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Friday, May 9, 2008

What is Article Marketing?

What is article marketing? It is a question asked by people that have come across the term when seeking ways to promote their website and generate traffic. Many people write articles, or have them professionally written, without understanding their real purpose.

If they do not understand how article marketing can be used to derive massive amounts of traffic to targeted web pages on their site, how can they possibly be prepared to write an article intended to achieve that?

That raises a question. The term is quite common in the world of internet marketing yet it appears that there are many people who have no idea what it actually means. Probably that is due to the misuse of the word by many article companies, so the intention here is to put the matter straight.

For a start, there are far too many writers supplying article services who have no idea what they are doing, and have obviously no interest in the needs of the person for whom they are writing. Websites offering freelance writing services are full of them. It is full of people who can neither write grammatical and well spelled English, nor understand the needs of their customers.

There is a difference in writing style and vocabulary between writing to persuade a reader to click on a link offering further information, and actually providing that information in the article itself. A teasing article, containing excellent information but not quite enough, and that compels a reader to click for the rest, is more difficult to write than 1000 words about a topic in general. It takes planning, and it is easy for a professional writer to spot an article that has not been planned properly.

Article marketing is, in fact, the art of marketing through the use of articles, in the same way that internet marketing is the art of marketing through the use of the internet. There is no other possible definition. Therefore, what that defines is that those who write articles intended of the purpose of article marketing should not only understand what the term means, but should fully understand how articles can be used to market a product.

Perhaps that product is a tangible product, such as a flat screen TV, perhaps it is something less tangible such as a concept involved in search engine optimization, or perhaps it is a website. Whatever it is that is marketed, if it is done so by the means of articles, then that infers strongly that the articles involved must not only be read, but must be well enough written as to maintain the interest of the reader to the extent that they visit the writers website. Otherwise, the marketing technique will fail.

That is what article marketing is in terms of the concept. In practice, it involves the writing of articles that readers will find interesting enough to want to know more. Such article services should provide a compelling reason for reader to click for more information. They must want to click on the link provided by the writer to his or her website to find out more about the topic.

If the article is written badly, this will not happen. The reader will leave the website or directory that contains the article. Sometimes it will be better to have an article professionally written so that it grabs the attention of the reader, but how do you know who is professional enough to do that. It takes us back to the beginning of this article, whereby you do not know the standard of writing you will get if you hire someone online to write for you.

Although a well written article will attract the readers attention, you should also have a well designed bio or authors resource box to attract the click to your website. If the article is written well enough, and is easily read and understood, then you can use the resource box to direct readers to your website. But not only that: the power of article marketing is that you can send visitors to any page on your website that you want. Simply write an article relevant to that web page.

The way to make the best use of articles is to make sure that they are well written, whether you write them yourself or not, are relevant to the topic and interest anybody who is reading them. Then, you will attract visitors to the page on your resource box, and also might just persuade someone to copy your article for their own website.

What is article marketing able to do for you? If you make sure that your articles are written well enough it can provide you with traffic to your website and one way links back to the page of your choice from each article directory that accepts it. You should also make sure that any site that provides article services intended to promote your product or website has a good record in doing so, and understands fully the meaning of the term article marketing.

More information on how to use Article Marketing to drive traffic to your website and increase your sales can be obtained from Pete's web page Article Marketing

He can be contacted from his article services website.

7 Principles for Article Marketing

If you are just getting started with article marketing, or if you are still learning about article marketing, begin on the right foot. There are seven simple rules you must know (and apply) in your article marketing campaign.

Planning:-. Before you begin writing articles, sit down and set a few goals for yourself. Know what your purpose is for marketing with articles. List directories where you have to submit. Knowing where to submit your articles will save you time. Decide where you'll submit your articles. Create an account at each website and bookmark it.

Compile article ideas. You should never wait until you think you're ready to write a few articles to accumulate ideas. Jot down ideas you have every day. Keep a small notebook handy to write your ideas in. When you're ready to write articles, you'll have a small scale gold mine of ideas waiting for you.

