More Blog Money

Popular article marketing methods used extensively by internet marketers involve submitting hundreds of articles on a daily basis to article directories. Article marketing is used to drive traffic and potential customers to sales landing pages and is an effective way for internet marketers to drum up sales.

Bloggers on the other hand, do not use article marketing as extensively since submitting articles to article directories mean writing an original article which many would rather save for original content for their own blogs. Bloggers use many other means of driving traffic such as forum marketing and social bookmarking. Some techniques such as creating linkbait are very effective in jumpstarting blog traffic.

Benefits Of Article Marketing

Article marketing could be one of the most underused methods of driving blog traffic for bloggers. If you sell affiliate marketing products, article marketing could be a good way to get targeted potential customers since your article will be about the product or service and people clicking your link will be those who are interested to find out more instead of casual browsers.

Another benefit of article distribution is that you get valid backlinks from directories that allow html in the authors’ resource box at the end of the article.

What About Duplicate Content From Article Directories?

There is much debate about duplicate content adversely affecting SERPs since Google penalizes duplicate content. Some use article spinners which mash and remix an article into several hundred versions before they are submitted to article directories.

The logical way to look at this concern is to take the example of news agencies like Associated Press and Reuters. Their news articles are widely distributed throughout the internet but are they penalized by Google? Their PageRanks are 8. Clearly, they have been rewarded rather than penalized by Google.

The truth is that only link farms are penalized by Google. These are sites specifically set up to create backlinks within a network to give misrepresentation of a sites’ authority.

Article distribution agencies are not link farms. Therefore, there really is no need to spin articles into several hundred versions before submission.

Getting Your Article Distributed Effectively

There are several ways to distribute your article from self distribution to using professional services that distribute articles to thousands of publishers, article sites and email groups. The main methods of distributing your article are:

1. Manual Article Submission
   This is a very time consuming and tedious process which is not the recommended route. You will need to register at each article directory and format your article according to each directory’s specifications for submission. This method however, is free.

2. Free Article Submission Service
   These will distribute a limited number of articles to a very limited number of article directories. The effect may not be impactful enough to drive blog traffic or give significant numbers of backlinks.

3. Article Submission Software
   There is some level of automation offered by article submission software but you are still required to manually register and submit your article to each article directory. The list of directories covered may be in the hundreds but is still limited.

4. Paid Article Distribution
   This is the preferred route as the distribution network reach is in the thousands. Prices differ with each professional article distribution service. Most require a membership of some kind with fees for high volume plans ranging from over $200 to $800 per year for unlimited article distribution.

   For beginners, you can cut cost by going to DP Forums and getting a freelancer to submit your articles for as low as $5 per article.

Try and stagger your article submissions with a break in between each submission since it can take some time for all article directories to publish your article. This will also make your increase in backlinks from article marketing more gradual and natural.