Marketing with articles was a traffic generation technique that I was introduced to when I first started studying Internet marketing and I regret that I dismissed it as old school, slow and ineffective.
Of course I had no business dismissing any suggestion then as I had no idea what I was talking about.
As a matter of fact there are some that would say I still don't know what I'm talking about...
Marketing with articles to promote your online business is a lot like SEO or link building or forum marketing to name a few other traffic generation techniques.
You invest your time bit by bit, every day and don't notice anything for a while and then a few months later, or sometimes days or weeks later, you start to see the results of your efforts.
Guess what hits you when you start to see the results? The reality that you should have started to do it a long time ago! You should start marketing with articles as soon as you have a place to send people.
A blog, a Squidoo lens, a Hubpage or any other piece of Internet real estate where you own the domain.
I thought until I had a rock solid offer that writing articles would be a waste of time, but it's not.
The missing piece for me was how important it is to start building your credibility and authority in your niche as soon as you can.
You see, writing good articles about your market and topics within your market begins the process of you being recognized as an authority.
As you become more and more recognized as an authority in your niche, people begin to view you as someone they should listen to.
This is huge.
It allows you to build credibility while you perfect your craft and perfect your offer.
You can't possibly start marketing with articles soon enough.
There are two things that keep people from doing more article marketing.
One is finding things to write about and the other is not being comfortable with writing.
As far as being comfortable writing, you can either outsource this or start practicing because the more you do it the better you get.
I can't imagine someone being successful online without learning how to write.
Content is so critical that you either get good at it or find someone who you can trust and pay to do it for you.
Difficulty finding things to write about is a very easy thing to fix.
One of the best free ways to get information on article or blog post topics is Google Alerts.
All you do is register there and enter the keywords you want information about and you'll get a daily e-mail containing anything Google crawls on the Internet with that keyword in it.
It's a fantastic source of current information on your niche that you can use to write articles.
There are a million other ways to find content by just visiting forums, blogs and other social communities in your niche.
Not enough content, ideas or topics is no excuse.
Start marketing with articles now and you'll not only reap the benefits of increased traffic, you'll become an expert in your niche in the process.