Naturally I shied away from articles for what now seems "too long".



You see, article marketing works, and if making money online is your goal and your budget is tight, then it's one of the best, if not the best, things you can do to start making sales.

Yes, right from the start. Put aside your doubts and your fears rest assured that where there's a will, there is a way.

Not only are articles, if done well, capable of driving targeted traffic to your sales page, they may make you famous!

Should this concern you? After all we're in it for the money and the lifestyle and not for the fame, right? Leave that to the performers and show-offs in life.

For my part, being the shy and retiring Scotsman I am (lol), I didn't fancy putting my name about the place pretending to be something I was not. I wanted to learn other strategies first. So it was later rather than sooner, through frustration and a lack of success, I put this worry aside, and took to the task of getting articles and press-releases out to the world.

I'd woken up to the fact that if you want to make some serious money online, and if people are ever going to buy from you, then "branding" yourself and building credibility is what you must do. Because the long term goal should be that people start looking for you; because people buy from people, and they will buy from you once your reputation is cemented in marketing

terms.

So, herein lies the quandary that most newbies have when they first consider writing articles to market online: how do you build credibility without compromising your integrity; which is, how to build credibility when you're new to the game?

After all, is it likely someone is going to buy from you if you hold up your hand and admit you don't know what you're doing?

Many newbies feign authority and an aura of success because of such a concern, in the hope they will get lucky and gain a few sales, and thus attain credibility by having some experience to talk of. In other words they fake it till they make it.

Essentially, however, the author holds a responsibility to the reader to provide informative content, and this is best done by writing from ones own experience. Therefore, if you are new to the scene, it's important to carry out a little, or a lot of, research on your subject matter before you begin writing your copy.

Provide inaccurate or misleading information and you're back to square one, except with a tarnished and perhaps even smaller reputation than when you first started. Not the way to success.

Key things to ask yourself before you sit down to write are: What's this about? What questions about your subject matter are needing an answer?

You don't have to be an expert on your area of choice to write articles on it, so long as you are honestly providing perspective and offering some benefit to the reader in what they are reading. In a very real sense you are priming your reader to want to know more, even as you are learning yourself.

Just write what you know. Answer your very own questions. Does the information you've found on your subject of choice satisfy you? If not, seek out more answers.

The great thing about writing articles is they force you back on yourself and what you are selling; which is, in truth, much the same thing.

As I said before people buy from people. It's a matter of course what your product is, build your name and reputation and people will check out your product. Become trustworthy by providing quality information in your own voice(and yes, get your name all over the place) and people will turn to you again and again. You've become a resource.

Don't confuse this by writing about yourself and your experiences at the expense of good content. At all times keep the reader in mind. Stay focused on your topic.

Article writing along with article marketing is a process that unfolds as you get good by "doing". The newbie shortens the learning curve by starting straight off and working at it on a consistent basis. This is aided by the fact that most publishers are looking for good quality texts and simply won't put your work out to the world if it's not up to scratch.

Again, you learn by doing. If you are diligent, honest and study the art of writing good text, rest assured that where you begin is not where you'll be.

Yes, read. Read a lot. And then some more.

Judge for yourself what resources are best helping you produce the results you are after. Mirror good writers. What is it about their work that makes you read on? Just the same analyse articles that just switch you off. Why does this happen?

Learn then you'll earn.

In truth article marketing is laying foundations for your future success. But don't be put off by any notions that is just isn't easy and that success through this tactic is slow to come by. A well written piece, submitted to a top article site, already optimised to rank high in search engine searches, can generate hundreds, if not thousands, of quality links back to your site in less than a month.

Now that is powerful stuff!

Just get the ball rolling!