What is this thing that everyone is talking about? The buzz is about “article marketing” – practice of providing royalty free content to websites, e-zines and newsletters.

It works like this: You write a simple article that is interesting to a particular group of people. It doesn’t have to be The Great American Novel, just about 500 words on topic of your choice. Then you submit your article all over web to ezine publishers, newsletter editors and content-laden websites.

When they publish your article (and they almost always do) your target market reads your words, sees you as an expert (after all, you’re a published author!) and they click on a link to your website that you conveniently provided at end of article. Viola! Instant, qualified traffic.

And it’s not fleeting traffic. Your article remains out there for people to find for weeks, months, even years. As new people happen across your article, they click link and visit your site. You have a perpetual traffic machine, driving tons of pre-qualified, open-to-an-offer, interested traffic to your site. This is better than advertising, and far less expensive.

The problem is effort of submitting your articles to enough sites that you really make a splash. Most authors will submit their articles to 20-30 places before getting totally burned out on submission process. It’s tedious, dull, drudge work.

There are three online services that automatically submit articles for authors. Each of these services explain intrinsic value of publishing your articles, and of course they each describe their services as best-in-class. They range from single submissions to unlimited submissions and from completely free to $119.85. Check them out and draw your own conclusions.

- - - - - http://www.SubmitYourArticle.com - - - - -

Sends out articles in three categories: * Internet marketing/online business * Self-improvement/motivation * Health and fitness. (They promise “Business-General” and “Finance/Investment” categories soon.)

Submits articles to an undefined number of ezine publishers and 15 or more article announcement lists with over 10,000 subscribers.

Special Feature: Offers an article management suite to retrieve, edit, or resubmit your article.

Cost: * Bronze membership, $37.00/month, you may submit one (1) article per month * Silver membership, $57.00/month, you may submit two (2) articles per month * Gold membership, $75.00/month, you may submit three (3) articles per month * Platinum membership, $90.00/month, you may submit four (4) articles per month

There are a number of free resources that make building and promoting your website a whole lot easier.

Web Site Design - page layout (http://www.steves-templates.com) Steve provides free web page templates which are nice looking, professional and can be used free for personal and business websites. Check out all variations and pick a template for your site. Another way to use this is as a springboard for your own creativity. Perhaps you like an element on template 1 and navigation of template 7. Get some ideas for creating your own site from scratch. There are also designs you can buy for under $100 and you gain access to a number of images, clipart, sounds, fonts etc.

Web Site Design - graphics (http://www.cooltext.com) Cool Text is a wonderful tool for creating great looking buttons and logos. It’s free and combinations of shape/color/texture/font are virtually endless. You can create professional buttons and logos with just a few mouse clicks. I use this site any time I want to "freshen up" my site or create buttons/logos for my customers.

Web Site Performance - images (http://www.gifworks.com) Nothing slows down your page like heavy graphics. Did you know that you can dramatically reduce file size of your graphics without compromising look and feel of your site? That’s where gifworks.com comes in. Run their free “optimization” tool on your gif images and watch as they get more and more streamlined. Your web pages will load faster. Gifworks has a paid service as well, allowing you to buy images, get custom work, etc.