How Article Marketing Can Build Your List

One of the most effective strategies for growing an email list is article marketing—writing and submitting articles to free content directories, blogs, ezines and websites. The potential for branding yourself, adding new subscribers and building online relationships is unlimited.
To use article marketing successfully, you must be able to write a decent article. While you don't need to be a professional writer, you do need to be able to communicate clearly, with relatively good grammar, and without tons of typographical errors. You must also be able to speak the language like a native without making simple mistakes in word usage that serve only to drive readers away.

If you're unable to write reasonably well, hire someone. Because of all the competition online, writers are affordable for anyone who is serious about Internet marketing. And they're worth their rate three times over if they increase your mailing list and make you look good.

For the best article marketing results, write articles that your niche audience wants to read. Choose a topic that your ideal customer might read, and write for her. In other words, if you sell gardening supplies, it's best to write about gardening! While you may enjoy writing about scuba diving, scuba divers aren't the most likely people to buy your products, so write to those who are.

Never write a sales letter and call it an article! Not only will you annoy readers, but you can get your article—and potentially yourself—banned from article directories, especially the best ones.

Instead, write a good, solid, informative article filled lots of beefy information that your readers want, then use your resource box at the end to sell yourself. Include a link to your mailing list sign-up page, tell them what they get free for joining, and make it sound good. Don't add a bunch of hype, just the benefits and what you have to offer.

If your article contains quality content that the reader enjoyed, you'll gain a ton of new subscribers for every new article you publish.

Once you have your article in-hand, having proofread and polished it until it shines, begin to submit it to the most popular article directories online. You can also contact the publishers of large ezines in your niche, or blogs that reach your target audience, and let them know you have a new article they may want to publish.

Some of the more popular online article submission sites are:

After your submission options have been exhausted, begin your next article immediately and keep the process going. Stay within your niche topic, and you'll attract untold numbers of subscribers.

Sometimes, a blogger or ezine publisher will ask you to write an original article, for free. If the audience is a good fit with your target market and the opportunity will build your credibility, it may be well worth the effort.

In fact, many article marketers form partnerships with blogs and publishers of large ezines just so they can reach those audiences free, on a regular basis. You might want to consider doing the same.

If you're afraid you'll run out of ideas, don't be. The topics within any niche that you could write about are endless, so when you think you have nothing else to say, spend some time brainstorming, or surfing your competitor's site to find new article ideas. There are plenty around, which you'll see when you start to look.

If you're still intimidated by the process, there are plenty of resources to help you. Services like articlemarketer.com and isnare.com will submit your articles for you, while easyarticlemarketing.com is a step-by-step course for creating and submitting articles to grow your list.

Using article marketing is a simple, yet highly effective way to grow your mailing list. Just keep doing it… write, polish, submit, repeat… and before long, you'll begin to see dramatic increases in the number of subscribers you've added to your list.