Don’t exactly know what it is about starting a new year of marketing online, but I always stop and take a hard look at all my marketing tactics and methods. Article marketing is always at the top of my list, mainly because it is and has always been the cornerstone of everything I do on the web.

By cornerstone I mean it is the key to basically all of my online earnings. Without article marketing I wouldn’t be a full-time online marketer – it’s as simple as that. No articles, no income.

Articles bring in the targeted traffíc. Articles build those all important one-way backlinks. Articles build those even more important top rankings in Google for your chosen keywords. Articles build your online reputation and credibility in the eyes of your visitors.

I was struggling on the web for around three years before I wrote my first article. “10 Reasons To Put RSS On Your Site” which is still on around 8,000 sites around the web.

Writing was always a passion of mine, but it was more on the creative side, although I did work briefly as a reporter for a very small community newspaper. Looking back on it, I believe (perhaps falsely) that I had to gain all those years of experience before I could start writing articles about it.

Which was the totally wrong attitude to take since anyone can research a favorite subject or topic and write a short informative article on it. Most of us have been doing that since grade school – it is the same as writing a report or an essay.

Only with article writing you actually see monetary returns almost immediately. Surfers search for an answer in the search engines, your article pops up, they read it and then clíck the link to your webpage where you have conveniently placed your affiliate links or your products.

A Small Percentage of Those Article Readers Will Buy Your Products and You’re in Business.

Over time, all those backlinks in your resource box at the end of your article will make your keywords rise in the search engines, especially Google. Then as someone searches in Google – your site pops up, they click thru to your webpage and a small percentage of these visitors will buy your product or affiliate product displayed on your page.

Smart marketers will also start building a large list of prospective customers by offering a free guide, ecourse, ebook or software program to get those visitors to sign-up to your list. These marketers can then do follow-up with all these potential customers.

That in a nutshell is an article marketing model or funnel which thousands of online marketers and webmasters are using. And have been using for years.

But Will Article Marketing Remain Effective in 2010 and the Coming Years?

More than likely the answer would be yes but the web is constantly changing and there are other games worth playing. The same kind of marketing system could be done with Videos, Blogs, Social Networks and even with Twitter. Your options are more varied…

However, I find article marketing can be integrated into all these elements. For example, EzineArticles lets you Tweet your articles to all your followers. I turn my best articles into Videos and place them on YouTube which opens up a whole different flow of traffic to my webpages and affiliate links.

Likewise, you can place your articles or links to them on FaceBook, MySpace and the other social networks. I find getting your articles on Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon… can bring in a lot of traffic and improve your rankings.

But the Question Remains – is Article Marketing as Effective as It Once Was?

My own answer and personal opinion is no since it’s effectiveness has been watered down somewhat because every “tom dick and harry plus sally” is doing it. Everybody has discovered how writing short informative articles on the topic of your site can be very lucrative.

When I wrote that first article five years ago, I was ‘writer #1561′ with Ezinearticles. Now they have over 242,000 writers!

Back then, I found your article was placed on a lot more sites mostly because there wasn’t that many articles out there and competition was much, much less than it is now. More people writing more articles simply means your article falls into a bigger pool of other articles.

I believe video marketing is at the stage article marketing was at around five years ago. So turning your articles into short “how to” videos would probably be a wiser move and you would have a lot less competition. You can also place your marketing into the whole Video/Youtube craze that is still bringing in tons of traffic and interested customers.

However, the popularity of free article directories have grown and some of these sites have very high traffic numbers. Here are some of the main ones I use:

• EzineArticles • GoArticles • iSnare • IdeaMarketers

And I also like to place my articles on important but perhaps lesser known sites such as:

• PromotionWorld • SelfGrowth • American Chronicle • Buzzle

However, article marketing is still a very good way to get your site and name on the web. It can still bring in traffic and help build those all important backlinks and search engine rankings. This is one marketer who will not be giving up article marketing any time soon.

Some of my most effective techniques for article marketing are:

Place your targeted keyword phrase in the title, usually at the beginning.

Make sure your article is informative and supplies the information a reader is searching for – but always try to motivate the reader to click your links in the resource box for further information since your main objective is to get the reader to click thru to your site.

Most experts say to keep your article short, around 400 – 700 words, but I have found longer articles of 800-1500 words do really well.

Place your targeted keywords in the anchor text of your resource box links, that’s the underlined clickable part. Vary these keywords to avoid keyword spamming.

For very important sites, try writing an exclusive unique article for that site alone.

Always spell-check and proof-read your articles. Grammar hasn’t ever been my strong point so what I do for finding the correct usage of some tricky phrases or words – I do a search in Google with “quotation marks” to find out which one has the most links/usage… I go with one that has the most links, even if it’s wrong. Thousands of people are making the same mistake. Many marketers do the same thing with misspelled keywords. While they can be expensive, I also like using paid article submission sites such as SubmitYourArticle, ThePhantomwriters and Isnare… mainly because article marketing has been so profitable for me, I don’t mind pouring some of those earnings back into those sites. It saves me time and extends the reach of my articles.

Article marketing will continue to be one of your best ways to build backlinks, raise your rankings and bring in potential customers to your site. It still works for me and hundreds of thousands of other webmasters – it should also work for you.

About The Author The author is a full time online affiliate marketer. His livelihood is derived from & dependent upon search engine marketing & daily monitoring of targeted keywords, mainly within Google. He runs numerous sites, including: Free Marketing Tools & Internet Marketing Tools Titus Hoskins Copyright 2009. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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