If you follow these 5 effective steps, you'll increase your sales promoting through this avenue.

Step 1.
Choosing the product or service you wish to promote is the obvious first step. It may be your own product or favorite affiliate program. Whatever it may be ensure it's an offer that you'll earn profits from, and promote through your free ezine article and move on.

Step 2.
Define your "useful, but incomplete" approach. Provide your readers with information they find value and are able to actually apply but make certain it's "incomplete" in that they can better use the information by making a purchase.

It works like a charm. The basis behind it is to use your content to build up to your desired response, and then you make an offer that allows the potential customer to fully utilize the content.

For example;
Let's say you want to promote an e-book on Attraction Marketing.

- You could write an article that covers the "basics" of attraction marketing, and then promote an "advanced" but complete resource on the topic.
- You could write an article on how to profit from promoting yourself, and then promote an affiliate program e-Book as the complete "How to Market yourself" guide.

It's that simple, that's how it works.

Step 3.
Change your approach slightly by offering a tips list or tutorial.

For example:

You want to promote a software (let's say, an autoresponder). You describe various uses of autoresponders and how the reader can actually profit from it. What kind of tips list or tutorial could you create?

"How an Autoresponder Will Increase Your Sales 1000%"
"10 Powerful and Profitable ways to Explode Your Sales and Subscribers using an Autoresponder"

That's all you need to do. Determine your end result. Decide how to get there with your "useful, but incomplete" approach. And then develop a list, or even a step-by-step tutorial for your article that leads the reader along.

With each new "idea" or "way" or "tip" or "step" or "strategy" that you share, you can further direct the reader towards realizing their need of your upcoming offer, and lay the foundation for them to accept the offer.

Step 4:
Expand on each point to build your content.

Here's more of the easy part. Just "fill-in-the-blanks" to complete your article.

Write 1-2 short paragraphs for each of your points. Make them good. Provide quality content. The offer you will soon make will see poor results if your information isn't useful.

Remember, you are trying to pre sell the reader on the idea that they are going to need your offer. If you don't provide them with quality information that they WANT to begin using immediately, then why will they want to buy what you are promoting?

Light a fire in them. Motivate them. Challenge them. Give them such nuggets of gold that they want to keep mining until they hit the mother load!

Step 5:
Put the finishing touches on your article. This is generally referred to as the 5 Pillars; which are Polish, Promote, Proof, Publish, and Profit. Don't skip any of them as they're all critical.