Writing Tips – Most Commonly Confused and Misused Words

Thank goodness for spell checker, but wait, spell checker won’t detect correctly spelled words used incorrectly in a sentence. Your best bet is have a friend or virtual assistant proofread your articles and blog posts.

The most commonly confused and misused words are often homonyms — words that sound the same, but are spelled differently. The only way is to really pay attention to the homonyms when you’re proofreading. Words that uses apostrophes should be read aloud and fully.

For example:
Grandma’s house is 10 blocks away.
Grandma’s (Grandma is) sitting on the porch knitting.
Grandmas like to sit on the porch and knit.

Here are the most commonly misused words.

there, their, they’re, there’re
here, hear
principle, principal
to, too, two
you’re, your
loose, lose
then, than
effect, affect
accept, except
assure, ensure, insure
compliment, complement
it’s, its
no, know
new, knew
weather, whether
whose, who’s
past, passed
site, sight, cite
alot – it should be a lot

Even the best writers make mistakes, so take the time to read every word carefully.

~Sophia

Online Article Marketing Can Drive Traffic To Your Site

When you write online articles and use them in an article marketing campaign, you benefit in many ways. Let’s take a look at a few of those benefits.

1. You build quality back links to your web site which helps with search engine ranking.

2. You drive quality traffic to your web site and/or blogs. This targeted traffic is obtained by readers clicking on your links in your Author’s Resource Box.

3. Writing articles give the impression that you are a leader in your niche. It helps build credibility to your personal and business name and readers will look to you as a professional.

4. You will generate your own business leads. When people read your articles and click through to your web site, you are exposing them to the products you sell and the home business opportunity that you represent.

When it comes to writing your first article, here are a few important tips.

1. If possible, be personable in your articles. Try to make a personal connection with your readers when you write.

2. Your articles should contain a minimum of 250 words. Use proper keywords in your articles to help readers find the information that they are looking for. Your keyword should be in your title and in the body of your article three times. Anything over three times is considered keyword spamming.

3. Leave the sales pitch out of the body of your article. If you are pitching a product and/or business service, leave your sales pitch blurb for your Author’s Resource Box. You can’t use links in the body of your article. In addition, most article directories will not allow affiliate links in the Author’s Resource Box. If you have a blog, use that link instead of a link to your consultant web site.

4. Always spell check your article for misspelled words or grammar mistakes before submitting it to a directory. I find it very helpful to have a fellow writer proof my articles before I submit them.

Once you have your article completed, you can publish your article on blogs, niche related forum boards or in article directories. If you are publishing your article in a directory, your article will then be used by web site owners to be published on their web sites, in newsletters, ezines or on blogs.

If you are new to article writing and/or article marketing, there are several groups online that you can join. Writers within these groups can help you with your article writing and teach you proper article marketing skills. One of my favorite groups for new and experienced writers is http://www.wahm-articles.com. You can join their online community for free, as well as submit your articles to their online directory.

In closing, article marketing can benefit your Direct Sales business by building quality back links to your web site, improve your search engine ranking, generate your own leads and more importantly…give the impression to others that you are a leader in your niche.

Shelly Hill, copyright 2010, all rights reserved. Please do not reprint this article without Shelly’s permission. Thanks!

Two Tips For Writing Burnout

When it comes to a business or job, there’s bound to be burnout along the way. Writing burnout happens a bit more than I care to expect.

For the past month, I have felt like I had a firewall on my brain and someone needed to help me disable it. So what did I do besides complain about my major writer’s block? I even took my own advice on how to deal with writer’s block to no avail. Unblocking The Writer’s Block with Article Ideas and How An Article Writing Challenge Killed Writer’s Block.

I remember staring at my Notepad which is full of article titles that I found on Ezine Articles and as I went down each title, I kept thinking to myself, I’ve already touched on this subject or I would try to run an outline in my head and I would come up with regurgitated ideas on articles I’ve already written. For some reason, it didn’t spark any new ideas as I expected it should have.

So really…now what, right?

Take a much needed break and don’t even think about writing because the stress of trying to produce good quality writing is what’s hampering your writing process. I must admit I have written some blog posts that didn’t have a lot of substance, but it was do-able. I wasn’t completely happy with it, but I knew I needed to write and that’s wrong, in my opinion. It doesn’t help with the fact that I’m a perfectionist and I am hard on myself.

Share a good laugh with someone. I remember my husband making me laugh so hard that I almost peed my shorts while we were out on a walk. I came home and wrote an article. It was absolutely painless. I’m not sure what it was…maybe it lifted some of the stress I was feeling and I got some fresh air to clear my head, but whatever it was laughing that hard felt really good and the tension was gone.

Being idle and not being able to write is really not a negative thing as I thought. It’s a process of letting ideas come together or waiting for new experiences to happen. Writing shouldn’t be forced or be a struggle because when that happens you’ve already lost focus of why you’re writing in the first place.

~Sophia

Write With Clarity

One of the mistakes people often make when writing is being too descriptive. People want you to get to the point and they don’t need to weed through the excess words.

Being overly excessive with words doesn’t make the article more valuable. Whether you’re writing an article, blog post or business email…just get to the point.

I couldn’t have said it any better in this excellent article by Sherice Jacob.

Does Your Writing Suffer from Purple Overload?

3 Key Steps To Article Submitting

As you have read many times why people highly recommend article marketing simply because it works and it’s free!

Before you go submitting to thousands of article directories, here are three key steps to remember.

