A Simple Idea That Led To 62,158 Visits

I wanted to share a (rather surprising) story with you today…

A few years ago I set up a couple of little niche websites in the weddings business, one a blog that I had someone else write for me and the other was a resource type website about “wedding planning” that had a PLR ebook for sale on it, and apart from spending a couple of weeks getting them all set up and attracting a reasonable amount of traffic I haven’t touched them, or barely even looked at them, ever since then.

I know, I know, I’m a right lazy so-and-so!

However, I was checking my stats tonight and although I’m not making a fortune from either, in the last 12 months these two little sites have brought in $5,040 or an average of $420 a month and I swear that I haven’t looked at either of them for more than a year, nevermind actually doing anything with them.

So I delved a little deeper and looked at my traffic logs for the same period and not unsurprisingly more than 40% of the traffic has come from the search engines, 90% of that from Google alone, but what I found interesting was that a huge percentage of the remaining traffic came from referring websites and many of them article directories. This had me baffled until I realized that the person I’d hired to update the blog must have been submitting each of the articles they wrote to those too. I didn’t ask them or tell them to do that… they must have just done it off their own back.

(Note: if you freelance, those are the kind of people you want to have working for you!)

I sent the lady who was doing the blog updates an IM and she replied back to say that she would send me the stats from one of the main article directories if I wanted (www.EzineArticles.com), so that I could check out how well they’ve done and of course, I said “yes”. Fast forward an hour and what she sent me over blew my socks off (well, not literally, you know :))…

Articles Posted: 110
Article(s) Views: 62,158
Articles Published: 2,390
URL Clicks: 1,125

So she posted 110 articles, they’ve been viewed 62,158 times, 2390 have been published on other websites and from this article directory alone 1125 people have clicked on the links in the articles through to my websites.

For a free traffic source that isn’t bad at all.

And remember that this is only from ONE article directory.

It wasn’t so long ago that I read an article from a well-known “guru” who claimed that article marketing was dead, but as you can see from this it most certainly isn’t. It’s still alive and kicking, it’s safe to say!

Now, if you’re working to a budget (and who isn’t these days) and deperately trying to get more traffic to your own websites, or even directly to your affiliate merchants, this is what you should do…

1. Write a few articles and get them submitted to at least the main article directories like EzineArticles. If you can’t write, or don’t have the inclination to write your own, then buy articles packages from Niche Content Packages or EasyPLR and then either “spin” them or rewrite them yourself, so that they aren’t duplicates of anyone else’s.
2. Then get yourself a copy of this Article Submitter Software. That link takes you through to the sales page for the pro version of the software and if you’re going to do it right that’s definitely the one to use, but if money is tight then click on the “article submitter” link in the top menu and you can download the basic version for FREE!
3. Rinse and repeat. Follow the same process over and over for each of your websites and watch the traffic roll in. I know people who have built entire businesses around article marketing (@WillieCrawford for one, a millionaire no less), so this is a formula that does work, has always worked and will continue to work well into the future.

Besides the direct traffic you’ll receive from the article directories you submit to, you’ll also receive backlinks to your websites, other publishers will pick up on your articles and publish them on their websites, meaning more traffic and links for you, and you’ll also start to gain a reputation as being an expert in your field, which could lead to all sorts of profit producing offers.

I like this form of marketing a LOT.

You should give it a go too.