Few know how to make money online writing articles in spite of the number that profess to be able to write them. Articles can be used in two very fundamental ways: on your website or on the web pages of others. Since the purpose of writing articles is to have them read, then they will be read either on one of your own pages or that of an article directory, ezine or another website.



What is wrong with that paragraph? Did you spot the deliberate mistake? NO? Then read it again and see if you can find the false statement. It might not be too obvious, but it should become so if you consider the reason that the vast majority of people have a website. It's not to have it admired for the fabulous design, the graphics and the masterful writing. It's not even to attract massive amounts of traffic to your website. It's none of these things. Got it yet?

It's to make money! There's no point in all these beautiful graphics and intelligent search engine optimization if you aren't making money. So what's the purpose of writing articles? To make money of course, and that is why you need the resources of article directories and ezines to help you. The fact is that the vast majority of people that try to make money online have no idea how to do it. They don't know how to advertise a product - if they have a product, that is. Most have no product and rely on other people to provide one.

There's nothing wrong with that, because practically all offline stores sell products made or produced by other people. However, if you want to sell something online you have to know how to promote it, and that is where articles can come into the equation. The proper use of article marketing using well written articles that not only attract interest, but also persuade readers to visit your chosen web page, can make the difference between success and failure (that web page need not be yours!).

Given all of that, how do you use articles to make money? Very few people are trying to find out, because if you do a keyword search using the terms 'article' and 'money' you get next to nothing. Similarly with 'articles' and 'cash'. However, a lot more are seeking information on article marketing, since 'article marketing' offers 27,000 results on the Google keyword tool, and 'marketing articles' almost twice that number. That is using Google's keyword tool based upon searches for these keywords, not the number of web pages providing the information.

There are a number of ways in which writing articles can be used online to make money, the most lucrative being getting your articles listed on Page 1 of Google for its keyword, or even its title if that has a good number of searches going for it. Don't be fooled by the number of other sites on Google providing the same information, since the search engine appears to give a higher weighting to content on article directories than that on ordinary web pages.

They might deny it, but that's the way it seems to me and others, and why we write so many articles. I get better traffic results by submitting an article to the top 20 directories than I do publishing it on my own website. So why bother with a website? A good question, although there are reasons and this is not the place to discuss them.

There are places where the proper answers to these questions are provided, and the purpose of this article is to point out that many people have the wrong outlook on articles and why they are written. They are written to make money, and to achieve that you not only need content and readers, but you need these readers to be in a continual supply: such as you will get on a search engine.

So if your article is listed on a search engine, with no other competition on the page, you will be onto a winner. Guess what? That's what you get when your article is published on an article directory, and that page is listed on a search engine. No competition: just your article and your resource sending readers to your chosen web page. Writing articles can be used to make money, but only if you understand article marketing, and the right way to go about marketing articles for profit.

Fewer people understand how to make money online writing articles than you would believe, but if you can understand how to achieve it then you have cracked two of the major problems involved in making money online: marketing and publicity.