1. It’s important to read the author’s guidelines and the article directories’ requirements. For example, some article directories expect no less than 400 words and up to 5000 words and some allow up to three links in the resource box and others only two. Be sure to reference the guidelines often as they do change without prior warning.

2. This step is obvious. If you’re happy and accept the article directory’s and author’s guidelines then go ahead and create an account. A lot of people miss this next important step and it’s to fill out your profile. If someone really enjoys your article and want to know more, they will click on your name to read more about you. Don’t lose out on potential customers, sales or connections. Make sure you complete your profile.

3. Now you can submit your article and reap your rewards.

Happy article marketing!

~Sophia

6 Effective Ways To Improve Your Writing

Writing doesn’t come easy to everyone, but I believe everyone can write well when given the proper tools.

Here are six ideas that will help you become a better and more confident writer.

1. Start with your basics and review grammar and punctuation rules. Keep a thesaurus and dictionary close by when you start writing seriously.

2. Start writing. Start a blog and write from thought. Let your ideas flow and don’t worry about the mistakes you’re making while your writing. Just keep the flow going and you can always choose to edit after.

3. Find a writing mentor or someone who will help critique your writing. Someone else who writes will be extra beneficial to you as they will provide the best constructive criticism.

4. Read a variety of material as this will expand your vocabulary and expose you to the different writng styles from different authors. Take the time to read each day for at least one half of an hour.

5. You can find free writing tutorials or worksheets online to help with your writing. You can also look in your local library for books, community colleges, or community centers where they may offer writing workshops or courses.

6. Gather your writing material and your topics and start making an outline of what your topic will be about. You don’t have to do it in one sitting if you can’t, but each day add more to it until you have completed your article.

You can also set up your own writing goals, challenges or writing project to keep you focused and keep you writing because the only way to gain confidence and experience is writing consistently.

~Sophia

Article Writing Tip: Be Concise

There seem to be so many things to remember when you’re writing articles. Keep it simple, don’t use big words, use keywords or keyphrases, watch for spelling and grammatical errors and the list goes on.

Being concise and getting to the point is important to remember. Having a 500+ word article doesn’t mean it’s a better quality article.

One last tip: Don’t confuse your readers. Well executed articles drive the point home.

~Sophia

Writing Masterpieces or Regurgitating Articles?

I’m confident many people would agree with me when I say that article writers who re-hash, regurgitate, re-spin, reword their articles multiple times for submission to article directories is totally worthless.

Seriously I have to wonder why someone would write on the same topic over and over with the same information or ideas? That doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t know how many articles I’ve read from one particular author on how to organize your home office. For a moment it was deja vu because the article was the same material.

Yes, I understand people comprehend things differently in different ways, but if you write at an elementary grade level there should be no problems getting the point across in the first place.

How does it make the author look? To me, an author loses credibility. What they say offers no value and their words are meaningless.

Would this be someone you look up to?
To follow in their footsteps?
To be looked upon as a niche leader?

No, no and no.

It’s important to have good quality content attached to your name whether it’s on your website, blog or you’re submitting to article directories.

There’s nothing wrong with rewriting your article for a blog post and vice versa. When I rewrite some of my articles for blog post, I completely rewrite them, but it’s also acceptable to rewrite a few paragraphs.

The main thing here is it’s not okay to rehash and rewrite articles that offers nothing, but the same material and then submit them to article directories.

It’s pointless. It has zero value. It’s worthless.

~Sophia

10 Article Writing Tips For Writing Quality Articles

When asked for article writing tips, you will surely get a variety of answers. One tip is not more important than the other.

In no particular order, here are my 10 tips that will help you with your writing so you can create the best article each and every time.

1. Gather ideas for your topics. Doing a brain dump is good. Just write ideas as they come to mind. You can sort it out by putting them into categories and subcategories; deleting duplicates and so on.

If sitting in your home office is stunting your creative juices, move to another location. Going for a walk outside clears a clogged mind, but at the same time old stuff is filtered out and new ideas are filtered in. Don’t forget to bring something to help you remember your new ideas.

2. Working with an outline will help you stay focused and on the topic. You want to write with clarity and with substance. Don’t get too wordy. Get to the point.

3. Research your topic if necessary. Providing misinformation is poor, unprofessional and you lose believability and credibility.

4. Write with a solution in mind. The reason you write is to inform and to help answer your target audience’s questions.

5. Connect with your audience. People want to hear your voice. Don’t be someone you’re not. You get more respect if you are yourself and you are genuine. One of my favourite quotes comes from John Mason “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.”

6. Have a beginning, middle and end. Grab your readers’ attention with a mind blowing intro. Okay not mind blowing, but something that will entice them to read and not skim through.

The body is where all the juicy information is and the conclusion nicely sums up the message of the article.

7. Proofread, proofread, proofread. And then proofread again out loud. Get another pair of eyes and have them read through your article with a fine tooth comb. Microsoft Word spell checker doesn’t detect correctly spelled words used incorrectly in a sentence. Read your apostrophes fully to see if it’s (it is) right.

8. Don’t be a perfectionist. It’s okay to fine tune just don’t over tweak, over think and over analyze. The more you edit, the more you lose the core of the article.

9. Write regularly, but not forced or rushed. The latter produces substandard articles.

10. Always have a thesaurus and dictionary close by and use it.

Each time you pick up a pen or start typing in Word, follow these article writing tips to ensure you always create the best quality writing masterpieces.

S McIntyre is the founder of www.WorkAtHomeSpace.com, a free resource focusing on telecommute companies, home businesses and other work at home related topics. Join her on her work at home forums for more article writing tips.