Writing articles and marketing with articles is one of the best and fastest ways market your business. In fact, if you can write a 7 item grocery list, you can write an article that will help you increase your prospects, publicity and profits. Here are seven ways that you can benefit from articles. 1) Articles will quickly position you as an expert in your field. The written word is incredibly powerful. Writing articles sets you apart from your competition. You never have to say "Listen to me, I'm an expert!" Your articles do that for you, because articles increase your "expert-ability." 2) Articles can become little 24/7 salespeople. Once you have an article published, especially on the internet, you now have a 24 hour, 7 day a week, 365 day a year international salesperson working specifically for you and your business. 3) Just one article can be used in many ways. This is called leverage. Just one article can be used a free report, a bonus, featured in a newsletter or ezine, become part of an online e-course, become part of a book, and many other ways. 4) Articles spread the word about your business and your services. One article that I wrote 5 years ago was recently used in one of my internet newsletters. A newspaper reporter that is on my mailing list saw it and interviewed me for a story. When he pitched it to his editor, the editor liked it so much that they turned it into a feature article. They ran it on the front page of the paper, and it has been picked up and run across the country. 5) Marketing articles is simple, easy and inexpensive, especially when compared to other ways of marketing online. It costs you nothing to write an article. It also costs you nothing to have it listed on article directories such as EzineArticles.com. Imagine what it would cost you to pay for that kind of exposure and publicity. 6) Articles can help you build a mailing list that you can market to over and over again. Once you have a few articles out there, you will reach a certain critical mass where the prospects begin to flow in. Continue to grow past the critical mass, and you will grow to the point where you could not stop the traffic and prospects flowing in if you wanted to. 7) Articles allow you to stay in touch with customers/clients and sell more products. We know that it can take from 5 to 8 contacts or more for new prospect to be ready to become a customer. Articles allow you to stay in touch with prospects and provide them with quality information. These seven benefits are really just the tip of the iceberg of all the many benefits of article writing and article marketing.