At one time article marketing was limited to Internet marketers writing articles for the sole purpose of promoting their websites. If a marketer had a website about dog products that marketer would write articles about dogs and various things about dogs, and submit them to the “pets” category of article directories. If the marketer wanted to promote a site about making money online, he or she would write articles about making money online and submit it to the appropriate category in article directories. If the marketer had a website about “widgets” he would write articles about “widgets” and submit them to the directories. Writing articles for these types of article directories is writing done almost solely for the sake of publicity. People will know that you write about a certain subject because you have knowledge about that subject and may even seek out your expertise on the subject that you write about.

There is a new trend to article marketing today. It still takes into account getting traffic to a website but also more it is for the purpose of the article writer getting paid. In some cases the articles that a writer develops for these sites are not necessarily related to the niche of the writer’s websites. It is important when submitting to the directories that you establish a sense of credibility. The more credible that your article seems the more articles may get accepted.

The purpose of writing for article directories that pay you is first to make money by selling one’s writing. You do not necessarily have to be them most proficient in your writing capabilities in order to write for these type of article directories. Traffic to your website is secondary to how much traffic your content will bring to this article or media directory.

Of course, if your articles are well written, and provide valuable content, then your readers will scour the directory, and the Internet to search out more of your articles, and more information about you.

Both types of article directories have their place in the world of media. The ones that primarily serve as conduits to marketers wanting to get traffic to their websites will remain for some time to come and will remain a valuable asset to both the contributing writers and the people who visit these sites looking for content to reprint in their ezines and websites.

The more recent get paid for article directories just put a new face on article marketing. With the growing need for more specialized content these new sources will continue to need writers for some time to come. I would encourage you as a potential article marketer to work with both kinds of directories.

Keith P Stieneke is an Internet affiliate and network marketer who loves to write about several niche topics. He operates several websites. You can also see what he has to say about sites which pay you for content at http://www.opportunityassistance.com/paidtowriteonline

articles,article marketing,article writing,writing

Technorati Tags: articles, article marketing, article writing, writing

Article Database Official Newsletter Issue 7 March 11 2007

Welcome to another issue of the Article Database News Blog Newsletter

It has indeed been quite a period since I have published a newsletter for this site. Many things in my personal life needed attending to and with manually approving every article in Article Database it has indeed been a challenge. I will continue to set manual approval of articles for two reasons:

1. There are many of you who have not paid attention to the fact that URLS do not use html coding in order to show up. In fact if you use html in your articles it will not show up. Since I want you to have a clickable link in your article I have to remove all the html coding manually when you use such coding. This takes time and may in the future result in me deleting your articles rather than approving them.

2. There are some people who think that an ad is article. To these people I say “Please unsubscribe from Article Database” as I am looking for informative articles, not some of these ads which start out “Get Rich Schemes Revealed.”
—————————————————-
With that being said I am pleased to say that for this issue I am pulling an article from Article Database to use as the article for this issues newsletter. Without further adieu here it is:

Article Marketing Surefire Tips
By: Davion Wong

Article marketing is reputedly one of the easiest and fastest way to drive traffic to your website be it a hobbyist or business website. It does not require you to mess with search engine algorithm or html, php or any other webpage design language. In essence, as long as you can write, you can pen an article and start seeing instant traffic. And the best parts are the traffic is targeted and absolutely free! Article marketing has other indirect benefits such as letting you establish yourself as an authoritative figure in your field and in search engine terms, improve your website link popularity and search engine ranking. Now is it starting to make sense to you to use article marketing in your website promotion strategy?

Article marketing has three parts to it. First part is keyword and content research. Second part is of course writing the content, and lastly article submission. Now among the three, I would prefer to write, but some people simply hate writing. But we know without a doubt that everyone hates the process of submitting articles. Fret not. We will learn some tips and tricks about article marketing and how to work around the article submission part.

Article Marketing Tip 1 – Keyword and Content Research

Go to forums and read the posts there. You are sure to find out about the market needs and what are the people’s demands and problems. Next find a solution in the form of a product to meet that need or problem. If you already have a product, simply write from an angle of meeting that need. Article directories are also great places to do your market research. By browsing through the categories and looking at the articles written, you can grasp a brief idea of the current market demands.

