Articles You Write: What to Do With Them

Do enjoy writing articles for your website or blog?  If so, did you know that you can use those articles as a way to make money?  You can.  In fact, you may be surprised just how many options you have.

So, what can you do with articles you wrote?  Honestly, you can do whatever you want with them.  Why?  Because you authored the articles yourself, making you the legal owner.  If you opt for outsourcing, make sure you get exclusive rights.  Despite the fact that you have freedom in deciding how you want to use your articles, continue reading on for a few helpful tips.

If you are a website owner and have a published website, add these articles to that site.  This is recommended if you ordered or wrote articles that are similar to your website’s main themes.  Although any type of article will do, keyword articles are recommended.  They get picked up by the search engines.  This means that you may find your website appearing on the front page of Google with applicable internet searches.

Articles that you wrote can also be used on a blog.  What is nice about this approach is that blog postings aren’t always expected to be long.  In fact, some readers prefer blog posts that are around 200 to 300 words each.  Many like to read blogs that get right to the point.  This means that you can divide a longer article into two separate blog postings.

Articles can also be submitted to article directories.  Unfortunately, this option is often bypassed, as some do not see it as a way to make money.  Don’t make the same mistake.  When you submit an article to a directory, you get to include a link to your website or blog.  Other internet users can post your article on their website, provided your links are still attached.  This is an easy way to spread the word and increase your website or blog traffic.  Remember the more traffic you receive, the more you are likely to make money.

Articles can also be added to revenue sharing websites.  These are websites where you are paid for displaying your article online.  You may receive a percentage of sales generated through advertisement clicks or affiliate purchases, but you may also receive a set page view bonus.  This approach isn’t always the first that comes to mind, but you can utilize it.  Remember, you wrote the article, so you can do whatever you want with it.

Finally, you also have the option of reselling your articles.  You can create your own website where the articles are listed for sale.  This is a great option if you can devote time to writing keyword articles on a wide range of topics or if you can hire an outsourced writer to help.  There are also online marketplaces where you can post your articles for sale.  This approach is easy and convenient, but watch for high fees, as they can cut into your profits.

So, which approach is best for you?  It depends.

Do you already have a website or blog published online?  If so, add your articles to your website.  Reader love fresh content and it helps to keep them coming back.

Submitting articles you wrote to online directories is a nice way to generate traffic for your website or blog.  While you don’t get paid for using them, the traffic generated can create income for you.  As for how you make money, it depends on whether you are selling a product or relying on advisements.

Revenue sharing websites are okay, but only if you wrote the articles yourself.  Many people in your shoes would rely on outsourcing.  If so, double check all outsourced articles.  In fact, you should do this regardless of your intended use.  Make sure the articles are truly unique.  In terms of revenue sharing websites, some will ban you if you display plagiarized content, even if you didn’t know it was obtained illegally.  In fact, that leads to an important point.

If you are given the opportunity to choose between writing your own articles and outsourcing them, doing the work yourself is best.  Outsourced articles are nice, but your name and reputation is put on the line.  Make sure all articles are written with quality and uniqueness.

Article Outsourcing Dos and Don’ts

Are you looking for web content?  Whether you want to resell that content, add it to your website, or submit it to article directories, you may find the job to be more than you can handle.  In that case, you should outsource your work to a professional freelance writer.

As great as outsourcing sounds, it is important to know what you are doing.  There are multiple ways for you to profit from the use of outsourced articles, but you can also lose money with them.

If you are looking to outsource your article writing:

DO take the time to find a quality writer.  There are hundreds of writers looking for work online, many actively.  Remember, however, not all writers produce the same quality content.  To improve your chances of making money with outsourced articles, make sure you hire a good writer, who will get the job done.

DON’T hire a writer without first asking to see samples.  As previously stated, you should hire a professional writer who is known for producing quality content.  How do you know they are a good writer?  You can tell by reviewing samples of their work.

DON’T pay a lot of money for content you know is or will be poor in quality.  That is why it is important to request samples of work.  If you want to hire a writer based solely on rates, know that you may have to improve their articles or make multiple corrections.

DO tell your outsourced writer what you want and expect from them.  If you have a specific purpose for the articles, like if you want to display them on your website, tell your writer exactly what you want and need from them.  This is the best way to get quality content that you can profit from.

