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Archive for the ‘Article Marketing’ Category

First up I want to make one thing absolutely clear …

The articles you write for Online Article Marketing are NOT a ‘sales pitch’ for you or your work.

Each article should be about a different Subject that you photograph.

The idea is to attract people  with an interest in a specific subject … that you happen to have photographs of.

So you write an article about a specific subject that you have photographs of, post it to various article directories, with links back to photos of that subject. So you’re offering up good free information about the subject, with the option for your reader to then go and look at photos of the subject.

This works for you in a number of ways …

First of  all you get visitor targetted traffic … people with an interest in your subject, read your article and visit your website.

If your article is good, it’s quite possible it wil lbe syndicated … ie people will republish it in their own blogs and newsletters, with your links still embedded, increasing your exposure even further.

(A good newsletter can go to 100K+ readers and generate a virtual avalanche of visitors overnight … they won’t al lbe buyers but in those sorts of numbers, you’re likely to find a few!)

And of course you get instant backlinks.

Some of the article directories have a high Google PageRank, which means any links from their site to your site increases the value of your site in Google’s eyes … and htat improves your ranking in the search engines.

And the higher you rank in Google, the more peope lare going to see your link … and the more visitors you’ll get!

So for the ‘writing’ part of it, always remember, it’s all about The Subject … not you, and not even your photos as such.

If you have a lightbox of ‘dog images’, write an article about dogs.

If you have a set of restaurant food images, write a short piece about the specific cuisine.

If you have a set of photos of a building, find out something about the style of architecture or even the architect.

If you have photos of a city, write a brief guide to the must-see sights.

If you’re writing multipel articles for a given subject, you can make one of them  about ‘photographing XZY’ if that’s your interest, just as lnog as you avoid the ‘sales pitch’ approach.

A  lot of photographers resist this sort of approach to marketing their work, and plenty will insist that their work stands on it’s own and they should have to write … but unfortunately they’re missing the point.

For their work to speak for itself, it’s got to be seen … and online that jsut doesn’t happen without written content to tell the search engines what it’s about. And really it’s nothing new.

Savvy photographers have been putting words with their images for years to sell more photos. It’s always worked well for editorial sales, and in an internet environment this approach is even more effective.

So again, as a bare minimum, you should be planning to publish 2-3 short articles on each of your key subjects. Submit those to 20 of the biggest article directories, and you’ll be adding 50+ high value backlinks and generating a lot of useful, long-term traffic.

Now I can already hear many of our readers groaning that they don’t write, can’t write or simply won’t write. That’s OK, there are several ways you can still use this powerful website marketing tool if you’re serious.

You don’t need a whole lot of content and you don’t need to do it constantly. In fact one short article for each of your key subjects will do the job.

1. The best suggestion I can offer is to learn enough to get by.

The writing for these articles does not need to be perfect … interesting, relevant & readable is much more important. And long term, if you want to market your photography online you should be providing related written content.

If you want some good assistance, I’d really recommend you register with www.EzineArticles.com as an author.

Once registered, look for their offer of free training emails. These are priceless!

You’ll get a heap of great information plus some good simple templates & ideas for writing short effective articles. Just apply those to your key subjects and you’ll

2. Alternatively, you can find someone to write for you.

You can go to a website like www.eLance.com and post a job for someone to ghostwrite say 12 short articles for you, one on each of your key subjects. You provide the subjects, the article length and the time frame, and various freelancers will bid for the job.

There’s currently 11,000+ Article Writers registered on eLance, so as long as you’re clear and specific about what you need, you should get quick results and a good price. $50 could easily get you a hig hquality 500 word article on 10-15 different subjects. Try it and see!

If you want to have a go at this yourself, one easy starting point is the ‘list’ article …

Top ten ways to photograph ……..
Seven things you never knew about ……..
3 pro secrets to great …….. photos
The best  ….. tips for 2010
How to build a ……
How To buy a ….
10 Things to do when you visit …

Pick your subject and fill in the blanks.For SEO submissions you only need a short, basic article, but if you can write a good one, slightly longer, you’ll have soemthnig that people are more likely to sundicate and republish for you (with your links embedded of course!)

That’s one for later though … we’ll show you how to put them to work in the next post.