How do you feel about writing articles and having them published on the Internet? Many people find it hard to get started with article writing. The main problem is lack of confidence. This can take the form of lack of confidence in your writing ability and/or lack of confidence in having anything to say that anyone would want to read.

There are three big reasons to write and publish articles:

1. To add content to your website or blog;

2. To get readers interested in you and what you have to offer at your website;

3. To get one-way links back to your website.

The best sort of article will do all these things for you but, it is still worth writing articles even if nobody ever reads them and they just earn you the links to your website.

Tip 1

If lack of confidence is a big problem, you can get round it by using a pen-name when you publish your first articles. The benefits of doing this are that your early articles won't come back to haunt you when you are rich and famous online, but you will still be building links back to your website by having your articles published in article directories. You will also be getting valuable writing practice and, instead of leaving your early writing attempts sitting in a folder on your PC, you can put them to work for you. If you have underestimated your writing ability, you might be pleasantly surprised to find that your articles get picked up and circulated by ezine editors.

Obviously, if you use a pen-name, you will need to be a bit creative with your resource box, ie you wouldn't claim ownership of your website under a different name because this will look as if you are involved in something devious. You could simply put something like "(your name) recommends xyz website for the best ..." . As resource boxes go, this example is not inspiring to anyone who gets to see it but it will still give you a one-way link back to help your website PR.

Tip 2

If you are quite happy about writing but don't feel you have enough experience to write articles advising people on subjects relating to your website, you can write articles on a completely different topic. If your passion is collecting butterflies or playing golf or home-schooling kids, write about that. It is better to write well about an unrelated topic than to write badly about a topic relevant to your website. Again, experience will come as time goes on and you can then start writing articles concerning your business.

In your resource box you can say something along the lines of "(your name) is a renowned butterfly expert and the owner of xyz website where you can get great …". Hopefully, you can come up with more interesting wording but this should give you the general idea. This type of article is also good for blogging - there's no law that says you can have only one blog and that it must be on the same topic as your website.

Writing original articles for publishing online is the best form of free internet advertising available. Anybody who owns a business website will benefit from writing their own articles and, if you are just about to start, it is easier than you might think.