Article Submission - How Fast Are You?

Is it really important how fast you do the article submission process? It may not be if you are just going to submit an article or two and leave it at that. However, if you plan to use articles as a regular part of your marketing plan for your website, it becomes very important.

When I wrote an article to promote one of my web sites for the first time, it took me hours. The article submission process took another hour - for just one article directory! Most articles now take me less than an hour to write. Almost every morning I submit an article to a dozen directories, and this takes me just fifteen minutes.

Does speed matter? Consider that in the last twelve months I've written and submitted 300 articles to directories (don't worry -  you don't need to write this much to effectively promote your sites). Now suppose I took twelve minutes for each directory submission, instead of the 75 seconds I average now. That's 525 hours extra in the last year, or 17 of my 30-hour work weeks!

Efficient Article Submission

It's not about rushing or typing fast. Just develop a simple process or system for anything that you repeatedly do. A simple process makes article submission more relaxing, not less so.

Write your articles in a Windows Notepad file or any simple word processing program. Have a systematic way to format everything - one that works for you - and stick with it. In my files, I have the author's resource boxes prepared and copied many times, waiting for the addition of the articles. Of course they can be modified for an article, but this is quicker than writing a new one each time. I also keep a separate file of articles for each website.

When I write an article, I copy and paste it into the file again, adding bold tags or italics or heading tags as necessary to the first version. This way I have a version ready for the directories that accept HTML and those that don't. Each article also has a two sentence description and a list of keywords, ready to copy and paste into the submission forms.

I keep a numbered list of directories I submit to - with the URL of the submission page ready to be copied and pasted into the browser to speed things along. I write the article titles on a list. As I submit them I jot down the number of the article directory. Sometimes directories have technical problems for a day or a month. With my simple tracking list, I can go back later to submit the article to those that were missed.

You have to open and close (expand and minimize) files repeatedly as you fill in the submission forms. To save time on forms that require my name, I copy the title and name together, paste it into the "title" box on the form, then cut the name and paste it into the appropriate box. This will make more sense once you try it - it means opening and close the file one less time.

I paste the article description and the keywords into the form, if that article directory requires these, then I copy the article body along the resource box. After pasting the article into the form, I cut out the resource box and paste it into the appropriate box. Again, this is to open and close the file one less time. Use any little tricks that work for you to speed things up.

You may have an auto-fill feature on your browser, or you can get one. Use it. When forms asking for name, email, or anything else are highlighted yellow, you can usually fill them in with these tools. At directories requiring my name and email address, I just click my auto-fill button, and those fields are filled in for me. I use this tool dozens of times daily, saving me a lot of typing. You should also get a keyboard with "cut," "copy" and "paste" buttons. These are much faster than navigating up to "edit," finding "copy," then opening it again to use the "paste" function. This little feature has saved me twenty hours of work in the last year alone - well worth the small price.

I speed up the process in may other ways too, but there is no reason you have to do it the way I do. The important point is to spend more time writing good articles than submitting them. That is why it's important to develop some system for efficient article submission.