So if you are only going to receive traffic from the top two, then why even bother submitting to all of the other directories? Well because even though you may only see one or two visitors a day from the other directories, when you combine that total you may end up with another 10 to 20 (or more) visitors a day from all of the other sites combined. Another 300 to 600 visitors a month is nothing to ignore. There are literally hundreds of article directories you can submit you article to. So bringing traffic to your offer shouldn't be difficult if you can put together a decent article.

The other benefit to submitting your articles to the lesser producing directories is for the backlinks that will be contained in your articles. Each article that you have out on the web has the potential to count as a backlink to your money site. Obtaining backlinks to your site is a large part of search engine optimization these days, and this is an easy, automated way to get them.

Outsourcing Your Articles

Now you know the mechanics of how article marketing works. You may also be thinking that it is just the sort of traffic generation you need. The is virtually no cost involved if you do all the work yourself. The problem is that free isn't always easy. You may have already decided that you either don't have the time to do it, or you don't want to put in the work involved. You may also be the type of person that simply can't write well. All of these objections are understandable.

The good news is that there is nothing to keep you from outsourcing much of the work to others. If you don't like to write, no problem. You can hire writers to write the articles for you. I have seen article writers advertising rates as low as $1 for a 300 word article. But I have also seen premium writers advertising articles at $20 each. So you can see there is quite a range. I find that you will normally get what you pay for.

You will want a writer that speaks English as their native language. Of course there are exceptions to this as there are people that speak English very well as a second language. But I have experienced better results with native speakers. You should also ask to see sample articles that they have written and it is advisable to ask for a few customer references. You should be able to have 300 to 500 word articles written for three to five dollars each.

You can also purchase private label rights articles and put them through an article spinner to make them unique. Keep in mind that you can spin all of your articles in order to create new ones. So if you pay $5 for an article, and then spin it to create 50 new ones, then your true cost is only ten cents an article. You can see how a good article spinner software will pay for itself very quickly.

You can find writers for hire at any good internet marketing forum. I have found good writers at elance.com, sitepoint.com and the Warrior Forum.

Giving Your Articles a Boost

If you have selected a good keyword to base your article on, it is not unusual to see your Ezine Articles (EA) article submission ranked on the first page results of a Google search for your keyword or keyword phrase, within a day or two. Right now Google loves to rank articles from EA. This is why I always make sure I submit my articles to EA first. I make sure that what I submit to them gets submitted nowhere else. I want that content to be fresh and unique. Then I will spin the same article and submit it to the Go Articles as I want that one to be fresh as well. Google also likes to rank Go Article submissions. Then I will spin the article a second time and submit to the other directories.

The first page ranking is a result of it being fresh content. Google loves fresh content. The article will normally sit there for a week or so and then starts to slip in the rankings. So you really need to give it a little boost if you want to keep it there. Each of your articles will be placed on a page of their own at these directories. So all you have to do is build some backlinks to prop them up a bit. You can also bookmark them at the various social bookmarking sites. Of course if you are top of your article marketing game, then you will be creating new articles every so often that will help you stay in the top rankings as well. I build backlinks only to my EA and Go Article submissions only. The other directory submissions are used primarily used for backlinks to my main money sites. If the secondary directories actually produce traffic that is fine as well, but I don't count on it.

Conclusion

So submit your fresh original content to Ezine Articles first, spin it once and then submit it to Go Articles. Then spin the article a second time and submit to the secondary directories. If you do not have a spinner then you will need to re-write the content manually.

Then build some backlinks to your articles and do some social bookmarking for them. I do this only on my EA and Go Article submissions. Then write another article and repeat the process.

You are not likely to see immediate results from your article marketing efforts. You will receive immediate traffic to your site, but it probably won't be in the volume you need to make consistent sales, at least not right away. However, after a few months you should have enough articles submitted that you will begin to see the traffic you are looking for.

I think a good goal for a new article marketer is to submit 400 articles to Ezine Articles and Go Articles. Each submission to each place counts as one. All of the other submissions to the secondary directories don't count as they are just backlinks for the most part.

Now I have mentioned several times throughout this section how much work article marketing is. I will also tell you that there are more effective ways to drive traffic to a website. But they all cost money and most of them require extensive testing to make profitable. So if you are on a limited budget, then I feel this is the best option for you.

This does not mean that article marketing is only for the new or the low budget marketer. Many of the big names are using article marketing because it flat out works. The difference is that they are automating the process and hiring out the manual aspects of the work. You can get to that point to. So although it is a lot of work in the beginning without automation, it is a means to an end.

Before you put a lot of time and energy in to any sort of marketing, make sure you have tested your money site and that your offer converts your visitors into sales. All the traffic in the world won't do you any good if your site does not convert.

The only thing to do now is roll up your sleeves and get busy.

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Here is a listing of my Top 25 Article Directories