It is not my intention to give you a 5 or 10 step plan to get traffic to your web site. But I do want to talk to you about one of the best traffic generating systems that exists.

Posting your Articles to Article Directories.

And it's really a surprisingly efficient way to bring in traffic.

Hopefully you're not saying "But I don't have any articles". If you don't, and are serious about wanting traffic, then get some. Either write them yourself, or have them 'ghostwritten' for you. It is amazingly inexpensive to do this, and the benefit is priceless, and non-stop.

The most well-known place to have articles written 'on the cheap' is http://www.elance.com

You must believe me when I say that the benefits are endless. Most of us start out reluctant to spend a lot of time posting articles, but when we finally become convinced of the value of the extra traffic, we become believers. Then we kick ourselves for not doing it sooner.

Here's How it Works:

Let's say that your web site is about Affiliate Marketing, as mine is. You need to become known as an expert in your field. The best way to do this is by having articles on your content-based web site telling all you can about affiliate marketing techniques.

In addition to pages on your web site, you can become well known even faster by posting articles to Article Directories. They are in the business of providing articles to the Internet public on many different categories of expertise.

People can read them, and even more significantly, they can post them on their own web site, or even use them in their email newsletters. Well how does that help you? Simple.. your name and resource box is at the end of every article, and people will surf over to visit your site from that.

That is how you get extra traffic.

Do all those who read your articles visit your site? Of course not. In fact, only about 3% of readers may visit. This is quite normal, but it does eventually snowball into significant numbers. Here's How.

When people use your articles on their web sites or ezines, they must also maintain the credits and respect the copyrights of the author. I felt really honoured when I discovered that some of my articles were used the day after I posted them. And you only discover a very few places that your work is used. Most of the time, you can't know.

The first Directory I posted articles to is Ezine Articles at http://EzineArticles.com/ which is the fastest growing of all of them. By logging in to my members page, I can view how many times each article has been read. What I can't see is how many times people borrowed my articles, and how many times they were read in that new place, etc, etc.

Can you see how significant this all can be?

One more important point is the question of how long the articles should be. My personal preferences are 800 to 1,400 words. However, 500 to 1,000 is an acceptable range. In fact, if you have a 2,000 word article, you should split it up into 2 parts. That way you get the advantage of one extra page of visibility.

Finally, there is the question of how many directories you should post to.

You need to be aware, that posting articles can be a very time consuming exercise. For that reason, it may be best to test many, but only use a few. The more popular ones are usually better organized and permit article posting in an easy way. Ths includes previewing it before posting it with errors.

Currently, I post to 5 directories but have rejected more th an 20 that were such a drag to use, that I gave up on them. On the easy ones to post to, I can get in and out in less than 5 minutes for one article.

Here are some current favorites:

Ezine Articles
http://EzineArticles.com/

Go Articles
http://www.goarticles.com/

Article Alley
http://www.articlealley.com/

Idea Marketers
http://ideamarketers.com/

PS: What is shocking to discover is that every directory has it's certain type of reader with differing tastes. An article read 50 times on one directory may be read 200 to 300 times in another one. And the reverse also happens for a different article subject, when comparing the same directories. Instead of 50 and 300, it could be 300 and 50.

This proves that you must post to several directories. Probably 10 to 15 is the most you need. Even 5 is good, but 10 is better. If you change headlines and a paragraph or two, then that can be also good. Let the search engines find you more often that way.

I don't have enough articles posted yet, but I slowly add more every week or so. My primary target is 25 to 35 articles, and eventually 100 articles.

To find out where some of my work is, just search on Yahoo or Google for "fred farah"

Until next time.

Fred Farah
copyright 2005

The Best Affiliate Products
and Niche Market Strategies for Maximum Profits
Best Affiliate Products