Article Marketing has become a powerful online marketing tool of late. So what is it that makes article marketing so effective in the affiliate marketing community and why does it continues to bring in profitable results for some successful article marketers?
To get an answer to this important question we have to understand the concept of articles and why and how they work to drive traffic, leads, and sales to your online business.
If managed properly following the basic steps, article marketing can run like a perfect set-up-and-go machine.
So what is article marketing?
Article marketing is not a business by itself, but it is the art and science of using articles which you either hire out or write yourself with the main purpose of driving traffic and getting prospects to your online business. The articles are submitted to various article marketing directories, many of which are free, to display and promote your article online.
You may wonder what benefit the Article Directories derive by promoting your articles. The main purpose as to why the article directories offer their services for free is because they earn substantial profits from the placement of contextual advertisements around the content of the articles you submit. The more articles they promote on their directory, the more traffic, and therefore more money they make. If you observe any Article Directory you will find Google Adsense Ads on the top, side or bottom of the articles.
Even before the internet evolved over the last few years article marketing was prevalent offline in the print media. You could get your article placed for free in the offline media too, outlining the benefits of a product or service you promoted. Obviously the newspaper (or magazine) saved on the costs of hiring authors or writers to write for their publication. So again it was a win-win situation for both parties involved.
The major difference between online and offline article marketing is that the barrier of quality for entry has been lowered to the point where both the bad and good article marketers are on the same level playing field.
Bad articles were bound to be rejected in the printed publication. The scenario is different with online directories. The number of article directories being so huge, they are actually starving for content and therefore, no matter how low quality the content is, still it will be accepted by some article directories. This is the main reason for loss of credibility for online articles.
Of late article marketing which is mostly free, is efficiently used as a tool to promote products or services. Many online marketers with low budgets embrace this route to get the results they aspire.
To make article marketing profitable and effective you must keep in mind that keywords are your most important article marketing tool. Without proper keywords research your article marketing can be like shooting in the air without a target! Proper keywords research will make it easy for your target audience to find you.
So place yourself in the shoes of your targeted audience or prospects and give a serious thought to what keywords they are likely to type in the search box looking for specific information and write your articles accordingly to provide the relevant high quality information or solution to a problem. If you manage to get this right, you would not have to struggle to drive traffic and get prospects to your online business.