Yellow Pages Antarctica

If you have a website or product to promote, you may want to start writing for promotion. Writing and submitting articles is one of the most effective forms of online promotion. The first thing any business person should learn in Article Writing 101 is the importance of writing and submitting articles, and the benefits that you can enjoy by doing this one simple thing.

Each time you write an article and submit it to the various websites around the Internet (like www.Content-Articles.com) using an article submission site like www.Article-Marketer.com you are using a form of viral marketing. When people need content for their websites, they usually start their search for free content at these sites. If your article pertains to the topic of their website or newsletter, and it is well written, they will probably post your article on their website, or use the article in their newsletter. When this happens, several other things happen.

First, your article will get wider exposure. It will be seen by the visitors to those other people’s websites or their newsletter subscribers. Since the people who use your articles must include your author’s resource box, traffic to your website will increase as well. This helps to increase sales. The article of course becomes viral. More than one person will use your article for content.

You receive even more benefits if the person uses your article for website content, or if they post their newsletters on the web. This improves your link popularity, by providing inbound links to your website. By improving your link popularity, you improve your ranking in the search engines. You further improve your link popularity and website rank in the search engines by the simple act of submitting the article to websites that accept article submissions and post those articles online.

You that you can easily start establishing yourself as an expert by writing and submitting articles related to the topic of your website or product. Establishing yourself as an expert considerably increases your credibility as well, making people more open to making a purchase through your website. Establishing yourself as an expert and increasing credibility is vitally important for anyone who does business online.

You can also use your articles to promote specific products that you sell, as opposed to promoting your website where you sell products. You can write review type articles that give your readers more information on the products that you sell. This helps to increase sales. It is important, however, that you not write articles that appear to be more like long sales copy than informational articles.

You can write articles that tell people how to get the most out of products that you sell, or how to use the product or service to enrich their lives, help them make more money, or to improve their looks. These are popular items of interest to a large majority of people around the world. Words are very powerful, and the words that you use in your articles can be the difference between making a sale, and not making a sale.

As you can see, the there are a great many benefits to writing and submitting articles. Articles really don’t take long to write, and you should try to write and submit at least one article per week to promote your website, products, or services. If you aren’t sure how to write an article, look around online for a free Article Writing 101 class that will teach you the basics - there are many such classes available. The articles that you write don’t need to be complex - simple articles will do nicely!

Jason is a successful Internet Marketer, and posts regularly on his Adventures In Internet Marketing blog. Take a minute right now to sign up for his newsletter for more great information!

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There are certain “root assumptions” that serve to define reality and set it parameters. In our world they are “time” and “space”. Our waking life consists of a series of moments that seem to exist in a sequence we call time, and of an array of objects that occupy a dimension known as space.

Because an invented fantasy world is free to dispense with the root assumptions of our own, other limitations must be adopted in order for it to achieve internal consistency. Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” stories, for example, operate in a setting where space is in constant flux. Alice experiences difficulty reaching places that seem near at hand and discovers other areas to be much closer than they initially appeared; and her own body size and consciousness undergoes severe alterations. Carroll justified these violations of natural law by framing his young heroine’s adventures in a kind of Dreamtime.

More often, a mythological or fantasy story will be structured around a Prohibition. Everything in the imagined world seems pristine and harmonious on the surface; the inhabitants are content, and yet there are certain places they are forbidden to go, certain actions that they dare not perform for fear of some divine retribution.

Don’t partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Don’t stray from the yellow-brick road. Don’t sail so far westward that you can no longer see the shores of Numenor.

If you’re a fantasy novelist, then defining the Prohibitions that operate within your story will help you to understand the distinctive flavor of your world, as well as the motives that drive your characters and the forces they’re up against.

The hero of myth and fantasy can be defined as a person whose exploits and achievements transcend the bounds of everyday life and, in doing so, demonstrate our own potential. In our world, Columbus burst the boundaries of the medieval mind-set with his famous voyage. Similarly, at the onset of a fantasy story it is the Prohibition that demarcates the limits of the
protagonist’s horizon.

I’ve made reference to a story from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion” entitled “Akallabeth”. The Numenoreans were forbidden to sail so far west because the Valar (the gods of Tolkien’s milieu) feared that these men would grow desirous of the immortal lands and overpass the limit set upon their power and happiness. This touches upon another recurring element of the
Prohibition motif: the guardians of the realm (i.e.-of the status quo) are jealous of their boundaries. Greek mythology abounds with examples.

