Article marketing is, simply put, powerful stuff. Many internet marketers make the majority of their income from article marketing, and pretty much every marketer out there earns a portion of their income from it. If you are an affiliate marketer, internet marketer, or own an online-based business, you really should be taking advantage of article marketing.

For those who don’t know, article marketing is essentially creating an article with your link at the bottom, and allowing that article to be distributed for free. This allows a single article to be potentially distributed to hundreds, even thousands of sites, all with your link. Of course it doesn’t always work out like that, but it is definitely a good source of traffic.

If you are interested in getting in to article marketing, be sure to check out the tips below:

Use article directories.

Article directories are by far the #1 source for article distribution, and therefore, article marketing. A single high quality article submitted to a popular directory such as EzineArticles can potentially produce 1000’s of visitors to your site. Some popular article directories are: ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, and articledashboard.com.

If you opt to use article directories for your distribution needs, be sure to make a great resource box. The resource box is just as important, if not more important, than the article itself. You could have an excellent article, but if your resource box doesn’t inspire people to click thru, your efforts will be wasted. You should always, always have a call to action in your resource box. A call to action is simply a sentence or two that tells or asks people to do something. For instance, something like “Visit www.example.com to find out more about this product, and make a purchase if interested” is a call to action. A resource box without a call to action will not bring good results, even if it is well-written.

Write high quality articles.

If you plan to succeed in article marketing, you need to take the time to write a high quality article. Take the time to spell correctly, format the post so it is easy to read, and make the content original and interesting. With so many people submitting articles, the people who use the articles can afford to be picky about the articles they choose, and poorly written articles are often thrown by the wayside, and left unused and serving no purpose.

Write non-generic articles.

There are millions of people out there, most of which are pedaling the same old products. In a world of re-written content, you need to write fresh, non-generic articles if you plan to have your work distributed. Try to write on small niches, localized niches, or something like that. Stay away from very generic stuff, such as product reviews, general informational articles, etc, and never, EVER, re-write an existing article and expect to see results.

Write list/blog-style articles.

List or blog-style articles are very popular, and more people are looking for them than any other type of article. A list style article is something like “Top 5 Dresses of 2008″, and includes a simple numbered or bulleted list, with a description for each item. A blog style article is just like the one you are reading now. A title, introduction, and several small sub-headings, which are usually in bold, italic or some font that makes them stand out. These articles are popular because they can be skimmed through easily, but still contain a lot of information.

Write how-to articles.

How-to articles are also wildly popular, mainly because so many people search the web for things like “how do I do ___” or “how can I improve ____” or something similar. How-to articles are not hard to write, and from my own personal experience I can say that they bring much better results than normal articles. So, if you are promoting, let’s say a web design company, write an article entitled “how to build a website in just a few hours” or something similar. Write an article explaining in simple, easy-to-follow steps, how to build a website quickly. Then, in the resource box, put something like “if you are going for a more professional look for your website, please visit yourURL.com”, or something similar.

More methods of getting juicy traffic will be discussed in future posts so stay tuned by subscribing and share this post with as many site owners as you know by using  “ShareThis” below. Oh and don’t forget to comment

To your success!

Tags: Traffic, Traffic Monday

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