GOLF SWING INSTRUCTION AND STEROIDS

GOLF SWING INSTRUCTION AND STEROIDS

CLEVELAND, Ohio - One of the methods for becoming well known on the internet is to write an article that is both factual and informative about a subject of interest to you. There are many sites that specialize in publishing such articles. The advantage to having your article appear in one of these sites is that they have a head-start in the SEO department. That is, your piece about golf lessons will be found by Google and the other search engines right away vs. your having to develop your web site or blog enough to get the same exposure.

Whenever I submit a golf article to a site like Factoidz, Articlesnatch or Suite 101 I'm guaranteed new vistors to both my blog and web site, http://overthetopgolf.com/ . So it makes sense to use these publishing sites from time to time.

Yesterday I got an alert in my inbox informing me that one of my golf instruction articles was published. Of course, I clicked on it. Don't know why it never occurred to me before but now I notice something that bothers me about the whole arrangement.

You see, these article-publishing sites exist through advertising revenue. You get your article published and they sell advertising space around it. But sometimes this has unanticipated ramifications.

My articles are about golf. One of the subjects I wrote about, for instance, was junior golf. In my opinion, appropriate advertisements accompanying the piece should have been golf-related but instead, right next to my article were ads like "Learn how to pick up the hottest girls on campus" and display ads for everything from steroids to pro life counseling. Regardless of my position on various products or causes, do I want my readers being subjected to these pitchmen? An ad for golf shafts or golf vacations would be more appropriate but as an author I have no control over which ads appear on the same page as my article. It's led me to make a difficult choice.

As a businessman in the business of selling golf instructional DVDs, exposure means customers. But as a moral person I cringe at the thought of a kid reading my article and then clicking on the adjacent steroid ad out of curiosity. My intention is to never use an ambiguous title: I clearly and specifically convey the topic and content out of a respect for readers. I hope to create articles that are considered relevant and trustworthy. But I'm being subverted by ads. Most are innocuous but you risk being read next to other ads that are far less so.

Consider this a lesson learned if you are planning to publish articles through third-party sites. Don't want a LADIES IN THE NUDE advertisement next to your adventures in putting article? Then do what I plan to do in the future-investigate the site thoroughly by doing searches and noting whether accompanying ads are related to the article in some way.

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Keywords for this article: golf, swing, over the top, lesson, instruction, eBook, golf blog, golf instruction, golf instruction DVD, golf lessons, junior golf, over the top golf swing, publishing, steroids
Revised 09-03-2012