With the popularity of sites such as Squidoo, Twitter, Facebook and so forth, not to mention my own enthusiasm for article marketing, the question of how much time one should be spending on creating content for others does come to mind.

Is it a waste of my time?

So much depends on how you use it. Generating content for others can be a waste, but it can also be a great way to bring traffic to your own website. Shoemoney does well with it, for example.

We aren’t all Shoemoney or any other big name blogger, of course. Not everyone will get delightful amounts of traffic from such sources.

The key factor I consider is whether or not I can afford to be dependent on a particular source. The simple truth is that no business should be relying on a single source of traffic. If you aren’t trying to get traffic from a range of sources, what are you going to do when that one vanishes?

Of course, many people make the very good point that if you are creating content for other sites, you’re also helping them to earn money, rather than earning it for yourself.

Honestly, I don’t worry about that very much. It’s perfectly true that these other sites do need to earn money, and what I post on them helps them to do so. But so long as I also get a benefit I don’t see it as a huge problem.

Each source I use has something to offer me in terms of traffic or networking. I don’t get tons of traffic from Twitter, but I do get to meet some pretty great people, and I do get some traffic out of the deal.

Facebook I don’t use much, aside from finding old friends on. My business uses of that are minimal.

Squidoo has been something of an interesting experiment for me, but not one of my big traffic generators. Others have had different experiences. As with anything else, you in part get out of it what you put into it, and that one hasn’t drawn enough of my attention to get much out of it.

Article marketing, on the other hand, has been an interesting experience for me. While many of the links come from sites that aren’t that great, I’ve seen definite SERPs benefits that I consider to be most likely due to the links gained from article marketing. That’s not a bad deal at all.

If you look around, there are ebooks telling you how to earn money using any of these sites. There’s The Twitter Report, Squidoo Affiliate Destruction, and Facebook Fortunes, just to name a few. I haven’t read a one of them, so I can’t tell you about the quality of these particular titles, but they are out there.

The catch to using just one of these sites, of course, is that if they change the rules or vanish away, you’re out of luck. Over reliance can be a poor decision.

So why do I use any of these at all?

Just as with any other method, I know better than to rely solely on a single method, such as article marketing. You never know when the rules of the search engines will change and suddenly everything built from that method will mean less.

Fortunately, just because the rules change at one search engine doesn’t mean they will change at them all. That is one of the advantages of article marketing. If you can get your site up there in more than one search engine, you aren’t doomed by a sudden rule change.

Overall, it all comes down to being sensible about all your marketing tactics. Once you’ve mastered one, keep it up and start learning another. Just about anything you do online depends on another site to bring you traffic. Rely on that one source at your own peril.

I do a lot of article marketing for my sites. I enjoy it and get decent results for my efforts. But it’s sometimes hard to decide whether an article belongs on my blog or being distributed as an article for other sites to use.

Sometimes I do both. A few edits and it’s not the same article on my site as it is on others. But other times I can’t imagine doing that to a good article… err, blog post.

How to Decide Which to Do

Picking which way I go can be a bit of a pain. Sometimes an article that starts out as something I mean for article marketing ends up being something I would far rather have on my blog. There’s a difference that can be hard to explain. I guess you could say blog articles tend to be a bit more personal for me. Not too significantly, but there are some elements I can picture better on my own site than someone else’s.

And sometimes that means I need a new idea for the article site. It might be a twist on the now blog post. It might be an abbreviated version of the post.

Either way, a decision must be made. It’s almost a whim, no hard and fast rule. Just the feeling that the style or how personal I get goes better one way or the other.

Editing for Article Sites

If I choose to just edit it, there are a few ways to go about it. I don’t worry much about duplicate content issues. I don’t particularly want an article site outranking my site with one of my own articles, but it can happen. Even if the article is more thoroughly rewritten it can happen. After all, how many people are going to search for your article by quoting from its text?

I do prefer to keep the most thorough version for my own site. What goes to article sites should still be a good article, but mine should go one better.

