Its hardly a secret anymore. Creating articles and submitting them to article directories is now recognised as efficient, main stream marketing. Thousands of smart marketers actively seek out directories and submit to them daily as part of their marketing plan. Flip open any generic internet marketing book and youll see entire chapters on promoting via article submissions. In fact entire eBooks, courses and software have been developed to help harness the power of article marketing. Now heres the interesting thing. Everyone who uses articles hungrily seeks out new article directories to submit to. Most internet marketing sites have a list of directories on their site to help their users identify available article directories. Imagine- thousands of people searching for article directories. Countless more searching for content to populate their websites with. Yet the number of article directories online remains relatively small. Right now is the ideal time to set up an article directory for yourself. Here are just a few ways that this can benefit your business: * Literally tens of thousands of influential site owners are looking for valuable content that they can use for their sites. It's gold-dust to them. Similarly, several thousands of marketers, authors, resellers and affiliates are hungrily looking for article directories to submit to. Both are desperate to find, use and return to your article directory...again and again (and again)! * Your directory site could have Adsense and other affiliate ads and create a nice hands off residual income. * You can capture the prospects as leads(eg. Contributers need to register before posting articles) to build your list. * You can create special highly targeted niche article directories. You could put up highly targeted big-ticket affiliate products that can increase your commission checks significantly. If you already have an in-house product you can promote it directly on your directory to prospects that you know will be interested in the offer. * You could even create and sell directories as a business in itself. When you have the correct script its very simple to do, yet one simple directory can fetch hundreds of dollars when sold to a small business or entrepreneur who may not want to learn to do it themselves. If you think that setting up your own article directory involves extreme expense in hiring a programmer or special technical skills to do it yourself, you may be pleasantly surprised. You can use point and click software to get your directory up and running in just minutes. Now well look at the art of marketing the article directories that you create. The good thing is that because directories are in such demand this should not be particularly difficult. Here are just some of the ways you can publicise your directory: * Participate in relevant forums and leave your article directory details in your signature. This is also a great way of getting exposure for your main business too. * Contact influential personalities in your niche and inform them that you have a new article directory that they (and their prospects) may find interesting. * Find article directory directories and submit to these they will give you exposure to thousands of people who are searching for specific directories. * Use your own traffic resources let your list/blog/forum know that you have a new directory. * You should already know that building a successful business online means cultivating relationships online. Hopefully you will have built up a select few JV partners who you are on exceptionally good terms with. Ask them to post a few articles to get your directory going. One thing is clear- using article submissions as a marketing tactic is a long term trend that will be around long into the future. So is using contents of articles to populate website. Everyone wants to be where the traffic is thats exactly why the next big trend that the gurus will tout as a marketing gem is article directory ownership and they would be dead right. There are huge gains to be made by establishing your directory now long before anyone finds out what a gold mine they represent. |
