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You’ve written your article, distanced yourself from it for a couple of days and are now sure it is ready to be submitted to article sites.  Each of these sites has its own rules regarding submission regardless of whether it is called an article bank or an article directory.

You need to start by doing your homework. Most of the sites will require you to register, which costs nothing.  Making a document with your name, address, telephone number, email address, business name, and website address, as well as the username and password that you would like to use will save you time . You can copy and paste from it into each site.   You can also use software, such as Roboform at www.roboform.com .

Read the submission guidelines completely for each site before you submit for each one is different.  The sites will vary on how many articles they will accept each week. Some article sites require an actual human being to register. Not following the guidelines set forth could cause you to be banned from ever posting.

While most sites will post your entire article, there are some that will only post a brief bit and link to the article stored at your site. You will find it boring to type in the same information over and over again so that is where the cut and paste document or Roboform comes in.

It’s much easier to have a ready-made document or  software to fill in the repeat information. Next, fill in your  headline, subheadline, the body of the article, and your author’s resource box information, cutting and pasting works well here.  Some of the sites will keep your information on file but you may find yourself needing to change this information when you choose to promote a different product.

After submitting your articles, you will see an increase in the amount of mail you receive. Using a different email address solely for article submissions will help.  You will need to make sure and check it, however, because the article sites always check for email validity.

There are hundreds of sites to submit your articles to,  but the following listed ones are the ones you should start with.

Article Blast
http://www.articleblast.com/index.php

Article City
http://www.articlecity.com

Article Finders
http://www.articlefinders.com

Article Hub
http://www.articlehub.com

Articles Factory
http://www.articlesfactory.com

Connection Team
http://www.connectionteam.com

Constant Content
http://www.constant-content.com

E-Calc.net
http://www.e-calc.net

Free Zine Site
http://www.freezinesite.com

Go Articles
http://www.goarticles.com

How To Advice
http://www.howtoadvice.com

Idea Marketers
http://www.ideamarketers.com

Marketing Seek
http://www.marketing-seek.com

Morgan Article Archive
http://morganarticlearchive.com

Simply Search 4 It
http://articles.simplysearch4it.com

The Ezine Dot Net
http://www.theezine.net

Valuable Content
http://www.valuablecontent.com

Certificate.net
http://certificate.net

Xongo
http://www.xongoo.com

Even if you can write, it might make more sense to hire one or more ghostwriters to provide your articles. Needing hundreds of articles in a short amount of time will make it necessary to hire several.

There are many reasons to have someone else do your writing. The hard part is, finding a good, affordable ghost writer.  You can post a bid request for the work at one of the freelance sites, such as www.elance.com or www.rentacoder.com , but you may not get a writer who can do a decent job.

One of the major problems you may find at these sites is the fact that in order to get a low price, they often hire writers who don’t speak, or write, English very well. This doesn’t mean that the writer is a poor one, it simply means that they don’t know English well enough to provide the content you need.

Plagiarism is often another problem you will find at these sites.  If you purchase articles from a writer at a freelance site, go to copyscape at www.copyscape.com and run each article through to make sure that the work is original.

Your best bet is to hire someone who you can use exclusively for all of your writing needs. Most of these writers are quite expensive, but you can find some that will write good articles at a reasonable price. One company that hires good writers and charges affordable rates can be found at www.writingandtranscriptionservices.com . This place offers you 300 - 500 word articles written for under ten dollars.

The best way to get what you want from another writer is to relay exactly what you are looking for. Providing the writer with a list of topics or titles for the articles is a very good idea. This allows the writer to see exactly what you are looking for. A good writer will get your articles done quickly.  The time will depend on how many articles you need, and how much research the writer must do.

Most ghost writers will want part of their money before they start working for a new customer. This deposit is usually equal to one third or one half of whatever the total cost will be. Once you and your writer have established a good working relationship, however, they may allow you to pay only upon completion.

The purpose of writing and distributing articles is threefold: to increase website traffic, to establish your credentails as an expert, and ultimately to sell more products or services. Just writing and submitting articles won’t do this, however. You must make it possible for your articles to become viral.

An article that you write  is distribute to the various article sites on the Internet only one time. From there, ezine publishers, blog writers, and website owners who have an interest in information in your area will find the article and publish it on their websites, blogs, and in their ezines.  This starts the viral domino effect.

From those websites, blogs, and ezines, other people will pick it up and publish it in their ezines and on their websites. The one article just snowballs. The sky is the limit.

Ten years from now, you could be wandering the Internet and stumble across an article that you wrote and distributed just today. It shouldn’t come as a surprise if that website owner only recently published your article on their site. If you search for that same article, at that time ten years from now, you may be astounded as to many times that one article appears!

