The first two lines are my affiliate link for an e-book that I co-wrote. Next I give details of my web site, to bring in traffic. Finally, I advertise
complete list of my articles. TIP: Write your resource box in third person - for example *Dianne created and runs* rather than *I created and run*.What can you write about? Anything that you can! What is your site about? Do you have a hobby? A job? Experience of life? There are web sites and ezines covering any topic you can think of - and webmasters are always on lookout for new material. From aardvark breeding to zero gravity - they want your articles and expertise!
TOOLS You'll need a text editor program, not a word processing program. Why? Your WP program uses invisible control characters to store formatting information such as end of lines. Webmasters don't want these, as when they copy and paste them to their ezine or web page they'll cause errors. So use a text editor instead. Text editors don't give you all these formatting extras. Windows includes NotePad, but I prefer freeware NoteTab Light, from http://www.notetab.com/ as it has many more features. If you want a spell checker, you'll need to upgrade to paid version.
You will also need an auto-responder. You can store your articles so that publishers can send for an automatic e-mail copy. Some article banks only display title and outline, with a link to your auto-responder. I include e-mail address of my *master list* at end of every article. Both publishers, and their readers, can then send for other articles of interest to them. There are several free auto-responders on web. I use GetResponse at http://www.getresponse.com - if you want ad-free e-mails, you can upgrade to paid version, otherwise your articles will all have a short ad at start of each one.
FORMATTING You'll need to format your article so that it can be pasted right into a page or ezine - publishers are much more likely to use it. However great your content, having a huge editing task will stop many webmasters from choosing your work. Most ezines are formatted at between 60 and 70 characters a line. I format all my articles to 65 characters, to try and please as many people as I can.
If you have web links, include full address, including *http://*, and make sure you have a space before and after link. That way they'll be clickable in e-mail programs and web browsers. Use *mailto:* before e-mail addresses for same reason.
As well as your resource box, don't forget a copyright notice, such as *Copyright Dianne Reuby 2001* . (Use your own name, of course - unless you want me to get glory!) All sites and mailing lists below allow author to keep copyright - always check this before submitting to a publisher you haven't used before.
WHERE CAN YOU PUBLISH YOUR ARTICLES?
There are two main methods - through mailing lists (e-mail) and article banks (web sites).
