For the writer branching out on the Web there is not a better way to fine tune your writing than checking out the Article Directories and setting yourself a target to submit to a number of them. The difference between posting articles on your blog and on an article Directory is substantial.

Your blog, especially in the early days won’t be getting any traffic so guess what? Nobody will see your stuff except perhaps you and your Granny.

But then again if Granny doesn’t have a computer, which is possible, unless you have trained her how to operate one, then your admirers will be very thin on the ground. Yes I know if you’ve spent a fortune on SEO courses and How to make Money on the Internet rubbish you’ll probably have tried to implement a few strategies that will get you a few visitors. All good character building stuff as your Headmaster used to say!

There’s no free lunch here and a blog will take time to mature rather like a good chateau bottled Bordeaux. We are talking several years here and that assumes you are posting to the blog more than once a year!

Achtung! You are now entering a Restricted Area!

Now to the spectre of Article Directories… there are a gazillion of them out there at the last count and probably, while you are avidly consuming this article, there will be another 100 Directories added online. But lets not get disheartened people there are a few, a very few Article Directories out there that are worth pursuing as a home for your carefully crafted work.

In the excitement of producing my first blog, which got me hooked on learning html, by the way, it seemed to me to be rather a good ruse to knock up a few articles and submit them to about a dozen article directories. Having read that this was an excellent way of getting one’s work published around the globe I sat back with my second pot of Java that day and thought I had cracked the millionaire code.

Three days later with sheets of newly created Analysis and Urls and stuff I sat back and waited for the money to roll in. Of course you’ve noticed in this short resume that there are many aspects I have missed out. That’ll wait for another day!

Imagine my consternation when the first Article to http://ezinearticles.com was returned to me for breaching guidelines. Yes you’ve guessed it… in my enthusiasm I hadn’t read ALL the small print. Not to be put off I corrected the errors and set about writing for a solid week.

The Headquarters of the Internet Article Directory Police

The other Directories were good, with varying submission criteria. The debate about Duplicate Content hadn’t really started yet so it didn’t seem a problem to submit the same articles to a dozen sites.

Six years on and after a two year sabbatical, Wrinkly Writer is back and with some dollars (just a few) earned from Web Writing for Blog and Website owners under his belt, he is now equipped to make the transition from (Gee wouldn’t it be Great to be a Writer) to (Hey I am a writer and lets go Shake Rattle and Rock)

In another module I’ll put together some more resources for people exploring Article Directories so you can cut to the chase!

Here’s the link to the No 1 Article Directory on the Web.Period

This links directly to my own Authors page where you can see some more of my content

In part two we will dissect the various strategies that should be employed to make Article Marketing work smoothly and hopefully persuade those of you out there who are still sitting on the fence to take some action… no correction! Massive Action. Want to know who the Massive Action Master is? You will have to look a little further to the authors’ resource box thingy below and then do some Detective Work. The Authors resource box is found at the bottom of an article in an Article Directory and has to be kept intact (along with the article) in order to be republished

Actually I must credit the amazing Jim Edwards for getting me started some nearly four years ago.. It would be worth your while checking Jim out since one good idea can sometimes change your life! Jim usually has more than one good idea that he floats around

(1)   These can be published on your Web Site with perhaps a sign-up required to access the full library.

(2)   They should be submitted to as many Article Directories as you can find. I guess that for a Newbie Author perhaps ten or twenty of the top Directories.

(3)   Submitting manually is certainly a chore and they do not all have exactly the same submission systems  which often leads to one false click deleting your handiwork until you are very familiar.

(4)   A major Article can be turned into several blog posts with some variation of the copy.

(5)   Blog Posts that are done on the spur of the moment will often give you an idea for an article or series of Articles.

(6)   Once you get over the Newbie paralysis syndrome you will be surprised how quickly the ideas come. So you need to create a neat folder or workbook to write down these ideas and then categorise them for your future writing.

(7)   It should be possible for someone to create at least three or four Articles a week o r more once you get moving. Momentum is a great force of Nature.

(8)   Once you have submitted your Articles and they have been accepted you should make a point of doing plenty of keyword/phrase searches and you will be amazed how quickly your article and name will start appearing in these places.

(9)   One of our Articles that was not written from a search engine perspective but by chance had in its title, some very often used Key words was showing up in the number one position on a page of 38,000,000 entries. The Article Directory and its high search engine ranking led to this. So if you can do it once by accident you can surely do it over and over again by Design!

(10)   One of the encouraging aspects of getting into a very regular Article groove is that other Web Masters and site owners will, if they like what you have to say and it is in demand by their viewers, publish you on their site. The advantage of this is that your Authors’ resource box will be visible with usually two live links to your Web Site or Blog

We will expand on this technique as time goes on but in the meantime take a trip over to the Webs’ Leading Article Directory http://www.ezinearticles.com and see how it all works. That will be an hour very well spent.