Using The Amazing Authority Of Zero Cost Articles To Lure Visitors
Jim Green is the author of the bestselling Starting Your Own Business also published by How To Books, and has started and successfully run more than one small business. He is based in Glasgow.
Engaging in online marketing without access to the strategies revealed in this book is akin to entering a giant ‘mugs alley’ in a virtual fairground where all the vendors are barking out their sales pitches to each other because there’s no one else around to listen in. You won’t have that problem. What you are absorbing here is a series of tried and tested techniques of enticing visitors onto your stall to listen to your message to the exclusion of competing distractions.
Now here’s another such technique and a vital one at that ...
WHY ALL SUCCESSFUL E-ENTREPRENEURS USE ARTICLES TO ATTRACT VISITORS
They cost nothing but time and energy to produce and distribute, and the power they exert is astounding.
Article submission is the perfect niche vehicle for attracting pre-qualified, targeted prospects for your niche produce at zero cost.
- You should adopt this influential practice for your own online promotion;
- You will miss out on a potential gold mine of buyers if you do not.
You know all there is to know about your first online project; you even produced an information product on the topic.
Now is the time to make a start on your first batch of articles.
HOW TO MAKE A START
Pull down strands of useful information from your information product; sculpt it into a dozen or so initial articles for distribution (I’ll show you how, why and where in a moment).
When you think you’ve exhausted that source, go back to your research notes and you will find more; much more.
When you’ve finished doing that, go back online and research again. Look at what other people have to say about the topic, not to copy them, but to use whatever you glean to prompt you to search in disparate directions.
Then do likewise at discussion forums. The supply of information is endless.
WRITING YOUR FIRST ARTICLE FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION
You will get the hang of it very quickly and when you do, you will be churning out one or two articles at a time, quite effortlessly. There are just a few simple rules to observe.
- 1.Start with an eye-grabbing headline.
- 2.Fire your biggest gun in the first sentence.
- 3.Fire the next biggest in the next sentence or two.
- 4.Keep the text rolling on with short chunky paragraphs.
- 5.Break it up with occasional subheadings.
- 6.Keep it conversational.
- 7.Restrict the word count to between 500 and 700.
- 8.End with a resource box (your bio).
Here now is a text example of one of my own articles which is shown again in published format immediately after ...
This article appeared in Web Pro News (the leading online magazine) and attracted 2,071 additional visitors to my website in just 14 days
Does promoting with articles always work to drive huge numbers of visitors to your site instantly every single time you do it?
No.
The truth is not every single article you write and distribute online will hit a home run and bring an avalanche of visitors to your site.
Some of my articles only attract a trickle, but I have so many of them out there now that in total they add up to a sizeable volume of steady, targeted traffic.
Periodically I hit a grand slam with an article that takes on a life of its own and dumps thousands of visitors on my site in a couple of days – like the one you just read ...
THE WORST THING THAT CAN HAPPEN WITH EVERY ARTICLE YOU PUBLISH
- You continue to build your reputation and credibility with your target audience as a trusted expert.
- As your credibility increases, Joint Venture partners will begin to seek you out and be open to your approaches.
- You’ll create additional tools your affiliates can use to sell more of your products.
- You create more valuable content for your own and other people’s websites that the search engines can index – driving even more traffic to your website or affiliate link.
- You create additional instalments for your auto-responder series that you can easily turn into profitable mini-courses.
- You get better and better at picking topics, distributing articles and your traffic logs will snowball with targeted visitors.
In fact, just by writing and distributing zero cost articles on the internet, you will become recognised as a world-class expert on the topic of your choice and you will have people seeking you out for all kinds of lucrative opportunities.
Promoting with articles represents one of the best ways to not only attract free traffic but to build your business and your reputation online.
WHERE TO SUBMIT YOUR ARTICLE OUTPUT
And now to save you the time and trouble of doing it yourself, I will give you my own list of ‘hubs’ for article submission. You can add to this as you discover other outlets relevant to your specialist topic.
128 ARTICLE HUBS THAT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MATERIAL FOR FREE
http://homeincome.com/writers-connection
http://writingcomer.com/admin/sub-guidelines.htm
theezine.net
www.businessknowledgesource.com
www.freelancewriting.com/newssyndicator.html
www.homebasedbusinessindex.com
www.home-based-business-opportunities.com/library/id2101–book.shtml
www.more4youarticledirectory.com
www.webmarketingspecialists.com
THIS SOFTWARE THAT DOES IT ALL AUTOMATICALLY
If submitting your articles manually would dig too deeply into your busy working week then consider investing in Article Submitter, it distributes material in bulk to all recognised sources. A new enhanced model was recently introduced and last time I looked it was still available on a free three-day-trial basis.
CONVERTING ARTICLES INTO PRESS RELEASES
We talked about press releases in Chapter 6 where I provided you with two excellent sources for distribution. While you will come across lots of advice elsewhere regarding formatting I recommend you stick with what I’ve just given you on construction. It works for me and it will work for you.
HOW TO DRIVE HOARDS OF TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE
Here is an extension to what you’ve just read that drives traffic in droves to my portal site.
Most savvy Net workers use articles on a regular basis, but I add a new dimension that produces spectacular results.
Apart from the hundreds of articles I already have circulating on the internet, I produced 20 specific ‘How To’ articles, each relating to a specific product.
- 1.Each article has its own (sub-domain); each has its own URL.
- 2.These pages are all posted to the Web.
- 3.They are all listed in the main directories, the major search engines, and in 100+ supplementary engines.
- 4.Included also at the foot of every web page is a link back to my portal site.
- 5.On the portal site there is a page entitled ‘Articles’ which contains individual links to each of these web pages.
On the next page is an example of one of the pages:
All 20 web pages have a corporate look (Palatino Linotype headings and Book Antiqua for the body matter).
THIS TECHNIQUE PRODUCES STAGGERING RESULTS
These 20 pages are picking up browsers from all over the internet and driving them in droves back to my portal site. It’s a case of multiple exposure, multiple viral marketing, multiple visits.
I am currently receiving more traffic from these 20 web pages than from all the major search engines combined.
Total cost: zero.
