If you don't have much money to spend advertising your online
business, writing ezine articles is the most effective and least
costly way to attract visitors to your site.
Increasing numbers of people use the Internet everyday to find
information. To satisfy this growing quest, ezine owners who
don't have time to write their own material are always looking
for fresh articles to publish in their newsletters.
You may be cringing at the idea of writing articles, or writing -
period.
However, writing a how-to or tips article on a relevant topic is
no more difficult than writing a letter, or talking to a friend.
Simply share good information that demonstrates your enthusiasm
for the subject and encourages the reader to learn more.
The most compelling reason to write articles for submission to
ezines is the amount you save in advertising.
A single ezine ad can cost anywhere from a few dollars to
thousands of dollars.
However, ezine article submissions are free. In fact, it actually
pays you to write and submit articles to ezines and newsletters!
By adding your byline at the end of each article, your personal
bio and your site's URL are published, and that's free
advertising for you.
Furthermore, the author's resource box, in which your byline is
placed, is usually the size of a typical ezine advertisement.
Better yet, your article is ten times that size. So, you've saved
advertising dollars and earned ten times the coverage. That's
great value for an investment that only cost an hour or two of
your time.
Depending on the subscriber base of the ezine that picks up your
article, the potential for new visitors to your site could be
enormous.
For example, I wrote an article entitled '10 Ways to Gain Visitor
Trust and Increase Your Conversion Rates' for Allan Gardyne's
Associate Programs Newsletter in October 2002. With a subscriber
base of 20,000, the appearance of that article doubled traffic
to my site for the next week. Because Allan archives the
newsletters on his web site, that article is still sending me
traffic!
Onsite archiving has an additional benefit. As more of your
articles and links to your site appear on more and more pages,
your search engine link popularity increases tremendously.
With the increased exposure and link popularity, your name
becomes better known and your credibility as an expert in your
field grows. This effect becomes cumulative, as 'experts' are
frequently interviewed for other publications which again
increases their popularity.
In many ways more important than popularity is the goodwill that
you build by teaching and sharing your experiences freely with
your readers. You also invariably learn more about any topic you
write about, and knowledge is power - earning power.
Taking this proactive approach to site promotion builds traffic
faster and beats waiting for the search engines to spider your
site and send you a visitor or two.
When your articles are published in ezines relevant to your
site's topic, they are read by people who are interested in your
subject matter. With your skilled and informative approach,
interested readers become interested visitors, who in turn become
motivated purchasers, and then repeat buyers.