Release Schedule

Of course, anything on my own site gets published first, by several days at least. It’s always good to have the content on your own site have first shot at being discovered by the search engines. A couple weeks is better yet in my opinion, but I’m not always writing far enough ahead to manage that.

Are They Really So Different?

Depending on your style, blogging and article marketing don’t have to be all that different. But they can be. I see my blogs as something more personal than what I want to send off to article sites. They need to have more of my personality.

Articles still need some of that personality, but I prefer to count on the information bringing people in through my article links. A hint of personality combined with good information strikes me as a good combination to bring someone to a blog where you continue with the good information and more personality.

The recent opening of Google’s Knol has a lot of people thinking about what they can put on there. The theory is that Google pages should rank well. Early tests show that to be likely, and so many people are creating Knol pages to see what they can get.

I’m always cautious about these things. Creating a Knol page is working on something that you do not have complete control over. I have no doubt that Google will delete Knols anytime they feel one is inappropriate.

It is, of course, entirely possible that people will make money from their Knol pages. There are many people already making money from sites on Blogger and pages on sites such as Squidoo or HubPages. Some even do pretty well.

It’s a cheap way of creating web pages, which appeals to many a tight-budgeted marketer. And so many pages do get some pretty good traffic that this can be appealing.

But what you give up is control.

Don’t assume that just because you have legitimate information to share that someone won’t try to get you removed from a particular service. It has happened to many on Blogger, for example, and not just to spammy pages. It is possible for legitimate content to be flagged by competitors. Creating pages on a service you aren’t paying for means that you risk the account being deleted, sometimes with poor warning.

On the plus side, creating a Knol, Squidoo Lens or what have you means that you are listed on a site that may get traffic with less of your own effort. There can be a benefit to that, especially for keywords that you are having trouble ranking for anyhow, even if the links to your own sites are No Follow.

The key to these is to add to your own image as an expert on your topic. Create a good page and be sure to have links to relevant pages of your own. Not to excess, as the page you are creating should stand mostly on its own. But as a reference for more information or details that are related to the topic at hand, the occasional link to your own site can help to drive traffic.

Do it too much and your page will look more like spam.

Overall, there’s nothing wrong with creating pages on services such as these, so long as you build a solid core business that you have more control over. It’s rather like article submission in some ways. You’re spreading content out in the hopes of bringing in more traffic and income. So long as you are not relying on any one page or group of pages for your livelihood, you’ll probably do all right.

Some people are fans of article marketing. Others aren’t. This may be due to concerns about their articles being stolen, duplicate content penalties or even just a dislike of article writing.

Could it be? Is article marketing a waste of time?

In my experience, no, it is not. I get traffic and backlinks from articles I’ve written. I get better search engine rankings. It works for me.

Why doesn’t it work for everyone?

The first reason article marketing doesn’t work for everyone is that not everyone goes at it right. They try submitting private label articles or don’t spell and grammar check their work. They submit thinly disguised ads as articles.

In short, they don’t think about what article publishers will want to use or what people will want to read.

What helps make an article stand out?

Article writing doesn’t have to be laborious. If you know your topic well it may take only 10 minutes or so to write a reasonable quality article.

If you want to stand out more, you may need to do some research or be more detailed in what you write about your topic. The articles that really stand out are the ones that provide the best information to readers. This will help you to stand out as well.

Lists are said to work very well. You can do a top 10, 20 or more with some pretty good results. Shorter lists work well if you give details as to why you picked each item for your list.

Humor can also work. Humor is often some of the hardest writing to do, but when it’s working it’s a lot of fun. You may run the risk of offending people and you need to think about what impression a humorous article will give of your business. It may not be the one you mean to make.

Submitting your articles to the right sites helps.

While you can submit your articles to smaller article directories, the bigger ones such as eZine Articles are more important. But that doesn’t mean smaller ones are good for nothing. If they are choosy about the kinds of articles they accept, your work may only be associated with other good articles.

