No doubt you`ve heard the saying “Quality over quantity” and that is very true when it comes to article marketing. Now, I`ve had quite a bit of success with this type of promotion and I can honestly say that it`s in my top 3 list of ways to promote your business for free. However, a lot of work at home moms feel they just don`t have time to write as many articles as they need in order to really do a good job of promotion.

Effective article marketing isn`t about writing thousands of articles for hundreds of directories. In fact, you`ll have far better luck if you take the time to craft a well-written article that offers valuable information. The reason for this is that while people do occasionally read articles in article directories, your best bet for getting great links and actual visitors comes when someone uses your article on their website. And most people are pretty discerning when it comes to putting someone else`s content on their site . . . the better your article, the more likely they are to use it.

That being said, you will still want to turn out several articles a month. Here`s how to make the whole process a little easier.

• Brainstorm first. I go into more detail on this in Article Marketing Step by Step, but basically, by having a list of article topics, you will be able to write faster and not spend as much time mulling over potential article ideas. I keep a running list of article topics for each of my blogs.
• Set a weekly goal. I find that daily goals don`t work well for me. Daily life tends to get in the way, but often I will find a chunk of time during the week when I can sit down and write several articles all at once. Start low, three articles a week that are well written will do better than 15 hastily scribbled pieces of junk.
• Limit your submissions. While submitting to a hundred different directories will probably get you a lot of links, it can also dilute the power of your article in search results and it takes WAY too much time. I`d suggest picking just a few of the best directories and submitting to them. I usually submit to 3-5 different directories.
• Rewrite. It`s very simple to rewrite an existing article. All you need to do is change it up a bit and the topic is the same, so no additional writing or research needs to be done. This also makes your article marketing more effective, since you aren`t submitting the exact same article to every directory.
• Use the directory settings. Not all article directories have these features, but EzineArticles, my favorite place to submit, lets you save up to 3 bios or reference boxes. Make use of these and you can just select and append with a couple of clicks, saving yourself a LOT of time.

If you want to know more about article marketing, my ebook does a good job of taking you through the entire process from brainstorming to submitting to rewriting. BUT, don`t buy the book just yet. It`s priced at nearly $20, but for Mother`s Day, you`ll notice in my sidebar there`s a May Madness ad . . . a bunch of us from MomMasterminds are practically giving away our products at $5 and I`ve added my book to the list. So, if you`re thinking of buying it (and I hope you are, I have a bathroom to finish building ) then you might want to wait until this Sunday and get it for a quarter of the price. In the meantime, go check out the promo page and see what other deals will be available.

P.S. If you`re reading this anywhere except on www.athomemomblog.com or in your feed reader, please be aware that the site you are reading it on does NOT have permission to be reprinting my articles. I have implemented a new policy on this which you can read on my sidebar, due to some unscrupulous persons using my content. Please read it before copying anything from my site.

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