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You're dead in the water if you don't have traffic
coming to your web site. It's as simple as that.
It doesn't matter whether you're trying to sell a
product of your own, or whether you're promoting a
product as an affiliate -- if you don't have enough
traffic you're not going to make any sales.
While there are many ways to generate traffic, one of
the easiest ways to do so is often overlooked. (Just
a note: probably the easiest way to get traffic, PPC
(pay-per-click), can also be one of the most
expensive -- we're not going to talk about that in
this article).
Article marketing has seen a resurgence lately but
it's not a "Johnny-come lately" -- smart marketers
have been using articles as a way to drive traffic
since before there was an internet.
Yes, we may look at techniques such as using articles
to get free traffic as an "internet idea" but it's
been in play for decades. What we in the electronic
age gain is the ability to distribute our articles in
a way the "marketing forefathers" couldn't even
imagine.
In a nutshell, article marketing is when you write
(or have written) an article that includes a link
back to your web site. That article is then typically
distributed to article directories and people who are
looking for content for their web sites, ezines,
blogs, etc., are allowed to use your article.
Of course, they're not allowed to remove the link to
your web site, so if someone with a large following
publishes your article you could see a wave of new
visitors!
And one of the coolest things about article marketing
is that an article doesn't just work one time -- once
you've made it available for publication, many
different web sites and ezine can publish it -- and
that can happen over and over again, for months. A
friend of mine recently related a story where he
still gets traffic more than five years after writing
an article.
One thing to know about article marketing is that
newer articles will tend to bring more traffic to
your web site, and there's typically a short lag time
between writing an article and gaining any traffic
from it. (It can be almost immediate, but don't count
on that.)
Instead, look at article marketing as a long term
strategy. Start writing at least one article per week
on your specific niche or topic. Submit those
articles but don't wait for traffic to start coming
in before writing the next one. Instead, always have
new articles moving into the pipeline.
Once the traffic starts coming in you'll have several
more articles that will cause the traffic to swell,
and with a steady supply of new articles you can keep
the traffic coming in without worrying about it dying
out.
Probably the biggest advantage to using article
marketing (besides that fact that it gives you web
traffic at no cost!) is that the traffic that comes
to your site is ultra-targeted! The people just read
an article about your topic and the reason they're
clicking through to your site is because they want
MORE information!
If you haven't tried article marketing in your
business you're missing out on one of the easiest
(and cheapest) ways to get traffic to your web site
-- and more traffic means more signups and more sales
for your internet marketing business!
Jay Jennings is the author of Article Architect,
software that helps you write, submit, and organize
all of your article marketing efforts. To see how
Article Architect can help you drive more traffic to
your site, see the site at http://articlearchitect.com
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