Article Marketing

If you want to draw more traffic to your sites, you need article marketing. There is what we call article e-business. In article business, you will be working as a freelancer. Your business is to be writing articles that will bought and later sold to internet marketers that are always on demand for articles for their online business. You can even be working directly with internet business owners as their virtual assistant, and you will be getting paid for it. But I will not been explaining much on article writing e-business here, I will be illuminating on article marketing for your online business.
It hasn’t taken long for the holes to start appearing in the fabric of the system once the benefits of article marketing were introduced to a much wider audience. Think about it-rightly or wrongly, your credibility will be affected by what you write and how you write it. As a reader when I see things like “Are You Tired of Loosing Money Online”, my idiot radar switches on immediately, and I click away. It’s true that you don’t have to be Shakespeare, but if you can’t spell (spell checkers aren’t that difficult to use), can’t punctuate and don’t have a basic grasp of English grammar, you will appear, to a large number of people, to be an idiot.
Having been raised to believe that if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, I can help but cringe when I see so many poorly constructed efforts. So, if you struggle with writing, think twice about proceeding, and if you prefer, use a ghost writer or a freelance writer to create a copy.
If English is not your first language, submitting horribly mangled efforts is unlikely to work either. It is not that editors are unkind or unfeeling or don’t understand and appreciate the effort you may have put in, but they usually don’t have time to proof read every article they receive and poor translations are among the first to end up coming under the unforgiving hammer of the delete button.
As a writer, remember that the directory owners are looking for a reasonable standard, If they fill their directories with rubbish, they won’t get returning visitors, and the usefulness of their site soon becomes questionable to anyone who drops by looking for some good content to republish on their websites or blogs. This is a serious threat to authors, publishers, directory owners and the entire fabric of article marketing.
Moving on, let’s talk about keywords. So many people get this aspect wrong. It’s worth mentioning it yet again. If you are targeting the key phrase “dog kennels” for example, you want to try and use it in your title, and to sprinkle it around in your content, probably ending up with a hyper-linked example in your resource box .However overuse will kill your work and probably see your article rejected by any decent directory. If the following were to appear in the first paragraph, you will, in all likelihood, be zapped immediately by any savvy editor…
“Dog Kennels come in all shapes and sizes. When shopping for dog kennels you can often find them at better prices online. Dog kennels are important for your dog’s well being and choosing dog kennels that are not suited to the dogs you own is a common mistake. So, how do you choose dog kennels and where should you start when looking to buy dog kennels online?”…
Now, if you think that looks okay, I’ll save you some time and effort. Don’t try your hand at article marketing. This example is not uncommon. With the proliferation of automated writing software and the insistence by “experts” that keywords are vital, this is exactly the sort of dross that fills the moderation queues of directories everywhere .End result-cyber garbage tip.
You will also notice, through the painfully manipulated and halting style, that article already sounds like an ad. That’s because it is-it’s not an article, it’s poorly written ad copy and it won’t work. Writing articles and writing ads are two completely different disciplines and you will do well to remember this if you want to succeed with article marketing.
Editors quickly recognize and reject such obvious ads. Sure, if you mass submit, one or two of your efforts will make it into some of the less discerning directories, but who is going to pick up your work and publish it elsewhere? Poor articles will deliver poor results every time-that’s a guarantee I can give with confidence.
If it’s all beginning to sound like a lot of hard work, well, it is. However, following a few simple rules will ensure that article marketing works for you .Remember that quality is always preferable to quantity and you won’t go too far wrong .Read the submission guidelines of the directories you submit to as they all have their own rules and getting off on the wrong foot won’t help your efforts.
If you use article submission software, some directories won’t accept your work, although the majority will. If you use an article distribution service, choose carefully as many directories view these in a poor light due to extremely bad or non existent quality control. As you will be paying for the service, ask around for their reputation and effectiveness before buying.
Although it’s tempting to want to get your article into hundreds of directories, it’s sometimes better to be selective. Often, a well written article submitted to a handful of quality sites will be a better bet. There are plenty of niche directories as well as general ones, so your choices are plentiful. ‘Good’ doesn’t always mean only those with high PR for example; there are plenty of lesser known and smaller sites where your work will get good exposure and not be lost in piles of dross.
There comes a point in every online business where you need to start outsourcing but the task can feel so overwhelming. How do you know you’re ready to hire a virtual assistant? You may or may not be making profit when you decide on bringing a virtual assistant into your business. It’s more important that you have a process for creating profits then it is to have a lot of extra cash on hand. If you have an action plan for creating real income and making the investment of a VA back then you’re to outsource.
There is a lot more to this subject, but these points should give you an idea of some of the pitfalls and help you to avoid making some of the more common mistakes. There is no doubt that article marketing can be a powerful and effective promotional tool for almost