Keyword research is very important. It makes your article look targeted to your audience and also improves your chance of getting the article indexed and ranked high in the search engines. This is what we call using indirect organic traffic or borrowed traffic.

Article Marketing Tip 2 – Writing Articles

As mentioned earlier, forums and article directories are the best places to find content. Other places include the search engines and offline resources like your local library or magazines. Magazines have done their own research so it is likely that their content is relevant to readers. Tap onto this opportunity.

If you hate to write or feel that your command of English is not strong enough, you can always pay a ghostwriter to write you an article. But don’t get too lazy. You still need to give the guy your target keywords. You can find good writers at affordable rates at Scriptlance and Elance. The good thing about this is you get unique content.

Article Marketing Tip 3 – Submitting Articles

The power of article marketing is enhanced many fold by mass submission to numerous article directories, probably in the tune of hundreds.

You have basically three options to do so. One is to do it manually which would take tons of time and brainless monotony. But it is free. The second option is to pay an article submission service such as iSnare or The Phantom Writers to do that for you. But be mindful that it can add up quite a bit and strain your budget. The last option is still the most preferred – using article submission software.

Nowadays, article submission software are affordable to almost everyone. In the long run, it is most cost effective to use an article submission software to expedite the submission of articles. Read more about article submission software at my blog and find out which are the most popular software in the market today.

This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author’s name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

Davion is a successful webmaster and author. Discover more about article marketing and read reviews of top http://Article-Submission-Software.blogspot.com article submission software such as Article Post Robot, Instant Article Submitter etc and find out how these tools can drive instant and continuous traffic to your website at http://Article-Submission-Software.blogspot.com
—————————————————-
In other news I have created a lens over at Squidoo.com called Article Marketing Revisited. You can visit it to discover many ideas about article marketing. The address is http://www.squidoo.com/articlemarketingrevisited
—————————————————-

Technorati Tags: article+database, Squidoo, article marketing, article writing, davion+wong, writing

I will be updating this blog more frequently now that my schedule allows me to do so. A brand new newsletter should be coming by the beginning of next week. Thank you for your patience during these times.

Article Database Official Newsletter Issue 6 September 28 2006

It’s finally time for another issue of our newsletter. I realized looking at a bounce list that much of the email being sent out to each of you is getting returned as sp@m. For that reason I am asking that you add articleadmin@article-database.com to your whitelist. If you don’t do this important updates won’t reach you when they should.

As always I remind you when you post your articles to Article Database to include your full name as well as a resource at the end of the article

This month’s guest article will focus on the ongoing debate as to whether short articles or long articles are better for the article marketer.

The article is as follows:

Articles Views, Article Pick-ups or Targeted Traffic; Importance to the Article Marketer?
By Lance Winslow

There have been many studies about online article marketing using statistics of traffic and article views. Some ask which is better a long article of 500 to 750 words or a short article of 250-350 words? Well statistics show that the number of article views is fairly similar and therefore it is easier to write smaller articles and do just as well.

But over time the longer articles pull a little better. Yet if you write 2 or 3 short articles for every longer article you will win and have more article marketing success. This is all interesting as well as documented. However, I am interested in the article pick-ups ratios, because if each article picked up gets 300 article views somewhere else on average over a year or more then, what size articles are being syndicated more?

That is a question I need to know because right now at; 52,775 article pickups, I would like to figure out how to get that to lets say 100,000 by mid-2007. And at the current 2,624,709 article views, it would be nice to see if that can get to 4,000,000 article views by mid-2007. I think both goals are possible based on the current growth rates.

Article Marketers need to think in terms of statistics and real data and that is why I am interested in any data on # of article pick-ups per size of article and so should you if you are involved in article marketing. So, consider this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

That’s all for now. Keep your articles coming.

Article Database Article Directory Official Newsletter Issue 5 September 4 2006

Happy Labor Day… Hopefully you are enjoying the respite between the Summer and the unofficial part of Autumn.

