Basics of Article Marketing - List of Directories

Article Marketing is when your write and article about anything and then submit it to any of the many article directories that exist across the internet. To do this your article must contain useful content. Something that benefits the reader in some way. It can't just be a sales letter. Now the remaining question is, how do you monetize an article while still providing useful content?

When writing an article you should have good writing skills or most of the highest traffic directories will not accept the article. Basically, good grammar.

Some article directories are used primarily for traffic, while others are used to build backlinks but probably won't draw much traffic.

If you are going to manually submit articles stick to the most popular directories so you will get lots of traffic. It isn't worth it to waste time submitting to places where you won't see any traffic, just to build backlinks.

Here are the top 3 directories in order of traffic:

EzineArticles.com - 8'000'000 views this month.
Buzzle.com - 1'200'000 views
GoArticles.com - 400'000 views

EzineArticles is the most popular hands down. But also it has the strictest posting requirements. You should learn their guidelines because an accepted post by them would draw 100s of views per day just from one article.

Buzzle is very nice because its like a balance of strictness and traffic.

GoArticles has almost no regulation on its acceptance so its very nice to use for newbies.

I suggest to use all 3, no matter how advanced you get.

Now when you submit articles you will see a "resource box", you can post 2, or at some, 3 links in your resource box. The first link should be to your blog. For the second link, I learned a little trick for that, link them to an URL that contains links to all your sites, or articles that you have ever written. This will form backlinks for everything else you have ever written on every new article you post. Some of your traffic to your article will be from people searching in the directory, if it gets on the front page of the directory it will give a lot more traffic, if a popular site uses your article on their site it will provide even more substantial traffic. But the most important thing is to have your articles show up highly in Google for the keywords and title you have chosen. A good way to do this is to form backlinks to your articles, since that is the main criteria Google currently uses to judge the placement of your site. If you can submit a 3rd site, make something up, as long as its relevant and benefits you and your reader in some way.

To be successful you must devote yourself to writing one article a day for the next 30 days, 400 to 600 words each, and submitting them to the top 3, if not top 5 directories (which I have now made a post about further up). Personally I recommend that you get used to writing 2 to 3 articles per day, but 1 is manageable and if you have written and submitted 30 articles in 30 days to 3 places each, you will see traffic and sales on your site by the end of those 30 days which should then provide you the motivation you need to continue.

In the worst case scenario each of your articles should get 50 views each that month (That is a very conservative estimate, I'd actually be very surprised if an article only got 50 views in 1 month). Out of those 50 views at least 10 people should click through to your blog, assuming you made the article actually provide useful information (If you did not, then don't expect hardly any clicks to your blog). So at the end of those 30 days you have written 30 articles to 3 directories, with 50 views on each. 30x3x50 = 4500. You should have gotten at least 4500 total combined article views. If 20% of those clicked through to your blog, that is 900 blog views. Assuming once more that you have provided just as useful information on your blog as the reader expected from your article (which is why they clicked through in the first place), then you should convert about 1% of those as long as you properly utilized your affiliate link and were convincing enough while still providing useful information and-or resources. So if you converted 1% of 900 you made 9 sales. Lets say you get 10$ per sale (Thats also a very cheapo estimate), then you made 90$. 90$ isn't a lot, but this are -extremely- conservative estimates, AND remember this would theoretically be just your first month. In the second month with just as much work sales and traffic would quadruple.

Now lets take some professional estimates. A professional who has been at this 6 months or more writes 1 article a day for 30 days. Because this professional has knowledge of SEO, Keyword, and niche research he is able to get 600 views a month from 1 article. So with his 30 articles combined he has 18'000 views. Because he provides very useful content in his articles and has become great at writing them and shows the reader what they wanted to see in the first place, he is able to get 40% of readers to click through to his blog. So he would get 7'200 blog views combined after all his articles ran for 1 month (I forgot to mention in the paragraph before this but these statistics are considering every single article ran for one month, which couldn't happen in 30 days because you only wrote 1 a day for 30 days so the last 10 you wrote couldn't have possibly ran for more than 10 days). Now because his blog is so good and written in a way that makes it not only easy and convenient, but enticing to purchase whatever affiliate program he is going on about, he is able to convert 3% of the people who visit. And his affiliate programs pay an average commission of 20$ for this example. 3% of 7'200 is 216. 216 multiplied by 20$ is 4'300$. From these statistics after he left all 30 articles running for 30 days each, combined those articles would have generated 4'300$ for this guy. These are average estimates for those with the knowledge, professionals can have a new blog up and running and making thousands of dollars by the time their first month ends. By the time that blog is 6 months old it would be making at least 10'000$ a month. If he left it to work on another blog or was working on multiple ones simultaneously, and made his way up to 10 blogs. He would be a millionaire by the time the year ended.

If you work 2 hours for the next year. And as long as you possess at least average learning ability combined with the will to stand up and take action, and never give up, never slack. You will be making six figure income by the time those 12 months end. If you dedicate those 2 hours a day for the next 4 months you should be able to calculate a 5 figure income of at least 20'000$ a year from your current statistics, depending on a combination of luck combined with intelligence combined with determination, you could reach that goal on the 2nd or 3rd month and be able to calculate 20'000$ per year income, because 4 months was a conservative estimate. Every estimate I make is conservative from now on, just remember that.

It is also important to remember that 90% of your past efforts will continue to work for you for at least another year (conservative estimate yet again) after you did it. Articles stick around for a long time, successful ones for sometimes 5 years. So in your first month you may not make much, in your second month you will make about 4x more minimum. Next month 3x more. Then about 2x more. Then about 1.5x more. Then a little more, and a little more. In 6 months your blogs potential is at a very high point, but it can forever be improved if you want.