Formatting - A Publisher's Point of View
(c) 2004, Jude Wright
Do you format and spell check your ads and articles?
Speaking from an advertiser's point of view, if you don't,
your ads and articles may not get published. And not just by
me. I know a lot of publishers who just "delete" those
unformatted ads and those articles with tons of misspelled
words.
Speaking strictly from a newsletter publisher's point of
view, please do!
I love to get articles from my subscribers. However, when I
get an article that is not formatted at all I tend to just
click delete. Why? Well, if there is nothing to tell me
where a paragraph is supposed to end, I have to guess where
the author wanted a new paragraph to start. With some
articles that can be a chore because of the way they are
written. Of course, if the article is a good article (and
yes, I do read all articles), i will put paragraph endings,
where I believe they make the most sense. In some cases I
will try to contact the author.
As to the numerous ads that are submitted to me, they should
be formatted too - 60 characters per line is my line length
of choice. And don't forget the ALL CAPS dilemma! You might
think this makes your ad stand out, but the truth is - it
also keeps the entire newsletter from being delivered. The
sp'am filters just love to eat those all caps emails! So my
job is to go through all the ads and change the all caps to
"sentence" or "title" caps. Please remember this when
submitting your ads To publishers. It makes it so much
easier to put a newsletter together when rules are followed.
There is a reason for the rules after all!
Are you wondering about all the "/" and "'" marks in the
ezines you receive? Those are separating trigger words to
"hide" them from the sp'am blockers. Just one more job for
the ezine publisher!
What about spelling and grammar? Well, I'm not as worried
about grammar as I am about spelling. Having been an Office
Manager for over 20 years, those spelling mistakes are just
plain irritating. I do take into account the fact that the
author/ad writer may not use English as his/her first
language. But sometimes people get in a hurry and just
"don't bother" with the spelling.
Another irritant? Long URL addresses. Some of those babies
are really long! So, when I have gone through and formatted
the length of the lines of my ezine, there's one that always
goes way out past that line length. I think it looks
unprofessional. Use one of the many text formatting
utilities out there. Two of them are: http://tinyurl.Com and
http://snipurl.Com. I suppose i could "snip" them myself,
but with all the ads I get, that could take a long time too!
There's also the probability that someone will "steal" your
commission by entering his own affiliate ID.
So, please take a few minutes to format your ads and
spell check your articles. It's to your benefit as well as
to
the benefit of the newsletter publisher. You are writing
the article to be read - and published...Right?
-----------------------------------------------------
Jude Wright has been an Internet Marketer for three
years. She has just created a product that will help
other Internet Marketers keep all their marketing
information in one database. Check it out at:
http://i-marketingorganizer.com/organizer.htm
