Why Article Marketing Just Won’t Go Away

How you can benefit from this established marketing practice.

Article marketing isn’t about to go away. You probably knew that, but what you might not know is why this form of “getting the word out” still works.

Marketing Expertise

I consider myself an expert of sorts in article marketing. Beginning in 2005, I was hired by a client to write articles for his business and post those articles to various marketing directories, but especially to EzineArticles. “Ezine” is owned by Christopher Knight and if there is any one person who knows article marketing better than Knight, then I haven’t met him. Come to think of it I haven’t met Knight either. Moving on….

Seven years later, I have scads of articles posted to directories. At one point I was No. 10 on EzineArticles’ list, but eventually I shifted my sites to magazines, blogs and websites. Yes, I was paid to write for the directories and to post those articles. Maybe I should change my tense here because I still market articles on a regular basis. These days I write about a dozen articles each month for EzineArticles and other sites for my clients.

I thought article marketing would eventually fade away, but at this point in the game, I still see benefit from having original and interesting articles posted to other sites and picked up, with backlinks intact and posted elsewhere.

Article Marketing

Here is why article marketing will continue to thrive over the next few years:

1. It is free content — Even if an article is eventually posted to multiple sites, the people who are doing the posting are getting free content. Sure, you NEVER want to rely exclusively on content used available for use elsewhere, but with article directories you can find some good reads to include on your site. In exchange, you’re expected to keep the links in the “author’s resource” section in place.

2. Authors can build a name for themselves — If everyone knows who you are, then article marketing won’t matter to you. For people who want to make a name for themselves or desire to expand their base, then writing several quality articles and offering these to the directories makes sense. The alternative is to find a website to host these articles, but that doesn’t always work out. Besides, if you want multiple backlinks, then article marketing is the fastest way to gain these.

3. You don’t have to be a writer — Writing for the article directories is one way people who aren’t especially good at writing can hone their skills. Of course, that means some of the articles submitted to and accepted by the directories aren’t first-rate. Still, if you are looking for an audience and can’t afford the services of a copywriter, then the article submission route is a very good way to go.

4. Your article stays in place always — This is where you need to be careful about submitting your articles. Use a directory that isn’t proven or regularly updated and you’ll risk that your article will someday disappear. Personally, I don’t count who picks up my articles and where they get republished — I’m satisfied that the article directory has a copy and that copy will continue to send links back to my sites or my customers’ sites for years to come. Choose only an established directory and avoid those with little to no standards.

5. You’ll get new business — As a writer, I know my articles have brought in new business for me. As for my clients, they’re satisfied on two fronts: 1) backlinks are gradually built up and, 2) more customers find their websites. What they pay for my services is a cost they’ll need to recoup. I’m confident that my services are a moneymaker for them, otherwise why am I still doing article marketing?

Final Thoughts

One bit of advice that should be used is this: when you market your articles, submit what you write to just one directory. Multiple submits are a waste of time — find a directory or two or three that you like and send your articles there. Keep track of your articles including how many times each article is picked up and redistributed. Work on writing catchy titles, use your keywords wisely and put in place your sub-heads too.

The New Age of Article Marketing

By Neil Jones

Article marketing has always been one of those tried and tested marketing mediums that has stood the test of time. With the constant changes that are evident in the online world and the new and sexy marketing methods being introduced daily, article marketing is still firmly rooted as a stalwart for website promotion.

But as competition in the online marketing industry has grown the ability to generate large amounts of traffic from articles submitted to directories has significantly dissipated. It wouldn’t be uncommon for one article to receive fewer than 10 views each month, revealing that article marketing might be losing its effectiveness. But guess what? At this very point in time there are marketers who are generating five figure monthly incomes from article marketing alone. Article marketing is still alive and kicking!

However, these marketers are utilizing an innovative technique to drive traffic to their sites through the use of article directories, a technique that defers from the traditional article marketing methodology. In this post I will reveal to you what this technique is and why it so effective.

What is the new age of article marketing?

Traditionally, article marketing was used to drive traffic to an internet marketer’s site from articles submitted to directories like Ezine Articles. In today’s environment this isn’t effective as the traffic generated is less than acceptable. For a marketer to succeed with this method he/she will have to submit 5-10 articles a day to receive a respectable amount of traffic from the directories.

The new age of article marketing goes against this trend and relies on article syndication. Article syndication is when an article you’ve written is picked up by other webmasters and published on their sites with proper attribution (links to your site to credit you). What these 5-figure article marketers are doing is basically writing an informative, engaging, and compelling article and submitting it to the top article directories. These articles are then used as web content, or newsletters by webmasters who feel the content will add value to their visitors or subscribers.

The power of this strategy is that one well written article can be syndicated to hundreds of traffic intensive websites. And this will result in traffic being generated from unlikely sources. Beside the traffic there will also be a number of strong backlinks that are built as well. An article written for syndication will have to follow certain criteria:

The article should:

• be engaging, value-adding, and informational
• not be hyped or “salesy”
• not be written to generate a click as a sales letter will

Article syndication does have its disadvantages as well and very often an excellently written article will go unnoticed, but don’t let this deter you as perseverance is the key to success using this model.

When your articles are re-published on other sites you will have the opportunity to form a relationship with the webmaster who published the article and this will lead to a greater amount of opportunities. You will find that the webmaster in question will begin re-publishing your articles more often when you have established a relationship with him/her.

And don’t forget: the traffic that you acquire from your republished articles will be passive in nature. This will result in a never-ending flow of traffic to your site, which will equate to multiple streams of passive income.

Author Information

Neil Jones specializes in launching ecommerce sites and is currently plying his trade as head of marketing for eMobileScan. With 18 websites based all around Europe this company is on course to become one of Europe’s largest online retailers of Industrial handheld computers like the Motorola MC75 and Zebra ZM400. Neil has been an online marketer for the past six years, and has owned and run a range of ecommerce sites.