything else in life, for every rule there is an exception

10.  Keep the faith and keep writing articles

Since most authors, especially newbies, prepare only one copy of an article, against the advice of most seasoned authors, it’s important to keep your chin up – keep the faith.  That will be easier as more and more of your articles are accepted and published, driving visitors to your website while creating those all important backlinks.

It’s not necessary that every host accepts everything submitted to them.  After one or two hosts publish your article on any given subject, the search engines tend to penalize you anyway by ignoring additional postings. While it could help someone find you, it probably won’t.  It is not necessarily, the more the merrier.  The additional listings will not increase your page rankings or links reported by the search engines.  It’s more important to get published by hosts with the highest Google page rank possible.

BONUS TIP

Along with “the rejection slip” will usually come a suggestion on how to “fix” your article and a  request that you resubmit it.  Don’t waste your time.  While trying comply with one database manager’s request you could have written a new article from which you get much more punch.  Enough publishers will pick your article up so move on and save yourself some time and heartache.

How many good ideas have you lost because of waiting?  Don’t procrastinate!  Go!  Capture that thought before it’s gone forever.