Three Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills.With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is

Basically the internet can be used to make money in three ways:

1) Selling a thing or service that you provide yourself

2) Selling a thing or service that someone else provides (affiliate marketing)

3) Using the internet to play the stock market, Forex market, traded options or other form of intelligent gambling.

For beginners the easiest is number 2 - affiliate marketing, and this article is going to deal with that. An"affiliate" is just someone who points the prospective customer at the website of the seller. There are plenty of wealthy affiliates who earn more than $700 a week. We are going to split that method into two parts, leaving the other methods with just a passing mention.

"Pay per click" (PPC)

If you have a little capital to invest you can use established advertising services such as Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing. This involves writing a short advertisement, placing it with Google or Yahoo or some other advertising outfit and letting them display it, for which you will pay them. The more money you are prepared to pay, the better they will display it.

If they display it in a prominent place - i.e. among the first ten search results that come up when someone enters the phrase that forms your ad heading into the search box - people will click on it and be brought to the site where the article or service is sold. You will pay for every click, and the cost can soon mount up so you had better be sure that only those who really want to buy will click your ad.

This is terribly important, so be warned! Your ad must be such that very few who are just browsing are going to want to click it: it must be specific. An ad with a heading "Luxury watches" is going to get a lot of clicks but you won't sell enough watches to cover the cost of the ad, never mind making a profit. On the other hand, an ad headed "Patek Philippe nautilus watch" will attract mostly those who are looking for this kind of watch and are considering buying one, so that a greater proportion of clicks will "convert" into sales.

Article Marketing

Another way of affiliate marketing is to write articles. These articles will be on subjects that interest people and their purpose is to bring the reader to the website where your product is being sold. You will publish them on one of the article sites on the internet - EzineArticles.com, Goarticles.com and USFreeAds.com are three well used sites. Your article will contain, either in the body of the article or at the end, (editorial policy varies between sites) links to a site where there will be a sales page.

The big search engines are looking over these sites, too, and they may feature extracts from your article on their search results pages. You must become a member of these sites, and USFreeAds.com charges a small monthly fee. The other two are free. USFreeAds allows blatant ads, the other two want informative articles with some links.

The great advantage of this form of selling is that it costs very little or is even completely free. Free as regards money, that is. But certainly NOT free as regards work. You are going to have to spend much time and thought over your writing, and if you are not an experienced writer this can be a daunting task. It does need sustained work in researching and writing articles and for some - me anyway - that does not come easy. Just writing one or two articles, publishing them and sitting back is not going to make you much money. You will need, thirty, fifty or a hundred articles to be sure of making money, because not all of them are going to work. Even writing just one a day can tax your creative powers to the limit if you are a beginner.

If you do persevere and publish a large number of articles, many of them are going to bring in sales and you will make money. Some article publishers make much more than $700 a week, so you can set your sights quite high!

You will find more help than you can possibly use at certain sites on the internet. Not everyone with a website is out to fleece you, some will give very good value for money, and there is a lot of free advice even by experts. The site I find most useful is run by two very successful young men - wealthy affiliates - who get a kick out of helping others and I recommend it. Newsletters and free e-books can also be useful - if you don't get sucked in and spend instead of earning!

Gil Gamesh http://anewmee.wordpress.com/

For those two young men I mentioned, open my recent post "Seeking Abundance ..." on my blog here and click the "Wealthy Affiliates" link towards the top of my post. I highly recommend them, there is personal service, tuition and a very lively forum to help would-be millionaires. You will not find a more helpful site on the web. Here's to your making much more than that $700 a week!