Book Writing And Article Marketing

When I first started looking at getting into an online business, it was with every intention that my efforts would focus on cooking and recipes. After all, I am a trained chef, I’ve cooked in restaurants and owned my own catering business, and cooking seems to be the only place I seem to have any creativity.

I got myself off track after seeing how many cooking and recipe sites there are out there and deciding I needed to learn more about doing business on the web. You know how completely I got sucked into that pit!

Kindle actually has been the impetus for me to venture back into the food niche. I am told that cookbooks rank in the top 10 for downloads of Kindle books, so I’m spending some time with that.  I’ve edited a couple of public domain books, and now I’m writing one about meringues (no, not just the fluffy stuff you put on top of lemon pies – when you flavor the meringue and bake it crisp, it’s very good!) I’m hoping to have it offered for sale on Kindle in a week or so. And of course, it will be coming to a web site near you, as well, for the non-Kindle readers.

And article marketing will be a part of the marketing program.

I’ve been really lazy about doing article marketing – which is just plain stupid, given how effective it is to getting traffic to your site. I did a few articles about my Ireland site and actually saw some traffic generated, even though that’s another over-saturated niche. But then I got distracted (surprise!) by the newest shiny thing and didn’t follow through.

I do have roughly a bajillion articles/article packs sitting on my hard drive. Many of them are duplicates, I know, and it’s just plain annoying to have to go through a file simply titled “900 PLR Articles” to try to figure out what they’re about. But who do I have to blame? I am making myself spend an hour each day doing just that, though. Most of the articles are on internet marketing topics and most of those are awful, so I’m clearing up some space on my hard drive. And, the ones on other subjects are often pretty bad, too. I’m thinking that for most of the giveaway article packs, ‘you get what you pay for’ is especially true.

I have found a new offering, though, that I’m thinking is pretty impressive, especially for free. A fellow named Mike Steup, who seems to have found his niche in everything to do with articles, is offering a free daily set of 5 articles. He cautions that they are very rough and need editing/rewriting work, but they are a starting point. I just got my first set (they’re about aerobic exercise, and I’ll be able to use them on one of my sites, I think), and I am impressed. They will need some rewriting and editing, but only to get around the duplicate content thing and to maybe add some content (they run a bit over 400 words per article). They are good enough to use as is.

Of course the reason he’s giving these away is so he can tell you about his other products, but I’m thinking it’s well worth a little sales copy to have access to this quality. You should take a look by clicking here.

I’m back to my recipes. Have a great weekend – a great holiday weekend, if you’re here in the U.S.