But probably one of the easiest and most reliable ways to get traffic is through the creation and submission of articles to article directories.

This me seem really simplistic and your first reaction might be, yea, tell me something I didn’t already know.

But there are many different ways of approaching article submission, some that will work a LOT better than others.

There are a lot of tools that will allow you to submit your article to hundreds if not thousands of article directories.

But let’s talk reality here, there are not thousands or even hundreds of article directories worth submitting to.

The truth is there are probably 20 article directories that would be considered good choices for submission, but of those, probably less than 10 are the real players and of those we start getting down to 1 or 2 that can deliver for you.

But I want to tell you how I approach article marketing and why.

1) I never submit the same article to more than 1 directory. No dupe content is submitted anywhere.

2) I don’t even bother with anything more than the top 2 or 3 article directories and even then, I generally focus on just one the majority of the time. Ezinearticles.com

3) 100% of my content submitted to article directories is unique. It is not spun content, it is not scraped content.

But doesn’t spun content get you a lot of links from second tier directories? Well, yes and no. Go ahead and spin an article using one of the many tools available, submit it to 1000 directories and see how much traffic or link juice you get from it. It won’t be a lot.

But take one unique well written article and submit it to EZA and you’ll get far more in return.

Another mistake I think people make is that too often article submission is looked upon solely as a link building technique, and while it can certainly help with link building, one of the biggest benefits of article submission is the direct traffic it can bring you.

Let me give you some examples.

I have a few accounts at EZA. One of my newer accounts has 376 live articles. These were largely submitted over the past 8 months.

In that time these articles have received 150,044 views, and have received 24,463 clicks from my author bio link to my sites.

That’s a CTR of over 16%

For those of you who have read my Profit Loophole course, you know that I mention the power of traffic from EZA.

You really don’t need to do a lot of additional promo on articles submitted there, they tend to do pretty well on their own.

But I’ve had sites whose sole means of traffic is direct referrals from an EZA article, and these were sites that I ended up cashing out for a pretty decent sum of money.

Recently I tested a product that is selling like crazy at Clickbank. It essentially is an article spinner, supposedly one of the better ones.

Well, I spent a decent amount of time learning the program, and wanted to put it to the test. I created what were really pretty good spun articles. The program comes with an article submission module as well.

You know how many of 527 articles that I created from 1 original got through EZA’s initial automated filters?

Exactly 3.

Sure, some of them were accepted at second and third tier directories, but what I am trying to say is, what a colossal waste of time when I could have, in that same time frame, myself, written probably 4 or 5 articles of far better quality that would in the long run deliver far more back to me than those 527 spun articles would.

I’m not saying there are not ’some’ uses for spun content, but it still amazes me that so many people are still buying this stuff, and still looking for the magic bullet, that one shortcut that will lead them to the promised land of online riches.

If you want to make money off of spun article content, or mass directory submissions, it’s not likely to happen doing it the way most folks do. What you need to do is build another tool like all the others, because people will still buy them in droves.

And then when it doesn’t work, they will buy the next tool that claims to do it better.

Having run a business where we insisted on original content in our network, I can tell you that it is a waste of time, and is so easy to catch.

Just last week, we had an individual whom I am pretty certain was using this exact software tool I mention above try and slam one of our networks with 60,000 spun posts. Guess what. All deleted.

If you are really serious about making a real living online, focus on what really works, not something that may work for a couple weeks but has no long term viability.

With the kind of traffic I receive from EZA, I could easily make a consistent $40K-$50K annually when combined with what I teach in the Profit Loophole course, with no other source of traffic.

That is very close to the median average annual income in the US. And it’s sitting right there in front of everyone, and so few actually capitalize on it, opting for failed shortcuts over sound business practices.

- Dave -