Write quickly. Lots of writers struggle over writing a perfect copy the first time around. Forget about it. Write fast, letting your thoughts flow onto the page which is a good technique. Once you're finished with your draft you can edit as much as you like.

Confirm spelling, grammar and word count. Before you submit your article to any directory, be sure you run a spelling and grammar check on the document. If you tend to forget to do this, write yourself a reminder on a sticky note and place it on your monitor screen. Admit a well-written resource box. This is the most important, and often most overlooked, part of the article marketing process. Always include a resource box with your articles that creates a call of action to your readers.

Be uniform. You can't write a handful of articles and expect huge results. Article marketing requires persistence and consistency. Plan long-term and you'll start getting amazing results from your article marketing efforts.

Prakash Jain Run a Articles Direcotry, You Can Also Find Articles on Writing Articles and Online Promotion Articles

Introducing A Killer Way Of Generating 100's Of Article Ideas In Just Minutes! (Part 1)

I was trying to come up with article ideas one rainy Sunday afternoon when I came up with an idea: I looked at salespages and their bullet points. These places are a goldmine of potential article topics!

Just by looking at one salespage, you can easily come up with dozens of article topics that you would not have thought of.

As an example, I was looking to write an article on acne and was getting short on ideas. I visited an acne solution salespage. How did I find it? Simple, I simply searched the Clickbank marketplace, where there are hundreds of direct marketing salespages for you to mine.

Direct marketing salespages are the best places to get ideas, simply they generate the best responses. Instead of concentrating on branding, their idea is to grab attention and sales.

So I found an acne site. And found a bullet that said something like this:

How To Eliminate Acne And Say Goodbye To Worthless Over The Counter Products Forever!

By reading that bullet point, it is easy to tell that the solution is a natural one, or something unorthodox. So I simply began to search for natural acne solutions on Google and read the articles that came up. I extracted the main points into Notepad and began writing my article. In less than 15 minutes, I had a brand new, unique article. Thats the power of bullets on salespages.

This tip alone can be worth hundreds of new articles, and more money in your bank account!

Fabian Tan is the author of the free 51-Page Report:

"Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!"

Head over to http://www.MurderYourJob.com to get your free copy now before its gone!

How To Grow Your Home Business Using Only Promotional Articles

Is it possible to grow your home business to a respectable size using nothing else but promotional articles and your website content? The truth is that many people are very skeptical about this ever happening or working out not believing that mere promotional articles can be that powerful a marketing weapon.

The truth is that your home business website content is so important that it can make or break your site. Actually when using promotional articles, everything starts at your site and the quality of your content there. Many home business webmasters fail to note one very important point. And that is once visitors arrive at your site, your content will immediately have an impact on how long they will stay. It will also impact on whether or not they will be interested in coming back again to your website in the future.

So imagine a situation where you are doing some very aggressive promotion and yet every visitor who arrives at your site quickly leaves and is not interested in ever setting eyes on your site again. This is the exact situation where promotional articles do not work and can never work in 100 years.

The right approach for successfully using promotional articles is to start at your home business website with your content. Make it as captivating and useful as possible before you do any promotion using articles outside your site. Once you are really confident about the quality of your website content, you can then use the best of your content to create promotional articles and post them at high traffic article directories with links pointing directly at the excellent articles already on your site. That is exactly how you get promotional articles to work like a dream for you.

The keywords you use in your articles both in your site and outside it are important because it is the only way you will get lots of continuous search engine traffic based on popular keywords that you have used.

Many webmasters do not have the time or talent and skills necessary to generate their own content and so they hire ghost writers and SEO content providers to write the articles for them. Actually because of the stiff competition, you can get very professional content writing services at a very dirt cheap price. What all this means is that you will really NOT have any excuse for not having quality home business content on your website.

