This is a guest post by John who likes freelance writing and is an internet marketer. You can visit his website OnlineIncomeAchievement.com to know more about his work.
Traditional article marketing consists of writing an article and submitting it to article directories such as Ezine Articles, Article Base, Go Articles to name a few.
While this method of using articles for traffic worked swimmingly for a number of years, it doesn’t quite deliver the same results anymore. The growing competition in the field has made it less effective as a way of generating traffic to a website.
So, IS Article Marketing Dead? Not by a long shot.
Today, there are better ways to get the most out of your article marketing efforts. Instead of submitting your articles to the directories, you’ll be better served by submitting them directly to where your target market is hanging out. There are blogs, for example, that consistently get up to 400k (and more) unique visitors a month. Of course, the more popular the blog the tougher it will be to get your content selected, but you don’t necessarily have to shoot for the highest end of the spectrum to get decent exposure for your article.
There are websites and blogs for pretty much anything under the sun these days. This means that whatever niche you’re in, there will be online properties where people interested in your niche gather. Popular websites/blogs already have a loyal audience that comes in daily to consume content, and some of these sites actually invite content and would gladly publish your article as long as you submit original, quality content; all you ask in return is that they allow you to put a link to your website either somewhere in the article or in your author’s bio.
This means that, upon acceptance, your article is instantly exposed to thousands of targeted visitors every day without any extra work on your part. This will translate into a tremendous increase in traffic to your site, blog, squeeze page, etc. It’s a win-win situation. The website owner gets free, fresh content for his or her readers, you get exposure.
How Is It Done?
So, how do you find blogs that will accept to publish your article? An easy way is to run a Google blog search for a keyword in your niche and browse the results. You’ll find that some blogs, not all, will have a “Submit Article”, or something similar link that you can follow to find out about the guidelines for submitting an article for publication. Just make sure you do some research on the blog in question to determine if it gets enough traffic to make it worth your while.
Alternate Method
Another way to use your articles for massive traffic is to get them published in an online newsletter. Many businesses create their own newsletters as a way to build customer loyalty, some of these companies are always looking for content to populate the newsletter, and as such they will happily accept pre-written articles – it makes their life easier. All you have to do is contact the owner, via email or phone, and you’ll find that more often than not, you’ll get a favorable response.
A simple search on Google for “newsletters + your niche” will produce a slew of newsletters that you could approach by asking them if they’re looking for contributors. Obviously, they’re not all going to be looking for pre-written content, but some undoubtedly will – it is a numbers game. This is a very underused method, and while it does require a bit of extra work, the results can be more than worth it.
Some newsletters have subscribers in the 10’s or even 100’s of thousands. This provides a substantial exposure potential for your article; much more than you would get by submitting that same article to all of the article directories.
You can even sign up and become a subscriber to a few newsletters to get a feel for what they’re about and what they look like. This can help you decide on the ones that are best suited for your style of writing.
Final Words
An additional advantage of giving your articles to high-profile websites and newsletters is the fact that you do not need to worry about keyword research or assuring that you properly sprinkle keywords in your article for SEO purposes; you do not need Google in this instance because the high-profile website already gets its own traffic, or has a large list of subscribers in the case of the newsletter. How liberating is that?
Most article marketers think of search engines as the way to acquire traffic. There’s nothing wrong with this given that that’s where web surfers go to search for information; however, Google, or any other search engine, is not the only place to get traffic. There’s a load of traffic than can be acquired from various websites out there without the competition or having to keep up with Google’s ever changing algorithms.
Now, if submitting to article directories is producing results for you, by all means continue doing so. But, you’ll start to see a lot more traffic by taking it a step further and contributing content to popular sites and newsletters in your niche.
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Hey John,
The competition in article marketing has definitely made it tough to generate good traffic to your website through writing and submitting articles. However, I agree that article marketing is not dead thanks to the many different high traffic blogs out there.
I love the idea of guest posting on blogs where your target audience hangs out. However, I really love the idea of getting my articles published in online newsletters.
I can definitely see how getting involved with a newsletter that has thousands of subscribers can get some exposure to my articles and ultimately my site. Thanks a lot for sharing your insights John, I learned a lot.
Hmm, i’ve never thought of doing this.
Until now i have just posted to article directories, and not getting great results. So yeah, this is definately worth a try.
Thanks!
I’ve been an avid article marketer in the past, but I’m now beginning to see guest posting is the way of the future. I don’t think it’s taken over completely from article marketing though – rather I think they supplement each other.
Nice post! Ezines are relics of the past. From my experience in VeryBestSoftware, guest posting is by far the better way not only to get exposure for your blog/products but also to advance your ranking in google results for the keywords you use as anchor text in your post. It guest posts maintain their value and use through time since they get visitors even after months and years whereas newsletters get old and useless after a day. Of course they have their advantages too.
Top post I certainly make a habit of using my own articles to form email newsletters, its a great way of popularising your most popular posts even further and attracting further readers.
Guest posting does offer huge value but article marketing if done right can still produce excellent returns. Many IMers are earning 4 and 5 figure incomes by using article marketing as a promotional tool only.
If you write well there is every chance of your article being syndicated on various other sites, and this gives you even more exposure and not to mention free backlinks.
Hi John,
Thanks for another great article with lots of valuable information.
Publishing articles in other blogs of your niche is a good and proved way to get targeted traffic to your blog or website.
But submitting articles to directories has one more advantage to offer than newsletters… you can monetize your articles… And if you own a blog yourself, you get a quality backlink from an authority site..
you are right that we might not get that much traffic as we use to get before when the compition was low but the thing is that we can get better serp if we are posting good content along with keywords using as an anchor text
There are still benefits to submitting articles, although not as huge as they once were. It is mainly useful as a link-building tool now, if you use strategies such as link-wheels and post to multiple directories. Articles are also able to be posted to hundreds of directories if you want, whereas blogs only accept original guest posts. That said, guest posting offers its own benefits, like relevant exposure to help build your online credibility.