Prometheus - whose name means “Forethought” - beheld the race of man as existing in a pitiful state. He longed to bring them fire; and, by extension, civilized life. Jupiter, ruler of the pantheon and likely the voice of the superego in the Hellenic psyche, feared that if men had fire then they would grow as strong and wise as the gods. Prometheus defied Jupiter’s law and called men from their caves to behold a piece of sun’s flame that he bore in a dry reed. Eventually, as a result of this boon, humankind came out into the open air and the bright sunlight. They became civilized.

It is interesting to note how, in so many of these tales, it is the BREAKING of the taboo that is essential to the movement of the plot - and the fulfillment of the characters’ destinies. Because it is the role of the mythic hero to bring back a boon to his social order, his or her journey must necessarily carry him or her beyond the boundaries of that society’s “proscribed reality”. Sometimes the dangers arise, not from the forces of law, order and authority, but from the very nature of the power and knowledge he or she seeks. A recent example is Robert Jordan’s “Wheel of Time” series. In this case the central taboo is for a man to draw upon Saidin, the male half of the One Power. Only women can channel from the Source. But, as generally happens, the prohibition must be broken in order for destiny - and the fantasy tale - to be fulfilled; and Rand Al’Thor the Dragon has to risk madness to weild Saidin.

We can even venture into Freudian territory and interpret the taboos within mythological stories as symbolic of the conflict between one’s conditioning and the spontaneous freedom of the soul; between the primal Id that says: “I want that!” and the superego that responds with: “Thou shalt not have it!” Seen in this light, moral judgments are rendered useless in defining the true worth of what the hero achieves with his or her deed. Prohibition isn’t “wrong” any more than parents are in the wrong when they tell their small children not to cross a busy street by themselves. Such an idea, lodged within the mind of a child, only becomes restrictive if he or she STILL fears to step out onto the road as an adult. Fantasy tales typically begin by depicting a moment when such a limiting and infantile idea affects its entire milieu. Then the heroes need to come along and demonstrate to their brethren that they need not fear crossing over to the other side.

Only by traveling beyond those boundaries - and braving the perils that the status quo has thus far kept at bay - can the hero of the story lead the others into a new realm of
experience.

Perhaps it’s significant that the Prohibitions in faerie and fantasy tales often prove to be temptations too alluring to resist. Maybe, in their hearts, the stalwart custodians of conservative society WANT their world - and their world-view - to be shaken up by the new.

For those of us living in the everyday world, and bound by space and time, what the hero’s journey means, essentially, is stepping out from the protective cover of what our parents, teachers, religious leaders and politicians have always maintained is true - and finding our own response to the challenge of living as conscious beings.

Remember Prometheus? Well, Jupiter retaliated against the titan’s transgression by sending along Pandora and her little jeweled box - upon which the Goddess Athena laid yet another prohibition: she must never, ever open it. Of course Pandora did, and ten thousand diseases, troubles and worries flew into every dwelling place of humankind. And blessings, too; and Hope. Mankind learned the price that comes along with consciousness and freedom of choice; in other words, with being akin to the gods.

Seth Mullins is the author of “Song of an Untamed Land”, a novel of speculative fantasy in lawless frontier territory. Visit Seth at http://www.authorsden.com/sethtmullins

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Article marketing is one of those marketing methods that has received a lot of attention as of late. It makes sense. Article marketing provides many benefits and is probably one of the best free methods for generating traffic and increasing sales for your business. In this short article we will discuss some of the benefits of article marketing.

The first benefit of writing articles and submitting them to article directories is that it establishes you as an expert in your particular field. People who read your articles are more likely to perceive you as someone who knows what they are talking about and more prone to want to work with you.

A second benefit to writing articles is that you are allowed to place a small resource box where you can provide the reader a link to your website. If a reader enjoys your information or wants to learn more they will more than likely click on to your link to get more information. This will help to increase traffic and drive targeted visitors to your primary website.

A third benefit to article marketing is that it helps your visibility in the search engines. By posting your articles to article directories you give permission for people to publish your articles on their websites. This will increase the number of incoming links to your main website and drive more targeted traffic from the search engines.

So those are just some of the primary benefits of article marketing. I think article marketing is a great way to generate free targeted traffic to your website. It’s one of those marketing methods that works and will continue to work over time.

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Writing articles has proven time and time again to be
one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to any website.
Here are ten quick tips to help you use your articles to
the best of their potential.

1. Submit them to e-zines and web sites for publishing.
Include your resource box at the end of the article to get
free advertising.

2. Combine your articles into a free e-book. You can place
your business ad in the e-book. Give it away to visitors and
allow them to do the same to multiply your advertising.

3. Create an article directory on your web site. People will
visit your web site to get the free information.

4. Submit your articles to print publications that pay for
submissions. You can make extra income getting paid as
a freelance writer.

