Quick and Easy Ways to Get Articles For Your Site

By: Jeanette Cates

If you are new to Internet marketing, one of the best approaches you can take is to set up a blog. A blog is quick to set up, costs next to nothing, and is easy to maintain. So for most starters, this is the type of website they set up first.

But immediately after that, the instructions tell you to "Publish an article every day for the first month." And while this is a good idea to get the notice of the search engines and to start to build some readership, most people panic at the idea of writing 30 articles.

Here are four approaches you can use.

Idea #1: Use other peoples' articles. Go to an ezine directory site and choose up to the maximum number of articles or 30 articles, whichever is less.

For example, my favorite article directory is ezinearticles.com They have a limit of 25 articles published on a single site. (Check the publishers' guidelines for the latest information.) But they also have an easy-to-use Publisher's interface that makes it easy to grab articles with minimal formatting required.

There are hundreds of article directory sites. Just search for "your keyword articles" in Google (no quotes).

For each article, write a short introductory paragraph and publish it on your site. Be sure to link to the author's site from the resource box at the end of the article. That's their "payment" for providing you with complimentary content.

Schedule the articles to go out once a day and you have 25-30 days of content - quickly and easily.

Idea #2: Use PLR (Private Label Rights) content. These are articles and ebooks that you have the right to claim as your own. In all instances you want to rewrite these into your style. But they give you a lot of content to start.

To find PLR content, look for "yourkeywords + PLR" in Google. They are generally offered in "packs" of articles, so you will get 10-50 articles at once. That's more than enough to get you started!

Idea #3: Use Wikipedia. Wikipedia provides content that is free to use, so you can create your own articles from it.

Look up your topic in wikipedia then start chopping the content into short articles. Remember, an online article is typically 400-700 words. So you can grab pieces of this content, rewrite as needed, and post it.

When you're using Wikipedia, remember to get related articles. For example, if there are famous people associated with your content, then include short biographies and articles about them.

Idea #4: Use News Items. Set up a subscription to your topic in Google News. You specify the keyword phrase on the topic on which you want to stay current. You'll receive a daily email with all of the headlines on that topic. You can click on any of them to read the full story.

You can then write a short article on any given news item - or in some cases, post the news release in its entirety.

Remember that using a combination of these approaches provides a good content mix for your site. So start with one method, perfect that, then go to the next one. Don't fall into the trap of trying to do all four from the start. Master one, then move on.

And remember, enjoy the process. You'll be learning more as you go - and you'll be providing a valuable service to your readers.