If you know me you know that I love article marketing. The reason is simple. Article marketing changed my life.
And I believe it can change yours as well.
When I joined the Directory of Ezines as a member so many years ago our family was having hard times. In fact, the fee I paid to join the DOE was sacrificial.
Because I didn’t have money to buy ads I used the DOE to contact publishers and offered my articles to them.
Free content for them. Free exposure for me. A win-win.
And it worked! A little less than 18 months after joining the DOE as a member I bought the company. The rest, as they say, is history.
Except for this — Ten books and five membership sites later I still do article marketing every week and always will.
If you are not doing article marketing now, or trying to but not succeeding, let me share why I love it and how it can help you too.
There are ten reasons I love article marketing. Ten reasons why article marketing is the best marketing you can do of all the free advertising methods.
Article marketing works better than many paid methods of advertising.
First let me share two core truths about article marketing.
One – article marketing creates totally free traffic year after year after year.
I still get traffic from articles I wrote and submitted in 2007!
Two – Blogging IS article marketing. So if you have a blog now you are in the article marketing business already!
There are other forms of article marketing to be sure (and other things you can do with the articles you put on your blog) but blogging is perhaps the best form of article marketing.
More about that in another article. 🙂
Now, the top ten reasons I love article marketing.
1. Article Marketing works
If you look at the history of what work online you will see a pattern.
There are short term players who create a big splash, show you their hyped up Clickbank screenshots and then fade away.
I could name literally a dozen or more “next big things” that climbed the gravity ladder and then fell, never to be seen again.
Then there are long term players.
Men and women who share their knowledge openly for the benefit of all, knowing that people who like their message will respond and buy their products.
Three examples are Paul Myers at TalkBiz and Brian Clark at Copyblogger and Jimmy Brown at Imstitute.
All are article marketers, all have thriving businesses and strong reputations.
If you don’t know them you are missing out on highly actionable, highly valuable information available totally free. Just click their names to visit their sites.
These aren’t affiliate links you will be clicking. Oh no, this is a 100% promotion free recommendation of three people who have impacted my life and will help you too.
2. Article marketing builds credibility
When people trust you, when they believe what you say, they buy from you. They listen to you. They rely on you.
This is a gold in business. It’s called trust and it’s more valuable that almost any other asset you can earn. And notice please I said earn. There are no shortcuts here. There are no manipulation tactics that will do the trick. You simply give your best.
The reason I make sales every time I send an email to my list is because I have worked hard to give the people on my list true value before asking for anything in return. And the people on my list are good people who want to learn and grow and have a real business online.
You can join my list and read helpful articles for literally three years and never be required to buy anything at all.
That activity builds trust. And, best of all, it helps people. Because helping people is what’s it is all about ultimately. At the end of my days it won’t be the money I will be counting – it will be the people helped. Not preaching, that’s just how I see it.
If your focus is helping people more than making money the making money online part of the equation will take care of itself. I have seen that happen many times.
3. Article writing can be outsourced
Don’t want to write or like to write? No problem.
Article writing can be outsourced!
Here’s the good news and the bad news. The bad news is that you can’t expect to pay $5 per article and end up with a good product. Just not going to happen.
What you will end up with is some spun article that will get you slapped.
The good news is that there are terrific writers online who love to write, love to work from home and will write excellent articles for an affordable price.
These articles will belong to you. They will be your articles, never to be sold or used by another person. You own the copyright.
The best writer I know online is Meredith Pond. You can reach her by clicking her name. Again, no affiliate links here. She doesn’t even know I’m writing this but she is flat out the best in the business in my view.
Two more resources I use personally are Elance and VA Classroom. I have purchased excellent copywriting at both.
4. Article marketing is durable
The lifeblood of the Internet is information. Without unique high-quality information Google goes out of business.
When YOU become the supplier of that information Google rewards you with more business communications and visitors than you can imagine; and they do it year after year.
I literally get visitors every month from articles I wrote years and years ago.
