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.
Top 10 Search Terms:
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nice post John.. there are very few bloggers nowadays who write about article marketing.. you’ve done a wonderful job here.. I was one of those who thought article marketing was dead… but now I know how it can benefit us
I’ve been reading a lot of articles on the net but it’s quiet sometime now since I came across article marketing topics. E-readers are on the rise and people these days loves reading e-books and articles so I feel there is scope for article marketing and it can become more interesting with the right techniques.
Article Marketing sites had taken a big blow in the latest Google algorithm changes. Do you think this is affect this advice?
Like Ayden, I’m curious on your take. How do you think the Google Farmer/Panda changes affect article marketing? Is it still worth it? Many of the article sites seem to have fallen out of the SERPs
Online newsletter was impressive and I was not aware that online newsletter can bring in huge traffic. Will try implementing it. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
I agree, the competition in article marketing has made it almost impossible to generate good amounts of traffic to your website. You will either have to write a bunch of articles each day or be a very good writer to draw in some good website traffic.
I have submitted my articles to blogs before and this method does produce some good results. However, I have never tried to publish my articles in online newsletters but I see the benefit.
Imagine if you could get your article in a newsletter that has thousands of subscribers. This will bring thousands of new eyeballs on your content and website. Thanks for sharing your insights John, I will definitely try out the newsletter method and see how it works for me.
Before i read this post, i only knew that article marketing is write an article relevant to a product or website, and post it to some famous article diretories like ezinearticle. This post let me know article marketing is not just easy, any may not get good result from it.
I think the first thing we should do about article marketing is find the targeted audience place to post.
This is actually good advice for people like me who worry that article marketing has taken a hard slap with the latest Google algorithm change. We don’t have to worry about Google using these techniques. If the content is good, these will bring traffic.
may be i could have a try too on newsletter, never tried this concept before…..i need traffic to my website and may be it could do that
I mostly use enzinearticles …and i think we must have to write different article for different sites and also write according to the users needs and interest…thanks a lot for shairng this informative post
Like the other commenters here, I had thought article marketing was mainly submitting your article to the directories and hoping for the best. With those huge newsletter lists with subscribers in the thousands, I never would have considered asking them if I could have a spot in front of their readers.
However, if success is also a mindset, then I will never get that kind of exposure if I don’t seek it out, right?
I’ll definitely be trying it here soon. I’ve already received invitations to write guest posts for certain blogs. How much more different is it to write an article for established newsletters?
Delena