You’ve seen this results in a lot of article directories, as well as a lot more junk articles being produced and submitted to these directories, making it more challenging for people to succeed with article marketing.

But does it still work?

The short answer is yes. It may not be as easy as it used to be but it definitely still works.

You can no longer just write a bunch of crap articles, get great rankings and flood your site with traffic that buys.

But you can still use article marketing to generate almost instant traffic, get backlinks, boost your search engine rankings and build your credibility (if you’re trying to become an expert in your niche).

But what about long term?

Can your articles still produce traffic on an ongoing basis or will you only get an initial push from being on the first page of EzineArticles.com when it first goes live?

Great question! So I took a look at an article that I shared results about in a previous post – Does Article Marketing Have Staying Power?

In that article I published the following graphic from my stats in my EzineArticles.com account.

So what about now? With the surge in low quality article marketing, as well as many changes over at EzineArticles.com, is this article still producing views like this?

Here you go. The following was taken on May 12th, 2009.

Not only is it still producing a serious number of views on EA, the numbers have gone up since I last wrote about it. And this article was first published on EA over three years ago.

So if you’ve stayed away from article marketing, you may want to consider giving it a try.

But I get asked a lot if it works as a long term traffic strategy.

In other words, does the traffic dry up once you stop submitting new articles to the article directories?

Well, it depends. There are a number of factors involved that help determine how effective your article marketing efforts are over the long haul.

Things like:

• Keyword Selection – selecting the right keywords goes a long way toward determining whether your article will get found by searchers.
• On Page SEO – where you place your keyword phrase in your article, as well as how often it appears, will also affect your possible rankings in the search engines.
• Article Quality – the higher quality the article, the better chance another site will pick it up and use it on their site, or possibly in their newsletter.
• Article Topic – this will also play a huge role in whether other web sites pick up your article. If your article topic is timely or controversial there is a much better chance of it getting passed around the internet
• Links – Things such as the quality and topic of the article will also play into whether or not you get a lot of links from your article.

The more web sites that pick it up, the more links you get, which means a much better chance at receiving long term traffic from your article.

If some real authority sites in your niche pick up one of your articles, your main site could get a serious boost for its search engine rankings.

One article I submitted a while back, continues to get more direct page views on Ezine Articles each month than most of my articles do ever.

Here’s a screen shot of monthly views:

Now, I have plenty of articles that don’t have 3,000 views on Ezine Articles in total, let alone for one month.

And no, I haven’t figured out what sets that article apart from the others.

What I can say is if you do do as many things right as possible with each article, and continue your article marketing efforts, you’ll create articles that have traffic generation staying power, too.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out my previous post ==>> No Way, Not the Death of Article Marketing, Too!

As I’ve said before, the internet is made up of information.

While video and audio are becoming more and more popular as people get faster and faster internet connections, the text format still has it’s place in any marketing campaign.

For one, many people prefer reading over audio or video when it comes to absorbing information.

I know I much prefer being able to read something as opposed to listening to an audio on the same topic.

I’ve written previously on using article marketing for traffic generation, as well as link building, and sharing with you some of the results I’ve had, including my article marketing case study that you can get for free at ArticlePublishing.com.

Article marketing will drive traffic to your site. 

How much traffic it drives and how much money you make will depend on other factors, such as your niche market, your keyword research, your resource box for your article and then the structure of the offer on your web site when people do click through and visit.

Here’s a recent look at my main Ezine Articles account (yes, I have other Ezine Article accounts. In the past, they didn’t allow you to have multiple author names in one account so you had to sign up for different accounts for each pen name you used).

One thing I want to point out is the clicks.  This number is probably much higher. 

I had my EA account, and most of my article views, long before EA started tracking that information.

My first site, which is still around and about 1,000 pages or original content right now, was built around  proper keyword research, SEO, and article marketing. 

As you can see in the image below, this site gets a lot of traffic from a lot of different web sites.

