Earlier that day, I was reading in the local Malaysian newspapers about the “horror” of a woman’s ordeal as she watched her house being swept away by floods that killed scores and left thousands homeless in the southern part of the country.

Horror. Same word, contrasting situations.

I’ve been guilty of this early in my career, probably more than once, having written about sports for most of my journalism life.

Once after covering a football (soccer) match, I described a 2-0 loss as a “disaster” for the team concerned. A learned colleague pointed out: “If that’s a disaster, what are you going to write when they lose 3-0?”

He got me thinking. What he should have said was: “This is sport. A team losing is not a disaster. Loss of life and destruction of property … that’s a disaster.”

Indeed, our sports desk once received a memo from the editor-in-chief banning the use of the word “horror”.

The memo read something like this: “When 90-odd people die in a stadium, that is a ‘horror’, not when Sheffield Wednesday (an English football team) lose a match.”

Still, sports journalists continue to get away with “murder” when it comes to what happens on and off the field.

You still read and hear about “horror” result, a “disastrous” goal or a “catastrophic” loss.

On a planet where floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, militants, terrorists, armies and the like are causing true death and destruction, you’d think sports journalists would take the time to step back a bit and put their world into perspective.

My advice to journalists and writers is to, as always, choose words carefully, especially in sports writing.

If a team suffers a heavy loss, all you need to do is write “ABC United lost 5-0″. Let your readers decide if such a result is “disastrous” or simply “a bad defeat”.

What is wrong with driving a sensible vehicle? There should be special licensing requirements for women to drive SUV’s because they are clearly struggling to drive them. These vehicles require more strength to operate because there is more vehicle to maneuver. I am not condemning women drivers…not yet anyway, I am just condemning your choice of transportation. Not only are you already a danger on the road in these vehicles but why do you have to talk on the phone while you areattempting to operate one. Can’t the gossip wait until you get home? You do not pay attention and you cut people off like you’re so entitled. Like the rules of the road do not apply to you.

Another aggravating thing about you is that you park in undesignated parking spaces; fire zones, handicap spots, expectant mother parking spaces,…”Oh, I’ll just be a minute!” In addition, you drive way too fast in those parking lots. They are not thru streets, they are PARKING LOTS! Actually, you drive too fast pretty much everywhere I see you; residential areas, mall parking structures, freeways, school parking lots. What makes your time more valuable than mine? What could be so important that you cannot adhere to the speed limits. (Your nail lady will wait for you don’t worry). As I said, I am not opposed to women drivers as long as they drive sensibly, like anyone else is expected to do. However, for some reason when you buy these SUV’s you leave the lot with a complimentary lobotomy.

tf(2006)

Because of your little bio, many readers who find your article interesting, click on the link and visit your site. Once there, they may either sign up for your ezine, click on one of your Adsense ads, or maybe even buy one of your products! And all because of your resource box!

Ok, now that you know the benefit of including a bio in your article, you need to be able to create a powerful one that’ll entice visitors to click-through to your site. In order to do this effectively, first think about your USP (unique sales proposition). For instance, if your traffic exchange site is the only kind out there that offers a service exclusively for blogs, go ahead and mention it.

Eg:
www.nameofsite.com is the only traffic exchange out there that caters exclusively for blogs.

Next, you might want to create an irresistibly free offer to further entice your readers to visit your website.

Eg: Join FREE and get a fabulous, one-of-a-kind pack of internet marketing goodies!

Another good tip is to use targeted keywords that are related to your site. Readers will then immediately know what’s in store for them when they click on the link to your site.

This way, your resource box will easily be able to help drive a ton of targeted traffic to your site.

So never ever underestimate the awesome power of your resource box. Sure, it may be somewhat small in size, but it does provide substantial and significant aid in driving a swarm of traffic to your website. Remember, a boring and unexciting bio is not going to produce results. Your copy needs to be creative and compelling. I just can’t stress this enough!

The next time you’ve got to write out your resource box, keep the above tips in mind and you won’t go wrong! Good Luck!

In this article, I’m going to share with you 5 awesome tips on how to find hot topics for writing your articles:

Here’s a great technique you could use to find red-hot topics that’ll have a swarm of visitors all eager to read your articles. Simply head over to
www.submitexpress.com, look in the right column of the site for ‘Keyword Suggestion Tool’ and type in a keyword that you think will be quite popular. The tool then returns the average number of searches done for that keyword during the past month.

For example, the keyword ‘yoga’ returned a result of 3,337 for last month alone! Now this is a sure-fire sign that this particular niche is massively popular. So what next? Do some research on the subject, create a fact-filled, useful piece written in a simple, flowing style, and voila, you’ve got an article that’ll surely attract plenty of traffic!

Here’s another great idea - read message boards where topics related to your area of expertise are being discussed. Take note of what folks are asking and what they’re talking about. If a particular topic is being discussed say, by a group of 10 people, you may be sure there are plenty of others out there also talking on the same subject.

Check out the Google Zeitgeist Tool. This cool new feature from Google gives you the 10 most popular searches done on its search engine during the past week, month, year, etc. This tool alone will help you figure out what’s hot and what’s not!

Take a couple of minutes to browse through some of the magazines on news-stands. What’s making the front page news? Also, it’s a good idea to run through the ‘Readers’ Corner’, and check out what’s got people talking. Based on all this info, you can then easily write up a good newsy article.

Well, there you have it! If you apply the techniques given in this article, you too will soon be churning out articles faster than you can imagine!

Since your title is what’s going to attract most people to read your article, you need to work on creating a killer headline. One that’ll stand out from the rest and grab the reader’s attention. Some great pointers when it comes to creating a killer headline include usage of the following phrases - How to, Discover, Attention, Did you know, etc, etc. Titles containing these words have always proved effective, so it’s a good idea to follow this technique.

