My Article Archive

If you're searching for inexpensive tips to generate clients for your new complementary therapy business, especially if it has an online shopping cart, the perfect way is Article Marketing because it's free and the traffic keeps coming, month after month, from each piece of work. So if you are looking for product launch ideas read on.

Article Marketing isn't a fast way to get started online, but it's a low-cost, risk-free plan anyone can adopt. First let's compare it with some different ways to get online traffic. Let's take the example of promoting a new shopping cart.

The usual way of bringing traffic to your new website, taught by some on-line marketing courses, is to get in touch with other website owners asking for a link exchange. This can be successful, but it's a slow process and you need to take care who you target. For example, if I sell dog collars by mail order I may be happy to do a link exchange with someone who runs dog training classes, but not someone who is promoting dog collars.

Another method is answering questions on forums in your market-place, with your website in your signature. Also effective, but time-consuming.

In theory a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign is fast to set up and you could see leads very quickly. In practice unless you're experienced at these campaigns, you can spend ages testing for the optimum settings and exhaust your budget without making a single sale. I did! And being of a suspicious nature , I often wondered how many clicks were by my competitors, to waste my cash!

Alternative online methods include FFA (Free For All) sites and traffic exchanges where you view other people's sites, in return for them viewing yours. This strikes me as a waste of time. I am trying to sell, not buy, so why sit aimlessly, clicking on other people's websites so that they will sit bored to death clicking on my site? They probably never even see my site. With tabbed browsers the temptation is just to open the following tab to click on the advert, never reading the adverts.

These ideas are time-consuming and ineffective for a serious product launch.

Offline promotional methods include networking to swap cards at business clubs. Time-consuming, expensive and again in general, others are attending to sell, not to buy.

In contrast, article marketing targets people who have suggested that they are interested in the subject your website targets. Choose the correct keywords and visitors will be actively intending to buy, not sell.

The idea of article marketing is that you write an article and submit it, with your website details, to article directories from which publishers can copy articles for blogs etc so long as they publish your website details with your article. Then as interested parties read your article, they can click onto your website.

The article you have produced in an hour or so stays (theoretically) online forever and you can receive focused traffic from it in perpetuity.

For instance, I submitted an article in October 2005 and 4 years later it is still generating traffic, with no extra effort, and had received 28,897 lifetime views, with 5,961 clicks through to my website. How much would that have cost in PPC? Another benefit is that the best article directories email you a report showing the keywords on which your article is being found.

My belief is that article marketing has so many advantages over alternative methods that I cannot think of any reason why it would not be one of your marketing strategies.

Much of my success with article marketing was learned through trial and error. With a little free, or low cost, training I would have realized the potential much earlier.