Article Marketing is one of the most effective ways of generating targeted traffic to your website – and, the best part is – you can do it for free (although you’ll probably want to invest in some tools to automate the submission process as your budget allows)!
When you market your articles, think of the movie, “Pay It Forward” – you need to “give” before you can expect to “get”. The way you “give” is with the free content you provide your reader. The way you “get” is through the links and author bio that you include in your Resource Box (this is what will generate your residual income).
Determine a Topic for Your Article
You can easily write articles from your areas of expertise (either business or hobby-related, etc.), or if you need ideas, go to one of the keyword finders like VREToolbar.com to generate a list of related keywords for your general topic. Pick one of those keywords and write an article about it.
Use your keyword liberally throughout the article, at least 3-4 times, but don’t just “keyword stuff”.
Content is king when it comes to writing articles – but you need to write for two separate audiences:
1) the human reader – write so it informs, and makes sense, and
2) the Search Engines – they’ll be looking for the keywords
Write a Catchy Title for Your Article
Use your keyword (or keyword phrase) at least 1x in the title – best if you can use it (or a synonym) at both the beginning and the end of the title. Don’t use a really short title of only one or two words – strive for a title containing about 5-10 words, as that increases your chances of having your article found by search engines – and human searchers, as well.
A good title is worth about 80% when it comes to future income from your articles.
Write a strong Resource Box
Your Resource Box info is very valuable internet real estate – don’t waste your time here talking about the fact that you enjoy trout fishing (unless, of course, your article is about trout fishing) – remember your goal is to generate traffic to your website, which will eventually turn into residual income for your business.
Make sure you include a clickable link to your website or blog. (By clickable, I mean it should appear in blue and be underlined in the text – and, of course, when someone clicks on it, it should take them directly to your web page).
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DO NOT FORGET TO INCLUDE THIS INFO OR YOU WILL HAVE WASTED YOUR TIME WRITING THE ARTICLE
Post Your Article on the Web – As Many Places as You Can
You can post your article on Article Directories, your own blog, other people’s blogs, etc.
At a minimum, for every article you write, you should try to post it on at least one Article Directory – EzineArticles.com – the largest and best of the directories; it gets about 15,000,000 visitors per month.
There are lots of other Article Directories you can consider, but these should be at the top of your list: Isnare, GoArticles, Article Dashboard, SearchWarp and Amazines.
You can do this manually, but if you post to more than one or two places, the manual effort involved can become quite burdensome.
Automate the Article Submissions Process
If you really want to make money from your articles, you need to set some very aggressive goals – volume is the key! Don’t expect to start seeing a lot of traffic hitting your website before you’ve published at least 25 articles – to tons of locations on the web.
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Residual Income = f(Quality Content + Volume)
The combination of quality content plus number of internet postings will determine your success – and those articles will continue to generate targeted qualified visitors to your website for years to come, i.e., generating residual income for you, for years to come.
In order to be really effective with article marketing, I suggest that you automate as much of this process as possible.
There are two types of tools that will be of great benefit to you in your article marketing efforts:
1) Article Spinner programs
2) Article Submitter programs
Having an “Article Spinner” program is definitely worthwhile. You’ll want to avoid submitting the same, identical article to multiple directories, or even multiple blogs – you’re much better off if you submit a unique “variant” of that article to each different location, and you’ll need a Spinner to do that efficiently.
Having an “Article Submitter” program is also definitely worthwhile. You’ll want to be able to submit to multiple locations with one single submission, rather than having to go out to each individual location and fill out their submission forms, etc. Some Submitter programs will submit to Article Directories, while others will submit to other people’s blogs. I don’t know of any that submit to both, although there may be some.
There are a number of these on the market – feel free to do a Google search and you’ll come up with lots of possibilities. Most of the products offered will do one or the other, but not both of these functions – but there are some that will do both. A few will let you submit for free, but not very many will let you “spin” your articles for free. A few might still be available for a one-time fee, but most will want to charge you monthly for that service (i.e., that’s how they’re generating residual income for their businesses!).
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Tags: article marketing, blogs, residual income