That’s because the articles I’ve written get picked up by other web sites and link back to my sites. 

This means the articles you submit to a site like Ezine Articles help you in other ways. 

They get you links on other sites which helps your search engine rankings and they also get you direct traffic from other sites as well.

If you’re beginning internet marketing or you’ve been trying to make money online but have been struggling and are frustrated with your results, or you don’t have much money to try things like ppc, article marketing can do wonders for you.

Haven’t made money online?  Want to make that first bit of cash?

1.  Grab your own domain and hosting and set up a simple 5 page web site OR just set up a free site at Blogger.com

2.  Put Adsense on the site

3.  Write and submit articles to EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com

4.  See money in your Adsense account

Obviously, that’s a very simplified example but it also works. 

I finally started seeing success online when I focused on building a quality web site using Site Build It and writing and submitting articles to EA.

Everything else I’ve done has grown on top of that initial site building and article marketing process.

Now, a crucial point to understand is that you can leverage your article marketing efforts by turning your articles into audios to submit to podcasting directories, and videos to submit to sites like You Tube, Meta Cafe and Revver.

You can do all of this quickly and easily with PushButtonTrafficSystem.com

You don’t have to create completely new content.  You’re just re-purposing your articles into different mediums to generate more links and more traffic to your money sites

It’s a little over 7 minutes long. Check it out – Two powerful research sites

While we’re busy bouncing around from one opportunity to the next, we’re paying for what we’ve missed.

This goes back to what I’ve mentioned previously with regard to focusing on a target to the exclusion of other things.

Every decision you make in your life has a cost, whether you see it or not. While you’re busy doing one thing, you’re missing out on something else.

And only you can decide how to allocate the limited time you have.

But in order to allocate it most effectively you have to realize what you’re missing out on and you have to value your time.

Most people who bounce around from one opportunity to the next ultimately get extremely frustrated because they haven’t made any progress on anything.

So they rationalize this lost time and money by convincing themselves that none of these things work.

Instead, you should focus on what might you have accomplished if you had selected one of those ideas, such as article marketing, and worked on that to the exclusion of all other noise.

• Where would you be today?

• Would you have made progress and moved forward?

• Would you have a more profitable internet marketing business today?

• How valuable is your time to you? $10 an hour? $20? $50? $100?

• How much do you want it to be worth? $500? $1,000?

Are you spending your time doing the things that give you that kind of return? Or, at least, potentially that kind of return? Why not?

In the beginning, you’ll probably need to do everything, unless you are flush with cash for outsourcing purposes.

But “everything” should be part of one thing.

In other words, if you’re doing article marketing, you may need to learn html to create your own content site or squeeze page, set up an autoresponder, write the messages, write and submit the articles, etc.

But those are all part of article marketing, which is your one thing.

Eventually, you’ll be able to outsource a lot of that stuff.

Don’t be a jack of all trades. Be a master of one.

Pick something. Learn it. Become great at it.

If you want to start generating high quality one way backlinks, get top search engine rankings, and drive thousands of visitors to your site quickly, I highly recommend you sign up for the VRE Coaching Course

I don’t want to bash you over the head with too much hype but it’s truly more valuable than some courses you’d pay hundreds of dollars for.

Did I mention it was free?

But it’s important to understand that direct traffic from those articles shouldn’t necessarily be your focus or the way you judge whether or not your article marketing efforts are a failure or success.

Some of the commonly talked about ways article marketing can help you include:

1) Direct traffic to your site via article directories where you submit your articles.

2) Writing and submitting articles can generate lots of backlinks to your site from the article directories and other sites that pick up and use your articles.

3) Indirectly, these backlinks may improve your organic search engine rankings, helping your search engine optimization efforts, and drive more traffic to your site via the search engines.

These are all great reasons to write articles.

However, if you are focusing on building an internet business that is successful over the long haul, these aren’t the real power behind article marketing.