5. Combine a few of your articles together into a free report.
Give away the free report as a bonus for buying your main
product or service.

6. Publish a book with all your articles. Make extra money
selling the book from your web site.

7. Give people an instant article directory. Tell visitors they
can instantly add a free article directory to their web site
by linking to yours. All those links can add up to a large
amount of traffic to your web site.

8. Post your articles in related online communities. This can
give you free advertising in newsgroups, forums and e-mail
discussion lists.

9. Allow people to include your articles in their free e-books.
Your article could end up being in 20 to 30 e-books in no
time. You won’t even have to promote the e-books.

10. Let people access your articles by autorepsonder.
Include your full page e-mail ad with the article.

Tony Newton is the editor of the popular website http://www.PleaseThink.com -
With lots of motivational tips and business advice to help you gain
the financial independance you rightfully deserve.

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The first and maybe the most important step in writing a book is coming up with a great idea for some really useful or interesting book. The great idea makes the writing fun. The great idea makes the book easier to sell to a publisher. In the end, the great idea means you’ve got a shot at making good money from your writing. Unfortunately, many new writers don’t have a clue as to how to do this. Accordingly, I offer the following tips based on the 150 or so books I’ve written and the three dozen books I’ve published:

Don’t pick something big and obvious…

The first thorough book on any important topicthe last war, the current big business success, the next medical breakthroughcan be a good book that succeeds even to the point of becoming a bestseller. But I respectfully suggest that you leave the big topics to the big writers. The problem with big, well-known topics is that they are well-known. And that means, very probably, that big publishers are already talking to big authors about writing books. Sorry. But that’s the reality.

Find your own space…

A related point to this idea of staying away from the really big topics is that you need to find your space. You will find it very hard to succeedespecially as a new writerif you’re doing what’s already been done. Publishers, booksellers and readers will too easily respond to your book or book idea with the feeling, “Well, yes, but hasn’t [insert name of well-known, bestselling writer here] already done that?” By innovating, however, you may be able to find your own empty spacea niche that isn’t already occupied by some successful book or series or author.

Fortunately, you often don’t need to be wildly innovative to create the illusion of existing in a new space. Incremental innovation usually works well. All you need, sometimes, is to be just enough different that publishers, booksellers, and readers will say, “Oh, that seat is empty.”

A warning must be made, however. Your innovation can’t be to “write a better book.” And it’s not that writing a better book isn’t a good idea. It’s just that “writing a better book” isn’t innovative. Too many writers think of the idea.

Test the market appeal of your idea…

Here’s another technique for filtering and refining your ideas: You ought to write a press release for your idea to verify that the ultimate book sells well as a concept. A press release is a one-page news story that touts your book and proves to people who will help sell and promote your bookdistributors, wholesalers, booksellers and magazine editorsthat your book is special and unique and worth looking at. Your press release gives your book a chance to break out from the pack of other books and get noticed. Any idea that can’t be distilled into a great press release is risky.

You can see what book press releases are by visiting publisher web sites. You want to visit web sites and look for press releases for books like the book your idea may produce. While you’re doing this, look at any magazines that review books like the one you’re contemplating: Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, and so on. Get an idea about the sorts of books get people talking.

Build a list of periodicals that will blurb your book…

If you’re considering a nonfiction book, you ought to be able to come with a list of a handful of special interest periodicals (magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and so forth) that prove people are interested in the topic of your book. If you want to write a book about raising Guinea pigs, conspiracy theories concerning the last president, or monetary policy in emerging economies, for example, one of the best ways you can confidently predict people will buy and read your book is to verify that people are already buying and reading periodicals about the topic.

If you do construct such a list, include the list and subscriber count information in your proposal to a publisher. The publisher can use your list to promote your book. In fact, as a former publisher, I promise you a publisher will look more seriously at any proposal that shows this level of author insight into the marketing of a book.

Try to fit your idea into an existing series…

Here’s another technique. If you can fit your idea into a publisher’s existing series, you ought to try that approach. While of course, we writers find it most satisfying to go our own way creatively, you’ll find it much easier to sell another idea that fits in an existing successful series.
I’ve always written about how to use technology for business and for personal finance. That’s my space. And I’ve got lots of good interesting ideas for books. But my bestselling book has been Quicken for Dummies (Hungry Minds 1993-2005). Would I like to write a different sort of personal financial management book? Yes. But to date Quicken for Dummies has sold one million copies in its numerous editions. The royalties on those salve away any creative disappointment.

