Run Your Own Website

Questions I’ve received recently… Is it really possible to build a website yourself, and not spend much money? Yes. Why do you keep “almost” telling us how? Is it because you really don’t want us to know? No. Read the rest of this entry »

Most web hosts, including DreamHost, have a mail option that let’s you receive mail at your domain, but forwards it to another address which is where you really get your mail. For example, John sends you an email to name@yourname.com. Your email account at DreamHost (or whoever Read the rest of this entry »

Sooner or later, I get asked about search engines. The underlying system we use with Run Your Own Website is WordPress. And the story about how we started using WordPress is all about search engines. Here’s that story… I was testing a variety of data driven website Read the rest of this entry »

nodropBy Christopher Knight

Most authors are wasting their time producing dozens to hundreds of high quality articles that never reach a fraction of their traffic potential. It’s a darn shame.

When I review the behind-the-scenes traffic statistics on over 20,000 articles that have produced over 1 million monthly page views in my article marketing lab…ONE thing is clear: All articles are not created equal even when everything about them is identical except for the TITLE.

The reason is probably not what you think.

If you’ve been schooled on traditional copywriting, you know that in the offline world, the headline determines as much as 95% of the success of the book or article. This statistic takes into consideration what makes the book title successful: Whether a human buys it or not.

Article Marketing on the Internet is a whole different story because of the way your articles reach humans who have an interest in them.

MYTH: Most people will read your articles because they came to a website and started browsing just like they do if they were to Read the rest of this entry »

nodropBy Christopher Knight

If you want to really make your article “SELL” then you’ve got to craft the perfect RESOURCE BOX. This is the “author bio” that is below your article body and it’s also known as your “SIG” (short for SIGnature).

Here are the essential items that should be in your RESOURCE BOX:

• Your Name: You’d be amazed at how many folks forget to include their name in the RESOURCE BOX. Your name and optional title should be the first thing in your resource box.
  
  
• Your Website Address: in Read the rest of this entry »

nodropBy Christopher Knight

Making your articles available for reprints by other ezine publishers and webmasters is the cornerstone strategy in building an avalanche of pre-qualified visitors to your website.

If you want your articles to be picked up and massively distributed by others, here are 7 common mistakes to avoid:

Article Mistake #1 Too many grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors.

In addition to having your article proofed by others, you may also want to be sure that you have clearly defined paragraphs. Nothing is worse than a big blob of text with 20 run-on sentences.

Readers no longer read articles in depth and often only ’scan’ your article. They want small bites of information that can be easily digested… also known as “info-snacking.”

Keep your “voice” in the same person throughout the entire article. If you are using the first person voice (I, me) or the second person (you, we, us) or the third person (they, them, he, she)…be consistent by staying in one voice for the entire article.

Article Mistake #2 Too much hype, bragging and self-promotion.

If you are as good as you know you are, there is no reason to fill the body of the article with hype, gratuitous links to your site or blatant self-promotion. Readers are smart and will see right through your “hype-veil.”

Better to only sell or pitch your company in the RESOURCE BOX below the body of the article. Research I’ve done indicates that the resource box often gets a 3% CTR (Click Through Rate). Be sure you take advantage of that by not selling hard in the body of the article.

Article Mistake #3 Content based on what you need to learn, not what your reader needs.

Put yourself in your reader’s shoes and ask yourself, “What does this article offer me?” Research what your reader wants to read by doing survey’s with your own audience or do keyword search engine research to find what people are looking for.

 <a href="http://ryowebsite.com/do-it-yourself/content/article-writing-mistakes-7-to-avoid/#more-68" class="more-link">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</a>

nodropBy Christopher Knight

Many successful authors close their mind to learning HTML because they figure they don’t need to know it. I’ve been in technology, marketing and writing on the Internet for a decade+ now and I too shut my mind to learning HTML… until earlier this year. My thinking was that HTML coders only make $8-$10/hr and why would I want to learn a skill that I can outsource to someone who specializes in HTML coding?