Don’t get me wrong, they are great for short term results, which helps your motivation and your profits, but the really good stuff comes later.

I’ve never hidden the fact that my core business isn’t selling ‘how to make money on the internet’ products.

Instead, I’ve had an online fitness business since 2002.

I’ve seen, over that time period, the real power behind article marketing and having your own web site.

The real power is the opportunities that can eventually present themselves to you because of your article marketing efforts.

When I first started an online business, I was constantly seeking out link partners, trying to get into other fitness ezines, etc.

Now, people seek me out. And that’s because they find me everywhere.

And they find me everywhere because my articles are everywhere.

I’m becoming more and more known in my industry and am currently involved in some great projects because other fitness professionals have found my articles and then my web sites, like my information, and want to work with me.

It’s a great feeling. But understand that it’s not instant.

However, if you go after the short term results of article marketing, and you stick with it, eventually you’ll see the real power of writing articles by becoming an expert in your niche, someone that others seek out for advice or to work with on projects.

So does article marketing work? Absolutely.

Just maybe not the way all the hype explains it to you. Get writing!

Check out this article marketing case study for a step by step plan to get started.

I included article marketing as one of the tips in yesterday’s article, 10 One Way Link Building Tips.

I wanted to share something with you that I recently received via snail mail. I received a very cool mouse pad in the mail from EzineArticles.com

It included a brief one page letter about my 2007 article marketing results, which were as follows:

For example, my most viewed article on EzineArticles.com was viewed 42,898 times!

That same article got the most clicks in 2007 – 1,188 clicks!

Those article marketing numbers are only the immediate stats direct from EzineArticles.com.

It doesn’t include things such as the number of other sites that posted the article, the number of one way links it generated, and the traffic those links on other sites generated.

It also doesn’t include the intangibles, like the joint venture opportunities that happen because other experts in my niche recognize my name.

That article took me about a half an hour to write. And it generated 1,188 visitors just from EzineArticles.com.

Don’t forget that is also extremely targeted traffic. Those visitors clicked through to my site AFTER reading that article.

They would only click through if they liked the article and wanted more of the same type of information.

Oh, and EzineArticles.com only sent this package out to 500 of their members out of over 82,000! There’s your other lesson in this bit.

Besides the results you can get from article marketing, it’s an example of great marketing by EzineArticles.com.

After all, their business is dependent on quality submissions from their top authors. It re-energized me to keep on top of my article marketing.

For example, my top article for 2007 was viewed 42,898 times on EzineArticles.com and also received 1,188 clicks (highly targeted traffic to my site)!

Those article marketing numbers are only the immediate stats direct from EzineArticles.com.

Article Marketing Update:

Some articles have legs and it really is set and forget. You never know which articles will achieve this which is why you need volume. Keep writing.

In addition to the above mentioned stats for 2007 that same article already has the following numbers for 2008.

Remember, these numbers are specifically from EzineArticles.com

Articles Views: 3,080
Click Throughs: 408

I don’t want to cherry pick and make the picture seem rosier than it is.

I have articles older than this one that don’t have any many views as this one has click throughs. That’s the nature of the beast.

The more you write, the more likely you’ll generate some articles that give you big numbers.

Article marketing doesn’t work like it used to but is still very effective.

It’s even more important than before to do good keyword research, use effective headlines that grab attention, write high quality content and provide the information on a niche that is in demand.

This will help you stand out amongst all the low quality recycled plr content from people that are throwing up 40 – 50 software generated “articles” each day.

I know plenty of people complain that EzineArticles.com has become very strict about the articles it accepts. The truth is this is a good thing.

If you do things right, from article marketing to blogging, to social marketing or anything else, you’ll have very little competition.

Very few people follow through and take action. Most do nothing at all and some try and take a shortcut and use things like article “writing” software to recycle crappy PLR content to create crappy articles.

Don’t let this be you.

Massive Action Equals Massive Results!