I hear more and more people say that they see article marketing touted as a great way to do business online, but that they don't understand the basics of how it works - read on to discover more.
Although the principles of article marketing are simple once you understand them, it's like anything else - until you have it explained to you, it can be anything *but* simple! The basic idea behind article marketing is this - you write articles relevant to the subject of the business you are promoting.
This could be your own business, or an affiliate product that you are promoting.
When you submit that article to various places online, readers who are interested in what you had to say will then possibly click on a link you put either at the bottom or in the article itself.
This drives traffic to the site of your choice, where you are then in a position to get them to take further action, and at some point in the process that action will be to make a purchase.
Each article gets you traffic in numerous ways.
Firstly, if you format it correctly it can show up in search engine results for people relevant to your market, so this gets you traffic.
Secondly, once your article is published, it can be picked up by other website owners, and used on their site with your link intact, this also brings you traffic.
A third and often overlooked way that articles can bring you traffic is that people actually read articles on the directories themselves! You can also post the article on your own site, maybe a blog, or social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
One appeal of article marketing is that you do the work once when you write the article, but you can leverage that work over and over by getting it out into cyberspace.
That gives a brief outline of the basics of article marketing.