Articles Are The Quickest Way To Your Customers Wallet

One way of promoting your website and product is with article marketing and guess what, it's free. As an additional bonus, this “free” method can boost your sites traffic and sales, doubling and even tripling your income.

How does this work?

Write articles relating to your website and submit them to “free content” submission sites. Easy to do, takes little time and can increase your website traffic, sales and of course, your income.

How can article writing boost traffic and income?

The article on the free content site contains a link to your own website. Readers, after reading your articles, may choose to click on the link and pay you an unexpected visit. Having them on the free content sites is also making these articles available to other webmasters who may wish to publish that article on their site.

If they do, your article will include a link back to your site. And anyone who reads the article on that site can still click on the link to visit your site.

As the list of your published articles grow larger, and more and more of them are appearing on different websites, the total number of links to your site increases too. Major search engines are placing a lot of significance on incoming links to websites so they can determine the importance of a certain site. The more incoming links the website has, the more importance search engines attach to it. This will then increase your website’s placement in the search results.

If you site promotes a product or service, the links that your articles have achieved will mean more potential customers for you. Even if visitors only browse through, you never know if they might be in need of what you are offering in the future. Don't forget to add an easy 'Bookmark' button on your pages.

There are also those who already have specific things they need on their mind but cannot decide yet between the many choices online. Chances are, they may stumble upon one of your articles, click the link in your resource box and visit your site. Provided your site is set up to sell your product and service you stand a very good chance of making a sale. See how easy that is?

Search engines do not just index the websites, they also index published articles. They also index any article that is written about your own website’s topic. So once someone searches for that same topic, the list of results will have your site or may even show the articles that you have written. And to think, no effort on your part was used to bring them to your site.

It is no wonder why many webmasters are suddenly reviving their old writing styles and taking time to write more articles about their site than carrying out other means of promotion.

Getting their site known is easier if they have articles increasing their links and traffic and making it accessible for visitors searching the internet. Since many people are now taking their buying needs online, having your site on the search engines through your articles is one way of letting them know about you and your business.

The good thing with articles is that you can write about things that people would want to know about. This can be achieved in the lightest mood but professional manner, with a little not-so-obvious sales pitch added.

If you think about it, only a few minutes of your time is spent on writing one article and submitting it to a free content site. In the shortest span of time also, those are distributed to more sites than you can think of. Even before you know what is happening, you are getting more visitors than you previously had.

If you think you are wasting your time writing these articles, fast forward to the time when you will see them printed and wide-spread on the internet. Not to mention the sudden attention and interest that people are giving your website and your products or services.

Try writing some articles and you will be assured of the sudden surge in site traffic, link popularity and interest. Before you know it, you will be doubling and even tripling your earnings. Nothing like getting benefits for something you got for free.

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Steve is the CEO & Editor in Chief of Article Land. He has written a book entitled 'Article Marketing Avalanche' which is available free on his website.

How To Continually Grow Your Affiliate Checks

The promise of earning profits without really doing much of anything has enticed a lot of people towards affiliate marketing. But does affiliate marketing really work this way?

As an affiliate, all that is required of you is to simply place the merchant's ad on your website. Then after that, you virtually do nothing but wait for someone to click on the merchant's ad and later collect your profits. Easy, right? Well, not quite. Many affiliates earn almost nothing from their affiliate programs simply because they do nothing. Remember that affiliate marketing is but another form of marketing, and you'll definitely need to market your merchant's product for you to earn something.

Successful affiliates in any affiliate program simply don't sit there and wait for the money to come in. Why? Because there is no money in simply sitting and waiting. If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing and if you want to continually grow your affiliate checks, you've got to do something. Think of ways to promote your merchant's business and products better. Think of ways to induce other people to click on the link or ad provided to you by your merchant. Think of ways to make your affiliate sales increase!

So if you're new in affiliate marketing and you try to follow the easy go lucky pit that most unsuccessful affiliate marketers follow, then you're definitely on the wrong track. But we're not advising you to stop right there. No. Rather, we want you to take some steps to make your affiliate program work better and gain more commissions for you. How? Here are a few guidelines that may help you to continually grow your affiliate checks:

Become an expert on your affiliate product.

You can promote your merchant's product better if you know a little about it. To become an expert, the best thing you could do is purchase your merchant's product yourself. This way, you can tell your customers about your first-hand experience using the product. You could also write a testimonial or a personal endorsement ad about it. But if any condition does not permit you to purchase the product, you can at least thoroughly research it.

