Several of my guest bloggers, like Linda Lee and V. Michael Santoro, have mentioned e-zine articles or article marketing already this month. I’ve discussed it in my own blog posts as well. I figured it was time to take a closer look at this article form and method of publicizing not only books but just about anything you do—teleseminars, coaching, blogs, workshops, or information products. In fact, as Jeff Herring, The Article Marketing Guy, likes to say, you can use article marketing to drive traffic pretty much wherever you want it to go.
I’ve been listening to Jeff’s teleseminars for a long time. I’m not sure if I first heard about e-zine articles from him or not; I’ve been using them for many years. In fact, I attribute the traffic on one of my websites, Pure Spirit Creations, and its blog, As the Spirit Moves me, to the numerous e-zine articles I posted that were related to the topics I discussed there. Now I’m using the same tactic with CopyWright Communications and its related blogs.
That’s why I thought it only appropriate this year to ask Jeff to write a post for Write Nonfiction in November (WNFIN) that would describe article marketing and e-zine articles in more depth. That way all of you also can begin using them to build your platform (more visitors to your websites and blogs, more people signing up to your newsletters, etc.) and sell more books and products.
Not everyone understands the concept of giving away your content for free. Jeff explains it well and describes how to put it to use in your promotion and marketing plan.
Get 30 Million Unique Visitors to See Your Content Per Month
By Jeff Herring
As an author or an aspiring author, how would you like to get your content in front of more than 30 million unique visitors a month? Before you answer, let’s do a little math on that: Thirty million unique visitors a month equals roughly a million a day, 41,667 an hour, and 3472 in the time it takes you to read this article.
So now, if you are answering with a hearty “YES, I want to get my content in front of that many prospects, please allow me to introduce you to article marketing and EzineArticles.
Article marketing is simply a very powerful strategy in which you create a 400-500 word sample of your expertise, and then distribute and syndicate this content all across the Internet.
One of the places you will distribute your content is on article directories, which are websites that exist to publish your content so that those who own websites, blogs and online/offline newsletters can use these samples of your content complete with links back to your website or blog.
EzineArticles is the #1 article directory on the Internet. As I mentioned a moment ago, they get over 30 million unique visitors a month
Selling your books online is all about getting traffic to your website so you can offer new prospects your book. The first thing I learned about getting traffic on the Internet is this: “Don’t chase after traffic, find out where the traffic is going and get in front of it.”
And never has there been a better place to do this than with article marketing and online article directories like EzineArticles.
Now, knowing authors the way I do, I’m confident that I can guess what you are thinking about now: “Why would I want to give my content away so other people can use it!?!”
My answer is: “Do this only if you want to sell more books.”
Articles From and Articles About
Stop worrying about giving away the store in an article. You really can’t in a 400-500 word article. But just like the samples in a grocery store that get you to buy the product, samples of your content online persuade prospects to buy your books.
Article From – You can create an article directly from a sample of your book. Choose 400-500 words that provide a good flavor and taste of what is inside your book. You can actually provide several samples, all of which still induce the prospect to get your book. I know of authors who have written their entire books as blog posts on their blog. Prospects read each post, and then bought the book when all the blog posts were collected into a book. Not only did these authors not lose sales by writing the book on their blog, they built a ready made audience eager to buy the completed book. I realize this may fly in the face of everything you have been taught as an author, but it slam dunk works!
Article About – You can also create prospect by creating articles about the topic of your book. Each time you create an article about the topic of your book and invite your reader prospect back to your website or blog to buy your book, you are sending a fully qualified “article agent” to market your book.
Think of these “article agents” as International Evergreen Article Agents:
- They work for you all over the world (remember, www stand for World Wide Web)
- Once you publish each one they work for you forever (I have one article that I wrote about the topic of a book in August of 2005. That one article still brings in between 1,500 and 2,000 new prospects each month)
- These “article agents” never call in sick, get cranky, or ask for a raise….
So, if you are ready to start getting your content in front of 30 million unique visitors a month, then I invite you to claim your Free Instant Access to two of my Article Creation Templates when you visit http://TheArticleGuyBonus.com.
You’ll get two “plug-n-play” article templates—just plug in your info! And you will also get a 30-minute Audio Replay of a teleseminar about writing more articles in less time than you ever thought possible.
About the Author
Jeff Herring is known as “The Article Marketing Guy” and for The Great Article Marketing Network. His students and clients discover how to create more content in less time, get their information in front of more eyes in as many consumable forms as possible, create a massive web presence, build a highly qualified and highly responsive list, and create multiple information products to build their information empire with their articles.
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