By Jo Mark

Writing articles can be a very profitable exercise if you focus on the details. One of the most important details of your article is the author’s Resource Box. Many authors mistakenly use it to market themselves. They talk about their education, their background, and their accomplishments. Unless you are a famous individual, no one really cares where you went to school, where you grew up, or any of your fabulous accomplishments. Don’t waste precious space in the Resource Box to brag. If you feel a need to tell people how great you are, write about it in an article and see how many page views you get. I’ve researched over a thousand articles and the number one reason that many writers fail to make money with their articles is due to a flawed Resource Box.

In the ideal Resource Box, you should tout three things: your website, one of your own promotional items, and an affiliate program. I’ve seen countless articles that did not even mention a website.

The article is written to benefit the public, the Resource Box is written to compensate the author. Many authors have one Bio that they use for every article they submit. This is a big mistake. When I finish writing an article, I don’t step away from the computer until I complete two Resource Boxes. A plain text version for sites that do not accept html in their articles, and an html version for sites that accept the ‘a href’ command. If a site says that they will allow html in their article, I will submit the html version. If the site does not specifically state that they will accept html, or if they say that they will strip it out, I submit the plain text version.