DON’T assume your writer automatically knows what you want.  Also, do not assume that everyone will ask questions.  Some writers view asking too many questions as a bother or a sign they don’t know what they are doing.  Don’t give your outsourced writer a chance to make a mistake; provide them with all needed information ahead of time.

DO try to hire a native speaker.  This may cause some controversy.  Yes, many writers can speak and write in multiple languages, but the quality may not be as high.  However, due to different living wages, a writer from another country may be willing to work for a lower rate.

DON’T assume you are provided with original articles.  Yes, you may have asked for 100 percent unique articles, but that does not always mean you will receive them.  Truly professional writers will never copy work from another writer, but is always best to verify this ahead of time.

DO check for plagiarized work before processing a payment.  There is nothing worse than realizing you were scammed.  That is why you need to examine the originality of articles before you reach the point of no return.  Once you have verified that your outsourced articles are original, through CopyScape, release payment.

DO tell your writer that you want exclusive rights to the articles.  Although this falls into the category of telling your writer what you want and expect from them, it is very important.  If you intend to profit from outsourced articles, they need to be original.  If your writer sells your articles again or uses them for his or her own personal use, you may fall victim to duplicate content.

Buying Articles: What to Look For

Are you looking for a way to make money with articles?  If you are, you may be pleased with all of your options.  If you have a website that sells either a product or a service or a content filled website that makes money through advertisements, written articles can help you generate income.

On that same note, if you are a website owner, you may have very little time to market, promote, and write your own articles.  This is where outsourcing comes in.  You can hire a writer to produce quality and unique content for you.  In addition to hiring an article writer, there are websites online where you can purchase existing content.  This is nice, but what type of articles should you look for?

First and most importantly, purchase quality articles.  Do not waste your money buying articles that look like they were quickly thrown together or articles that are plagued with spelling errors.  When you buy an article, you should be able to turn around and use it right away, not spend hours making it meet your expectations.

Next, affordability is important.  The less you pay for articles, the larger your profits will be.  Before you develop a set of expectations, in terms of payment, know how much articles usually sell for.  PLR article packages are popular and they tend to amount to $1 or less for each article.  However, these articles are sold multiple times.  This means that you must rewrite them or pay an outsourcer to make them unique by rewriting.

When you buy articles with exclusive rights, you become the sole owner of those articles.  This approach is best if you want to have your website or blog filled with quality content or if you plan to resell the articles yourself, but for a larger profit.  Since you are walking away as the sole owner of the articles, which cannot be used by the writer again, they often command a higher asking price.

The right tone is important when looking for articles to buy.  What is nice about hiring an article writer to work for you is that you can tell them what you need upfront.  They write based on your wants and needs.  Speaking of your wants and needs, they are important when purchasing prewritten articles.  Do you have a content filled website that makes money through advertisements?  If so, readers likely come to your site looking for advice.  A conversational tone that is easy for them to understand is best.

In keeping the tone of articles, do you run a website that sells a product or a service?  If yes, you still want articles that are easy to read, but professionalism is important.  Look for articles that are informative.  Your readers need legitimate reasons why they should buy your product or service.

Keyword articles are important when looking to recoup the money you spend on an article writer.  Keyword articles are nice, as the search engines find them automatically.  This means that you get traffic without having to do any marketing.  Look for articles that have popular keyword phrases placed throughout each article.  On that same note, avoid articles that are overstuffed with keywords.

Speaking of keyword stuffed articles, this is where you will find the tricky part.  You want to buy articles that are designed for both readers and the search engines.  That is why you should not only look for keyword articles, but content articles as well.  Many professional article writers should know how to combine the two to make amazing content.

Finally, look for articles that have a long shelf life.  This often means that you get your money’s worth.  The articles can help you out for days or months to come, not just for a one-week period.  Yes, you can pay for articles on topics that are popular or in demand at the moment, but you may want to pay a slightly lower price.

5 Signs You Need to Hire An Outsourced Writer

Are you a website owner who relies on fresh content to help you make money?  If so, you may do your own article writing.  This approach is nice, but could you benefit from outsourcing these articles?  In most cases, you can.  In fact, five signs that you should hire an outsourced writer are outlined below.

1 – Your Website Quickly Takes Off

Whether you have a content filled website or a website where you sell a product or a service, content is king.  It helps you generate traffic.  This traffic is needed to see a profit.  The more internet users that visit your website, the better your chances are for making money.  Since content is so important, you should have lots of it on your website.  In fact, readers like to see fresh content.  They are more likely to return to a website they know is updated.