Many webmasters out there usually place the headline and a brief intro of your article on a webpage, together with several other articles. Folks visiting these sites can then pick out an article they’d like to read, and click on the link to read the rest of it. Now your intro, otherwise known as your ‘teaser’, should achieve the same effect as your headline. It needs to be magnetic and lure the reader into reading the rest of your article.

First, here’s a great free tool you can use to pick out a popular topic to write your article - http://www.nichebot.com. Using this tool, you can easily come up with a list of around 10 hot topics, and then do research on Google to write an article on them. Another method is hanging out on a couple of sough-after forums. Refer the most visited threads in each of those forums, and check out what all the fuss is about. You can then create a high-quality article based on that info.

It’s always better if you can incorporate keywords into the articles you write. You need to place that keyword in your headline, in your intro, and you’ve also got to maintain a keyword density of around 2-3% in your paragraphs. Reason? Search engines rate your article according to its keyword density. Also, if readers type in the keyword term matching yours, your article is likely to come up in the top 10 results. When they click through to read it, and then visit your website thereafter, you’ll be generating targeted traffic.

You want to insert your resource box at the bottom of your article, since this is where you can include a URL to your website. Your resource box also gives you the opportunity to advertise yourself and your web site, so make sure you write compelling content!

A great many of these online business sites use private label articles for the content of their website. The use of them helps keep their costs down. Plus a variety of private label rights articles means webmasters have a lot of opportunities to use them for many niche sites.

However, while using private label articles there is always the risk of being one of the many who are using the same article. If that is the case, your website’s content could be lost in the maze of others out there, and there would be hardly any value addition to your website. But if you use the same private label articles wisely you can make significant difference to the traffic you get on your website. Following are a few tips on how to revise private label articles.

Use Synonyms

You can significantly alter the article just by replacing words from the article with their synonyms. If you are good at it the final article that you create can be more clear and comprehensible than the original article. And you wouldn’t require any separate software for this; Microsoft Word will be good enough.

Add Introduction and Conclusion

Technically known as article wrapping, adding an introduction to the article and a conclusion can significantly help your article to stand out, plus you may also hope to expect more traffic by a clever use of keywords in these two sections. The conclusion can also be used to blend in information about your product or service.

Rearrange & Revise Paragraphs

This is another way in which you shuffle the articles so that some points are emphasized more than the others according to your needs. You can even consider dropping some matter if you think that it is not required. Just a simple rearrangement with revision work can make the article read different from the original one.

Rewrite

The best option however would be to rewrite the article. The process would be first to read a private label article, internalize what is being said in it and then convey the same information in your own language. So you have the information ready from the original article, however, the language makes the new article completely new.

These are some of the most basic methods in which you can attempt to revise a private label article. So write away!

The best thing about a FAQ article, which can be as tiny as 500 words. The great thing about the Question and Answer format is that often you can stumble across the very language that people are actually using when they type questions about this subject into a popular search engine like Google or Yahoo. So when you do your market research properly and try to find what you need on the forums at big websites like ivillage or on huge consumer or product review sites then you are practically being handed the keywords that you need to optimize your website on a silver platter.

As mentioned previously in this blog, a good source of keywords is the overture inventory tool, which is a free tool for searching for the appropriate keywords to use in your ad, blog or article. The key to using it is to never choose the top keyword but rather ones that are more exclusive.

The original purpose of the Internet was to give people information about products, places and people that they could not get elsewhere. People still look on the Internet to find this exclusive type of review today. When you write a FAQ article you are satisfying that urge to find out the “truth” about a product or a solution to a problem, which was the entire basis for the FAQ page on the Internet in the first place.

The Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 on Playstation 3 is a very exciting game to play. This particular series is going to be a blast. Right from the beginning you will be amazed at the performance of the game. It loads in a few seconds.

When the loading is done you are given many different options to choose from. The most noticeable option is that of Career Mode. In this mode you can create your own custom golfer.

Some of the other modes include: match play, alternate shot, battle golf, best ball, stroke play, skins, practice and many more. Each type of game has its own rules, but there is still something there for everyone.

One of the best matches to play is Battle Golf. It is basically match play with an entertaining twist. During this match you will play a normal golf game. But after every hole the winner gets a special treat.

That treat is the removal of an opponents golf club. That means any club in their set can be removed. It’s a great feeling when your opponent has only a few clubs at his disposal while you still have all of yours.

Creating and developing your own unique golfer is one of the highlights of the game. You get to design them to look like whatever you want. You are free to design your golfer right down to the very last detail.

You can also choose the type of reactions they have on the course. If all you got to do was design a character and just look at that character, the game would quickly lose its appeal. Luckily, theres much more to do with your created character than just looking at him/her, and the best thing to do is to start a career.

Career mode allows you to take your character through many different tournaments and matches. You will face off with some of golfs well known names, such as Tiger Woods, John Daly, Justin Leonard, Mike Weir, Jim Furyk, and many more.

In order to compete with these pro golfers and become the best, you will have to create one heck of a great golfer. However, creating a superstar golfer is not that simple.

After all, Tiger Woods did not become a great golfer over night. But thats beside the point. The point is you will need plenty of training and practice to reach your peak as a golfer. You do that by taking your character through a few different mini games. They will develop your character’s individual attributes.

These are your characters different attributes: ball striking, driving accuracy, putting, recovery, power, power boost, approach, and spin. After each mini-game some of those attributes may increase. However, that will depend on your overall performance during the game, as well as what the mini-game’s main focus was on. Your starting character is going to suck. But with a few mini games under his belt the character will grow in talent and become a star golfer in no time.