Getting Something for Nothing: Is it Time to Give Up on Free Article Marketing?
I recently read the NY Times bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek. One of the things the author, Tim Ferris said was to remove the word “Free” from your marketing.
His reasoning? More or less, people looking for free stuff are lower-end customers. They are the ones who will make the most demands on your time and usually buy nothing, or very little. He explains it better than I ever could, but that’s the gist of it.
So, this got me to thinking about free article directories. I’ve used this marketing tactic for years to spread the word about my business. It’s worked in that I get subscribers to my newsletter and visitors to my website blog.
Is Free Article Marketing a Good Marketing Strategy?
So, I do think it’s a good free marketing strategy – to a degree.
For about the past six months or so, I haven’t contributed very much to free article directories because I simply haven’t had the time. As I sell a lot of my content to sites like AssociatedContent (AC) and as PLR content, it’s becoming a less viable way for me to market.
3 Things to Keep in Mind to Make the Most Effective Use of Free Article Marketing
Following are three things to keep in mind about article marketing to make it work for you.
1. What level of freelancer are you? Free article marketing directories are great for newbies who are just starting out to start attracting traffic and clients to their website blog.
Don’t just submit to a directory though and expect clients to come. Contact clients directly with links to your article. There are millions are articles on the web in free article directories (of which there are thousands), so to get found, you have to proactively market your content there.
2. Submit articles to paid sites first. One of the reasons I stopped submitting to free directories on a regular basis is that some paid sites like AC won’t pay up front for content that can be found all over the web. And, this is what happens when you submit articles to numerous free article directories – they wind up all over the web.
So, submit to the paid sites first. If you so desire, you can submit to the free directories later.
3. Know when to let go. As in, once free article marketing – or any form of advertising – has exhausted its use for you, let it go. May of us keep doing the same things over and over out of habit.
While I think I’ll always submit to free article directories, it’s usually during some down time when I have nothing else pressing going on.
When you freelance, time is money, so every second you’re at your computer, make sure you’re doing something that adds to your income – and doesn’t waste time.
Free article marketing is a wonderful marketing strategy to get the word out about your freelance services – if it’s used correctly.
Money Never Sleeps | February 6th, 2008 at 2:21 pm #
Personally, I first submit to ezinearticles and than I wait about one week and submit to ISNARE’s distribution service for $2 per article. On average I recieve about 170 backlinks from my articles submitted to isnare. It is worth the money, trust me on this one!
Stephan Miller | February 6th, 2008 at 3:32 pm #
I haven’t submitted articles in a while either, after it started being called “article marketing”. It just seems like it waters down your name. When your article shows up everywhere, it tends to look spammy. I do understand the backlinks you can get, but I am wondering if even that is worth it or another method for getting backlinks will work just as well. And I really need to The 4 Hour Work Week.
Alex Rich | February 6th, 2008 at 5:39 pm #
Ms Black is right on the money as always. I followed her advice and started freelancing. Now I’m building a practice that is growing. I recently cut back on my submissions to free article sites. It’s a matter of balancing supply and demand. I definitely want to build demand for my work by not making it too available in that sector.
JBiggs | February 6th, 2008 at 10:32 pm #
I’m very enjoy reading this content.
Thank you for good information
Ibanez Guitar Blog | February 7th, 2008 at 1:37 pm #
Yuwanda, thanks. I’m always looking out for more article marketing info. Trying to find a good balance….
Money Never Sleeps, thanks for the ISNARE tip.
Yuwanda Black (Post Author) | February 7th, 2008 at 2:29 pm #
@Money Never Sleeps: I never tried Isnare’s paid service. When i was writing my ebook on article marketing, it was one of the sites I used in my case study, but it took forever for them to post the article. At the time I wrote:
“I love the ease of submission of this site – once you create an author account. BUT, it takes a while for them to approve your article for publishing – unless you use their paid submission feature (Platinum account). Eg, I submitted an article on 10/19, and as of today (11/1), I’m still waiting for that article, and subsequent ones, to be published.”
I got pretty good coverage submitting to directories myself. If I ever start to use this method of marketing on a regular basis again, I might go this route though, as I simply don’t have time to manually submit anymore and think that software would cause duplicate content penalties.
Thanks for the tip.
@Stephan, Google and other search engines are getting much more strict about duplicate content penalties — they weren’t as bad just over a year ago, when I wrote the article marketing ebook. I don’t necessarily think seeing your article all over the web look spammy. Think of it as a compliment that it gets picked up so often. My problem with it though is that it’s usually picked up by other directories, not actual site owners who want to use it as content, for example.
And yes, DO read The 4-Hour Workweek. Excellent read and teh way I’ve been thinking for years (Tim just beat me to the punch in writing the book :razz:)
@Alex: Glad to hear your freelance writing career is going well. Continued success!
@JBiggs, you’re very welcome; glad you enjoyed the read.
@Ibanez: “Balance,” you hit the nail on the head. Doesn’t it apply to most everything in life.
Thanks to everybody for commenting.
And oh, one more thing. The article marketing ebook I kept referring to is free when you sign up to my newsletter. Didn’t want y’all to think I was mentioning it for profit.
Yuwanda
Andy MacDonald | February 7th, 2008 at 6:19 pm #
I think you summed up this article perfectly in your last sentence alone, and i entirely agree with you!
“Free article marketing is a wonderful marketing strategy to get the word out about your freelance services – if it’s used correctly.”
Nice article. keep up the great work.
Grover | April 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm #
I just began my journey with article marketing and although my successes have been small, I am still amazed at the traffic (and money) they can generate.
Nothing | June 9th, 2008 at 11:32 am #
thank you for such a great tip