LIST BUILDING - Article Directories

As explained in “The Exciting Business of Building a List”, the most deservedly popular method of marketing online has at its heart, the accumulation of a list or lists of the names and email addresses of contacts. These are people who have previously expressed an interest in a product of yours and who have also, usually confirmed that they are happy to receive future mailings from you. Such mailings can be the basis for your truly passive source of income.

How to go about building your list or lists (Separate lists for different areas of interest or ‘Niches’) is the subject of numerous articles, blogs, books and other writings which proliferate on the internet. I make no apology though for adding to this profusion because the subject is in a constant state of flux and the conventional wisdom of last month may well be ‘old hat’ by now or is at least likely to have been subject to the continuous process of gradual change.

There are several approaches to the search for new ‘sign ups’ which have to be paid for but which are usually justified by the idea that however much is spent in this way, far more will be earned as a result of the expenditure. These however are not the subject of this article or its planned successors. Far more interesting and exciting to many are the abundance of free ways to secure people’s commitment and in that way to create the path to your passive income.

                                                                                                                                    

I shall describe one of these today and more in future posts. Today’s little gem  is Article Marketing. In my next post I will cover E mail Signatures:

Article marketing is exactly what it sounds like. There are dozens of sites on the internet which exist solely for the purpose of providing a vehicle for the writings of authors, amateur and professional of quite short pieces on just about every subject under the sun. The consensus is that one; www.EzineArticles.com is the most prominent of these and that site certainly does make great efforts to secure the originality of its articles and to protect the intellectual property of the authors. Other article directories include ArticleDashboard.com, GoArticles.com, ArticlesAlley.com, Amazines.com and many, many others.

The idea is so simple. An article directory as they are known, provides the opportunity for anyone who wishes and is able, to write a short piece about virtually anything. In time the library of articles thus accumulated constitutes a valuable source of unique information for those in search of it.

For the online marketer however there is another, more significant benefit. The search engines also love article directories and any contribution is very likely indeed to rank highly in Google, Yahoo, and Bing, to name only the biggest among them. An article in one of the directories always carries a short bio of the author and invariably a link to his or her website or blog. Articles featured in one place are frequently picked up and repeated in numerous other sites thus creating a network of mentions for the author and for his or her site. In this way people are attracted to the site and the site owner inevitably collects more names for his list.

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