These are some of the questions that must have occurred to any article marketer at some point. But the most important question is, what is the return on investment? To answer that question, we shall attempt to answer all the other questions, and in the process derive the answer to our most important question.

First, I must state that there is no such thing as free traffic. Even if you don't pay for them. That's because if you don't buy your traffic, chances are, you'll be spending time generating that traffic. Forum posts and article marketing are just two such examples. But the truth is, time is the most valuable resource. So if you are going to have to spend a lot of time generating that traffic, it's probably not worth your effort at the end of the day.

And that's what every article marketer should be asking themselves: Is the time and money spent on article marketing well invested? What is the return on investment if I am to spend X amount of time and dollars to write and submit a single article? To save you the trouble of having to test things out, I have the answers ready for you.

From my own tests, each article you write and submit will bring you an average of five to six visitors a month, on a consistent basis. How many visitors each article brings you depend on many factors, such as the quality of the article, the keywords used, and the directories that the article was submitted to. But on average, my results show an average of five to six visitors a month. Notice that those figures do not look unreasonable, and are certainly very much achievable for anyone.

So six visitors a month, means six people clicks on your link to visit your website. If you are to buy those clicks, how much would you pay for them? Depending on your niche, clicks from quality search engines could cost as much as a dollar and up. As the market gets more and more competition, the bid prices for bid will continue to rise. And at a dollar a click, six clicks will be worth six dollars. If you consistently get an average of six visitors a month for ten months, that's sixty dollars worth of traffic for a single article. Now ask yourself, how much did you spend creating and submitting that article?

Assuming you outsourced your article writing and submission for pennies, your return on investment could be a thousand percent and up after just one year! And it doesn't stop there. As long as your articles are still out there, you'll continue to receive traffic.

So don't write off article marketing just yet. There are article writing and submission services that'll take all the work out of your hands for just pennies.