Just be warned -- you're gonna get a lot of email! When your first article goes out, expect a bunch of emails to come flying in.

Believe it or not, this is a good thing! All of those emails indicate that your articles are getting out in the world, and the wheels are in motion to propel your business into greater success.

The Headwaters of the Email Flood

The first emails you will get are from mailing lists, asking you to confirm your membership. The article distribution services that send out your articles will automatically sign you up for mailing lists, user groups, and forums when you submit an article. These are the places your article will be distributed.

When you receive confirmation emails from these lists, forums, and groups, make sure to confirm them, and be quick about it. If you do not join, your articles will not be sent to those places. That is lost opportunity.

Joining increases your exposure. The more places you are published, the more links you will receive. This means increased site traffic and an increased number of backlinks to your site. As you gather more and more quality backlinks, you'll see your rankings on Google climb higher and higher.

A Little Time Now Is Worth a Lot!

Each email confirmation takes roughly 20-30 seconds. In the scheme of things, thirty seconds is just a blip on the radar. Imagine how long it would take to utilize some of the more traditional marketing methods. While article marketing requires a small time commitment up front, it will soon begin to run itself, leaving you to tend to other aspects of your business.

Make sure to confirm these requests as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more time that is wasted with your article floundering around, waiting to be distributed. Make a habit of going through these emails at least once a day. Not only will this get your articles out faster, it will prevent you from getting overwhelmed with a weeks worth of mailing list confirmations. Get them off your plate as soon as possible and you'll see a greater return rate of positive results.

The Best Ways to Manage Your Mail

First, set up a separate article marketing email account. This will keep your personal life separate from your company separate from your article marketing campaign. You'll find things are much easier to manage when you funnel all of the mailing list requests into one email box.

Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! all offer free email accounts. It takes a matter of seconds to set up an account and it'll save you oodles of time in the long run. You'll be happy to know that all of your article marketing business will be organized on one account, not to be confused with the rest of your inbox contents.

Keep The Decks Clear

As you become a member of all these great mailing lists, you'll be on the list to receive emails from others on the list. And, unless you set up your email to prevent it, you'll end up with a LOT of mail.

You can avoid inbox overload all together by properly setting your email options. In fact, you can set your mailing options to allow you to read messages from the groups online. Not only will this keep your inbox from overflowing, it'll make it easier for you to accept each mailing list. And you'll still have access to all that great content from other authors on your lists.

While article marketing requires a little of your time in the initial phases, you'll see the results return more business to you than most other marketing methods. Invest a little time in getting things going and you'll be blown away by the results.