In this article I will look at how you can publicize your articles, what makes a well written article, and some of the dangers of writing for profit.
Stumble upon, Delicious, Digg and so forth
Most site sharing services' TOS's Specifically prohibit you from advertising websites in which you make a profit. It doesn't matter if you are actually providing good content for the service; you are still in violation of their TOS, which can lead to all your activities coming to a close as you are unceremoniously banned.
Saying that, there are no rules against others people submitting your work. If you have good friends willing to submit, then by all means ask them to. But remember one very important thing- if they provide poor content, their reputation suffers for it. If you are a true friend, you will NOT pressure them into submitting your work for you. Let them decide if it is good enough and go from there.
Stumble users in particular can be very, very antagonistic (thanks to Poprock-Kiss for this information). If just one of them thinks your site is a moneymaking scam, or a shoddy piece of work thrown out before it's ready, they will thumbs down you, then probably get their friends to do the same. If you're a scammer, then pretty much every website you've ever submitted will get the same treatment. If you've been using stumble to advertise, then you MAY get lucky, and suffer only an attack on that one site.
If you are going to use these sites, then respect the community by providing content that you have not published. This will demonstrate that you do follow the ideals of the service, and are not using it as a cash cow. Reasonable users will then "overlook" a few self promotion articles if you are providing content to the community. The golden rule is this:
Site sharing services are not your advertising tool. You have no right to advertise on them. If you do, you take matters into your own hands. ALWAYS submit other content and take an active part in the community to demonstrate to others you are not abusing the service.
The Best- First And Last
There's an old saying, “Always save the best for last.” This doesn't work when writing to make profit. If you can't maintain quality throughout, then you need to put it in two places, the start and end. If someone starts reading your work and gets bored, they will not carry on.
Keep them interested for the first 200-300 words or so though, and they will more than likely finish reading it. You'll need to do all sorts of things to keep them reading, trick them into thinking there is little text by adding pictures and embedded youtube videos, make the article personal, try to make it sound more interesting with the title and introduction. But above all, WRITE WELL. All the tricks in the book won't help you if the reader doesn't find your article easy to follow, or if you're spouting bullshit for half of it. There is no such thing as free money, and if you want to get paid, you need to put in the effort. You owe it to yourself, and more importantly the readers.
Also ensure you end well. Users will decide whether to comment/ Click I like it / submit to site sharing services, AFTER they have read your article. Generally (but by no means universally), readers will decide how they felt about an article based on the feelings they had finishing it, especially if they did not read it through properly, or skimmed it.
One example of this in action is my article documenting my travels through the war cemeteries of Flanders; Walking with the dead. For me, this article represented writing from the heart, and I harnessed that by ensuring my feelings came through within the article. I tried to involve the reader, to tell an interesting story and help them learn a little about the brave sacrifices of the soldiers of the Great War. I played this up heavily at the start, showing how this was a personal story (Why do you think gossip magazines sell so well?), and again at the end by allowing my true feelings and thoughts to be put to paper. This emotional involvement, hopefully involves the reader.
We all publish articles we've not put much effort into. Some are just funny little skits, some we really couldn't be bothered with but wrote to keep up momentum. While it's fine to publish these, be careful about advertising them. Poor quality reflects on you poorly as a writer, plus they will sink like an iron brick on site sharing services. Filler does not make good content, and in the worse case scenario if advertised, will result in a negative backlash (see above about the stumblers.)
