Writing Tips at GarySpeer.com

Having gone to college in an era well before the Internet was invented, I never had the option of something as exciting as Western Governors University (WGU), with the many educational advantages they offer as an online university — not just any online university, but one praised and recommended by such sources as “TIME” magazine and NBC Nightly News.

You’ll see some exciting things looking around the WGU website. The first feature I saw that would have been extremely helpful during my degree seeking days was the incredible convenience of studying in MY location, rather than the route I was forced to take: I had to move 600+ miles to the campus I wanted to attend. WGU online students can study and learn where and when it fits into their busy lives.

The university offers courses and degrees for a perfect range of useful, practical career paths: They have a Teachers’ College, a College of Business (including a degree path to an excellent online mba), a College of Business, and a College of Health Professions. Many news reports and surveys in recent years in the U.S. target education, business, IT, and health professions as the career growth areas in coming years.

WGU’s history revolves around the university’s name — it was founded by 19 U.S. state governors, and is supported by more than 20 major corporations and foundations who are committed to the school’s success. Tuition and fees are very competitive, and WGU offers a number of scholarships as well as other financial aid programs.

If you’re looking for the flexibility of online education and want an experience that challenging and personalized to meet your career needs — I recommend you take a close look at Western Governors University.

It just occurred to me that, in my eagerness to bring you frequent “Useful Websites,” there are some fundamental sites for writers that I’m missing. So let me remedy that right now with this one — “EzineArticles.com.”

If you are at all interested in Internet writing, you’ve probably already found ezinearticles.com. But just in case you haven’t, I wanted to direct you there today. If you’re already familiar with the site, you should go there and look around frequently, because there’s always plenty of fresh content coming in from eager Internet authors.

That’s both the good and the bad of the site: Plenty of content comes in each day from people who are eager Internet authors, but not always good writers. To their credit, the founder and editorial staff at ezinearticles.com work hard to maintain a level of literacy and quality not found on many article submission sites. The task isn’t very easy, because too many people who cannot write even a little bit try to get articles accepted there.

The way this works, for those of you who don’t do “article marketing,” is to write an article on a subject related to what you’re marketing. Make the goal is to make that article both keyword rich and content rich. In the case of ezinearticles.com, you put an author’s “bio” box at the end of the article with links to your website on which you are trying to sell something. Once the article is accepted and listed, the hope is that webmasters will go to ezinearticles.com, snatch up a copy of your article to use on their website, and include — as strict terms require them to — your author’s bio with links to your site on their website. Assuming all goes well, visitors at their websites (which you hope will amount to the hundreds and thousands) will go through your author’s bio to YOUR website and buy your widgets or whatever you’re selling.

I personally have found the best use of ezinearticles.com is not to get website content, but simply to get ideas. I use information I find there to stimulate the old brain and to provide anecdotal info to help me research ideas for stories and blog posts. As with everything on the Internet, you are wise to take “expert” or “authoritative” with a grain of salt. But it is an excellent source of ideas.

Stay tuned for some follow-up thoughts in future posts regarding article marketing as a viable source of income. Does it work? How would you use it to make some bucks with your writing?

For that matter, if any of you out there are using your writing skills to market successfully by writing articles on the Internet, I would invite you to share tips with us by commenting on this post. That would be great.

Technorati Tags: article marketing, ezinearticles.com, Internet writing, writing tips at garyspeer.com

Maybe I’m coming late to the parade on this one, but I just ran onto “wikiHow — The How-to-Manual That You Can Edit,” and it looks like a very useful site for writers and researchers. It’s one of those great places like Wikipedia, where you can get caught up and spend hours of your time, if you aren’t careful. Or, maybe that’s just me. One of the best memories of my childhood was reading through five or six volumes called
“Junior Classics” that my parents brought home from a rummage sale when I was a small kid.

If you like “how-to” articles, wikihow is a good place for you. I’m one of those would-be/should-be handyman homeowners. My dad was an excellent carpenter and handyman, but I was a rebellious little kid and unwilling student. Consequently, I need a good how-to manual if I’m going to, say, replace a light bulb. No, just kidding on the light bulb. (But there’s a couple of boxes upstairs filled with tiles that will attest to my need for a good how-to on how to install porcelain tile.)

So take a look. I think it’s a useful site. Be careful, as always, to verify anything you find there before assuming it’s true and using it in your writing (or your home repair work). Remember that it’s a user-contribution sort of site. Don’t assume it’s all accurate.