Many article directories accept pretty much every article, and your work is hidden by junk and spam. If you’re submitting by hand, skip this kind of directory.

Niche directories are a good choice as well. This can keep your article with other relevant content. Your odds of being read by people interested in the topic may go up.

And of course submit articles to relevant webmasters who accept article submissions. This can go a long way toward developing a relationship with another webmaster. You don’t want a competitor so much as a complementary site.

It’s making the extra little efforts that will help your work to stand out. People who fail in article marketing most often do so because they aren’t working hard enough on it. Don’t fall into that trap.

Not my income goal, my article marketing goal. It’s been a couple months since I’ve managed that, for a variety of reasons.

My goal is simple. By the 15th of each month, have one article for every day of the month written for publication through Article Marketer. I only had two left to do today, and I finished them.

This is one of the things I love about Article Marketer. I can spread out the publication of my articles over a period of time, so that a blast of writing doesn’t leave me with a single days’ exposure on the article sites. Instead I appear in various categories throughout the month.

I have my sites set up by priority. My highest priority site gets an article published every 3 days. Next priority is weekly. The remainder are approximately monthly, with a couple sites getting extra articles if I have the free time for it.

This month I’m not doing extra articles. I’m going to start researching new BANS niches instead.

I got a package in the mail yesterday from Ezine Articles, and thought I’d share the results with you. Every here and there, they send just some of their “Expert Authors” a little something. Last time I got a coffee mug. This time it was a mouse pad.

But what I really liked was that they included some stats for me. First of all, the stats told me I need to work harder on my article marketing. Fan that I am of it, I only sent them 66 articles last year. My goal is 1/day. But then I wasn’t doing heavy duty article marketing for a lot of last year. Still, I want to do better. Should have done better.

My most viewed article got 1400 page views. That’s not too bad, especially since 642 people clicked on the link to go to my website. That’s not bad, close to half the people reading the article go to visit my site.

I checked in Google and found that the exact article title, in combination with my name, has 141 results. I combined it with my name because the title in this case may not have been unique, and one would expect my name to appear anytime someone included the resource box as they are supposed to.

And the article is one I wrote and submitted in 2006. It’s been there a while.

I checked my other stats, since Ezine Articles gives some really wonderful stats. That article far outperformed my others, with twice the clicks of its nearest competitor. That tells me I was on to something with that one. On the other hand, some articles appear to have been published more often, another facet to consider.

Now, I do my article marketing a semi-lazy way. I do all my own writing rather than use a ghost writer, but I submit using Article Marketer. I have a lifetime membership with them, and it really is easier than doing it by hand or even with article submission software. I’ve been trying to use part of each month to write up an entire month’s submissions, and then I use Article Marketer’s system to send them out one a day. Keeps me from having to think about it the entire month.

I hope I can come closer to my goal of 1 article submission per day this year. I already know I’ve missed some days, but I still keep working at it, to see how far I can come with it. Just think how much more 365 articles can do in comparison with a mere 66!

Starting a Home Business Series:

Get Your Home Business Going in the New Year
Brainstorming Your Home Business Ideas
How I Research a Market for a Niche
How Do You Get a Website Going?
How Much Does an Online Business Really Cost?
How Complex Does a Website Need to Be?
How to Set Up a Wordpress Blog
These Are a Few of My Favorite Themes
Can Article Marketing Work for You?
It Sounds Like a Lot of Work - Is It Really That Hard?
Building Your List
Getting Social with Your Blog
Is Your Site Ready for Pay Per Click?
Article Marketing Statistics (current page)
Putting the Pieces Together

I’m a big fan of article marketing myself. I have regular goals for how many articles I write each and every month for publication on other websites. It has really helped me to build traffic.

But it doesn’t work for everyone. Why is that?

A lot of people try to skip steps when they write articles. They dash off a quick piece, possibly full of links to their own site and submit it to tons of article websites. The part they don’t understand is that in order for article marketing to work, someone has to want to post your article.

