I use a hosted service from Sales Force (www.salesforce.com) to manage my leads. It costs me $65 per month for a full-featured sales force automation and lead management system that I can get to from any computer with internet access. Like my American Express card, I don't leave home without it.

I use free service from PRWeb (www.prweb.com) to send out press releases to media for my clients. Their paid service is about $400, but I've always been happy with results from their free version.

Can you see how telling people about these tools takes nothing away from my own service offering? Giving away this information does one very important thing: it makes my target market happy.

After all, how many people don't even know that www.articlemarketer.com is a tool they should be using or that salesforce.com offers a web based lead management SFA offering? When they read my article, they get valuable information about something they can use right now to get more traffic, find more prospects, and increase their sales volume. They are satisfied.

Then magic happens.

When they get to end of my article, if they like free information I've provided, they will want to know more. I put my website address in resource box (yep, see below) and I get a flood of traffic to my site. Not just any old traffic though. The people coming to my website are pre-qualified. It's what Ken Evoy says is crucial in selling online, these visitors are "open to an offer" from me.

They have already proven to have an interest in what I'm talking about, and they already feel somewhat comfortable with me, my style, my approach, etc. When they arrive at my web site, they get a lot of information absolutely free. They can also purchase things I have for sale.

I've seen dramatic spikes in my Simplified Selling book sales after distributing an article. The conversion rate is better too – meaning I get more sales "per capita" than using pay-per-click or buying ads in newsletters.

Of course, it's not that expensive to buy an ad in a newsletter – but does anyone have enough money to pay for advertising in every newsletter that reaches a particular target market? Of course not, there are hundreds of thousands of ezines published on web and in print.

However, publishers need content and they are willing to publish your free reprint article (meaning they don't have to pay you for your writing) and in exchange they provide a link to your website.

That link shows up in newsletters to be seen by your prospective customers. You also get permanent links on websites - something else that Google Patent identifies as important when ranking sites.

So sit down, draft out an article on some topic you like, and get it published. Watch as world beats a path to your door.