There are numerous inherent benefits in this fairly simple and innovative way of promoting your website and your products.

You can establish yourself as an expert in your field

People trust and tend to buy products from somebody they consider to be an expert. Once you start writing articles and if these articles provide valuable information, it won’t take long for you to get accepted as an authority in your subject matter.

Augment your own knowledge

If you write articles, apart from knowledge that you already have, you still have to do some home works on relevantmaterials – gathering and culling information, data, surveys, etc. This process eventually improves your own grasp of subject as well.

Get targeted traffic to your site

As far as web marketing is concerned this is main reason why you should consider writing articles. Each of your articles that you allow others to republish should carry a resource box which includes a short description of you as an author and a link to your website. If readers like your articles, they will visit your site to check out what else you have to offer.

Increase link popularity of your website

All your articles published in other websites with a backward link to your website will help boosting your link popularity. Link popularity indicates number of web pages that link to your website. Many search engines use it as one of main factors in their algorithm which determines search engine ranking of a certain website.

If you are a novice writer and would like to pursue this unique method of promoting your website, you don’t have to worry about where to start. There's a load of information available on Internet about writing. However, before even you start writing your first article, no matter how good you are in your chosen subject matter, you still have to do some extra research to seek out an interesting topic, gather relevant materials on topic, evaluate gathered information, organize your thoughts and plan your article.

While writing an article, maximum time and effort, probably, you will spend on preparation rather then physical process of writing itself.

Here are five steps for novice writers to jump start their website promotion through article writing.

Step I: Choose a topic

Research firm eMarketer predicts that worldwide B2B ecommerce revenues will surpass US$ 1.4 trillion by end of 2003. In United States alone revenues will total US$ 721 billion. By 2004, US B2B ecommerce revenues are expected to reach US$ 1.01 trillion and studies show that a significant portion of these transactions will be conducted through emarketplaces.

What is an Emarketplace?

In a broader sense, business to business emarketplace is an online platform where buyers and sellers come to communicate, collaborate and make business transactions. Emarketplace caters a large number of participant companies as a community. The main objective of an emarketplace is to create a venue, filled with features that allow members to efficiently conduct significant portion of business processes on Net. Emarketplaces are also known as B2B exchanges.

Types of Emarketplaces

There are varieties of emarketplaces available on Internet to suit your company's specific need.

Public: These emarketplaces are open to all companies. Virtually, anybody can become a member and conduct business through these marketplaces.

Private: Membership is restricted and owners of marketplace decide according to which criteria they will select participants. For example: a large trading company can have its own emarketplace limited to its buyers or suppliers only.

Horizontal: If emarketplace works with a large numbers of products and services from different industries, it is called a horizontal marketplace.

Vertical: Industry specific emarketplaces are called vertical markets. An emarketplace, working solely with suppliers and buyers of cars is an example of this kind of marketplace.

Can your company benefit from an Emarketplace?

Whether you are primarily a buyer or a supplier, participation in emarketplace can generate enormous benefits to your company - both in cost savings and productivity increase.

Benefits that you can have as a buyer

Automate purchasing procedure Emarketplaces allow you to send request for quotes to a prospective supplier, receive quotes, send purchase orders and receive invoices within marketplace system. You can virtually consolidate all your procurement processes in one single place. This process of automation brings significant efficiency to you and saves your transaction processing cost. According to Aberdeen Group, a research company, thanks to B2B procurement systems, businesses can reduce these processing costs up to 70%.

Comparison shopping at its best Since you can see all suppliers of a particular product, that you are planning to buy, in one place, it is easy for you to see which one among suppliers suits you best in terms of quality, delivery time, geographical location, costs etc.

Reduce sourcing time cycle Most emarketplaces allow you to select multiple offers from different suppliers and create purchase orders in one shot and send. Since you handle all your procurement related correspondence from a consolidated working page, you can see right away answers to requests for quote, invoices, etc. This helps you react instantly and reduce you time in document processing.

Community participation You can receive valuable feedbacks from other fellow buyers, receive industry-related information, build new partnerships and use networking ability of a community.

Real time access to current product information Current information of a product is vital for an accurate buying decision. 24 hours access to supplier's catalog helps you getting most up-to-date information any time you need it.

Control rogue spending Consolidated and automated procurement and approval method stops maverick buying in a company.

Benefit that you can have as a seller

New sales channel By becoming a member of an emarketplace, you open a low cost, highly functional and easy-to-use sales channel for your company. You expose your company to a new targeted audience that otherwise would have been untapped to you.