The easiest way to get an article published is to publish it yourself. Just write it and post it on your website. Then you can notify your clients, prospects, and referral sources; give them the article’s URL and invite them to read it. If you use meta-tags wisely, people all over the world who are searching for information about the topic will find your article and, after reading it, click through to your home page to learn about you or your firm.

And I’ve got oceanfront property in Omaha.

For most professional advisers, the publish-it-yourself-online model does not work. One reason is that it’s just too easy to do. Because it’s easy, too many people do it, and there is too much really bad journalism on the Internet. Much of the information that you find on professional advisers’ websites is (a) inaccurate, (b) poorly written and difficult to comprehend, and/or (c) written by authors who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Internet researchers are getting wise to the fact that many of the articles they find on the Internet are junk – and self-serving, rather than educational. They scrutinize articles for evidence of credibility and authoritativeness before reading them.

When you “reprint” your article on your website, you should state, just below the title and byline, something like this:

For greater credibility, provide a hypertext link to the journal’s home page, in case the reader hasn’t heard of it.

If the article requires updating from time to time, do so – do not ever let it become obsolete or inaccurate, or you’ll shoot your credibility. Then, after the aforementioned reprint notice, add something like: “Updated by the author January 2005.”

Here are some of the most common reasons why editors reject submissions: