Well written articles are powerful things - they demonstrate your expertise to readers better than any ad, website, or banner can. And once you're considered an expert, people listen to you. If a licensed medical doctor told you that you should take aspirin every day to lower your risk of a heart attack, would you listen? Yes (Well, hopefully) What if you read an article in Newsweek that said the UK was going to convert to using the Euro, would you believe it? Yes. Why? Because they're experts on those subjects, and they say so. That's the power articles can give you.
Author Resource Boxes Are The Trail Of Reese's Pieces Leading Back To The Author's Website
Why do authors write articles? It's not just to solidify their expert status. That status alone is pretty much worthless. You've got to give the reader a place to go when they're done reading your article ? a place to find out more about the subject. If they've read the entire article, chances are, they want to learn more from you. Authors give their readers that chance by putting a link to a place where they can find more information in your resource box, aka - the About the Author area. Think about the traffic you would get from a site with 500,000 subscribers or more, and feel free to make the Homer Simpson drool sound.
Googlebot Loves Candy [or] There's A Reason Why It's Called Inktomi Slurp?
Who else loves to read an entire article, then follow the link back to the author's website? That's right, search engines do. Search engine bots will follow your trail of Reese's Pieces all the way back to your site, then chill out there and look around while they finish the rest of the bag.
Your Link, All Over The Internet
Now that your article with your link in the resource box is on the web, publishers can read it. If they like it, they can re-print it in newsletters, ezines, websites, all over the web. And what are your conditions? The publisher can't change it, and they have to include that active link to your site. Now you have your link, all over the Internet.
Another added bonus of other sites reprinting your articles is SEO. If a site that ranks very high in the results for keywords related to your article picks it up, the chances of someone getting to your article through a search engine are high. This is kind of a round about way of getting search engine traffic, as some of those people will also follow the link in your resource box.
Where Can I Submit My Articles?
Yep. You can submit your article to individual article directories by hand, and get the job done. In fact, here is a great site that has around 100 directories listed on it: http://www.arcanaweb.com/resources/article-directories.html
But even if you assume it will take 1 minute (that's being very generous) per submission, that's still over an hour and a half of work you're doing to submit your article to only 100 sites.
Wow, That Sucks? Is there a better way?
Yep again. I use a service called Article Marketer (http://www.Article-Marketer.com) to submit my articles. They go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that publishers are only sent the highest quality work by weeding out spam, advertorials, and articles with bad grammar. In fact, since my articles aren't spam, they'll work with me to whip the article into shape, and ensure that I'll get the most bang for my submission buck, and the publishers get the content they're looking for.
Article Marketer can submit to roughly 30,000 publishers and article directories, and is very reasonably priced. If you're about to publish a few articles, you have the choice of a low per article fee, or you can get a 3-month subscription and submit an unlimited number of articles. This choice is invaluable if I'm launching a few websites in a month and need to promote them all.
Best of all, it doesn't take me hours, it takes me minutes. Using a submission service saves me time and effort, and it gets my articles out to places and people I never would have known about otherwise. Actually, I'm going to use Article-Marketer.com to submit this article, too. (By the time you read this, I'll have already submitted this article through them, haha!)
Wow, You Really Know Your Stuff
I write articles for nearly every website that I create, and I see the benefits almost instantly when I submit a well-written article. (I also own my own article directory, so I know what it's like to be on the receiving end, too)
Now that you know why article marketing is king, start writing. There are thousands of content-hungry publishers out there, ready to reprint your articles and make you an expert with TONS of Reese's Pieces?