And the good article directories are picky. They don’t post just any old piece of junk.

A good article should be at least 400 words of relevant information. Some say 750 words is ideal, others don’t really worry about it. But it is much harder to really impress people with fewer than 400 words.

There are tons of article directories out there, but just a few important ones, such as Ezine Articles. Many of the rest will probably never do much more than provide a highly obscure backlink, if the search engines notice it at all. The better article directories give you a chance that webmasters will decide to use your article.

You should also be submitting to selected webmasters who are willing to receive articles from you. If you can develop a relationship with a webmaster you are more likely to get them to publish your article to their site or newsletter. If they have a good readership, that can mean a nice amount of traffic to your website.

A lot of people recommend using automated solutions to article submission. There are some good services out there, as well as software solutions. My own personal favorite is Article Marketer. I’m a Lifetime Member there.

What I love about their service is that I can queue up my articles in advance, telling them when I want an article sent out to their publication list. Article Marketer is also picky. They review my articles and tell me if, in their view, there’s a problem. It’s just a bit of prescreening that helps to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

They absolutely require a minimum of 400 words, they make sure you haven’t overdone your use of keywords (their opinion, of course), they make sure your resource box HTML works, and they make sure your article is correctly categorized. These things can be a help.

Right now Article Marketer has a deal going on, and I don’t know the end date. They’re offering discounts on their quarterly, annual and lifetime memberships. And if you sign up, they’re also offering 1, 2 or 3 articles written for you, free with the purchase.

I love using them because it simplifies my overall article submission process. If I want to target a particular webmaster, I can still do that myself, but I don’t have to take the time to submit to the various websites. I’ve used article submission software, and using Article Marketer is just a better use of my time in my opinion.

What Else Should You Know?

A lot of people worry about duplicate content when they submit articles. The quickest way around that is to not post the identical articles on your site. The other part is to remember that it’s not quite as bad as people say it is, so far as I can tell.

I often have what I post on my site be different from what I submit to directories using Article Marketer. The information on my site generally has the most detailed information. The submitted articles are good, go into some reasonable depth, but there’s just a bit more to them on my sites than elsewhere.

It also takes a LOT of article submissions to really make a difference. Two or three articles won’t do a lot for your site. You have to be persistent in your efforts.

I would also suggest that you read my recent article from the newsletter on what I find keeps an article from being marketable. It’s from my own experiences running one of those really minor article directories.

Starting a Home Business Series:

Get Your Home Business Going in the New Year
Brainstorming Your Home Business Ideas
How I Research a Market for a Product
How Do You Get a Website Going?
How Much Does an Online Business Really Cost?
How Complex Does a Website Need to Be?
How to Set Up a Wordpress Blog
These Are a Few of My Favorite Themes
Can Article Marketing Work for You? (current page)
It Sounds Like a Lot of Work - Is It Really That Hard?
Building Your List
Getting Social with Your Blog
Is Your Site Ready for Pay Per Click?
Article Marketing Statistics
Putting the Pieces Together

More important, what drives your target market nuts?

One of the things you need to remember is that customers love solutions. The more annoying the problem, the more people will want a solution.

Thinking about what drives people nuts is important as you write your marketing copy, blog posts and articles. There is little point in focusing on things people don’t care about.

You don’t have to be perfectly serious as you write, even when you’re focusing on providing solutions to problems. A touch of light humor can work very well, but too much will make the humor more memorable than whatever you’re trying to sell. It’s something to use cautiously.

So how do you know what problems to address? There’s an old saying about how people don’t buy a drill because they want a drill. They buy a drill because they want a hole. That’s the kind of thinking you need to use.

There are a few ways to do this. You can take sides on a controversy, discuss the faults of other solutions, discuss the many ways you could solve a problem, and so forth. Creativity is good; you don’t want to sound like everyone else. You want to stand out.

And yes, thinking of what drives you nuts can drive you nuts some days. All a part of the process.

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