Focus on a small niche…

That last number I mentioned, the one million copies of Quicken for Dummies, raises an interesting point. As you manage your research time, you can make good money on a book that sells ten thousand copies. Maybe as much as $15,000. A book that sells twenty thousand copies or more is a big hit for both you and your publisher. And that means your best bet is often to go after niche. Don’t just write another whodunit mystery, write a whodunit for children. Or better yet, write a whodunit mystery for Christian children or Muslim children or Jewish children. And then promote your book not just like all the other mystery publishers do but also using religious education periodicals that go out to churches or mosques or synagogues.

Don’t worry about slicing the market too small. Few booksalmost no bookssell more than ten or twenty thousand copies. If you find a group of one hundred thousand or one million people with a special interesteven though that’s a very small slice on a planet with billions of peopleyour book idea can produce a successful work.

Verify your idea is big enough for a book…

One final idea and this is especially important for new writers. You need to make sure that your idea is big enough for a bookthe content you’ll create is big enough to fill 250 pages or 500 pages or whatever. Experienced authors can do this intuitively. I know which ideas of mine support two hundred pages or four pages of writing. But new writers often can’t gauge this very well. Ever read a book where by the third chapter the author just rehashes material already covered in chapters 1 and 2? That’s a book where the idea wasn’t big enough.

Especially for nonfiction books, you ought to try writing a couple of example chaptersmaybe chapters 1 and 4to make sure you’ve got a big topic. Your chapters don’t need to be pristine or perfect. But make sure that you can write a couple of good, rich chapters that aren’t redundant. When you’re done with those chapters, look at what other topics you want to cover and make sure that there’s still stuff left for at least two or three more interesting chapters. A bit of rehashing is okay, I think. But you don’t want people reaching for the television’s remote control in the second chapter.

Seattle author and accountant Stephen L. Nelson is the author of more than 150 books which have collectively sold more than 4,000,000 copies in English and have been translated into a dozen other languages. He is also a former book publisher.

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“Pay-for-Performance” or “Pay-per-Click” Internet advertising is making big waves lately, and the two biggest players are Google and Overture, which was recently purchased by Yahoo. Microsoft has since joined the fray with MSN Search and there are numerous other fish (albeit tadpoles) in the pond.

When it comes to promoting a book, the advantages of internet advertising over traditional print advertising can be summed up with the following acronym-rich equation: CPC - CPM = PPC. That’s CMO-speak for expressing how much more cost effective cost-per-conversion analysis is to cost-per-thousand analysis.

With Pay Per Click advertising via Google and Overture, the cost of the ad is based upon the performance of the ad; however, the effectiveness of the ad is gauged by its conversion ratio. Thanks to tools provided by both Google and Overture, these conversion ratios can be calculated automatically.

Traditional print media, on the other hand, provides a CPM (cost per thousand) to demonstrate cost (value) of an ad. A certain number of people will see the ad (and believe me, this number is pie-in-the-sky, based upon circulation times “readership”). Therefore, the cost is X.

It’s easy to recognize the advantages of pay per click advertising, especially when promoting a relatively small-ticket item such as a book, but before jumping head first into the PPC arena, review the following tips:

1) Be aware of the differences between Google and Overture

Google is the leading search engine at the moment, but their reach never exceeds their grasp. Overture technology, on the other hand, currently extends to Yahoo, AltaVista, CNN, Infospace, and others. Overture requires you to deposit money into an account in advance. Said account is then depleted based upon your campaign selection. Meanwhile, Google simply bills your credit card based upon your expenditures. Overture provides more intuitive and complete reporting functionality that enables you to analyze the effectiveness of keywords, but Google allows you to enter a maximum expenditure-per-day. This daily cap provides more control over your monthly spending while Overture’s system simply draws money from the online account until depleted. This daily draw can vary substantially from one day to the next. Also, Overture requires you to keep 3 days of “extra cash” on hand. Do you earn interest on the money you’re loaning to Overture? Forget about it.

2) Be aware of the similarities

Both Google and Overture differentiate their paid clicks from their free, contextual algorithms, usually by featuring the “sponsored” searches on a different part of the page and by highlighting them in a color box. Recently, Overture launched a new product, or search mechanism, whereby an advertiser can choose to be listed among the contextual content, also. That’s kind of like paying for a meal after you’ve already eaten it.

Both services also experience infrequent, yet unexplained, “spikes” that decimate your daily or monthly budget in a matter of minutes or hours. It’s a little unnerving knowing that you could blow through $500 or $1000 in a matter of minutes with absolutely no recourse. Staffed to handle these anomalies, both services feature barely adequate customer service with representatives who often reply to such technical idiosyncrasies with hostile ambivalence. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not.