Host your own website.

Or at least have a domain name that is short and easy to remember. You certainly wouldn't expect a visitor to remember a very long and incomprehensible URL. And if that's so, you also wouldn't expect him to visit your website any time soon. That means less traffic for your page and less chance for your affiliate ads and links getting clicked.

It is also a good idea to create a private website and offer access to it to anybody who clicks on any of your affiliate ads. Visitors usually get interested with these private websites. Private websites also give you a venue to promote your back-end affiliate products.

Write your own affiliate ads.

Many merchants usually wouldn't mind if you write and design your own ads for their products, providing you ask permission from them and present them your ad before posting it on your site. This gives you a greater advantage over a lot of other affiliates who will be advertising the same affiliate products.

Participate in chat rooms, discussion boards, and forums related to your product.

If you use to ignore them before, then it is time for you to start focusing your attention on them. You can start your own chat or join an existing chat related to your product. You don't have to promote your affiliate product at once, but find the chance to advertise and promote it as you go along. The same would be true for message boards, discussion boards and forums.

Create a free ezine or newsletter.

Ezines and newsletters are periodical publications whose aim it is to inform a group of people about a certain subject. In your ezines and newsletters, you don't always have to promote your merchant's product as this may annoy your subscribers. Rather, find a way to insert your affiliate ads and links on some portions of the letter. Also, don't forget to promote your ezine or newsletter on your website.

These are but a few guidelines on how you can increase your affiliate sales and continually grow your affiliate checks. Sure there are a lot of other tips out there, and if you think they would work, we won't discourage you from following them. What's important is that you are able to find a way to: attract more traffic to your site, induce your visitors to click on the ads on your site, and be able to promote your merchant's products even outside the boundary of your website. If you can accomplish these things, there is no reason for you to fail in affiliate marketing.

http://www.articleland.co.uk

3 Things You Must Know Before You Submit To Article Directories

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills again. With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information based marketing. This is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to your sites and converting them into buyers. This is why article writing, submission and publication are as popular as they've ever been.

There are already many tools that people can use to make the process of distributing their articles more efficient. Although this is invaluable in getting the contents more exposure, it is only half the story.

Let us first take a look at the most common mistakes that people make before they submit their articles to article directories:

1. Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.

When writing an article, you should be trying to achieve three things; branding, lead generation and promotion. All three are part of your optimization efforts. But there is only one reason why you write an article, and that is to inform your audience of your product or point of view. If the article is not focused on these primary and important facts, they will fail to achieve the promotion benefits because no one will be interested in reading them. You need to figure out first how to get people to read what is in your article, then make them click on your resource box. You can achieve this by producing good quality content with an eye catching title, combined with a resource box that encourages the reader to click your link.

2. Failing to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.

You may know already that your articles can help you generate additional links back to your site. But do you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from that same articles? Mention keywords at strategic places. Just be sure not to overdo them. Some are even using anchor text which is also an effective method. But it is important to know that majority of the directories are not able to support this.

Remember that it is not only about generating links back to your site. If you write good quality articles, they may get picked up by ezine publishers with a large reader base. This will enable you to get your message in front of thousands of extra prospective customers. By using strategically placed keywords, your search engine results will also increase.

But these things may still not put much money in your pocket. There are other factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity that can boost your earnings, not just increase the number of visitors to your site. Start out with a plan and see to it that your article will serve the function that you intended it to have.

3. Publishing content that does not help your readers.

Maybe in the process of writing articles, you are thinking that all that is required is back links to your site. Increased traffic to your site is also a bonus, but guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your articles automatically. Very often they have guidelines and specifications on the articles that they are accepting.

You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles that the directories want to share with other people. All it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to increase your potential audience overnight. Write the articles that publishers want in their publications. This also means you have to obey the standard guidelines, use a spell checker, research your topic and maybe even hire a writer to produce a good quality article for you.

At the end of the day, it is really a matter of choice on your part. You can start getting a little exposure from increased back links back but on a very basic level. Or with a little effort generate a quality article and enjoy massive exposure.

It will be your choice. Please be aware of the fact that a sub standard article submitted to directories will not have the same level of exposure as a highly-targeted article geared towards niche group of people.

Learn the difference between these two facts and it will surely help you when you decide on your article topic to write and to submit.

Steve Sharpe
http://www.articleland.co.uk