Dan’s Writing Blog

Part of my role as owner of an Internet marketing business is to judge the work of others.  We all do that, I guess, although perhaps in different ways.  We critique a sales page, a video or a trial version whenever we are deciding whether to buy a new information product or software application.  In doing a competition analysis, we are always judging elements of our competitors’ business website design or newsletters.  We also critique the writing of our writing team or those to whom we outsource article marketing.

I craft all of my articles about Internet marketing (including article marketing) myself.  But I often purchase the work  of others for many of the other niches in which we compete.  Furthermore, each day, I receive approximately twenty unsolicited articles that other marketers ask me to publish on some of my sites, although I never accept unsolicited articles for my main marketing sites.

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.  However, of the unsolicited articles…I reject a substantial majority even though they come to me as free content.

I thought that it might help other marketing writers to know why I am more likely than not to refuse to publish the articles that they send me.  These are the most common of the problems:

*  The articles don’t make sense in English.  All verbal messages in any language get their meaning from vocabulary selection and the arrangement of those words (in other words, grammar).  Someone may write extremely well in his or her native language, but it is a very rare person who can write well in a second or third language.  A far better choice would be to hire a native speaking editor.   

*  A common, senseless mistake, is to have the article submitted to the wrong category (i.e., niche).  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.  All the writers have to do is to put a business spin on their idea, somethat that could often be done with a little rewriting and an extra paragraph.  One could author an article about how to build a wedding planning business and cover many of the same topics as the article about planning a daughter’s wedding.  A web author could switch the things to look for in a plasma TV to the best features in a plasma monitor to be used in business video presentations.  While I won’t guarantee that I would publish those articles, they would certainly make more sense than would the actual articles I received.

*  The articles are not well spun.  I have spun articles for many years, so I can usually recognize within a paragraph or two if an article has not been well prepared for spinning.  No website can get any benefit from a poorly spun article or from publishing duplicate content. 

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 web article author who thoroughly understands the needs of Internet marketers.