3) Start conservatively

That said, realize that pay-per-click campaigns are not an exact science and contain the potential to be ridiculously expensive if you’re not careful. Start a campaign on either Google or Overture, but not both. Become familiar with the mechanics before launching full scale advertising campaigns on the other service.

4) Understand the mechanics

The way pay-for-performance works is simple. You bid on search terms, either words or phrases or a combination of both. Your webpage link then appears in search engine results relative to the price of the bid. If you’re the highest bidder, your webpage appears at the absolute top of many search engines. Remember the frustration of typing in a search for your webpage and never finding your link? No longer!

5) Understand the advantages

Perhaps the best part of pay-for-performance advertising is the “pay for performance” part. Unlike traditional advertising where you pay based upon the number of impressions, here, you only pay if people click on your link. In essence, they are pre-sold.

6) Select the appropriate keywords

Let’s look at an example. Say you have published a mystery novel about the death of a land baron in Louisiana. Not exactly a new plot and yet millions of “whodunit” readers may be interested in reading it. Your solution? Open a pay-for-performance account and bid on search terms like “Louisiana Mystery Novel” and “Mystery Book Plantation” and other similar search terms. Counter-intuitively, the more specific the term, the better your campaign will perform, since very specific searches deliver very motivated buyers to your page. Since you’re paying for each click, you want those browsers to buy! That’s where “conversion” comes in to play.

7) Understand the disadvantages

You have to be very careful managing your bids and selecting your keywords, or pay-for-performance advertising can become ineffective. Do not bid on ridiculously vague and popular words like “book” or “fiction” because you will never recoup your money. Instead, focus your search terms as specifically as possible.

It’s only a matter of time before traditional print media finds some way to adopt this new method of cost-per-conversion and pay-for-performance advertising. Those who don’t will die trying. Viva la digital revolution!

About the Author

Brent Sampson is the President & CEO of Outskirts Press publishing at http://www.outskirtspress.com . He is the author of Publishing Gems: Insider Information for the Self-Publishing Writer (http://outskirtspress.com/publishinggems) and Self-Publishing Simplified (free ebook edition available at http://outskirtspress.com/publishing)

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I am often asked what it takes to become a writer or “How can I do what you do?” The answer is not complicated. Anyone can write. Even if you were never a contestant for your eighth grade spelling bee, there is spell check. It is a marvelous invention. All of us have access to a dictionary, a thesaurus and a myriad of books and articles on how to write. The following are some tips to get you started.

Pay attention to what you tell yourself, in your sleep. I often think that I have written a bestseller, on the nights, when I do not get up and write down my thoughts. I keep a pad of paper by my bed. When I get that eureka moment, in my sleep, I get up and jot it down. Some nights, I go right back to sleep. Other nights, I can’t wait to put my thoughts on paper and am off and running.

The early riser gets the article written. I am often awake before anyone else in my household. In the quiet of the early morning, ideas for articles or often the entire article, will come to me. Of course, this can play havoc with a social life. If I don’t retire at a reasonable hour, I am an irritable writer.

Read. There is no one person that is an authority on everything. What you don’t know, find out. Read everything pertaining to your field of interest that you can get your hands on. If you want to be a writer of fiction, read what you love. My interest and love, is a search for balance in life and helping others to achieve it. I try to read, talk and breathe balance. If we recognize that we are all a part of this human race, why not love it?

Talk and listen to others. I try and engage others in conversation as much as possible, in the grocery store, the mall, the post office, etc. Yes. I am one of those annoyingly interested people. I am interested in everything and will talk to you about anything. I also listen. By listening, which is also a part of the conversational gambit, I learn about others interests, needs and loves. Writers, write best, when they write what they know.

Writers, write. This is probably the most important part of writing. It separates the ones that want to be writers from the ones that succeed. If you feel that you have something important to say, put it on paper. It doesn’t matter if your initial draft is intelligible. That is what the re-write is for, to hone your thoughts.

Take an interest in life. Successful writers write about topics that inform, entertain, uplift or in some way fill the needs which we, as a human race, carry in our minds and hearts. When I began writing, I read a quote from Erma Bombeck, a humorist, syndicated columnist and successful author for many years. She said,” Not a day goes by that I don’t hear from aspiring writers who have questions. “What if I fail?” (”What if you succeed?”).” If you want to be a writer, begin today. Sit down and put pencil to paper or fingers to keyboard. I wish you much success.

Constance Weygandt is an author, speaker and balance mentor. For more information or to sign up for Constance’s newsletter, visit her website at http://www.balancedwellnessonline.com

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