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You will find a number of my articles scattered across the internet in more than 150 Article Directories. They have been viewed by thousands of readers, republished, and even emailed to friends of the readers. The benefit has been free information for my readers and traffic to my various blogs and websites. Feel free to copy my formula.

Submitting articles to directories like this one is a major form of information-based marketing. We have had information-based marketing for many years via direct mail. It's one of the oldest and most effective techniques to reach targeted prospects and convert those prospects into buyers. Now, with the internet, the new form of direct mail has become article marketing. Article writing and directory submissions have made the difference for many websites and blogs. Where they once starved for traffic, they now have a steady flow thanks to article marketing.

The directories also benefit because of increased traffic from search engines. People who Google or Yahoo for a specific topic are likely to find many directories from which to choose that have the content they seek.

There are many tools to make the process of writing and distributing articles easily but this article is not about those, it's about how you can become an effective article marketer. It's about the mistakes you need to avoid as you start out.

Mistake 1. Writing with the wrong motives.

There are three obvious benefits to article marketing - branding, lead generation, and promotion of your website or blog. But there should be only one overwhelming motive for writing an article - to provide free and helpful information to your reader.

If the article is not focused on this primary and most important motive, it will fail to achieve the three benefits because your insincerity will be obvious. Readers are quick to perceive your self-serving purpose. How do you get people to read what is in your article, then click on your link in your resource box? Give them valuable information for free and invite them to get more by clicking your link.

Mistake 2. Failing to take advantage of article marketing as a promotional tool.

The link in your Author Box can help you generate additional links back to your site but you may not know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from that same article.

When writing, don't forget to insert your keywords at strategic places in the article. One at the beginning, one or two in the middle and one near the end is sufficient. You should also use anchor text in your Author Box link when the directory allows html. Out of the 185 directories I submit articles to, 21 do not allow anchor text. They do allow a standard URL to link back to your website or blog.

If you take the extra time to write quality content and use keywords and/or anchor text in your articles, your articles might get picked up by publishers with a large number of readers thus further expanding your possibilities for traffic back to you. This also results in better search engine placement because of the number of links back to you from sites outside the article directory.

If you have something to sell, that increase in traffic will put money in your pocket

Mistake 3. Publishing content that is mediocre or that attempts to redirect your reader to a sales page.

If you think that you can write and submit any drivel and you will automatically get links back to your site, think again.

Nearly all article directories are human-edited which means a real person will read your article. If it's drivel, they will reject it. Do that a few times and they will blacklist you. It's very important that you read the submission guidelines to avoid rejection or blacklisting. Play by the rules and you will reap the three benefits. Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your content automatically.

When you write and submit good stuff you raise your chances of reaching hundreds, perhaps thousands of readers overnight. All it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to republish your good stuff. Write articles that you, yourself, would publish. I cannot tell you how many articles I reject for my blogs because they are self-serving drivel but it's about 99%!

Mistake 4. Submitting illiterate articles.

This is a big one. Just recently I had a spell of "writers' arrogance" and did not take the time for spelling and grammar checks. Six of my articles were rejected!

Look, how hard is it to do a spell check and follow basic rules of good grammar? Before you submit, check and recheck for mistakes. Editors will quickly reject your article if it doesn't meet the basics or that makes you look like you only made it through the 5th grade. I use the spell and grammar check functions built into Microsoft Word.

In the end, it's all up to you to do it the right way. Put your readers first and the benefits to you - second - and you will soon be spread all over the web.

Jim DeSantis

Jim DeSantis is a retired broadcast journalist who publishes the On Line Tribune Newspaper and edits the eBooks Library