There are a number of ways to drive qualified traffic



to your site - some of it costs you money, some of it

costs you time. Some of it costs you both and doesn't

work.

This article is all about the best form of free advertising -

writing articles.

How can writing articles give you free advertising? As

you probably know, there are hundreds of thousands of

people publishing an ezine (electronic newsletter) on a

regular basis. For some of these people, publishing the

ezine is the central plank of their business - they set out

to create a business involving, primarily, the publishing of

the ezine. Others, however, publish the ezine only as an

adjunct to their website - a way to get their site in front

of their ezine subscribers in the hope that this will

generate repeat traffic.

Both types of ezine publishers have one thing in common.

The need for great content. If you've spent much time

online you'll no doubt have signed up for more than your

fair share of free ezines. You'll have come across some

that are really good, some that are OK and some that are

nothing short of woeful, with content that looks like the

publisher has picked up the first piece of regurgitated

whatever he happened to come across today to fill up the

space between the ads for his numerous affiliate programs.

Your site may include links to your affiliate programs.

After all, that's how you make money, right? But rather

than go the road of the ezine publisher who thinks she

can serve up any old porridge to her subscriber base and

they'll eat it up, spend the same time writing just one

good article on a subject matter relevant to your target

market and invite publishers of ezines with complementary

subject matter to publish that article, together with

your resource box at the end (the four or five line blurb

you see at the end of articles that give a little information

about the author and the author's website together with

a link to the site).

Now, here's the important point if you expect others to

publish your work. Your ad is your resource box; it is

NOT your article. Your article is content. Your article

should not mention your product, your site or anything

related to it. Your article must stand alone as an

independently useful piece of work (and when I say useful,

I mean it must be useful to the READER, not the author!).

Don't insult your readers' intelligence by dressing up an aFor more useful tips & hints,as an article. They're not stupid - they'll see through it and

you immediately, they'll put you on their blacklist for insulting

their intelligence and no publisher worth their salt will run

your articles anyway.

The whole purpose of writing the article is to make it such

a worthwhile piece of work that many publishers will want

to put it in front of their subscribers. Get a good article

published in an ezine with 10,000 subscribers and see

what that does for your traffic when hundreds of those

subscribers click on the link to your site that you've

included in your resource box.

Beginning to see how this works? And the best thing of all

is that it only costs you time - maybe an hour, two top

to write a decent article. Commit to writing one a week

and getting them published and you'll have a nice little

traffic flow going, believe me (AND, if you make sure that

you write about subject matter relevant to your site, that

traffic will ALSO be targeted, qualified traffic - so much

the better).

OK, so now you can see the power of writing articles as

a method of generating traffic to your website. How the

heck do you find other people to publish your work?

Thanks to the fact that so many publishers out there

don't have the time or (so they believe) ability to write

their own articles, or are looking for articles to supplement

their own, you have a ready-made market of thousands

of publishers who are always on the lookout for quality

content to present to their readers. You just have to

find them.

Here's a partial list to get you started:

When submitting your articles to the above websites, be

sensitive to the types of articles the site is looking for.

Some accept articles on any subject under the sun; others

are looking for articles on specific subjects such as internet

marketing, for example.

Over time, you will be able to add to this list. If submitting

to individual ezine publishers, don't be surprised or offended

if you don't receive a response. Most ezine publishers of

any size receive dozens of article submissions a day. Time

normally doesn't permit a response to each submission. Also,

try and find out from the publisher whether they even accept

article submissions. Many don't (me, for example). I receive

many article submissions a day which just get deleted unread.

The point is, just work up your own list, write articles

consistently and submit consistently. Over time, you'll

develop your own style of writing and attract a following.

Although it may be slow to start, you'll start getting a trickle

of new traffic from people who have come across your article

somewhere, some place and were interested enough to click

on the link in your resource box. Over time, that trickle will

become a stream, then a river, and then a flood.