As great as it is to see your website traffic and sales increasing, you may not be able to keep up with the pace.  In that case, you need to hire an outsourced writer. 

2 – You Want to Explore Other Opportunities Online

Selling a product, a service or making money through affiliate programs are just three of the many ways that you can make money online.  Do you want to increase your earnings?  If so, experiment with other moneymaking opportunities.  Unfortunately, you may not be able to do so if you must write ten new articles a week.  If you think that you are held back because of article writing, outsource the work.

What is nice about hiring a professional web content writer is that they can write quality articles at a quicker rate of speed.

3 – You Have a Fulltime Job

Yes, it is possible to make a fulltime income running a website that is filled with advertisements or products for sale, but many are cautious of doing so.  Some find it too risky to quick their fulltime job.  If you are one of those individuals, you may use the internet to make money in your spare time.  Since you may not have time to keep your website updated with unique articles, you should consider outsourcing. 

4 – You Have a Family

Similar to having a fulltime job, if you have a family at home, you may not have the time to devote 24 hours a day to running your website.  If fact, you may not even have 8 hours to devote.  The best way to make money online, especially with websites and blogs, is to keep them updated.  Marketing is also important and can be time consuming.  To ensure that you make money online, but also get to spend quality time with your family, outsource some of your article writing projects.  You and your family will be glad that you did.

5 – You Don’t Want to Do the Work

The above mentioned reasons are all great reasons for hiring an outsourcer, but you really don’t need to have a reason.  If you want to make money online, but without having to do any physical work yourself, outsourcing is the way to go.

If you opt to outsource all or a portion of your article writing projects, remember to keep profit in mind.  Quality articles are more than worth the extra costs, but make sure you can profit from them.

Click Fraud

If you're using AdWords or AdSense you must have heard about an emerging practice in the underworld of computing called "click fraud". But what exactly is click fraud and how is it accomplished?

Well AdSense uses a payment mechanism that awards a certain amount of money to a publisher (someone who holds an AdSense banner on their page) every time a person clicks on the said banner. So click fraud is the attempt to have people clicking the ads just so that they can earn a greater income.

There are people setting up sites for the sole purpose of fraudulently generating revenue through Google's AdSense program. These users achieve an incredible number of clicks through many methods, some complex and sophisticated and some rudimentary and simple.

One of the most complex is through the use of so called "hitbots". These are automated programs who emulate clicking the links in AdSense banners (there are some that actually click the banners as well).

Google's AdSense protection scheme is by no means perfect and nearly anyone can find the details of surmounting the protection mechanism, ironically just by doing a Google search.

Another, more rudimentary method is to hire a lot of people in a poor country to click the links on your site. This means these people will actually sit all day and just click links so you can earn a fortune. They come from very poor countries like India, and they're prepared to do so for just $0.50 an hour.

Of course, there's a problem with this mechanism. Once Google receives a large number of clicks from a single address, the address and the site that had the AdSense banner will be banned, and the illicit behavior might even get the fraudster sued.

To prevent this from happening, many people use a large number of proxy servers for the purpose of clicking. These are basically trojans, located on computers throughout the world (though mostly in the US). What's even more daunting is that these clicks will appear to originate from an actual computer so such scams are really hard to detect.

And don't think this happens only in isolated instances. There is a great deal of illegal activity in this domain.

In fact there's so much that if search engine companies don't increase their security with such programs as AdSense, such criminal behavior could become more become even more damaging.

Google has a very strict policy regarding click fraud, and it has sued those employing such techniques in the past. But while the search engine giant tries its best to minimize the risk of click fraud there's certainly room for a lot of improvement.

It is estimated that more then 20% of the clicks that follow an AdSense link are just done in order to get money from the person paying for the ad. Some people believe the number of fraudulent clicks to be even twice as large.

There are a great deal more schemes involving click fraud, such as groups of AdSense publishers clicking each other's links (which is referred to as "clicking rings", or spamming people so that they click such links.

Despite Google still holding click fraud on a leash, the phenomenon is certainly raising concerns for the advertisers on AdWords, but despite this advertising with Google's AdSense still remains more profitable for the advertiser, as opposed to traditional untargeted advertising schemes.

There are some means of protection against such schemes and all advertisers should be savvy enough to employ them. Many advertisers choose to avoid the content network all together for fear of click fraud.