Mike - Part 2, How To Get FREE Publicity For Your Site

[You are receiving this email as an AdMinder subscriber. Removal instructions found at bottom]. Dear Mike, In Part 3 we began the discussion of promoting your business, product or service through FREE publicity tactics of article submissions to ezines and newsletters. As a refresher, I spoke about the benefits of article submission versus classified ads in ezines and I discussed how and what to write about. Get FREE Publicity With Article Submissions - PART 2 Let's continue with the second part and finish up with the following topics: Where To Submit How To Submit Last Minute Tips Where To Submit With over 100,000 newsletters and email lists on the Internet, this can be very difficult. The first thing you must do is narrow your search down to your specific topic or subject matter. If you're business, product or service has to do with the selling nutritional supplements, then you would need to look in 'health' and 'sport' based newsletters. If you have an online business, you would need to look under topics of 'business' (or more specifically, 'home-based' businesses), 'marketing' and 'advertising'. There are a few places to start your search. The first place you can look is at the Topica which is a huge mailing list directory where you can search thousands of lists by subject matter and/or keywords. Another place you can also check out is "E-ZineZ". What you want to do it take a look at all the different ezines that have to do with your specific subject matter, see if they do or do not allow for article submissions and if they do, see what their rules, guidelines and restrictions are. Definitely check out the above Web sites. How To Submit Once you've written your article and found about 5-10 target publications to submit to, we can get started with your "publicity campaign." Chances are, you're going to email the publisher your article. The first rule is that you have to make it personal. You can't just use a generic template, send it out to a bunch of newsletter publishers and say something like: To Whom It May Concern, I've recently written an incredible article entitled, "How To XYZ On The Internet" and I think your newsletter would fit the exact profile for it. Feel free to use my article in an upcoming issue. Sincerely, John Doe Most likely your email is just gonna get deleted and your article, how ever good it may have been, will never get read! What you want to do is customize your email. Send out something like: Dear John (first name of the publisher), I've read a few issues of your "XYZ Newsletter" (fill in the actual name of the publication/newsletter/ezine) and I've really enjoyed the articles you've presented. I've also noticed that you accept article submissions from outside writers and I would be honored if you could possible include one of my newest articles in a future issue of your "XYZ Newsletter" (fill in the actual name of the publication/newsletter/ezine). Below you'll find my new article entitled, "XYZ Headline" (make sure it's a catchy headline). I think it will benefit your subscribers in many ways because they'll discover... benefit one... benefit two... benefit three... If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at yourname@yourdomain.com. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration. Warmest Regards, (your name goes here) (your web site goes here) [ article goes here ] Now, you don't have to be as long as I was and you could simply leave out the section with the "benefit bullets." But I like to leave that in because it teases the publisher and gets him to read your article (the same way it'll get his customer's to read the article!). As you become more experienced in article submissions, your list of newsletter and publisher contacts will grow to 20, 50 or more (I know of one person who has over 2000 personal contacts!) Last Minute Tips Short By-Line/Footer Make sure you have a short by-line or footer at the end of your article (no more than 3-5 lines maximum). To tell you the truth, with out this "indirect ad", your article is almost a waste of time for you. At the very end of your article, just write a very brief statement about you and your business. Also, try to entice people by giving away something for free. Write something like: John Doe (your name goes here) has written/done/accomplished (fill in some credentials). His web site located at (web address goes here) reveals (put in one or two catchy benefits). Make sure you stop by and pick up a free newsletter at (your newsletter subscription site) or send any email to subscribe@yourdomain.com (have an auto responder subscribing them to your newsletter). Don't Sell Anything Don't try to sell anything or promote your "new product" in your article. Just keep it informative, educational and filled with new ideas and tips. Leave the subtle promotions for your footer at the end of the article. Double Check Once you've written your article, put it aside for a day and then re-read it. Make the appropriate changes, spell check and make sure your grammar is correct and understandable. You may even have a friend or colleague proof read it for you. No Email Attachments It's best not to send your article as an email attachment simply because a lot of people don't open them up (thinking that it could be a potential virus or something else bad). Now, if your article is very long, you may want to send it in a two or three part email, just so you don't bog down their server, but this usually isn't a big problem. 70 Characters Max. Lastly, keep the length of each line in your email article to 65-70 characters. Most email newsletters (or any email for that matter) should only be that wide and it will save the publisher tons of time trying to reformat your article. You can use a simple text program like TextPad which guarantees correct length in each line. This is something simple, but it could make a big difference. Track Each Article I've said it a million times and I'll say it more. You gotta track everything you do. This part is probably the simplest out of anything you've read so far. For every article you submit to each different ezine, use a different ad tracking code. For example, if you use AdMinder you would use something like this: http://www.adminder .com/c.cgi?User&ezine1 http://www.adminder .com/c.cgi?User&ezine2 This way, you will know for sure which ezine brought in the best traffic. You can then use that information to your advantage ... maybe work out a deal with the publisher and submit them articles once a month or something similar. You can even track the article itself and see how that specific topic or subject matter did: http://www.adminder .com/c.cgi?User&article1 http://www.adminder .com/c.cgi?User&article2 You Will Be Shocked! You WILL be shocked at the fact that certain articles that YOU really liked, bombed big time with readers. And other articles that you write that you felt were "blah", you'll receive a great response. Once you find the "winning" article, give it out to AS MANY ezine publishers you can think of. Go to message boards and post it. Go to special web sites and post your article for millions of people to see (and of course, TRACK the site as well). You can easily double and triple your response simply by tracking and taking 3 minutes to review the results. That's it! In fact, let's take it a step further. Let's say you write an article about "search engine" promotions (or anything for that matter). The article REALLY does well. You can then use that information and create a product or back end someone else's product or affiliate program that has to do with search engines. BE CREATIVE and TRACK EVERYTHING! It only takes a minute. Well, that's about it for getting FREE publicity through article submissions. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve and I'll save them for the next issue, which you'll receive in another few days. Warmest Regards, Sam Robbins Founder AdMinder P.S. We've recently come out with a FREE demo copy of our Reporter ebook if you want to take a look at it, just click here and visit the site. Removal Instructions: You are subscribed to the AdMinder Free Web Advertising Course. Click here to remove yourself from this list.