The Cheap Internet Marketer

What will you write about in your articles?  That is the biggest questions most people who want to break into article writing have when they begin.  The field is wide open when it comes to what information you offer on the Internet.

The first thing to consider is — what do you like to write about?  All of us have hobbies and likes as well as dislikes — write about them from your perspective.  Write enough articles on a topic and you might qualify as an expert in your area within online communities.

The Reason for the Articles –  Why are you writing the articles? If you are starting a blog and want to draw attention to your site, you’ll want to choose topics that will be interesting to fellow readers on the Internet.  Surf the Web and research what topics are hot right now.  Some topics that are always popular: fashion, celebrity news, new products and services and health issues.  These categories will help you to generate a list of possible article topics.

When writing to draw traffic and attention to you, it is important to write articles about a topic that people are talking about.  If you are researching and see that there are not be a lot of articles on the Internet about pygmy animals, don’t get all excited until you do a bit more research – find out if people are searching for information on this subject.  You can write the most wonderful articles in the world on pygmy animals, but if there is not an interest in the subject, your articles will go unread.

Are You Creative? – There is very little that is new under the sun and there’s an almost unlimited amount of information available on the internet.  Chances are you will have to write about topics that have been written about before.  This is fine, but put a new spin on the subject, write about it from your unique perspective.  By using your unique voice and adding basic examples, you can recycle a topic to your advantage.

Brainstorm your topics.  Start by looking at your personal interests.  Then, move on to your job for ideas.  Finally, what is your family up to?  All of these people and interests make a good base for your article writing.

What are you curious about? — Maybe you want to know why the sky is blue.  Take some time and look up information about the sky and its color on the Internet or at your local library.  Now, you can write an article that people will want to read.  Whatever fascinates you can turn into a new avenue to find article topics.

Use Your Experiences – All of us have a story to tell, and your stories may be interesting to others.  Use both positive and negative situations as a tool – create how-to articles and give advice on a variety of topics. 

What are you going to write about in your articles?  The possibilities are infinite if you keep an open mind and use all of the resources at your disposal.

If you’d like a good ebook on writing articles and article marketing, I recommend “Article Marketing SuperHero” (see the link to the right, or Click Here.)  It covers a lot of topics, including how to get ideas, how to actually write the artices, how to use PLR for your articles, posting to article directories, outsourcing articlles, and more.   I’ll be covering most of this in upcoming messages, but if you want to get started NOW, this book will get you going.

Let’s just say it right now — a web site without traffic is a business that is doomed to failure.  If you’ve just started your first web site, don’t make the mistake of worrying too much at first about how many sales (also know as conversions in the IM field) you’re making.  Instead, concentrate on learning how to drive traffic to your site.  You must have traffic to get conversions (sales). 

There are a lot of different methods of generating traffic on the Internet.  Some that immediately come to mind are article marketing, buying Ads on Google, Yahoo, MSM and other sites (this is called PPC or Pay Per Click), posting ads on Free Ad sites, social bookmarking and Web 2.0, Forum Posting, Publicity Releases, Viral Marketing and others. 

If you are just starting out you will want to pick one or two of these methods and concentrate on learning how to use them effectively.   Each method has pluses and minuses, each has its own nuances you’ll have to learn.  If you know what you’re doing, each method works very well. 

Article Marketing is a very popular method of gaining traffic, so we’ll start our Traffic discussions with it.  Basically, you research and write short, informative articles and post them to free article directories.  Quite a few people go to these sites and read the articles and hopefully click on the links you are allowed to enclose, and these links take them to your website.  

More importantly, publishers of ezines and newsletters go to these article directories, looking for good, free content that they can publish.  The ultimate goal of article marketing is to have your articles published in newsletters and ezines, this can bring significant amounts of traffic to your site. 

There’s a lot more to know before you can successfully start an Article Marketing campaign, so stay tuned and we’ll discuss  more details about article marketing, plus some other traffic generating techniques.