SOURCES FOR FREE ARTICLES

THE ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTERS
April 11, 2007
By Dan Harley, Jr. - danharley@primeconcepts.net

Hello to another week of stimulating information about e-mail marketing. My mailing list grows once again. Those of you reading my newsletter for the first time, I would like to direct your attention to the next article about why you’re receiving this newsletter and why I’m publishing it. I also continue to receive a steady flow of questions, which I’ll answer in the Q&A segment of this newsletter.

This week I will talk about sources for free articles that you could use in your own newsletter or even for support information in follow-up letters. This is excellent information for those of you who don’t have strong writing skills, because it will prove that you don’t have to write a single word and still be able to publish a very powerful e-newsletter publication.

IMPORTANT!!!

I found some disturbing news about our personal information in the face of the Homeland Security Act. A friend gave me information about a Web site that could have access to ANYONE’S driver license information. This is very disturbing information, that I want to pass to my readers here. I have included an article concerning this today.

Keep in mind that my previous articles can be found on my blog at:
http://primeconcepts.blogspot.com/

Let’s get started!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
By Dan Harley, Jr. - danharley@primeconcepts.net

Answering questions in a newsletter is an excellent way to provide very informative content to your newsletter readers. I encourage all of you to send me your questions, and I will gladly answer them in my future newsletters. Thanks to your input, this Q & A segment is a permanent fixture to this newsletter.

Q: How do you fight spam?
A: This is a very good question that I should have answered earlier. Everyone has been confronted with spam, and that is especially so for me. I receive more spam than anyone I know, because I oversee over 200 Web sites. I receive more than 300 and sometimes over 800 E-mails a day, but I see maybe six to eight spam mails a day.

I use an Outlook plug-in called SpamBayes (http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/), which is a spam filter that uses a statistical anti-spam filtering system. Plainly speaking, the spam filter learns what is spam and what is not then applies some math to sort spam out of my inbox. Best of all, it’s free!

Q: What is the best Web site you have ever created?
A: My business objective is not to create the best Web site for my clients, but to make as much money as possible with my client by using the Internet. That in mind, I have three “best” sites.

My first best is Maverick Company (http://mavcoland.com). This is one of my first clients who had become a very good friend of mine. My search engine promotion strategies used on the site generates over 10,000 unique visitors/month. I actually had to tear down parts of the site to slow down the number of contacts coming from the Web site.

My second best is a collection of Web sites owned by Harbor Breeze Cruises. 2SeeWhales.com generates over 60,000 unique visitors/month during the peak of whale watching season. In turn, the Web site generates over 60% of my client’s business. The other sites focus on different services offered by my client.

My best non-profit site is Apple Valley Rotary (http://applevalleyrotary.com). This Web site won the first two District Web site awards. I had to take a dive last year and again this year to keep the competition from looking like it was rigged.

Q: How many seminars do you do?
A: I’m one of the weird people that love to do public speaking. I had regular seminars on business Web sites at many of the local chambers, business resource centers and other functions. I haven’t done as many seminars as I used to, due to getting married in Vietnam last year. I will pick the pace up again as soon as my wife is stateside.

Q: How’s you Dad?
A: Many of you know that my Dad’s health is not very good. He suffers from many health complications related to his tour of duty in Vietnam, and things seem to be getting worse lately. He’s not dying, but he is requiring more care. He’s currently having a hard time with recent adjustments to his medication. I’ve been stretched a little thin during the past couple weeks because of this.

He came to Vietnam for my wedding and to receive acupuncture treatment, which improved his health almost immediately. We have plans to bring him back to Vietnam for further treatment.

Q: Where’s you wife?
A: My wife is currently in Hanoi, and will be going back to Saigon in a few days. My Uncle Chau, who lives in San Diego, had recently arrived in Vietnam and my wife has done a fantastic job in taking care of him. She has shown my uncle places in Hanoi that he has never seen despite visiting there many times already. My wife will be going back to Saigon


Keep sending those questions, and I’ll keep answering them!


SOURCES FOR FREE ARTICLES
By Dan Harley, Jr.

Believe it or not, there was a time that I was not a very good writer (some of you may think that I am still not a very good writer). The tech bug had bitten me early in my life, and it directly affected my abilities to write well. Other computer geeks could understand me, but hardly anyone else could. I cheated through college grammar courses by taking classes with a professor that worshiped my Dad, who was an icon at Victor Valley College during his teaching days. It was an instant “B” for me without hassling through studying proper grammar. I never thought that writing would be such an important part of my life back then.

I had become better at writing as I grew older and acquired more wisdom. I wrote more as time passed by, and developed my own writing characteristics, which made writing a lot more fun for me. Although I enjoy writing now, it can still be burdensome from time to time. Now, I think too much about what I write, and probably take longer than I have to just to write something simple. Long story short, I have just as many excuses to avoid writing articles for my newsletters and anyone else would, despite being (arguably) a better than average writer.

My old e-newsletter was a lot easier to publish than this one is, because I often used articles written by someone else. I had known Dr. Kevin Nunley (http://drnunley.com/) through the Internet, and often re-published his articles in my e-newsletter. He has some great information in his articles, and it took less than a minute to copy and paste into my e-newsletter. The cost was subscribing to his newsletter and giving him credit for writing the article. Sometimes, he would return the favor and publish one of my articles, which gave me incredible exposure to his 100,000+ readers.

You can find free sources for articles, like I have with Dr. Nunley, on any subject you can think of. Finding sources is as easy as searching Google for “free newsletter articles”. If you don’t want to wade through the thousands of sources for free articles, here’s a few links for you to look through right away:

http://www.freenewsarticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.articledepot.net

After wading through the hundreds of free articles available, you might be thinking about why so many people do this and what do they get out of it. The catch is the write receives free exposure. You will be obligated to national and international copyright laws, which simply means that you give credit where credit is due. Make sure you state who wrote the article and their contact information they want you to provide in trade for use of their articles. That is a heck of a deal!

You don’t necessarily have to use the articles for a newsletter. You could use them as follow-up information to support what you are doing with your customers. Many of you are realtors, and you could support your information with a related article. This will give you credibility on top of your own words.

Next week, I will discuss the information you will receive from the article following this one. See you later!


IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR DRIVER LICENSE

I have recently come across some disturbing information concerning our privacy as citizens of this great country. I believe the Homeland Security Act has gone too far, and you should know what they have done in exploiting their power. Your personal information could be public knowledge now.

If you have a valid driver license, ANYONE could access this information through the National Motor Vehicle License Bureau’s Web site. I had searched for my driver license information, and am very upset with what I have found. You should see this for yourself. Go to the following Web site and search for your own driver license information:

http://www.license.shorturl.com/

Write me back, and let me know what you think.


OPPORTUNTY OF THE WEEK!

If you read anything in this newsletter, you will want to read this segment. I will have an offer of some kind published here weekly. It could be discounts on my services. It could be coupons for free dinners. It could be opportunities to earn cold hard cash.

This week’s opportunity is a FREE INVITATION…

I will continue this opportunity for one more week because it has been very successful.

For those of you who live in the High Desert, you may have heard about the Victor Valley Cigar Club. The Cigar Club is an opportunity for many of my friends to get together. I invite you to join the cigar club mailing list and join in our debaucheries.

To join, all you have to do is reply back to this e-mail with JOIN CIGAR CLUB in the subject line. I will add you to the mailing list, and let you know when our next cigar social will be.


END