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I've Got Content, But I Need Readers. What do I do?
by Katie Gustafsson

The Ailment: I have managed to secure a writing job providing content for a website, but I need to encourage more people to look at it so that I can earn some money. Any suggestions?

The Cure: Site promotion is a time-taking business, but it does pay off it you are paid by the amount of visitors who come to your site, or the amount of clicks you have etc. I would suggest the following tactics.

1. Write your article, column, tip or whatever.

2. Publish it at the site and make a note of the URL it appears at.
3. Spend an hour putting the URL in various search engines. Use the ones that allow you to submit to several sites at once or you could be there several hours instead of one. Also make sure you only submit to search engines appropriate to your subject area. If you aren't doing an academic related subject, don't tick the box of any search engine that is only interested in academic topics. Remember that some sites will take a few weeks to accept your page and so it may take a while before you start to notice an increase in traffic from this promotion. Take care with your wording in the boxes. You have limited space so make sure you are clear about what your article is about, and that it looks interesting enough to make people want to read it. Also be careful with your keywords. Use words that are specific to your article.

4. If you have a signature line on your email, change it regularly to advertise the content of your site - and make it a live link that people just have to click on to be taken to your site.

Copyright © 2001 Katie Gustafsson

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