When I owned QualityArticles.com, I would get articles that were outright “plugs” for physical or digital products, websites, services and various other kinds of specific things. In other words, articles that said nothing more than, “This product is great. Buy it from me!” I would reject them out of hand.

I thought it was simply careless, lazy writing. I thought these writers just chose to ignore the subtlety of marketing.

But today, as I was thinking about what more I could say about article writing, I started thinking about these writers and it ocurred to me, maybe they just don’t know HOW to write an article that does not blatantly sell a product, but DOES lead to their product’s sales page. So that is today’s topic.

How To Write An Article That Informs, Not Just Sells
The basic premise you need to remember is that people do NOT want to read yet another commercial pitch. We all want the highest and best for the Internet, and also, to not have it be full of garbage—or sales pitches. Be honest, you get up and go into the kitchen during those 30 minutes of commercials between every 5 minutes of the show you watch on TV, right? I know you do, so do I.

There’s a reason why it’s called the “information highway.” What we want on the Internet is information. Your articles need to inform and educate. So, if you are selling a product, or some such, how do you do that? You want the world to know how awesome your product is, correct? But you cannot simply write about your product.

Instead, you write about the PROBLEMS your product solves.
You talk about about the SOLUTIONS to those problems (the intrinsic values of the solutions, not specific products that would solve said problems). Then you offer, through your resource box, a way for your reader to do more investigation of a possible solution—your product.

Alright, let’s put this into action. You have a kick-butt affiliate product. It’s going to make you a bunch of money, provided you can drive traffic to the sales page. What are you going to talk about?

Are you going to talk about the product, itself? Are you going to write about the value your product will give your customers? No! That is the purpose of the sales page.

You need to address the PROBLEM that your product will solve. Draw the reader in by describing the problem. Share with them the difficulties that this problem brings. Share a personal ancedote, if you have one.

Then, you can start talking about solutions to the problems. Solutions… not a product that will solve the problem, but the actual “what-it’s-going-to-take” to solve the problem. The values intrinsic to whatever solutions there might be.

Example: I sell MicroNiche Finder, one of the best solutions out there for the problem of proper keyword analysis. But instead of just saying that, I do the following:

I point out the problem intrinisic with finding the right keywords, describing in detail how it is rather difficult and daunting, especially to newcomers.

The “solution” would be to find a way to streamline the process. I would even give steps to help eliminate PART of the problem, right there, in the article, for free. In the case of MNF, I would talk about the free tools that exist, pointing out that they are only partial solutions.

Lastly, I write about the benefits of finding a complete solution, and this is the paragraph that will lead to my resource box where my call to action and sales page links are.

Bottom line: Be informative with everything you write.

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