My motto is simple — do the work once and profit many times!
Article marketing does that.
5. Article marketing pre-sells
Giving away content is all fine and good but you still need to sell something, right?
With article marketing you can do both.
One thing article marketing does well is pre-sell your idea. Let’s say you want to sell a product about getting six-pack abs. That seems a pretty popular product.
An article marketing approach would be to start a blog about it and write articles about how and why to do that, along with what to avoid, and you are good to go. You could do a Squidoo lens or Facebook page too but your own blog – a blog YOU own – is key.
Now people visit your six-pack ab blog and can read articles without any pressure.
When they do they will be pre-sold on the idea and very likely buy from you — the friend who helped them get their questions answered and was so helpful.
And because your blog will live online as long as you want it to (unlike an ad that runs once and is gone forever) you have created real leverage.
You’ve done the work once and profitted many times.
Well done!
6. Article marketing creates better visitors
When you write articles that help people (like this one I hope!) you can place those articles on article directories, and on other blogs, for other audiences to enjoy.
When that happens you reach more people and the people you reach get to know you for the first time.
All without spending any money!
NOTE: More about how to do that without a duplicate content penalty in another article. That topic needs an article of its own.
So why “better” visitors? Because when people read your artilce on another blog or article directory first and then visit your blog after they WANT to know more about you.
Any visitor to your blog or website who comes there because they WANT to know more is better for you than the person who just Googles and clicks.
7. So few are doing it well
Marketing online is funny. Once something is discovered that works well you can count on the hype boys selling some “shortcut” or “three click miracle” way of doing it.
That’s what happened with article marketing.
Article marketing works and the hype boys noticed. So they created spinners and robots and scrapers to “do the work for you”.
Better yet, these miracle inventions would even submit your articles for you to millions of websites!
Of course, that doesn’t work. But people bought into it and spent their time and money trying it because it sounded easy and fast.
The sad part is this – if the people who bought into the hype had spent the same time (and saved the money) and written but two articles a week all that time they would be so much farther along.
With so few doing article marketing well now is the perfect time for you to get in the game.
I will soon release my own article marketing template (free to you) to share how to do it quickly. Even if you don’t like to write.
8. Articles can be repurposed
Another thing I love about articles is that they make great content on other venues. Here are a few ideas.
- You can use short snips from your articles as tweets on Twitter.
- You can post excerpts to your Facebook page.
- You can add articles to your follow up series
- You can combine articles into a report that becomes your viral marketing piece.
- You can make a Powerpoint presentation from your articles and create video for YouTube and other sharing sites.
- You can record your videos to create a podcast.
- You can even combine articles into a book to sell on Kindle or on your own blog or site!
There are many more ideas but I think you see where I’m going.
Write the article once and profit many times. Good motto.
9. Article marketing creates quality back links
When your articles are published on other websites you get a link from that site. When those sites are of high quality Google pays attention and gives you more attention, and more visitors.
Simple really.
The thing is, we can’t fool Google no matter how hard we try. It’s a fools game. So why bother “blasting” your article to “hundreds of thousands” of blogs or sites that no human will ever visit when you can do it right?
More about this in my Article Marketing Quick Course being created now.
Just like the Driving Traffic and List Building Quick Courses, it will be free to you!
10. Article marketing builds your list
There is no better list builder out there. While it might not be the fastest way to build a list (list swaps and solo ads are faster) article marketing will bring you better subscribers.
How better? Better becuase they have already read your work and like it. Now they want to know more.
And having someone want to know more about you, and what you offer, is more powerful than words can say.
So there you have it, the 10 reasons I love article marketing so much.
Let me encourage you to get more information about article writing and article marketing.
It has worked for over 15 years, it works now and it will keep working as long as people need help and need to learn.
And that’s going to be a long long time.
It’s morning on the Interet my friend. And now is the time for you to stake your claim and build your business.
Because having an automated thriving online business is a beautiful thing indeed!