The article will all but disappear, however, unless you give it the ability to become viral. You do this by including a notice at the very bottom of the article giving others permission to reprint the article, free of charge, as long as the article remains unchanged, and your resource box is included in the reprint.

It’s that easy. One small sentence at the bottom of your articles can change the entire path of your article simply by allowing it to be reprinted.  This will in turn change your business for the better. Without that notice, others won’t know if they can use your article, even if it is posted at an article site. If there is a doubt, most people will pass up reprinting the article to protect themselves from accusations of copyright infringement.

To make sure your article becomes viral, make that one sentence permission a normal part of all your article.

Networking with e-zine publishers in your field is a good business strategy. These publishers are one of the most important parts of your marketing and it is suggested you start building a list of appropriate e-zines now.

There are ezine directories that can direct you to appropriate places.   Vist them and subscribe to several e-zines in your chosen area. Don’t try submitting articles until you get a feel for the e-zine by reading a couple of issues. The Directory of Ezines at www.directoryofezines.com , along with several others,  even tell you information if article submissions are accepted, where to send them, and what rules tofollow. This information is priceless.

Contact the ezine publisher directly if you decide to submit an article.  Most e-zine owners like to know the person who is sending them an article for publication. Not contacting the publisher first does not create a good raport.

Send a personal note telling the publisher how much you like their publication. List something specific you especially like about the ezine. Next, tell the publisher you believe readers would like your articles and ask if you might submit one or more. Finding one specialized point within the general interest area will increase your chances of being positively received.

Don’t send tons of articles all at once and overload the publisher’s already full mailbox.  Limit yourself to sending only one article weekly, and sometimes even one a month. Make the e-zine publisher feel important by providing short articles once a week that you wrote just for that e-zine.  E-zine publishers like knowing they are the only place a person can find a particular article.

In the short history of Internet Marketing, using articles to sell has always been one of the best and easiest ways to market a business or website at little or no cost. This will hold true in the future just as it does now.

Article Marketing works with  a domino effect. One article is written, and it travels from your computer to several article banks, providing back links to your website. From there other website owners copy the article, with the authors information included, and publish it in their newsletters or on their websites. The article may even end up as part of a compilation for an informative ebook.

The important thing is that the article spreads far and wide-or becomes viral. This accomplishes many things. This provides you with back links to your site, as mentioned above, which helps with search engine optimization. Since your author’s information, or resource box as it is called, is at the bottom of the article, your website gains increased traffice and greater public awareness.

Writing articles accomplishes a couple more things that are important in ecommerce today. First, writing and distributing articles helps to establish you as an expert in your chosen topicand secondly, it helps to build a ‘relationship’ with people who read your articles, gaining their trust.

Writing and distributing  at least one article per week to the various article banks is common with successful internet marketers. They may use articles that they wrote for their newsletters then offer them out for distribution.  If the business owners can not write well, or don’t have the time to write their own articles, they typically hire some other writer to create the articles for them.

The articles that are distributed by successful people are informative and well written. These are not sales letters disguised as articles but instead are vehicles providing helpful information, with the author’s information at the bottom, including a link to the website. This in turn gets readers to visit the marketer’s websites.

Allowing your readers to change the links in your article and author’s resource box to their own chosen ones is a completely different idea.  Most marketers work to keep that information in the article no matter what.

This may not make sense to you at the moment and you may even think it is a totally off-the-wall idea. Changing the affiliate links does not change your information as to your name and website link.  These stay with the article so you still get the recognition.

You will still benefit from the article and may find it even more profitable.  Other people will be more willing to publish your article if they can see a benefit to themselves.  Allowing this change of affiliate links gives them that incentive.

A situation that is especially beneficial is when you have affiliates helping with your promotion.  It also works if you are helping promote another’s product and have affiliates under you.  They will feel more inclined to use the article and you will benefit by getting increased money from their added sales.

Depending on your ultimate goal from writing the article, it might even help if you allow your affliliates to change even the resource box.  They will add their own information there instead.

By allowing affiliates to keep your author name intact but changing all links, including the resource box ones you can still be recognized as the author.  This will allow you to be considered the expert on the subject, yet you will benefit from the increased sales of your affiliates.  This is a positive option all around.

These days, it is hard to find anyone, of any age, who does not blog. Business have even taken to blogging, from small ones to large corporations.  The popularity and simplicity of blogging makes it popular with everyone.

Using blogs to help with your sales is easy and recommended. It is simple to create your own blog on which to post your articles. You can find a webhosting company that  includes a blog in its webhosting package, or you can choose a popular blog site like Blogger at www.blogger.com .

The most important thing is to make your blog viral.  Do this by creating an RSS feed and allowing readers to copy your blog to their own.

