Writing articles and submitting them to article directories is one of the oldest ways to create quality links to your website. The concept is simple: You write good content concerning the topics that fit your products and are allowed to include a resource box at the end with a link to your website. You submit your article to article directories and other webmasters will take that article and publish it on their website. Article Marketing is the most effective method of advertising I use for a few specific reasons:

• It costs absolutely nothing.
• Establishes your professionalism, expertise, and knowledge in your industry.
• Some of the best links you can get are from the top article directories.

Writing articles should be easy for you. You know your products better than anybody outside of the manufacturer or creator (unless that is you). What you need to do is think of what the consumer needs to know about your products. You should easily be able to come up with 10 or more ideas about articles you could write. Here are sources for when your ideas run out:

• Forums in your niche – pay attention to the questions being asked. Odds are that others are wondering about that same question.
• There are hundreds of article websites online, but www.ezinearticles.com is the most prestigious. This is important, because you can get ideas for articles by reading ones that are already there. Don’t plagiarize, but get ideas from articles that have been written.
• Your competition’s websites! Check the content on your competition’s site. If they have great content, recreate it in your own words and distribute it.
• Blogs! Use your main keywords and the term “blog” and take a look at what people are talking about in your area of expertise. Check the comments on posts and the ones with the most comments are the common questions that need to be answered. Thinking outside of the box is what will separate you from the others competing with you. Here are a few things I do that most of my competitors don’t:
• E-zines – Look for popular e-zines and check their index page for a “submit article” link. You could have your article distributed to thousands for free. Normally they will also publish your article on their website, providing you with a powerful link.
• Forums – Most forums include an area for articles. This is another great way to get your possible customers to find your information and realize that you are a genius and they need to spend money at your website.

Distributing your articles is a necessity to gain the best exposure. My favorite 4 article sites are:

• www.ezinearticles.com
• www.goarticles.com
• www.articlecity.com
• www.articledashboard.com

Your articles must be written to pull in the reader if you want the most traffic from your efforts. You can write a series of articles and only include the last one on your site. Link to the last article in your resource box. There are hundreds of ways to motivate a reader to visit your site. Be creative and you’ll have more visitors.

I have a secret recommendation regarding these sites to truly set apart your results. Test different resource boxes! To do this you must submit the same article to all 4 sites with varied resource boxes. Track which resource box gets clicked on most. Once you have those results, use the one that gets the most clicks for full distribution.

Secret Tip #2 – If you hate writing articles, I’ve found a software that does 90% of the work for you. While it isn’t free, it helps with becoming an expert in a niche you know nothing about. Check out Instant Article Wizard and you’ll thank me for it when you do.

Writing articles and submitting them is old school. Don’t get me wrong, it still works extremely well. What can we do with an article now that couldn’t be done before?

Turn your article into a video! Take your article and break it down into bullet points. You can do this by taking the most important points and making them as simple as possible. Grab some images from whatever stock image service you like to use. Go into any graphics program and make all of the images the same size. Next, type your bullet points right on the images. Find some decent background music or use a microphone to narrate your video yourself. You now have a video article that you can distribute to all of the video services. Be sure to include a watermark with your website address!

An article that is well written can be turned into any number of different things. The first question to ask yourself is what you want your article to achieve for you. Do you want it up for some extra links for SEO purposes? Are you looking to get more traffic? Would it be OK if it went viral?

Once you figure out what you need your article to accomplish, think about what else you could do with the ideas presented in your article. Here are some options for you:

• Could you turn it into a viral style Ebook to promote your products?
• Is the content good enough to become a blog post (the answer to this should almost always be yes)?
• Would this work well as a spoken podcast?

Do you have a bunch of articles on one topic? If not, you will soon. When you do, think about what it would take for you to combine those articles and create a book.

Your book can be one that is found in bookstores or something digital. It depends on what your content says to you when you put it together. Keep an open mind and be prepared to put in a little effort. Apply your ideas and watch your content spread across the web.

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