Method #1 – Article Marketing

How many different email marketing lists do you belong to? If your mailbox is anything like mine, then you probably have subscribed yourself to quite a few during your browsing sessions online.

Whether the emails that you get are from other businesses that may be able to provide you with goods or services that you simply cannot get anywhere else for the price, for musicians who you like to keep an eye on in hopes that they will visit your city sometime soon or from bloggers who have great articles in your eyes – your email box is probably filled to the brim with notifications that you subscribed to at some point or another.

Now that you are considering moving into the realm of online marketing (more specific – online book marketing), it is high time that you learn to take advantage of the power of an email list and notification program. Potential clients and random visitors alike love notification lists, as it keeps them up to date on what you’ve got going on without them having to visit your website every moment of every day. People like things to be easy – and that is exactly what an email list is giving them – easy access to information on your website when they want it.

At this point in your career as a blossoming author/publisher, you probably do not know too much about the whole web design thing (or perhaps you do). However, even with your potential lack of experience, you have probably realized that it takes a well designed website with some killer content to draw people in and make them stick around.

While terms like article marketing and SEO may elude you, it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that you have got to have good, enjoyable, enlightening information on your website to make your guests, your readers and or your potential customers to stick around – and one of the best ways to do so is to be involved in an Article Marketing Program.

So What Exactly Is Article Marketing?

Quite simply it is just as it sounds – marketing your articles and taking advantage of articles written by other people to bring traffic to your own website. Because of the definition, there are two very different ways in which you can become a part of the article marketing phenomenon:

Submitting or Using.

Whichever method of article marketing your prefer is entirely up to you, although the former is much better way to attract traffic to your website and the latter should only be used in extreme situations.

Thanks to the wondrous power of the article marketing websites, there has never been a better time for you than now to become a better writer. Since you are probably already a writer, it shouldn’t be all that hard to do!

Writing Articles For Business Marketing

You see, in order to be able to take advantage of the amazing marketing potential of submitting to an article marketing website, you first have to be able to write your own articles.

For some of you who truly enjoy writing content all day long, this will not be a problem as you will be able to crank out great content in no time and flood the article marketing websites with lots of cool articles that everyone will want to have on their websites – easily getting your name out there so that you can start to establish a comprehensive email list of potential buying customers.

However, there is that problem that many people face who simply cannot draft an enjoyable document if their life depends on it. Perhaps you are tired of writing after completing your book, or you may have hired a ghost writer, if you are one of those types of people, the road to establishing an email list through article marketing will be long and arduous.

Eventually, you will be able to write an article that you deem worthy of submitting to an article marketing website. After some time you may even get a few hits on it and a few unique visitors to your website because of it.

But how much time are you willing to spend on something that may only net you a couple of people on your email list? Instead, why not try hiring a freelance writer (or ghost writer).

There are droves of them out there in cyberspace (check out http://www.Elance.com) who will work for relatively cheap rates and provide you with decent content (and if you don’t like what they have provided you with, you can always edit it).

Although many article marketing websites require that you write the articles yourself, if you have a ghostwriter do the dirty work for you, you can claim the article as your own and nobody will be the wiser.

Submitting To Article Directories

Once your article writing is finished, it is time to submit your work to an article marketing website. After it has been up there for awhile you will start to see people view it and you may even get a few downloads here or there. It is the downloads that you are really looking for, as it shows that someone found it interesting enough to put it on their website using your name, a link to your website/book, perhaps an email address and certainly some social media sites so that people will know who actually wrote the article in the first place. This will ultimately help a multitude of website visitors who may be interested in your content and also give them the opportunity to connect with you personally & ultimately bring your website more traffic.

Below, you’ll find a comprehensive list of some of the better article sites on the Internet. There are literally hundreds of sites, but these are the ones you should start with.

List of Article Directories:

• Article Blast: http://www.articleblast.com/index.php
• Article City: http://www.articlecity.com
• Article Finders: http://www.articlefinders.com
• Articles Factory: http://www.articlesfactory.com
• Constant Content: http://www.constant-content.com
• Go Articles: http://www.goarticles.com
• How To Advice: http://www.howtoadvice.com
• Idea Marketers: http://www.ideamarketers.com
• Simply Search 4 It: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com
• The Ezine Dot Net: http://www.theezine.net
• Valuable Content: http://www.valuablecontent.com
• Xongo: http://www.xongoo.com

Now, you can also use other peoples’ articles on your own website (but keep in mind that you are trying to direct traffic to your own site), so you’ll have to provide plenty of links to the original author’s website. However, there is a risk using this technique because you’ll be possibly driving people away from your own website before they get the opportunity to sign up to your eMail Opt-in List.

Getting people into your eMail Opt-in List through an article marketing plan can be tricky and arduous, but for the most part it is one of the more successful methods for establishing a good client base.

A lot of work must be done before you even think about posting that first article on an article marketing site, but once you are through with that all you have to do is sit back and watch as it brings in more and more potential customers to your website.

With each unique visit, there is another chance that person could sign up to your email Opt-in List. And we all know that the more people on your email list at the end of the day, the more people you’ll have the opportunity to sell your books to & ultimately maximize your chance for profits.