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Writing articles is one of the most powerful and effective ways to bring free traffic to your site.

The cost for this method of advertising is mostly time. The good news is it is very wisely invested time. Once you have written an article and distributed it it will continue to bring traffic to your site for a very long time.


The basic idea

Well the idea is simply this, you write a useful, informative or entertaining article on something you know about. If you sell jewelry then your article may be about making hand made jewelry. If you sell cars it may be an article on car maintenance.

What do you do with it once you have written it?
You give it away free of charge. Now this may seem completely nuts but it works. Yes you will spend several hours writing your article but here is why you give it away free.
There are many many sites in all genres that operate newsletters or article databases. They are ALWAYS on the look out for new articles to publish for their visitors or readers.

The deal is basically this, you let them publish and use your article free of charge as long as they leave your resource box at the end of the article.

Here is an example of a resource box.

This is where the power of giving away your articles comes in. First for the sites that publish articles you give them free content and they give you a permanent one way link to your website.

In the case of the sites that use articles in their newsletters a link to your site can get emailed to thousands of readers.

Publish your articles in the right places and they can be picked up by any site or newletter at any time.

In addition you have to remember that if someone gets your article by email and likes it they may well forward it to friends.

Permanent links and free traffic. This is a VERY powerful form of traffic creation for your site.

However there are some things you need to know. Some pointers for writing articles.

Write Them Well
Of course it is no big secret that articles bring traffic and many people have written many articles. The problem is most of them rush off any old rubbish and assume people will use it. Well they wont.

Your article needs to be informative, helpful or entertaining and it needs to be well written. When I write articles, I write them once, then i revamp them, then I do them again. Refining and twaking as I go. Take your time remember the better the article is the more it will get used so give it some attention.

DO NOT PLUG YOUR SITE
This may sounds silly but it is a golden rule. An article is not and should not be an ad for your site. It should be designed to help, educate or entertain and nothing more.

Let's use the jewelry example. Imagine I have a site that sells jewelry. If I write an article full of links to my own site plugging my own services or goods, not only will it NOT get published my most article sites, but the few people who do read it will see it as an ad and dismiss it as junk.

So I write an article discussing the best materials for making earrings with, or a "how to make a necklace using leather instead of metals"

An informative article on a subject that I know about, but NOT a direct plug for my site. The ONLY time your site should be mentioned is in the resource box at the end of your article.

the idea of articles is that you show your expertise in your field and share information and tips freely. If the reader likes the article and finds it useful I guarantee they will visit your site.

Write about what you know

Many people say to me "But what should I write about?" Write about something you know If you own a dating site, write an article on what makes a good dating profile. Make the subject relevant to your site but stick with what you know.

Give The Title Some Zing
One of the most important parts of your article is the headline. In the same way a newspaper headline attracts attention to the story your article headline can make a big difference to how heavily it gets read.

For example I recently wrote an article about exchanging links for visitors rather than for search engine rankings. I could have called the article

"exchange links for people not search engines"

or

"how to exchange better links"

But that's hardly very different now is it????

I called my article "Stinking Linking Thinking" Most peoples first reaction to that is "What? What is stinking linking thinking?"

Did it work as a title??? You bet it did, go now and search Google for "Stinking Linking Thinking" you will get 119,000 results many of which are links to my article which is posted on sites all over the web.

Everywhere that article appears there is a direct link to one of my sites. That article took me about 3 hours to write and re-write. About another hour or so to distribute and it continues to bring me traffic as we speak.

Like I said you do the work once and it stays done.

If you are not sure where to start search Google for "advice on writing articles" you will find a lot of good advice out there.

Once It's Done Distribute It

Obviously once you have written your killer article you need to spread it around the net. You can do this in one of two ways.

1. The way I used to do it. Search Google for terms like "Article submission" or "Submit your article" you will find thousands of sites to submit to. This can be a little time consuming but remember it is work that stays done.
2. Use article submitting software. A WORD OF WARNING HERE!!!!! There are programs out there that advertise "One click and your article is submitted to 500 article sites. AVOID THOSE PROGRAMS. Why because the article sites don't like them they get spammed to death with all sorts of rubbish using programs like that, the chances are the article sites will block you from submitting.

I have actually had some software written that will safely submit your articles to the bigger article sites. You type or copy your article into the program, fill out your resource box details then using the program move easily from site to site with a click. The program takes you to their submission form and fills out the boxes for you then you submit.

As far as the sites are concerned you submitted by hand. This little program keeps a log of all the sites which you can add to if you find other sites. It is nice and organized and saves you going backwards and forwards from Google.

For more details on that see this page.

In short give it a go, this is a traffic method that can literally bring you thousands of visitors for very little financial cost

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