Visit this website where fresh home business website content is provided for you on a regular basis: http://www.capitalistnow.com

The Article Submission Process Is Exhausting, But Necessary

The article submission process is a bit like an inflight movie. You can enjoy it but you might fall asleep a couple of times, get interrupted by the guy sitting next to you or the flight attendant taking your drink order, or you could just miss the best line in the movie because you were daydreaming and looking at the clouds.

It's a long and arduous process.

Sure, you could get one of those mass article submitters and send your articles out to thousands of article directories - most of which won't publish your article anyway. After all, why would a Croatian language directory publish your article on infant mittens written in English?

There are thousands of directories online but only a handful will do you any good. That's why I recommend studying the directories and picking the ones that will provide you the best benefit. There are several reasons you want to do it this way:

  • First, as already mentioned, not all directories will be of interest to you, or interested in your article;
  • Every directory has its own guidelines - some allow links in the article and some allow links only in the author resource box, but that is just one of the many differences. By studying the directories and their submission guidelines, you can tailor your article to each directory to ensure a more qualified, and better quality, article for potential ezine publishers;
  • Specialty and niche directories are easier to find with keyword searches;
  • Article submission software may not have a complete list of the latest directories. Yours may actually cost for an upgrade.
If you want to use an article submitter, I recommend a free one that allows you to create an author bio and upload your article with a push of a button (no need to spend hundreds of dollars to be turned down more often than not). Article Submitter is such a software. It allows you to pick and choose your directories then automate your submission to each of those directories and tweak the article or your author bio to personalize for a particular directory's guidelines if necessary.

Still, even with the best automation process, article submissions can be time consuming. That doesn't mean there aren't benefits.

Here are a few benefits to ponder:

1) You can be a recognized expert in your field in a very short time; 2) Publishers and editors of newsletters and ezines are begging for content - they need your articles and they constantly scour the Web looking for good material to use; 3) Every article features an author's resource box where your contact information is located along with links back to your web site; 4) Whenever an ezine publisher or web site picks up your article, the search engines count each link in your resource box as an inbound link; 5) Articles are a great way to drive traffic to your web site.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. You really do want to submit your articles to the directories. Specialty directories, niche directories, general article directories, you name it.

Not every directory will pick up your article, of course. They all have their guidelines. Some are strict and some are not. I like the strict ones because it means they are interested in well-written articles. That's what I like. The only caution I would issue is this: Stay away from those directories that will take anything. Article spam is about as annoying as any other kind of spam. It tastes baaaaaaaaaad.

If push comes to shove and you want to submit your articles but don't have the time, you can always hire someone to do it for you. But the one thing you shouldn't do is ignore it altogether.

Allen Taylor is an award-winning journalist and freelance writer. He is the operations manager for an article ghostwriting service at http://www.articlecontentprovider.com

Fast Article Marketing - Latest 4 Targeted Methods to Make Money Through Article Marketing

If you have the knack for writing, you don't need to look very far for a great traffic-generation method that you can use to build quality traffic for your website. You can simply write and submit articles to publishing sites to improve your page ranking, obtain numerous inbound links, and increase the number of your page views.

1. Plan ahead. Devise a workable plan where you can schedule all the smaller tasks that are associated with article marketing. Set your writing time and schedule your submission. Allot at least one day every week for your performance check and for improving articles that are not receiving impressive click throughs.

2. Match your goals with the amount of time and effort that you are willing to invest on this technique. If you aim to get additional 100,000 page views every day, you must be willing to multiply the number of articles that you submit on a regular basis or devise a better plan on how you can reach your goals. Some marketers hire ghostwriters or articles submitter so they can post more articles to get improved traffic.

3. Be patient. Some article marketers quit when they don't see noticeable improvement in their page views after a couple of submissions. Article marketing doesn't offer immediate results and based on researches, you need at least 100 quality articles before you will feel the improvement. So, be patient, keep writing and submitting articles and you'll surely reap great rewards in the long run.

4. Submit only to the best publishing sites. Some article submission sites are not even indexed by Google. Don't waste your time on these sites as they do not have steady readership that can potentially pick up and distribute your articles.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.