How many times have you read that in a sales letter? Tens, hundreds, thousands of times! I know I have. It's become an overworked clich?. But clich's are clich's because they are true!

I know because I went through my own revelation about web business.

After suffering a stroke and facing up to loss of income and medical bills, the web seemed like the solution to everything. I struggled with every trick in the book?but I was distracted by the noise on the web and never able to stick with anything or get anything to work. But through my very inability to focus, I learned the number 1 lesson about the web ? persistence is the heart of web success.

Then I had my revelation. I needed to find something I enjoyed doing. Then I would stick-to-it. Wow! So incredibly obvious, I felt sick about it!

As I cast around, my choice fell on article marketing. I'd always liked writing, but could I write with discipline and persistently? Well, it turned out that I could but along the way I had to get past some roadblocks and re-learn some things.

** I had to learn to pay more than lip-service to the absolute reality that "content is king" on the web. If you've taken that to heart you are in-synch with the search engines and more importantly the customers?article writing goes with the flow...

** I had to learn a skill ? how to write an article. Now, luckily that's a lot easier than it sounds?all the basic materials needed are on the web?Also, as writing is a skill, the more you do the easier it gets?you may never be a great author, but you can be a superb writer of short, fact-stuffed pieces that people absolutely love because they make a real difference to their lives?

** I had to learn to exploit my new article writing skills systematically. Simply putting an article out there doesn't do much good. You need a planned program of articles that are written with multiple uses in mind. And you have to learn the skills of monetizing the targeted traffic you will certainly generate?

** I had to make a vow, to avoid the self-defeating abuse of article writing. Duplicate articles, plagiarism, poor writing, unstructured and almost unreadable drivel, all these and more have to give way to solid, researched ideas with an original twist. If you do that the article users and readers will love you and you will succeed?

** I had to take a vow of patience. I don't know if there really is a Google Sandbox into which all newbies are put, or whether Google, faced with billions of web pages, is simply ?slow' to get round the web. Whichever, Google itself admits that finding all your links can take significant time! But the patience is worth it. There are ways of making short term money with articles, but the real money is in the residual income you get from the way articles (and their links) stick around on the web, creating traffic and building your search engine position?

** I had to invest in a few tools. Paid directory memberships to access the ezines, an article submission service to take out some of the drudgery of getting to the free article directories, mailing list and autoresponder services, and, of course, some web sites with domains and hosting. None of these broke the bank?

I came to article writing because as I looked into myself; writing and communicating ideas are things I deeply enjoy. But article writing is a way to promote all kinds of things. I could just as easily have had a passion for gardening and used articles as a way to talk about that. I would have ended up in the same place.

Easy money! Yes, because doing something you enjoy isn't hard. Requiring no work? No! But for those of you entranced by the myth of ?passive income', adding solid content to the web is a great way to achieve it. As your work spreads and you keep adding to it, it accumulates and sends you profit for years. Moreover, as ?content' is the life force of the web, writing articles goes with the flow and is immune to sudden changes of policy ? like the Google Slap.

Writing and in particular article writing, is THE heart of web profits for the ?everyman' and ?everywoman' on the web and practice makes it easy! It is working for me'it can for you.

Copyright (c) 2006 Michael Kay HBBReview.com