ARTICLE MARKETINGIntroductionArticle Marketing is one of the most common ways used by marketers old-timers and new. The process is as follows: 1. You write articles that drive traffic to your website. 2. You give a free product or promise information to those visitors to your site who leave their names and email addresses. 3. You show yourself to be a trusted expert to your mailing list subscribers, offering more and more useful information. 4. You sell to your list members. Getting Traffic to Your ArticlesYou must first get traffic to your articles or you will get little traffic to your site. Here are some ways to do that:1. Research keyword phrases that can be used in the title of your article and in the body of the article. 2. Test the number of competitive sites that are listed in Google when you place in quotation marks your keyword phrase. E.G. Your keyword phrase is "Grape Growing Secrets." Place "Grape Growing Secrets" and when you put that in the Google Search Bar you find there are 29,000 sites. That is too many competitive sites so you find another keyword phrase that has less than 5000 sites or so. For USFreeAds.com, you want less than 1000 competitive sites say some marketers. You should make sure your keyword phrases is being used about 1000 times each month or so. (See Keyword Research on right tool bar.)4. Place relevant content in your site. You need to use content related to your keywords which you place in your webpage title, description, and keyword Meta file. Then when a reader clicks on your link, he will find more information in addition to that found in your article. Here is another summary that may be helpful:1. A website is prepared having relavant information on the keywords in the title and description. 2. Articles are written using the site keywords. 3. The article has a link to the website. 4. Visitors to your site leave their names and email addresses and become your customers. Using Social Marketing to Drive Traffic to Your ArticlesDon't overlook social marketing. You can Twitter your followers when you create a new article. Tweet the link to the article. Also use FaceBook and the other social sites. (See Social on right panel.)Article SitesEzineArticles.comThe premier site for article marketers is ezinearticles.com. Before you write an article for EZA, READ the Author Guidelines. That will save you a lot of time and frustration. EZA article get top ranking with the search engines. EZA has the same goal as the search engines and that is TO PROVIDE RELEVANT CONTENT TO THE READERS. Here are a few helps:1. Your article has two parts called Above the Fold and Below the Fold (or Source Box). Above the fold, some links are allowed but no affiiate inks are allowed above or below the fold. Above the fold belongs to the reader and you must provide useful information to the reader relevant to the title of the article. 2. Below the Fold belongs to you the writer. You can write a blatant add or just say For More Information on Keyword, go to MYSITE. MYSITE must not be an affiliate link. It must be your webpage. There you can place your affiliate links, preferibly offering more relevant information. You are allowed two links below the fold. Most writers use only one link to help funnel the readers to that site. You can have a number of Source Boxes used for different articles. 3. EZA may hold your article until you make corrections. If you have a question, use their support service. They will help you get things going. If you carefully follow the guidelines, you will have few request for modification. If your article violates a guideline, you will be told which guideline it does not follow. 4. Being a coward, I never put followable inks above the fold. I may refer to a site but I do not enter the URL of the site. I may say Google and not http://google.com. Go to http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=John_T_Jones,_Ph.D. to see my articles at EZA. Squidoo.comSquidoo calls their article a "lens." A lens is just a many part web page created by a writer. Squidoo had few restrictions in the past. You could use affilate links and write on about any subject. They have many options and they will pay you some money too for sells to Amazon or other services they sponsor. In fact, you will get the same commission from Squidoo for Amazon sales as you do for direct sales to Amazon. The reason is that Amazon pays Squidoo double commissions and you get half. If you are writing a lens on How to Make Money, it may be rejected. For that reason, I no longer use Squidoo bocause they have become very difficult to work with. That is for we who have written a lot of lens that no longer fit guidelines we can't update the articles. At least I wasn't able to do it (being old and senile). I wasn't even able to bring them up to the new guidelines. When I did, they still would not let me publish. There is no technical help at Squidoo where you can get a quick answer in my experience. Members service the site. Here is my suggestion for Squidoo writers: Don't write in the areas that they have restricted such as Making-Money, Marketing Online, etc. Use it for everything else as it is a very powerful site favored by the search engines. Like all article sites, they are subject to the whims of the search engines. That is why they change their guidelines. It's a fact of life.But if you are not in the overworked money-making markets, you will be fine. Actually, I removed all of my lenses from Squidoo because you must continually modify your lenses to keep Squidoo happy. However, I recommemd the site to new writers. You will have a lot of leeway and great tools. Other Article SitesThere are many article sites:AffiliatedContent:Two options to make money here. They pay for some articles!howtodothings.com:1,2,3 how how to do articles.articlesbase.com:I have not written for this site.goarticles.com:Good for new writers.helium.com:A suffisticated site in a way. I have written for them on occasion and plan to do more there. They keep asking me to come back.HubPages.com:I like this site. It has few restrictions and is great for affiliate marketers.USFreeads.com:I use this often. I pay as a user and do not use the free function. It is 9.95 a month but worth it. All my maketing friends use this option.Gaining Popularity as a WriterArticle writers gain a tremendous popularity on the Internet.Google "John T Jones, Ph.D." How many sites showed up? Try "Taylor Jones, the Hack Writer" (also me). How many sites this time? The point is that you can become very popopular with Google and the other search engines. Learning Article Writing SitesIf you google "learn article marketing" you will find millions of entries. You will find programs that help you write, articles on article marketing, tons of stuff.ConclusionThe reason that affiliate marketers use article marketing is that it is free. You become an expert and many will follow you if your site is set up to allow this. But article marketing is used by most all marketers. It does not have the risk of PPC and can be very effective. AND you will have millions of readers and thousands of URL clicks over time.Final Note: I just learned about an ebook called Article Dominance. I read it and wish I could have read it years ago. Like I've said before, the ones that make money in this business are the young eager beavers. I learned about the book from my 26-year-old French friend, Louise, at Wealthy Affiliate University. Mark Thompson wrote the book, has been in the business for only 5 years, and knows how to get URL clicks from articles. IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE, GET ARTICLE DOMINANCE NOW! CLICK HERE! (Because of the use of scripts by EZA your browser could block the listing. Just choose OPTIONS and then ALLOW.)
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