All you need to do is set up your blog and start posting your articles into categories of your own choosing. using pinging features will allow blog directories to keep  updated whenever you add a new post to your blog. You can also sign up at http://pingomatic.com/  to have your blog pinged with many different services all at once. This will help bring traffic to your blog.

Another way to make blogs helpful in your article marketing is to seek out blogs that relate to your field of interest. Upon finding a subject that relates to your article, add a comment and a link to the article asking other readers of the blog to visit your blog and read the article.

Posting the actual article on someone else’s blog is rude and not accepted. A simple link to an article that directly relates to the topic in question is perfectly acceptable.

Marketing with articles can take a lot of time, time not everyone has to spare.  It can used successfully for most businesses, but if you don’t have a lot of time to spare, this may not be the method you choose.

It only takes a few minutes to write an article of 300 to 500 words.  It becomes a problem if you can’t write.  If thios is the case with you, it is better not to use articles to market.

Hiring someone to write articles for you isn’t always an option.  You must first find an author you can work with then find the money to pay them.  Most will seek immediate payment.  This may not be something you are prepared to provide.

If you are looking for ways to promote that cost little or nothing, you may try article marketing.  It has consistently proven itself as a very effective marketing strategy and shows no signs of that staus disappearing.

You can hire someone to write your articles and hire others to submit them for you.  If you have the money to do this, and it can be very affordable, then article marketing may be a good choice for you.

You won’t know how successful you can be with submitting articles unless you at least try it.  Write an article.  The first ones always take more time but that changes with experience.  If the article is good you are on your way.

Now comes the submitting.  Try doing this yourself and see how it works.  Do you have the time it will take?  Are you willing to put in that much time?  If the answers are no, are you willing to pay a submission service to do this part for you?  The answers to this will help you decide if this method is for you.

Give article marketing a month trial.  Write and submit a weekly article during that time and see what happens.  By the time the month ends, you will have a good idea whether or not you want to continue with this endeavor.

It is an estabilished fact that Article Marketing works by a large number of Internet Marketers in wide variety of niches. This has been repeatedly proven.  However, those who have not ever attempted article marketing tend to think that it is harder or more time consuming than it actually is.

Starts by writing an article. This can be done by yourself or you can hire a ghost writer. The cost of  ghost written articles is usually less than $10.00 for a 300 to 500 word article. It is important that the article be informative and related to your niche. The article should not sound like a sales letter.

At the end of the article, you include your ‘resource box.’ A resource box is simply information about the author, and it usually includes a link to the authors related website, a link to subscribe to a newsletter, and possibly even an email address to contact the author. If your article is ghost written, you are still the author.

Underneath the resource box, you type a statement giving others the right to reprint the article for free, as long as they don’t change it and keep your resource box attached.  This allows others to help make your article viral.

Once the article is written, you should distribute it to as many article directories as you can find. It helps to also send the article to ezine publishers within your niche for consideration. You can find lists of ezines in the various ezine directories that are available on the Internet.

There is article-submission software that can be used to speed up submitting your article in. One example of this type of software is Instant Article Submitter at www.instantarticlesubmitter.com . There are also services that will manually submit your article to directories. This is highly recommended because many article directories do not allow and will not accept articles submitted with software. One such recommended article submission service is We Submit Articles at:
www.wesubmitarticles.com .

Submitting the articles yourself is a time consuming task. If you can hire someone else to do that work, you will have more time overall to concentrate your efforts on other marketing tasks, including  producing more articles.

There are several ways to producing articles without having to write them yourself. Using a ghostwriter is one way, using private label rights articles you have bought is another option and doing an expert interview is yet a third way to compile article information.

Borrowing another writer’s article for use is yet another way to provide content for readers. Give the original author credit within the body of your article and fill in the rest with quotes from that author’s article.

This is a can’t lose situation for everyone. You don’t need to do the writing of your article, the writer who wrote the original article gets free publicity, and the reader gets the information that they want or need. Everybody wins.

Using public domain articles that are related to your subject is yet another way. Permission from the author to use their work isn’t necessary, but letting your reader know where the content originated will keep their trust. Don’t try to pass the words off as your own.

Use survey results from a self-conducted survey as an article. This does mean you’ll have to write a little, but compiling the results and turning it into a fast article isn’t very hard or time-consuming. You can create surveys through Survey Monkey at www.surveymonkey.com .

Use government provided information. Articles written by United States Government Authors are automatically in the public domain. The government is a prolific writer - on a wide variety of topics. Visit any United States Government website, and you will be greatly surprised with the amount of information that is free for the taking.

As you have seen, providing quality articles without writing a single word, or with just a bit of writing is possible. The information and means is there, use them.