I like to surf around different internet forums that deal with internet marketing, link building, traffic building, and search engine optimization. Lately, I have seen a lot of questions about using articles as a marketing tool. The question has been this: “How much traffic can I get from submitting articles to article directories?” I would honesty love to tell you that you get loads of traffic. On the other hand, I would love to be able to tell you that you wouldn’t get a lot of traffic. However, I cannot tell you either way because it really just depends. It depends on these things:

• How many articles you submit
• How many directories you submit your articles to
• Where you submitted your article
• Quality of your article
• Usefulness of your article
• Value of your article

So if article writing appears so iffy, why do it? One thing I will say is that article marketing is not something you will usually see results from overnight. Article marketing is a great long term investment for promoting your website, building links, and generating more traffic. Article marketing is only iffy if you are looking for a short term or fast, quick way to generate traffic. My best advice is to avoid writing garbage content. Provide useful information in your article. Keep a constant mindset that you are writing for people and not to see the traffic stats go up through the roof. You are not writing for numbers! You are writing for people. If you are writing for numbers, you may begin to feel discouraged because your traffic will not usually jump overnight. Quite simply, it takes time to realize the positive effects from article writing. I know that I am guilty of taking short cuts and forgetting about the reader in my articles. Sometimes I am feeling lazy and think, “Well I’m writing this article. My link will be on my article, so therefore, people will click my link and all will be well.” That is wishful thinking on my part! The truth and reality about that statement is that nobody will care to click to my website if my article is not worth reading. They won’t even make it through the article to see my link! That’s a shame. If your article fails to meet the reader, you also miss out on another important aspect. You miss out on the chance that the reader will take the article and distribute it to other people with your link attached to the article. That’s even more possible traffic you are missing out on! Quality is so essential to article marketing. The other factors of article marketing have no match for a quality article. You could submit to few article directories and many would read your quality article because it is an article worth reading. To summarize, write quality articles that meet the reader. Give the reader exactly what they want. Do not take shortcuts because there are no shortcuts in article marketing. Article marketing can be a time consuming process, but if done right, it will really, and I mean really, pay off in the long run.