The Author’s Resource Box is what used to be called, in simpler, offline times, the author’s “byline.”

The author’s resource box is still the author’s byline, really, only these days it allows for a bit more author information.

In a newspaper, for example, the writer’s byline is little more than his or her name, with maybe a location and/or an email address. For example, a standard byline reads, “Johnny Reporter is a Boston-based writer. Reach him at such-and-such an email address.”

And that’s about it.

The Author’s Resource Box, on the other hand, contains all that information, plus a bit more.

Why the writer is afforded this special opportunity?

Well, it’s not so special, actually...

That’s because the Author’s Resource Box came of age along with Internet Marketing, and specifically, with article marketing. And in article marketing, of course, the articles are free. So the Author’s Resource Box is actually how the writer gets “paid.” Paid in not monetary units, but with the opportunity to tell the person who just read your article a bit more about yourself?

So “payment” comes in the opportunity to self-promote, which the writer does with the Author’s Resource Box, where he includes his name and a bit about himself, along with a link back to his site.

That, in fact, is the author’s key objective with the Author’s Resource Box: To get the person who just read his article to click the link at the end of it and visit his site.

How to get clicked

In writing the contents of your Authors Resource Box, there are a few basic ways to achieve this traffic generation goal. No surprises here, either. It’s all good sense.

First, write with clarity; second, keep it brief (just a few sentences). This kind of goes without saying, though. This is standard writer’s etiquette.

In fact, do you want a few quick pointers on writing your Authors Resource Box? Go read a few. Don’t even bother with the articles; just go read some Author Resource Boxes. You’ll discover pretty quickly which ones you like and which ones you don’t. Emulate accordingly.

Any further creative advice on Authors Resource Box content -- advice you’ll see in other articles on this topic, advice like “make it compelling,” or “make it interesting” -- seem like moot points.

First, such “advice” goes without saying. Indeed, are you really going to try to make your author profile uninteresting? I didn’t think so. There’s no need to advise you to make it interesting, then, is there?

Second, what is interesting or enticing to you may not resonate with me, or anyone else. Writing, after all, is subjective.

Keywords help, too

Other than including a link back to your site (and perhaps, if applicable, a second link to another article you’ve written on a similar topic) another way to use your Authors Resource Box to bring traffic to your site is to use keywords.

If you write advertising jingles, for example, your articles might be about how to use them effectively; or, how to write them. Or, your articles might be about advertising in broader, more general terms. Whichever, an obvious keyword choice for you to use in your Authors Resource Box is ADVERTISING.

Maybe you could tuck WRITER or COPYWRITER in there, too. A third keyword might be to say that writing JINGLES is a specialty of yours.

For keep in mind, if a person is reading an article you wrote on how to use advertising jingles effectively, chances are his next search will be for people who write them. So keep in mind that a few concise, well thought out lines in your Authors Resource Box may well save him the search.

Indeed, he should be able to read those two or three sentences and decide right there whether you are the kind of writer he’s looking for.

Gee, after all that... I suppose it is more than just a byline, isn’t it?