Sam Clark
When people hear the term Article Marketing most switch off instantly. We all know that marketing a website, blog, lens etc is easy if you use articles. So why is it that so many people never invest any of their time creating these traffic pulling words?

Unfortunately people are inherently lazy. If they can find an easier way of doing something they will. People automatically think that they are not writers so creating articles will be a drag and not pull in even a handful of visitors to their sites. The sad fact is that they will probably spend a lot of money going the easy way, when all they need to do is take what they already know for free to generate highly targeted visitors to their site.

Writing should never be looked upon as something that only professional writers should do. You can hire a professional to do the writing for you but why spend out more money when you can do it yourself? Even if you have never written anything more than an email in your life.

If you are marketing your own product then you are already armed with enough knowledge to write a simple 250 word article on the benefits of your product. Imagine that you have just been sent an email asking you what your product does and why it will help this person with their business.

You know the answer already, you created this product knowing that it would do this and that and the user would benefit from it. Now just compose an email back explaining in simple terms what your product will do. Keep your tone conversational, don't use technical terms or feel that you need to come across as a college professor. You MUST come across as sincere and helpful, leave the professor jargon for the professors.

People don't want to be made to feel stupid or need to go grab a dictionary to work out what you are saying. Keep it simple and to the point with a friendly tone, just like you are talking to the neighbor who asked what you do.

Once you have the basics down, you then need to make sure that the title at least is a click generating machine. Get the title wrong and you could be looking at a waste of time and effort. A title such as 'Make Money With Adsense' wont generate as many clicks as a title that sparks the readers curiosity like 'I made $$$$ using this three minute adsense miracle that has been kept a secret for too long'.

Make the reader want to click through. Curiosity creates clicks. Grab their attention fast and keep it there. Once you get the hang of writing the articles, you then need to work on fine tuning it. If you create an article that doesn't get many clicks, then changing the title could be all it needs.

Offering the reader free information is another great way to get them reading the article. Remember the article is not a selling article, it's a pre sell. The sales page will sell, this is just warming them up.

Giving the reader something for free is always a sure fire way to keep them reading or clicking through to the sales page. But if your title reads '7 top tips for cleaning' make sure that you give them 7 top tips for cleaning. You will generate trust in the reader and make them want to click through to see what else you have available.

The most important part of creating articles is making them the right length. People don't want to get information that is going to take them all week to read, they want answers quickly. When you start writing your article don't go in with the intention of writing War and Peace all over again.

Some of the most successful articles are less than 300 words long. The average article length is between 250-600 words long. Once you get the hang of creating these articles you can produce two or three articles or more an hour. Don't let the title of 'Professional Writer' hold you back from cashing in on article marketing.
Jun 3rd 2007 00:08