2012-05-27 ~ Shalu Sharma's Blog

One of my favorite strategies of making money online is by article marketing. The basic idea is to write an article, include a resource box with a link to your blog or affiliate link and opt-in page and then submit it to some of the popular article directories.

You’ll get some traffic directly from those sites, but the real purpose behind this strategy is to allow other webmasters and bloggers to find your article and publish it on their sites. Whenever that happens, you’ll see a nice increase in traffic to your blog and a boost in subscribers.

What Should I Write About?

That’s a question I hear quite a bit. You want to write articles that are closely related to your blog. You also want to be very specific in each article. Think about some of the problems and issues your readers are facing… those are the types of topics you want to write about. As your site becomes more popular, this will get easier because your readers will tell you what they want to learn more about. For now, think back to some of the questions you had when just starting out.

Another option is to visit popular forums and look for questions that are asked. You can also browse some of the article directories and look what other people have written about in the category that best relates to your blog.

Once you have your topic, write a helpful article of about 400 to 500 words. Answer the question you started out with or simply share 5 to 7 tips on a topic. Most forums will allow you to place a signature in our profile; you always place a link here.

Don’t forget to spend some time crafting your author resource box. This is where you’ll lead readers from the article page back to your blog. I like to include two links. The first goes directly to the home page of my blog, the second to my opt-in page to get readers on my list.

Where Should I Submit My Articles?

Now that you’ve written your article, it’s time to submit it to some of the popular article directories. Below you’ll find a short list of directories I like to use. This is by no means a complete list. As you get more comfortable with article marketing, you’ll find other directories, but this is a good starting point.

• Ezinearticles.com
• ArticleBase.com
• GoArticles.com
• Isnare.com
• IdeaMarketer.com
• ArticleSnatch.com

How Many Should I Write?

If you’re just starting out, a good goal may be to write and submit one article per week. That’s enough to get a small trickle of traffic to your site. Of course more is always better (provided the quality of your articles doesn’t suffer). If you can manage three articles per week, great! If you’re really ambitious you may even write one per day. I don’t recommend aiming for more than that or you’ll quickly get burned out.

Article marketing is all about consistent effort. Find a number you’re comfortable with and then make sure that come hell or high water you’re getting those articles written and submitted.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
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Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

Let me share the big secret to building a list with you. It’s all about figuring out how to get your first 100 subscribers. Once you’ve learned that, you can simply do more of what you’re already doing to build your list faster. I’ll share three simple strategies with you that you can use to build your list. Best of all, all three of them are free and won’t take you long to implement. Let’s get started.

Blog Commenting

One of the easiest ways to get traffic and subscribers to your list is to comment on other popular blogs. Find about 10 of them and visit them several times a week. When appropriate, leave a great comment. Don’t just write “Great post, enjoyed reading it.” Instead, add to the conversation and share something of value.

This will encourage readers to click on your name and click through to your blog to learn more about you. From there you can start to get them on your list by having a signup box in the sidebar of your blog.

Forum Participation

Find 3 to 5 active forums in your niche and start participating. The important thing is to find forums that get quite a few new posts per day. They are the ones that get a fair amount of traffic and have a loyal readership. Look through posts and make sure there are at least 10 or so from today before you add it to your list of forums to start participating in. Sign up for each of those active forums and spend a few minutes creating a profile that includes a picture, some info about you and most importantly a link back to your blog.

Answer questions and be helpful on the forum. If allowed, include a signature file that invites readers to check out your blog and sign up for your newsletter. I recommend spending 15 to 30 minutes a day on these forums. You should see a few new signups per week from this activity alone. As you start to accumulate more and more posts on these forums and become known as a bit of an expert in your field, you’ll see signup percentages increase.

Write an Article

Last but not least, sit down and write a 400 word article on a topic that’s closely related to your blog. Make it helpful and interesting. At the end of your article, you’ll include an author resource box that will link back to your blog.

Submit the article to article directories. You should see a steady little stream of new visitors to your blog and a percentage of those will sign up for your list.