Dumb question, isn't it?

Have you ever thought about how many ways you can use informative articles to increase your traffic? A good article can get you a lot of mileage.

Put together a collection of articles and you've got a method to draw traffic to your site for months, even years.

Most marketers think of using articles as content on their site and for submission to ezines.

That is truly only tip of iceberg. Although you'll draw traffic if you stopped there, you're using less than half power of good content.

Submitting articles to ezines will bring a short rapid boost in your traffic, but that's just a short term solution. Stop submitting new articles and your traffic slowly begins to decline.

So how to you take advantage of long term pulling power of your articles?

There are four simple steps you can take that will have your articles driving new visitors to your site for months, even years.

Here are a couple of biggest lies I see when I scan subjects or initial paragraphs of my email everyday - -

"This is not spam since you are either on my mailing list because we corresponded in past, you sent me a previous email or you posted at my site."

"We want to join your program! Thanks for sending information on your program, please take a look at ours!"

"We Love Your Site!"

"You Have A New Member"

And there are many more similar come ons that are used.

When I take a closer look at address it was sent to, I note it is one of my autoresponder addresses! Then I notice that there are four more messages in my email with same subject and from same mailer. They are addressed to four other autoresponders that I maintain. I currently have about 30 autoresponders working around clock with various sales literature and free information and they are all subject to getting these anonymous messages.

Others are sent to it to me at email addresses that are use specific, addresses like support@homebizlink.com, or sales@homebizlink.com. These are addresses that are never used for promotion or marketing activities. They are normally used to control incoming requests and information. The only place they would get these type addresses would be at our web site.

So I didn't correspond before, I am not on your mailing list, and I didn't post at your site. Nor did I send my program to you for your review. I just don't use autoresponders in that manner. You have to request information from autoresponder yourself.

There is only one way they would have gotten those addresses on their mailing list. They harvested or extracted them from my site using some type of bulk mail software that automatically goes around to sites, stripping and stealing email addresses.

I particularly get a kick out of ones that say "we just visited your site at..." and next word is a hyperlink that is supposed to be our site but it is a link to some site we have never heard of. Sounds like their bulk email program screwed up!