Making Money with Articles: Free Article Content

Some webmasters try to use articles from free content directories to get visitors to their site and make some money. This is mostly important for those who have just begun working as an affiliate for several companies and do not yet have any funding, yet need to built small niche websites to visitors to their site so that they can begin making revenue.

Although this can sometimes be the only option for those who are running on a non-existent budget, it is not a way that will effectively build your website or revenue. There are a few potential reasons why this may be detrimental to your business building efforts.

Problem #1 - Search Engines

Search engines will only look down upon your site if it has the exact same duplicated content than other sites. The more sites that share your content, the less it will help you achieve good search engine rankings.

Good search engine rankings are essential in getting visitors to your sit so that they have a chance to click on your affiliate links. If you cannot even get visitors, then will never make an revenue. Working on the search engine optimization of your site so that you will eventually be high enough in the results to get customers, should be priority one.

Problem #2 - Getting visitors to click

Although getting your site high on search engine result pages and acquiring site visitors is hard work, unfortunately this is only half of the battle. You must also be able to convince those visitors to click on your affiliate links. If your visitors see the same content they have seen on a multitude of other sites, they will be least likely to click on your links. This is because most people want to buy things that are recommended by people that they trust or whom they feel like are an expert on the subject.

If your content is just duplicated from other sites, you will be exposed as someone who does not really know what they are talking about and therefore will not look heavily on your product recommendations. This will reduce the number of website visitors who will be willing to click through.

Problem #3 - Author Bylines

Most free content is only given to you if you agree to place the authors byline under the article (you can get into trouble if you try to use it without following the stipulated rules). This poses a problem because most author bylines include links. When a reader gets done reading a really intriguing article, there is a strong possibility that they will click on the author’s byline link rather than your affiliate links. This is the entire reason why these authors offer free content to begin with, so that they may get their name and links out there to the public. Using this type of content may mean shooting yourself in the foot and losing possible profitable website visitors.

Once you put these three problems together, you are looking at a serious decline in revenue simply because you used free website content from article directories. Although it may be the only option for some, if you have the funds to buy your own original content, then you should go this route. If you don’t have the finds, however, you may be better off writing your own content and then hiring professional services once you have made a profit to work with.

Making Money with Articles: Freelance Writers

If you cannot or do not wish to write your articles yourself, you can search different outsourcing companies to find a freelance writer to help you grow your business and your website. These freelancers will ghost write articles for you which means that you will own all copyrights to the material that is produced to do with what you want. Freelance writers have a talent for writing, however, they would rather make quick money off of writing for others, rather than taking the time to build a niche website that will need to be heavily marketed and promoted to begin earning revenue. They are usually not marketers, but rather people who have a gift for the written word.

On the other hand, those who are looking to make money from articles are marketers. They are looking to build websites that will give them long term revenue, rather than one quick payment and that is it. This Internet pool or freelance writers will open up a good opportunity for you to receive the quality, original content that you are looking for to build your niche site.

Making Money with Articles: Easy to Read Articles

When writing articles, make sure to keep your readers in mind. Studies have shown that most Internet readers tend to scan a page to find the information they are looking for, rather than reading the entire page. This means having good titles, a lot of subtitles, and making use of bullet points to help your readers easily scan your page. Readers prefer a site like this that is easy to use and will be more willing to come back to your site time and time again. The more that your readers return, the more opportunities you will have to get them to click on each one of your affiliate links. Failing to write your articles in this manner, or to have them written this way, could turn your site visitors away before they even have a chance to see what you have to say or to learn what your affiliate links are all about. Keeping your articles organized as recommended will keep your visitors returning and enable your site to continue making money for you.