Writing Articles For List Explosion

When building your list, you have to have someplace to send people, you have a squeeze page, which collects names and email addresses and sends them to your autoresponder service. Right? But there is a way for you to build your list writing articles.

I have at you can build your list by writing articles and posting them to major distribution sites daily. Make posts to your blog at least once a day and ping every post so the search engines know you have just posted something new to your blog and that is how you can use articles to build your list. Simple enough, right?

The content of your article should be relevant to the niche you're building your list around. I'll use horses as an example. Horses is a very broad topic, so you have to be more specific. Sooo.. .what about horses? Well, you could start with why you are a horse lover and how you became involved with horses in the first place.

Were you in horse 4-H when you were growing up? Did your family always own horses? Do you appreciate a particular breed over another? You could do an article on your favorite breed of horse, it's history, and bloodlines. Do you enjoy pleasure riding? Competition riding? What type of bit and saddle do you use? Training techniques? These are all great instances of questions you can ask yourself to help you narrow your topic to something more specific. Maybe your favorite racehorse in history is John Henry. You could write something about John Henry and what made him special in horseracing history. That's a pretty darn specific topic if you ask me!

OK, so now what? What do you do with your article now?

Use one of the major search engines like Google or Yahoo, I prefer to use Google. Type in "horse racing history" in the search bar. Many links for different sites will come up, but I suggest scrolling to the Wikipedia link, which should be located toward the top of the first page of your search. Use the search bar on their site to specify what race horse you are looking for. And there you have it.. .a whole page dedicated to the life of John Henry, plus bunches of other links you can visit regarding John Henry listed throughout the whole page. Anyway, you could write about his major racing wins, honors, and awards.

You found a whole page about John Henry and his long life. But your article has to be totally factual, you must know what you are talking about or your article isn't going to fly. Wikipedia is a lot like an encyclopedia, but it is user-driven, so the facts may not always be accurate, and having the facts straight in your article is crucial. You have to have the facts. So where to find completely factual information to support your article?

When in doubt, go to the source, and there are plenty of them you can go to for more information. Check out the New York Times, Associated Press, or try the United States Hall of Fame. These are all credible resources. Periodicals, like newpapers and magazines are great information sources. Go to your local library and look for books and journals. If you have a library card, you already have access to your library's website, which of course is a wealth of knowledge. All of the above could be considered credible resources for fact gathering.

Do your research, then you will need to collate your facts. Decide what your main point of discussion is going to be, like John Henry's age in a lot of his races and the fact that he was a gelding. Start with his beginnings:

"John Henry (March 9, 1975 – October 8, 2007) was an American Thoroughbred race horse named after the folk hero, John Henry. As a youngster, the equine John Henry had a habit of tearing steel water and feed buckets off stall walls and stomping them flat. This reminded his then-owners of the legendary John Henry, who was known as a "steel-drivin' man". He was gelded both for his orneriness as well as his lack of breeding. A Golden Chance Farm foal, John Henry was from breeding that might best be described as plebian.. .."

The above paragraph may not be entirely factual, but you get my meaning. Start with an interesting paragraph to begin your article. In about three paragraphs you can have the details filled in. Summarize what you've just written to draw your article to a close and you've just written a pretty decent article!

Now we cover where the marketing comes in. Once you've written your excellent article, then write a resource box. Write something like, "Jane Doe is a breeder and trainer of thoroughbreds and owns a horse farm in Kentucky. Join Jane's newsletter at http://janeswebsite.com to stay up to date in the world of horseracing."

Now put yourself in the position of the readers of your article. If thoroughbreds and horseracing is your readers' gig and they liked your article, then they would probably join your list. Right? Now that you have a basic idea as to where to begin with your article and what to do with it, keep writing good articles for your newsletter, ezine, ebook, or autoresponder series and use them to lead buyers to the products/services you're promoting. Again, base your article on fact. Start with an interesting lead to draw readers in, then invite them to visit your squeeze page. This works so well, it will blow your mind!

You've successfully written and uploaded your article to major directories like Ezine Articles, iSnare, and Go Articles. Now write another and another.. .stockpile them, so you always have articles readily available for uploading. For every article you write and upload to the directories, you will gain recognition with the search engines from all the one-way links pointing to your site. Articles are a fun and creative way to make your list explode!