The Little Black Book of Online Business: 1001 Insider Resources Every Business Owner Needs

Chapter 3. Article Marketing

Article marketing is a very simple concept. You write articles and post them to the various article directories. Each article contains a "resource box" at the bottom where you include your contact information.

If you're smart, you'll include more than just a web site address in your resource box—you'll give people a tantalizing reason for visiting your site (or opting in to your publication). There are a couple of effective techniques for doing this.

One idea is to make your articles part of a series (e.g., offer Part 1, Part 2, etc.). Then, at the bottom of each article, you'd have a link to "Visit example.com to read Part 2, '10 Secret Sources for Cheap Widgets,'" or something along those lines.

Another idea3 is to offer a free white paper or some such report in your resource box. You can have people visit your web site to get the report, or you can have them send a blank e-mail to an autoresponder e-mail address and send the report to them that way. (We discuss autoresponders later in this book.)

There has been some debate recently concerning the effectiveness of article marketing. If done right, I believe it can still be extremely effective. Not only do you get the direct result of people visiting your site from the article, but in cases where the article directory allows your resource box to contain a live link, you also get a better reputation from the search engines.

One drawback to article marketing is that it can be rather time-intensive. ...