Red Frog, Inc.

by Judith Tramayne-Barth

After four years on the Internet, I read constantly where "search engine placement" is the key to success and I am here to tell you this is baloney. Yes, it is a necessary ingredient but not something you should hyper-ventilate over.

To be an effective marketing person on this Information Highway, you must put up road signs all over it. Search Engines are just a small part of what you should be doing. My site is 103,692 out of the top 300,000 websites according to this site:

http://www.trafficranking.com

This service is provided by 7Search and I want to add, I have never paid them or anybody else for any type of advertising or submission services **ever** in my four years. So why my site would be listed with them who knows.

But it does show me that my method of marketing works. No I am not unhappy with the 103,000 figure considering the millions of sites on the Internet. But it does give me incentive to become one of the top 100 sites.

So what is the best and most time-efficient marketing method?

==> Writing Articles

Yes, I know you've read or heard this thousand of times before but guess what folks ó it works! Read these articles to find out why:

http://www.apromotionguide.com/increasetraffic.html

Now if you're saying to yourself "I can't write" — I say "yeah right, then you woke up" because I'll bet you email someone every day. And, basically that's all an ezine article is — you writing to a friend on a subject you know.

To get your articles accepted by most ezine publishers, there are a few guidelines you should use:

1. Publishing Permission Statement

This is usually at the top of your article and is similar in wording to:
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This article may be freely published in your newsletter, on your website, or in your free eBook, so long as you keep my byline and resource box intact with a clickable link back to my site.
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By putting this statement in, you will not have to play email tag with all the different ezine editors. It saves you both time if this simple statement is included.

2. Article Title with your name as Author

Make it attention grabbing and short if you can. Not only because you want ezine owners to read it when you email your article to lists on Yahoogroups or Topica but a great title helps when you add your article to portal sites like:

http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/articles/
http://ezinearticles.com/add_url.html
http://www.connectionteam.com/submit.html

3. First Paragraph and Body of Article

You have exactly 5 to 10 seconds to grab your readers attention so make sure your first paragraph does this. Then each paragraph after that should be concise, flow easily and never waiver from your main subject.

Your last paragraph should conclude your article either by recapping your main points (how-to articles) or have a slight twist leaving your readers smiling.

4. Resource Box

The reason you wrote the article in the first place besides wanting to share your knowledge. This is how you get targeted visitors to your site.

So spend your time on this and get it perfect. Write, rewrite and write it again so the 3 or 4 lines you are allowed entices the readers to click on your link.

5. Make It Easy For Ezine Owners

Ezines or newsletters are sent in emails and most owners use a 65 character line length. They are constantly under a deadline so if your article can just be copy and pasted versus one that has to be reformatted ó which do you think they are going to use?

An easy way to accomplish this is to set your email client to a 65 character length and send your article to yourself. The article should be anywhere from 500 to 750 words.

Follow the above guidelines when writing your articles, submit them and you'll be enjoying the best marketing method on the Internet!

Judith Tramayne-Barth owns "A Good Read Art & Book Club." Her members learn how-to make money on the Internet, market "Smarter Not Harder" and save thousands of $. Either visit http://www.agoodread.com or request artandbookclub@sendfree.com to find out how a membership will benefit you.