List Building - Article Leverage

Why do I write articles?
First, I like to help people with their businesses. It's true, I have a coaching program and I charge for it. I charge a lot. But some advice, I like to give away. I know when I was first starting out, I was looking for someone who had done made a million dollars, to tell me how. OK. I've done it. What I write is proven information.

The next reason to write articles is for list building purposes. List building is the core of online marketing, and any big marketer in the business knows that. You need to build a massive list of people who trust you, and who will who trust the people and programs you recommend. Writing articles shows people that you can be trusted, that you know what you're writing about. List building is greatly improved through articles, and anyone who doesn't use them for list building is missing something important.

And the third reason I use articles is to drive traffic to my web sites. This happens two ways. First, in the author's signature, I'm able to advertise my URL. If people like the article, they might click on it and visit my site. They might opt-in to my list that way, too, because my sites always start with opt-in boxes. If you've read any of my other articles, you know my motto: Always Be List Building. So, use articles to drive people to your site, and be list building at the same time.

The other traffic generators are search engines. One very important aspect of articles is that they produce relevant, one-way links to my site. All search engine optimizers know that one-way links, as opposed to reciprocal linking, is the best way to get a better page rank with Google. Higher page rank helps you to get higher in the results pages. People tend to click on the links on the first page, especially if your site is one of the first few results. The goal is to be on page one, ranked number one for a highly-searched keyword. If you can do that, and it takes a lot of time for that to happen, but if you can do that, you'll get all the traffic you need.

So, that about covers the big three reasons, but there's one more, actually. When you write well about a topic, and people read your articles and see that your advice and information is good, they'll think of you as an expert. An expert is someone who knows everything about a subject, right? So, it's not "as if" you're an expert. You are one.

Articles never go away. So, let's say that you keep writing at least one article per week. That's 52 articles published on the web, and guess how long they'll be around... probably forever. Two years from now, people could see your work on someone else's website or in an eZine, and come to your site.

So, there are really more than just three reasons to write articles. But the big three still stand. List building is essential, so definitely use them for list building, use them to drive traffic, and above all, use them to help people. They will appreciate you for it, and you'll still be list building and driving traffic. Neat little bow, huh?

The only time an article could hurt you is if it's really bad. I mean, you don't want to use crap articles, or PLR (private label rights) articles just the way you buy them, that everyone saw before with someone else's name on top of them. Be smart. If you can't write, don't have the time to write, or just don't want to do it--hire someone to do it for you. It's just that important.