Using article marketing is a good way to drive some traffic to your sites, as it works in two different ways. First, you can receive traffic from people who are viewing your article and then decide to click through to continue on to your site. You also have some SEO benefits from it, as every time you include a link to your site, it counts as a one way backlink which can be very useful in boosting your search engine ranking. But are there some things you should do to increase the efficiency of your article marketing efforts? Definitely. Here are some of them:

• Use Only Unique Content

In most cases, article directories only accept content that is unique and has never been posted anywhere before. It doesn’t matter if you wrote it, or if it has been posted on a site that you own. Your content needs to be unique. Search engines frown on duplicate content and so do visitors. If someone starts reading the article and notices that they have already seen the exact same information some where else, they will probably just move on to something else and not bother continuing.

• Avoid Making too Many “Salesy” Articles

There are way too many fake “reviews” of online products being posted all over the place and this is something that seems to be especially popular when promoting internet marketing related stuff such as e-books, membership sites and courses. The articles usually go like this: “Product X is a SCAM!! Arrghh!!! Oops… Actually, It’s Not, Buy It!!!!!” See, the thing is these might have been effective 6 years ago or so… but not anymore. The problem is that there are simply too many of them and the reader will automatically see that your “review” is completely bogus and you are just trying to make money by selling your own, or an affiliate product.

Articles that you post should always include useful information about your niche. For example, if you are promoting an “alternative energy” guide, you could post something about the different kinds of ways you can generate alternative energy and their pros and cons. Or, you could go into detail about how a certain method works and then explain why you think that it would be suitable as a solution for someone looking for an alternative energy generator for their home. Believe me, this is much, much more likely to result in someone visiting your site and buying the product you are promoting, as opposed to simply going on and on about how great the ‘ACME Green Energy Super Guide’ is and why everyone on the planet should drop everything that they’re doing and rush to buy it. Keep the sales pitch for your website. If a user has clicked through to it, then it means they are seeking more information about what you just told them in the article and now would be a good time to propose some products to buy.

Now you have seen a few ways to find work if you want to become an online article writer. The main places where you can find work are internet marketing forums, article writing sites and freelancing sites. Even if those are the main places to get some work, they are not the only ones.

You can try searching for article writing work on classified ads sites such as Craigslist, Gumtree and Backpage. Although it is not guaranteed that you will find something there, if you do it will more likely be long term projects rather than just people who seek to order a few articles. This can work out to your advantage, as you will then have some regular clients who will pay you for your writing. Some of them could even offer you full time work for many months in a row.

Another way to find work is simply by networking with others. By participating in various online marketing communities, you will make contacts who could offer you some projects if they need content written for their sites or introduce you to someone who does. In the internet marketing industry in general, networking can be very profitable for you. Just because you are self employed doesn’t mean that you can’t share ideas and information with others in the industry. Networking will also give you the chance to learn new things or find additional sources of income that you wouldn’t have discovered on your own.

Now that you have some ideas on how to find some projects to work on, you are probably wondering about some ways to increase your earnings from freelance writing. The first thing that you need to keep in mind is that the amount you can earn will increase gradually. While it is possible to make a full time income from article writing, it may take a few weeks or months before you are able to reach that level.

Here are some tips to maximize your profits:

Always do the best quality work and follow the instructions of the clients. By doing so, you will increase your chances that they will either give you repeat work or recommend your services to one of their friends or business partners that could use them.

Respect deadlines by submitting your work on time. Believe me, there is nothing worse for a client than to have a service provider not complete a project by the time they need it. Clients don’t want to hear excuses or be left wondering as to whether you are actually going to complete their order or not.

Seek out long term partnerships and projects. These tend to pay more in the end as you will be spending a lot more time actually writing rather than searching for work all over the place. You are also more likely to get work on a niche that you are familiar with, which will be easier to write about than a few different articles on various topics that you are only vaguely knowledgeable about.

EzineArticles.com is one of the leading article directories online today and has been established for a very long time in the marketing and article space.

Ezine Articles essentially lets your post your articles (rewritten for Ezine or as you posted on your own blog) to their database of articles with millions of visits each month. What that does, is it brings you visitors and backlinks to your website creating a lot of value for your business.

Some people make a living by posting to Ezine and linking out to affiliate products or their own products and selling people from their articles on the products and websites.

Ezine is a very powerful tool that should be in every internet marketers business plan.

There are two differing camps when it comes to article publishing on article directories. Some people believe that all the content must be unique that you post on your blog, therefore you should never post vanilla posts from your blog onto article directories. Then, there are other internet marketers who have claimed they have had no ill effects from publishing the same article from their blog a few days later on the most popular article directories. Personally, I have no problem posting my articles from my own blog onto article directories, but I usually wait at least a week before I do so, that way I have time for my own articles to be indexed and to appear as the original article source.

Once you are ready to start publishing, it is a good idea to go through and read some of the Ezine Articles to see what style are most popular and which topics seem to be as well.

You are not allowed to use affiliate links directly in your Ezine articles, so instead you need to set up a sub directory with 301 redirect to your affiliate link, if that is the way you are going to go.

Linking is also very closely monitored, you can not have links in the first 2/3rd’s of the article, so be conscience of that so that you can save yourself some frustration, there is also a limit on the number of links that are allowed.

Ezine Articles can be a very powerful tool to incorporate into your business, learning the ropes first and taking it slowly (so you don’t get banned) is important so that you can create unique content that will garner you some great responses to your links, in turn making you some money.