Lance Winslow on Article Promotion, Article Spinning and Rewriting

We had so many great things to talk about in my interview with Lance Winslow, author of over 20,000 articles online, that I split this interview into a second article which focuses on article spinning, rewriting and article promotion.

Lisa: What are your thoughts on article promotion?

Lance: Interestingly enough, since I write so much I have very little time for article promotion, and I have never really promoted my articles properly. Although I have something like 9 million article views on EzineArticles.com, and my average article gets syndicated some 17 times, and each one of those probably received anywhere from 200 to 300 hits, I probably have over 150 million article views.

You may not remember my name, but you have read one of my articles, at least the chances are very high that you have. In fact, you have probably read many and perhaps not given much thought to the name at the bottom. But that's okay with me, because I write to give information to the world, it's not about me, it's about you, and what you do with that information is your business, it's like 20,000 articles of FYI, perhaps it will help you in your life, knowing this new piece of information. At least that is my sincere hope.

Now there are people who promote their articles extremely well and many of their articles have 10,000 or more hits almost immediately, although I have a number of articles that have 10,000+ article views. That is not typical for me, although I have hundreds and hundreds which do only because I've written so many articles now.

When you write as many articles as I do, you have so much traffic, and so many inbound links, and so much attention, that you do not need to promote your articles as much to become successful online. I'm not sure I recommend this strategy for everyone, but I do know that quantity matters and you should consider writing more articles, without sacrificing the quality. This is something I learned early on because I had written 5000 articles fairly quickly and my quality wasn't there because I wasn't a very good writer, although over time I have now become what some might call a "writer" but I don't necessarily like the title. I think of myself as an entrepreneur, innovator, and retired businessperson.

Lisa: When talking about article marketing, how do feel about article spinning/rewriting/etc that is taking place often today?

Lance: One thing that truly bothers me is that people are now using articles spinning software, and many people are hiring writers from India for $1-$2 per article and then run these articles through an article spinning device, and make each one of them into 10 articles. Then they post them online and put their name on it, or they use a pen name because the articles aren't very good (actually most of them suck, that's the truth, there is really no politically correct way to say it).

And, those online marketers, well they know it, unfortunately also all the readers feel the same way. If you're going to do online article marketing and you're going to promote a product or service online you should write decent articles and not try to cheat the system, game the search engines, or play tricky games at the online article submission sites.

I do not rewrite my articles, and I will not use spanning software, although I see others have. I feel that those who use such tricks of the trade are ruining it for everyone, and I feel it is unethical. Now, I realize that many article marketers out there are not very good writers, and neither was I when I started, therefore they will hire out someone else to write the articles, and that's fine, just choose someone who really knows what they're doing, or write the articles yourself and hire a really decent editor. If you're going to pay $1-$2 per article, yes you can buy a whole lot of articles really cheaply, but that's all you'll have is less than adequate "cheapy" content, and that's nothing to aspire too. There are already too many people doing that and all that is going to do is tarnished your reputation.

To me article marketing is a balance between using the proper key words, not spamming the search engines, giving valuable information to the reader, and selling only legitimate products and services online. I find these days that too many people are trying to take shortcuts and selling trinkets online, or trying to coax other people into online marketing schemes that never pay off, except for maybe the person selling them, once in a while.

Rather than rewriting old articles, I recommend that you listen to what your customers ask and you take those questions and you make them into article titles. Then answer those questions either in an e-mail or on the phone and make those answers the body of your article. This is just one way you can create great content that will serve a very important need online, and they will give value to your reader. Rather than taking shortcuts, it's important that you do it right, that you have integrity for what you write, and that you stand on the ethical high ground; because if you do that, you will be successful in the long-term. Indeed, I hope you will please consider this and you may e-mail me if you'd like to discuss this further.

Lance is an excellent person to take article writing advice from as he does it from the sheer pleasure of the experience and not for profit or to promote a product or business. You can read his articles at Ezine Articles at: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow