I've tried writing search engine optimized articles in the past to sell my graphic design services and I've got to tell you -- it didn't do me much good. Search engine algorithms get smarter all the time, and keyword-stuffing doesn't work nearly as well as it used to. One of my clients (who will remain nameless) asked me to do a series of SEO pieces for his band's website -- and their site ranking actually went down as a result.



During a rare day of accelerated motivation, I was doing some Web research and came across the concept of article marketing. Fans of the practice claim that if you do it right, writing one or two articles a week about your business will drive traffic (and therefore money) right into your hands. So here's the experiment: I want to take the $5,000 per year I make now off my online efforts and turn it into $15,000. Ideally, articles like this one will help me get there!

The concept is simple: All I have to do is write one or two of these articles per week (provided I can keep up my motivation!) and when I distribute them to online content sites, I'll start getting links and improving my PageRank. That all sounds well and good, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Distributing articles to these sites is tedious!

It seems like every content site has totally different parameters: This one wants 75 characters per line, that one wants 70. This one accepts HTML coding, that one wants all plain text -- absolutely no HTML. By the time I had successfully submitted my latest article to three places, I was ready to uncork the chardonnay and call it a night! It took nearly four hours just to get my words out on three websites. I was ready to give up on the Internet for good after that.

After a little more reading, I discovered that I was not alone. In fact, there were so many other people like me that some enterprising Internet gurus had created systems that would negate the need for all the busy-work. I'm not sure yet whether I want to sign up for a paid subscription to one of these sites, so I'm going to do a little further research.

The first place I looked at was isnare. They offer a free article distribution service, but in order to reach their entire list of 40,000 sites you need to pay a fee -- something that is fairly commonplace in this industry. The fees work on a sliding scale depending upon how many articles you want to submit. It costs $10 to submit five pieces, right on up to $100 for 115 articles.

The next place I looked at was PhantomWriters. Cool name, right? I pictured myself wearing a leotard and a cape, flying from website to website distributing pearls of wisdom.

PhantomWriters has a snazzy website that is quite content-rich itself. In fact, I got pretty caught up reading some of their writing tips! This service is a little more expensive, ringing in at $35 per submission, or a volume discount of $200 for 10 articles. This one seemed a little steep for my budget, so I moved right along.

My next Internet search brought me to SubmitYourArticles. They charge a flat rate of $37 per month for four article submissions, which works out to just under $10 per article. They also offer HTML editing tools and a good directory of tips and tricks to get your work published.

Another service I found was Article Marketer. They work on a subscription system, and each level of subscriber can submit unlimited articles during the course of their subscription. The quarterly subscription is $74.99 right on up to a lifetime package for just under $500. Article Marketer submits to more than 66,000 sites. They also employ a team of editors who read each article to make sure it's publishable.

All four of these places have something unique to offer, and depending upon the volume of articles I submit, each of them could be a better value. In the end, it's all up to me -- and you!