Free reprint articles can dramatically increase traffic to your
website by way of inbound links. Free reprint articles are
articles that have either been written by you or by a ghostwriter
and are given away to publishers so that you can get free
exposure.
Your articles should deal with topics in your area of expertise
and the general topic that your website covers. Free reprint
articles are generally informative and helpful to the reader.
Once you or the ghostwriter have completed your article, you
will want to get it distributed to publishers who will print
it in their ezines and newsletters or on their websites. When a
publisher uses your free reprint article, the publisher agrees to
attach a textbox that contains the authors name and information,
and a link back to your website. This is where your increased web
traffic comes from.
Is it worth it for you to go to the trouble of writing an
informative, good quality article that can increase your web
traffic? Is it worth it to hire a ghostwriter to do it for you?
Are you willing to pay a distributor to get your article out to
the publishers? These are all questions that you must answer for
yourself. Keep in mind that writing a single article and getting
it published in niche ezines and newsletters that reach your
target audiences can be extremely valuable.
If you did not use a free reprint article, how would you reach
these targeted audiences? By targeted audiences, I mean that the
readers are interested enough in the topic that you deal with
to subscribe to ezines and newsletters that provide information
on those topics. Many would say that they would simply pay to
advertise in the ezines and newsletters that reach their target
market. This is an effective, but expensive method of reaching
your target audiences. Consider that on average, the CPM (cost
per thousand subscribers) advertising rate for ezines and
newsletters is $8 CPM. Now if an ezine has 10,000 subscribers,
you will be paying $80.00 for an advertisement in that single
publication.
Conversely, if you use free reprint articles to promote your
business, you can possibly reach this ezine and ten others just
like it. With some articles, you might be able to reach one
hundred more ezines with the same size subscriber base, and some
with an even larger subscriber base. I have been published in
ezines reaching as many as 750,000 subscribers per issue. This is
the beauty of using free reprint articles for business promotion;
one article written and distributed one time could reach 10
thousand readers, 100 thousand readers, and possibly even
millions of readers.
Suppose for example, you spend $600 to have an article written
for you, and suppose you spend $200 to have that article
distributed for you. In many cases, you can get a ghostwriter and
a distributor for much less money. For the sake of our example,
if you spend $800 to have an article written and distributed for
you, and your article reaches 100,000 readers, then you will have
spent 0.008 cents per reader to have your sales message delivered
to your targeted market. This is the equivalent of the $8 CPM
advertising we were talking about previously.
Now, what if you can buy a ghost written article and have it
distributed for half or even a third this amount, and what if
perhaps you can reach even more readers than the 100,000?
Whenever you can spend less or you can increase the reach of
your message, then you will have lowered the CPM cost of your
sales message.
For the average businessperson, a free reprint article will be
much cheaper than straight paid advertising, and the free reprint
article will show the readers that you are indeed an expert in
your field. Whether you sell services or products, the reader can
see that you know your stuff by reading your article.
A free reprint article that is sent to targeted publishers by an
experienced distribution service can reach thousands of potential
publishers that have thousands or tens of thousands of readers.
The cost of doing this varies, but the cost of distributing
one article is almost always far cheaper than buying one
advertisement in one ezine or newsletter. The distributors send
the article, with the textbox and link back to your site, to the
appropriate publishers. The publishers have generally developed
an appreciation for the distributors and are often more trusting
of material sent by the distribution services. Therefore,
publishers may be more likely to use your article in their
publications if you use a distribution service to get it to them.
Writing and distributing free reprint articles is definitely
an effective and inexpensive method to generate traffic to your
website and to gain new customers. If you do not feel that
writing is your specialty, consider hiring a ghostwriter to write
the article for you. When using a ghostwriter there is almost
always a written agreement that you can use your own name as the
author of the article. This way you become known as the expert
and as one who offers the valuable information to potential
customers.
A simple advertisement in a publication offers little real value
to the reader. A free reprint article does offer value, because
it gives the reader some real and useful information. For
example, if you are running a website that deals with home
improvements, then you may want to write an article that tells
the readers how to make a certain home improvement. Give away
some of your knowledge, and the readers will be more likely to
visit your website. An advertisement simply shows the services
that you offer, not that you actually know what you are talking
about.
Free reprint articles are cost effective and can save you time,
trouble and money. You can literally reach tens or hundreds of
thousands of possible customers in a very short period of time.
I would encourage you to track several pieces of data in
connection with your free reprint articles.
First, you should track where you have been published, how
many readers you were able to reach, and the average cost
of advertising in the ezines and newsletters where you were
published. This allows you to gain an appreciation for the
monetary value of the advertising you were able to acquire using
your free reprint article. It also allows you the luxury of
making an accurate determination as to whether the money you had
spent to write and distribute your article matched up with the
advertising value you received.
Secondly, you should track how much traffic you were able to have
delivered to your website as a result of the publication of your
article, how much of that traffic you were able to convert into
buyers, and how many dollars those visitors spent at your site.
This will allow you to determine how effective your advertising
is against the cost of the advertising received. The reality is
that some ezines charge $4 CPM and will not deliver that much
value, while other ezines charge $50 CPM and they are worth every
penny spent.
The actual numbers can vary widely from article to article. But,
when you compare the results from a free reprint article to the
results from a regular advertisement, the cost per visitor gained
from a free reprint article will be much cheaper and your return
on investment (ROI) will be much more long-term, than traffic
gained from traditional advertising.
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