It’s been quite a while since I sent a newsletter and posted to the Article Database News Blog. If you check out the blog at www.article-database.com/news where this newsletter is posted in full on our website you will notice that we changed our blog theme. The theme that we used did not appear correctly on some computer monitors and I thought that bringing the blog up to date with a new theme would be a major improvement. There is also a new plugin which makes it easy for you to add us to such tagging, social bookmarking sites as furl, myyahoo and such.

I have important news for some of you who post articles to Article Database. If your article does not have a resource box with information about you the author of the article, then the article will not be used. In addition there are many articles that may be deleted for this very reason. Always remember to include a resource box with your article.

I have also noticed a new trend where some of you as article writers don’t include your full name in the author box. Please include it as it helps the search engines in finding articles that you have written. I may also stop accepting articles that don’t have this information.

Currently there are over 500 articles in the Article Database directory.

Now here’s an article about resource boxes from none other than master article marketing expert Christopher Knight:

Article Marketing 101: The Perfect Author Resource Box

If you want to really make your article “SELL” then you’ve got to craft the perfect RESOURCE BOX. This is the “author bio” that is below your article body and it’s also known as your “SIG” (short for SIGnature).

Here are the essential items that should be in your RESOURCE BOX:

* Your Name: You’d be amazed at how many folks forget to include their name in the RESOURCE BOX. Your name and optional title should be the first thing in your resource box.

* Your Website Address: in valid URL form. Example: Your-Company-Name.com/

* Your Elevator Pitch: This is 1 to 3 sentences that encapsulates the essence of what makes you and your offering unique. Also known as your USP (Unique Selling Proposition).

* Your Call To Action: You’ve got them warmed up and now it’s time to lead them to BUY from you or visit your website. This is where you “Ask For The Sale.” Best to only give (1) specific call to action.

Here are some optional items you could include in your RESOURCE BOX:

* Your Ezine Subscription Address: While getting your interested visitor to surf your website is nice, capturing their email address can help you begin the confidence/trust process. If you’re going to do this strategy, include a URL for your ezine subscription address and do not use an email address for the “join” address.

* Your Contact Information: Such as your business phone number or how to reach you for interviews or your press/media kit. Keep in mind that article marketing is a timeless strategy and you may not have an easy ability to retract what you put in your article once it hits major distribution.

* A Free Report: This could also be part of your call to action or your free bonus report that further enhances your credibility as the expert on the topic of your article.

* Your email autoresponder: I’m not a big fan of this strategy due to the fact that spammers will text-extract your autoresponder address and add it to their spam list. Perhaps this strategy was best for the 1990’s and has now run its course.

* An anchor URL that is related to one keyword or keyword phrase that you want to build SEO strength for. Example: if I wanted to build search engine relevance/strength for the term “Article Marketing,” I’d link up that term in my resource box to my website. This is an intermediate to advanced level strategy and should not be abused by over-doing it. Keep it simple.

What NOT to include in your RESOURCE BOX:

* A listing of every website you own. There is no faster way to dilute your credibility than by posting a half dozen irrelevant URLs that have nothing to do with each other. Best to only post ONE URL that is related to the topic of your article.

* A listing of every accomplishment you’ve achieved to date. No one cares. Keep your resource box brief and to the point. Yes, your resource box should be benefit oriented so that the reader finds value in reading it rather than your ego being justified.

* Advertisements or pitches for products that are not relevant to the topic of your article.

* Keep the size of your resource box so that it’s no larger than 20% of your total article size. Too often I see resource boxes that are 50% of the size of the total article and this is abusive.

Your Perfect Resource Box Conclusion:

The BODY of your article is where you “GIVE” and the RESOURCE BOX is where you get to “TAKE” for your article marketing gift of information. The resource box is the “currency of payment” you receive for giving away your article. Be sure to include your name, website address, your unique selling proposition as briefly as possible and a simple call to action.

About The Author:

Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic EzineArticles.com directory. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links in tact giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a membership account today: Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.