How To Start An It Business

Mainly because it is and has always been the cornerstone of everything I do on the web, article marketing is always at the top of my list. But I always stop and take a hard look at all my marketing tactics and methods, don't exactly know what it is about starting a new year of marketing online.

No income, no articles. Without article marketing I wouldn't be a full-time online marketer - it's as simple as that. By cornerstone I mean it is the key to basically all of my online earnings.

Articles build your online reputation and credibility in the eyes of your visitors. Articles build those even more important top rankings in Google for your chosen keywords. Articles build those all important one-way backlinks. Articles bring in the targeted traffic.

000 sites around the web, "10 Reasons To Put RSS On Your Site" which is still on around 8. I was struggling on the web for around three years before I wrote my first article.

I believe (perhaps falsely) that I had to gain all those years of experience before I could start writing articles about it, looking back on it. Although I did work briefly as a reporter for a very small community newspaper, but it was more on the creative side, writing was always a passion of mine.

Most of us have been doing that since grade school - it is the same as writing a report or an essay. Which was the totally wrong attitude to take since anyone can research a favorite subject or topic and write a short informative article on it.

They read it and then click the link to your webpage where you have conveniently placed your affiliate links or your own products, your article pops up, surfers search for an answer in the search engines. Only with article writing you actually see monetary returns almost immediately.

A small percentage of those article readers will buy your products and you're in business.

They click thru to your webpage and a small percentage of these visitors will buy your product or affiliate product displayed on your page, then as someone searches in Google - your site pops up. Especially Google, all those backlinks in your resource box at the end of your article will make your keywords rise in the search engines, over time.

These marketers can then do follow-up with all these potential customers. Ebook or software program to get those visitors to sign-up to your opt-in list, ecourse, smart marketers will also start building a large list of prospective customers by offering a free guide.

And have been using for years. That in a nutshell is an article marketing model or funnel which thousands of online marketers and webmasters are using.

But will article marketing remain effective in 2010 and the coming years?

. . Your options are more varied. Social Networks and even with Twitter, blogs, the same kind of marketing system could be done with Videos. More than likely the answer would be yes but the web is constantly changing and there are other games worth playing.

I turn my best articles into Videos and place them on YouTube which opens up a whole different flow of traffic to my webpages and affiliate links. EzineArticles lets you Tweet your articles to all your followers, for example. I find article marketing can be integrated into all these elements, however.

Can bring in a lot of traffic and increase your rankings. . . StumbleUpon, reddit, i find getting your articles on Digg. MySpace and the other social networks, you can place your articles or links to them on FaceBook, likewise.

But the question remains - is article marketing as effective as it once was?

Everyone has discovered how writing short informative articles on the topic of your site can be very lucrative. My own answer and personal opinion is no since it's effectiveness has been watered down somewhat because every "tom dick and harry plus sally" is doing it.

000 writers, now they have over 242! I was 'writer #1561' with EzineArticles, when I wrote that first article five years ago.

More people writing more articles simply means your article falls into a bigger pool of other articles. Much less than it is now, i found your article was placed on a lot more sites mostly because there wasn't that many articles out there and competition was much, back then.

You can also place your marketing into the whole Video/YouTube craze that is still bringing in tons of traffic and interested customers. So turning your articles into short "how to" videos would probably be a more wiser move and you would have a lot less competition. I believe video marketing is at the stage article marketing was at around five years ago.

Here are some of the main ones
I use: The popularity of free article directories have grown and some of these sites have very high traffic numbers, however.

EzineArticles
GoArticles
iSnare
Ideamarketers

And I also like to place my articles on important but perhaps lessen known
sites such as:

PromotionWorld
SelfGrowth
American Chronicle
Buzzle

This is one marketer who will not be giving up article marketing any time soon. It can still bring in traffic and help build those all important backlinks and search engine rankings. Article marketing is still a very good way to get your site and name on the web, however.

Some of my most effective techniques for article marketing are:

Usually at the beginning, - Place your targeted keyword phrase in the title.

- Make sure your article is informative and supplies the information a reader is searching for - but always try to motivate the reader to click your links in the resource box for further information since your main objective is to get the reader to click thru to your site.

But I have found longer articles of 800-1500 words do really well, around 400 - 700 words, - Most experts say to keep your article short.

Vary these keywords to avoid keyword spamming. That's the underlined clickable part, - Place your targeted keywords in the anchor text of your resource box links.

Try writing an exclusive unique article for that site alone, - For very important sites.

Many marketers do the same thing with misspelled keywords. Thousands of people are making the same mistake, even if it's wrong, i go with one that has the most links. . . Grammar has never been my strong point so what I do for finding the correct usage of some tricky phrases or words - I do a search in Google with "quotation marks" to find out which one has the most links/usage. - Always spell-check and proof-read your articles.

It saves me time and extends the reach of my articles. I don't mind pouring some of those earnings back into those sites, mainly because article marketing has been so profitable for me. . . ThePhantomwriters and iSnare, i also like using paid article submission sites such as SubmitYourArticle, while they can be expensive.

It still works for me and hundreds of thousands of other webmasters - it should also work for you. Raise your rankings and bring in potential customers to your site, article marketing will continue to be one of your best ways to build backlinks.