Is Writing Articles the Only Way to Succeed Online?

Certainly not!

Many different ways exist to succeed with an online business. All of them will require a learning curve to use properly and effectively.

1 - Online Advertising

Traditional advertising still exists. There are many owners of websites who would be more than willing to sell you space on their site for your own site's promotion.

You will need to learn how to determine the value of this kind of advertising. How much traffic is generated? What kind of traffic is generated? Does the traffic convert to sales? Is it worth the money being spent?

2 - Online and Offline Word of Mouth

This is basically a free form of advertising. The concept is simple, if you know enough people and tell them, they in turn tell others and so forth. Before long many people are checking out your website.

Another similar technique which is an electronic method of spreading the word is thru the use of forums. You must be careful with this technique however, as it may be considered spam by many forum moderators and / or viewed negatively by forum members.

Many website forums offer sections specifically for advertising. They may charge a price, but it is usually not very high.

3 - Pay per Click

Many online businesses are extremely successful using pay per click campaigns with the search engines. Traffic can be nearly instantaneous and depending on the campaign large amounts of traffic can be generated.

This again is another technique you need to learn and understand before attempting. If not done properly it could possibly be one of the quickest ways to max out a credit card with no return on investment.

4 - Email Opt-In Lists

Many online entrepreneurs would say this is the only way to succeed online. They will give away products or information simply by having the visitor add their email address to their "electronic list" using a website form and then confirmed by the visitor via their email address, otherwise known as opt-in.

The idea is that once their email is on the "list", newsletters can be sent out many times with links to products they are selling. With this technique the visitor could possibly be sold many different products earning the online business owner far more income than only one initial product sale might produce.

Indeed, there are many success stories with this online business model. For it to succeed you need to have a large list of subscribers, good sales copywriting and products for resale.

5 - A Good Linking Strategy

It has been said that the links between different websites form the back bone of the internet. Search engines value links highly, especially one way links, and rank sites higher in their results which have a large number of links.

Website owner, naturally, figured this out and took advantage of it to gain increased exposure to their website. They participated in a form of linking called "reciprocal linking". They would ask a different website owner to add a link for them and in return they would link back.

This linking strategy worked for a while, but soon the search engines caught on and filtered this "fabricated" linking out, resulting in many site owners losing traffic.

Linking with relevant sites can still produce much traffic. It does again require a learning curve on how to do it properly and how to be rewarded from the search engines in terms of search results ranking. It also requires time for this method to work to its full potential.

People have succeeded in many other ways including blogging, free publicity and even by printing their website in various locations offline.

Articles are typically associated with online success from the phrase "Content Is King!" For many websites and users it is hard to beat the value of articles with the content they provide.

Many people are looking for information. They are not ready to spend money. However, capturing their attention by giving them the information they are looking for helps to draw them in and prepare them to spend their money.

Why not have them spend their money on your site? Feed them with information from your articles and reel them in!

Craig Ritsema operates a successful Part Time Work At Home business and resides in Michigan, USA. For more details visit his site at: http://part-time-work-at-home-opportunities.com

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