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Article directories are websites that house free articles. These articles are usually put there by whoever owns the copyright to them as a promotion method. Each article has the owner's byline placed under it so that those who eventually read the article will know who wrote it (or at least who owns it) and will be able to get in contact with or visit their website for further information. Article directories are a great place to put your articles so that they will make you money. By using this method, people who are interested in your product or service will see your article, view you as an expert in the subject, and will visit your website. Even if you cannot write or do not have any knowledge on the subject which you are promoting (for example if you run an affiliate website), you can always hire a writer to do the work for you. Getting quality articles written will be expensive up front, but they will pay for themselves in no time, either through affiliate sales or selling your own services, and everything from then on is pure profit. Let’s take a real life example. Imagine that you are an accountant working from home. You write an article on an accounting topic and place it on various article directories. Those who are looking for the subject you wrote about will read your article, see that you have the knowledge and skill that is needed to do a job for them, and visit your website or contact you via e-mail. Your article just gained you a new client who may use your services regularly, but will definitely give you a nice profit at least once. Furthermore, since you have posted it on a free article directory, others who have affiliate websites about accounting will inevitably use your article for their website. Since they must attach your byline to it, this will bring you even more exposure for every website that re-posts your article. This because you will be benefiting from the traffic that they get to their website. There are numerous article directories out there for you to utilize. Your bet best is to put a copy of each of your articles on every one for maximum exposure. It will eventually help to bring more traffic and customers to your website, which will lead to new orders and more profit. (Word Count 407) Click HERE for something that will really help you in knowing how to write articles and submit them to directories! When writing articles, make sure to keep your readers in mind. Studies have shown that most Internet readers tend to scan a page to find the information they are looking for, rather than reading the entire page. This means having good titles, a lot of subtitles, and making use of bullet points to help your readers easily scan your page. Readers prefer a site like this that is easy to use and will be more willing to come back to your site time and time again. The more your readers return, the more opportunities you will have to get them to click on each one of your affiliate links. Failing to write your articles in this manner, or to have them written this way, could turn your site visitors away before they even have a chance to see what you have to say or to learn what your affiliate links are all about. Keeping your articles organized as recommended will keep your visitors returning and enable your site to continue making money for you. (Word Count 183) Some webmasters try to use articles from free content directories to get visitors to their site and make some money. This is mostly important for those who have just begun working as an affiliate for several companies and do not yet have any funding, yet need to built small niche websites to visitors to their site so that they can begin making revenue. Although this can sometimes be the only option for those who are running on a non-existent budget, it is not a way that will effectively build your website or revenue. There are a few potential reasons why this may be detrimental to your business-building efforts. Problem #1 - Search Engines If your site has exactly the same duplicated content as can be found on other sites, it will not be looked upon favorably by search engines. The more sites that share your content, the less it will help you achieve good search engine rankings. Good search engine rankings are essential in getting visitors to your sit so that they have a chance to click on your affiliate links. If you cannot get visitors, you will never make any revenue. Working on the search engine optimization of your site, so that you will eventually be high enough in the results to get customers, should be your number one priority. Problem #2 - Getting visitors to click Although getting your site high on search engine result pages and acquiring site visitors is hard work, unfortunately this is only half of the battle. You must also be able to convince those visitors to click on your affiliate links. If your visitors see the same content they have seen on a multitude of other sites, they will be less likely to click on your links. This is because most people want to buy things that are recommended by people that they trust or whom they regard as an expert on the subject. If your content is just duplicated from other sites, you will be exposed as someone who does not really know what they are talking about. Visitors will therefore not look seriously at your product recommendations. This will reduce the number of website visitors who will be willing to click through. Problem #3 - Author Bylines Most free content is only given to you if you agree to place the author's byline under the article (you can get into trouble if you try to use it without following the stipulated rules). This poses a problem because most author bylines include links. When a reader finishes reading a really intriguing article, there is a strong possibility that he or she will click on the author’s byline link rather than your affiliate links. This is precisely why these authors offer free content to begin with, so that they may get their name and links out there to the public. Using this type of content may mean shooting yourself in the foot and losing possible profitable website visitors. Once you put these three problems together, you are looking at a serious decline in revenue simply because you used free website content from article directories. Although it may be the only option for some, if you have the funds to buy your own original content, then you should go this route. If you don’t have the finds, however, you may be better off writing your own content and then hiring professional services once you have made a profit to work with. (Word Count 580) |