Guess what? You don’t have to learn more than 15 minutes of HTML knowledge to significantly improve the quality of your articles. In today’s issue, I’m going to show you the top 7 easy-to-learn essential HTML skills that can help any article author make better looking articles before the day is over.

The 7 HTML “MUST KNOW” article author skills include how to format a URL or an email address, how to enhance your text with BOLD, ITALICS, or the UNDERLINE font attribute and how to set up a bullet or numbered list in HTML.

      <b>1. How To Make A URL/Website Address "Linkable":</b>    This:            <a href="http://EzineArticles.com/">   </a><a href="http://ryowebsite.com/do-it-yourself/content/essential-html-skills-for-article-authors-7-tips/#more-67" class="more-link">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</a>

nodropBy Christopher Knight

By default, Microsoft Word automatically changes straight quotation marks ( ' or " ) to curly (smart or typographer’s) quotes as you type. This is fine if you are only authoring your works for applications not relating to article marketing. When smart quotes are converted to HTML, the quotes are converted to non-standard characters which end up littering your document with question mark symbols and/or other garbage code.

When in doubt, don’t allow your Ezine Articles to contain smart quotes:

Most articles that are put into article marketing distribution eventually end up being sent to an email newsletter audience. Email newsletter servers have near zero-tolerance for MS Word smart quotes; they will not recognize them as valid ASCII characters (because they are not valid). They are a figment of the Microsoft ASCII imagination. In most cases they will show up as garbage code; thus making you, and your article, look like a real novice lacking proper formatting skills.

At risk are: quotes, apostrophes, double dashes, and 3 periods in a row.

This is what smart quotes looks like when properly displayed:

“smart quotes” aren’t very smart…

This is what STANDARD quotes looks like when properly displayed:

"smart quotes" aren’t very smart…

This is what smart quotes looks like when NOT properly displayed:

“smart quotes” aren’t very smart…

<a href="http://ryowebsite.com/do-it-yourself/content/microsoft-word-smart-quotes-and-article-marketers-dont-mix/#more-66" class="more-link">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</a>

nodropBy Christopher Knight

What should be in your article summary?

It’s otherwise known as an abstract or article teaser. The purpose of your article summary is to entice a potential reader to read the rest of your article. It’s a sales pitch for the benefits your article delivers and in many cases, it makes the difference as to whether your article gets read or bypassed.

Remove your “author/writer” hat and put on your “copywriter” thinking cap:

Here’s what should be in your article summary:

• Should be 2-7 sentences in length
  
  
• Emotional benefits listed that speak directly to your target reader’s interests.
  
  
• Reasons why your target ideal reader should continue reading your article.
  
  
• Mentions of at least 4-7 keywords relating to your article topic using keyword research tools.

Here’s what should not be in your article summary:

• Do not repeat the title of your article or your author name in your summary. This is redundant.
  
  
• Leave out the sales pitch for yourself or your business.
  
  
• Leave out your URL and email address.
  
  
Read the rest of this entry »

nodropBy Christopher Knight

Writing articles is fun, but it can be even more rewarding when you learn how to produce more in less time. Let’s look at the simple concept of writing articles in “sets” instead of one at a time.

Article Sets Defined:

A *set of articles* is anytime you produce 2 or more articles at a time.

Types of typical article sets that you could produce:

1) Article sets by topic or sub-topic.

Example: If you were writing about racquetball as your topic, you could make a plan to write 2 articles on racquetball nutrition, 4 articles that goes into detail about each of the different color of racquetballs on the market and what they mean, and a 10-pak of articles on forehand or backhand drills.

2) Article sets by style of writing.

Example: One style might be all bullet points, another lists of things, another is a Q&A approach, another might be conversational or discussion of issues.

Note: Each type of writing is best when done in sets of the same style.

3) Accidental article sets.

Example: Your target is to produce (2) articles that are 400 words each. While getting started, you get on a roll and accidentally produce a fantastic 800 word article. Break the article in half, give the other half a new title and you have an instant article set… even if it was created by accident.

 <a href="http://ryowebsite.com/do-it-yourself/content/article-sets-how-authors-can-produce-more-quality-articles-in-less-time/#more-64" class="more-link">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</a>