There are currently three ways to get your online articles published:



1.Submit your articles yourself.

2.Purchase Article software that allows you to automate some of the repetitive actions of uploading to multiple directories.

3.Hire an article submission service to submit your articles.

Let's look at some of the pros and cons of each of these options.

Do It Yourself

If you have all the time in the world, you could submit articles on your own. First you'd have to research all the online article directory sites. Then you'd have to check their search engine ranking. It would be a total waste of time to publish your articles to sites that were only page rank 1. Once that's done, you have to log on to each of the directories and create an account and a pen name. After creating 100 or so accounts you're ready to start uploading your article. You'd need to log on the each directory, one by one, and carry out each of the formatting steps involved in the upload process. Some of the steps include; create a title, write a summary of the article, cut and paste the article body, list out the keywords or tags in the article, and entering the links. If you average about 10 minutes to set up each account and create 100 accounts, you'd spend about 17 hours just creating accounts. Uploading your article to 100 directories could take another 17 hours. Personally I'd rather pound salt than go through this torture.

Purchasing Article Software

At first glance this seems like a great option. Buy the software and download it to your computer and take off submitting articles. You pay for it one time and you own the right to use the software. While this is true, there are a few drawbacks to package article submission software. One of the biggest drawbacks is that this is generic software. It works on the law of averages. It's programmed to work with the average article directory. If the article directory's formatting specifications match the software then the directory will accept your upload. If it doesn't, then your article will be rejected. Then you're back to uploading by hand. If you do a lot of article submissions to a wide variety of directories, package software is not the route for you. We have personally used many different softwares and the results were extremely slim.

Article Submission Service

For me, using an article submission service is the only way to fly. If you write and submit articles for numerous clients or just like to have articles effectively submitted for yourself, using a service will prove to be your most efficient and economical choice. A really good service will make it easy for you to submit articles for multiple clients. A service can tailor their uploads to suit each directory being contacted. What this means to you is that with a service you have a greater probability of your article actually being published on the target directories. The other thing you get with a good article submission service is excellent reporting capabilities. You can print out a report that lists all the directories that published your article.

Studio98 has just launched a new article submission service. I gave it a test drive and found it to be extremely user friendly. I loved the tutorials. I could actually understand what they were saying. I was able to create separate accounts for each of my clients. And I absolutely love their reports. I can show each client how many articles I've submitted for them and give them a list of the directories where the article was submitted to. (Its still up the administrator of the article directory to approve it, but its great to see where the articles were actually submitted). This gives me additional credibility with my clients. Their system also allows numerous levels of service. Everyone from an occasional submitter to a heavy hitter with many clients can tailor a service that meets their needs and budget. I tried out numerous article submission services before I chose Studio98. It's the exact right thing for me. It sure beats pounding salt.