Those of you reading this that run your own online nbusinesses know that the aim of the game is traffic - nqualified, targeted traffic - and lots of it.nnThere are a number of ways to drive qualified traffic nto your site - some of it costs you money, some of it ncosts you time. Some of it costs you both and doesn't nwork.nnThis article is all about the best form of free advertising - nwriting articles.nnHow can writing articles give you free advertising? As nyou probably know, there are hundreds of thousands of npeople publishing an ezine (electronic newsletter) on a nregular basis. For some of these people, publishing the nezine is the central plank of their business - they set out nto create a business involving, primarily, the publishing of nthe ezine. Others, however, publish the ezine only as an nadjunct to their website - a way to get their site in front nof their ezine subscribers in the hope that this will ngenerate repeat traffic.nnBoth types of ezine publishers have one thing in common. nThe need for great content. If you've spent much time nonline you'll no doubt have signed up for more than your nfair share of free ezines. You'll have come across some nthat are really good, some that are OK and some that are nnothing short of woeful, with content that looks like the npublisher has picked up the first piece of regurgitated nwhatever he happened to come across today to fill up the nspace between the ads for his numerous affiliate programs.nnYour site may include links to your affiliate programs. nAfter all, that's how you make money, right? But rather nthan go the road of the ezine publisher who thinks she ncan serve up any old porridge to her subscriber base and nthey'll eat it up, spend the same time writing just one ngood article on a subject matter relevant to your target nmarket and invite publishers of ezines with complementary nsubject matter to publish that article, together with nyour resource box at the end (the four or five line blurb nyou see at the end of articles that give a little information nabout the author and the author's website together with na link to the site).nnNow, here's the important point if you expect others to npublish your work. Your ad is your resource box; it is nNOT your article. Your article is content. Your article nshould not mention your product, your site or anything nrelated to it. Your article must stand alone as an nindependently useful piece of work (and when I say useful, nI mean it must be useful to the READER, not the author!). nDon't insult your readers' intelligence by dressing up an ad nas an article. They're not stupid - they'll see through it and nyou immediately, they'll put you on their blacklist for insulting ntheir intelligence and no publisher worth their salt will run nyour articles anyway.nnThe whole purpose of writing the article is to make it such na worthwhile piece of work that many publishers will want nto put it in front of their subscribers. Get a good article npublished in an ezine with 10,000 subscribers and see nwhat that does for your traffic when hundreds of those nsubscribers click on the link to your site that you've nincluded in your resource box. nnBeginning to see how this works? And the best thing of all nis that it only costs you time - maybe an hour, two top nto write a decent article. Commit to writing one a week nand getting them published and you'll have a nice little ntraffic flow going, believe me (AND, if you make sure that nyou write about subject matter relevant to your site, that ntraffic will ALSO be targeted, qualified traffic - so much nthe better).nnOK, so now you can see the power of writing articles as na method of generating traffic to your website. How the nheck do you find other people to publish your work?nThanks to the fact that so many publishers out there ndon't have the time or (so they believe) ability to write ntheir own articles, or are looking for articles to supplement ntheir own, you have a ready-made market of thousands nof publishers who are always on the lookout for quality ncontent to present to their readers. You just have to nfind them.nnHere's a partial list to get you started:nnYahoo Groups (submit from the Yahoo Groups website nat
http://groups.yahoo.com/ - you'll need to subscribe nto these groups first):nna business na general naainet narticle_announce nArticlePublisher narticles_archives nepub nhersmallbusiness nFree-Content npublisher_network nPublishInYoursnand these ...nnhttp://www.ideamarketers.com nhttp://www.marketing-seek.com nhttp://www.womans-net.com nhttp://www.boconline.com/sub-art.html nhttp://www.connectionteam.com/submit.html nhttp://www.certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml nhttp://www.mailbiz.com nhttp://www.UltimateProfits.com nhttp://www.atozines.com/content/subartic.htm nhttp://opportunityupdate.com/articles nhttp://www.selfgrowth.com nhttp://www.internetday.com/submit nhttp://www.marcommwise.com nhttp://www.vectorcentral.com nhttp://www.goarticles.com nhttp://www.hotlaunch.com nhttp://www.ezinearticles.com nhttp://www.webmasterslibrary.comnnWhen submitting your articles to the above websites, be nsensitive to the types of articles the site is looking for. nSome accept articles on any subject under the sun; others nare looking for articles on specific subjects such as internet nmarketing, for example.nnOver time, you will be able to add to this list. If submitting nto individual ezine publishers, don't be surprised or offended nif you don't receive a response. Most ezine publishers of nany size receive dozens of article submissions a day. Time nnormally doesn't permit a response to each submission. Also, ntry and find out from the publisher whether they even accept narticle submissions. Many don't (me, for example). I receive nmany article submissions a day which just get deleted unread.nnThe point is, just work up your own list, write articles nconsistently and submit consistently. Over time, you'll ndevelop your own style of writing and attract a following. nnAlthough it may be slow to start, you'll start getting a trickle nof new traffic from people who have come across your article nsomewhere, some place and were interested enough to click non the link in your resource box. Over time, that trickle will nbecome a stream, then a river, and then a flood.