Distinguishing Article Wheat From Chaff
Part of my role as owner of an Internet marketing company is to judge the work of others. Every business person does that in one way or another. Even in our roles as consumers of business products, we judge the copy of a sales letter or a video before we buy a course or a new piece of software. In doing a competition analysis, we are always judging elements of our competitors’ business website design or newsletters. And some of us wear the critic’s hat when we outsource our own writing assignments or contract for a professional writing service.
I create all of my articles about Internet marketing (including article marketing) myself. But I often buy the writing of others for many of the other niches in which we compete. In addition, I average about two dozen unsolicited articles per day from other marketers who want me to publish them on my sites in some of those other niches.
I have learned from having wasted too much money. I have found the best of the best, finally, and I have trained them. Their work never needs meaningful editing, so I pay them what they actually deserve. Of the unsolicited articles, I reject more than half.
My reasons for rejection are fairly consistent. These are the most common of the problems:
* The articles don’t make sense in English. Any language, of course, is composed of its vocabulary and its grammar, and it is difficult to master both by taking a few years of apparently inadequate instruction. It is certainly posssible that a writer may write brilliantly in her or his native language, but, without complete fluency in a second language, the writer will never be able to write effective marketing copy. A far better choice would be to hire a native speaking editor.
* The articles are submitted in the wrong category. I receive articles about subjects that simply make no sense for publication in a blog that has a theme such as the one to which the writer has submitted. I receive submissions for my business oriented blog that have to do with everything from planning a wedding to choosing a new plasma television. Of course, there are ways that a writer could target such content to a business owner, but these writers do not make the effort. For example, one could write an article that I would accept about the best approaches to starting a wedding planning business. A writer could produce an article about choosing the best plasma monitor for presentations at business conferences. Either of those, I might be happy to publish.
* The articles are not well spun. Since I spin articles, and have done so for years, I can easily spot an article that is not carefully or thoroughly spun. It does me no good as a webmaster if I publish an article that may be published in fifteen other sites. Under the best scenario, my traffic is going to be reduced to about seven percent of what it might have been if I had published a genuinely unique article on the same subject.
Implicit in all of these reasons for rejection are the solutions to the problems. Either write well in your targeted language, submit your article to the correct niche and use strict spinning standards, or contract with a professional web article writer who is well versed in Internet marketing.