Is Article Marketing As Effective As It Used To Be?

Well, there you have it…the $64,000 question as asked by many an article marketer these days. And with good reason. Having been an article marketer myself for many years now, I have seen the good and the bad, the highs and the lows and just about everything in between. I have seen a once shining industry littered with more trash than a New York City street after a parade. No…it’s not pretty out there.

I have seen article directories come and go. You’d be surprised at the number that have closed up shop over the years. Of course most of them weren’t worth squat to begin with…so nothing really lost there.

But quality article directories like Ezine Articles have taken a beating. If you’re wondering why, let me explain.

Ezine Articles, at its inception, was actually an ambitious project. We really didn’t have anything quite like it. And Chris Knight, smart man that he was, made it as easy as possible for people to submit their articles. Why not? The more articles posted on his directory, the more authority he gains. The more authority, the more Google love and ultimately, the more traffic he gets. Everything was rolling along really well until one fateful day that I will never forget.

Enter Travis Sago and his Bum Marketing method. In a nutshell, it was a simple way for even a bum off the street to make money without having to spend any money simply by writing articles and sending people to affiliate offers. Life was great…until everybody and their grandmother started jumping on this trend.

Suddenly, directories like Ezine Articles, which up to that point in time were receiving mostly quality submissions, were getting inundated with trash. Why? Because people were submitting articles who had no business writing. In short, the articles were poorly written and nothing more than a pitch for a product.

Eventually, things got so bad that Ezine Articles and other directories had to do some house cleaning. Many previously approved articles were being removed from their databases along with quite a few authors.

But the damage was done. Ezine Articles slipped in the rankings and, if you notice, articles in some niches that used to get triple figure views are now getting double figure views or less. Naturally this will depend on what niche you’re writing for. But for the most part, if you’re writing articles and submitting to Ezine Articles, you’re seeing fewer views than ever before.

However, authority is not the only reason for this. There are other factors involved.

For starters, there are simply more people writing articles today than ever before. So the competition has increased but the demand hasn’t increased proportionately. Therefore, you have more people trying for the same number of limited page one spots at Google or whatever your search engine of choice is.

But an even bigger reason for the decline in article marketing effectiveness, at least in the traditional sense, is the emergence of other web platforms. With things like Facebook, Twitter, Hubpages, Squidoo and others, Ezine Articles has more competition for visitors. Add video to that mix (heard of YouTube lately) and articles are getting a real run for their money.

However, having said all that, article marketing can still be effective, but not as a standalone do nothing else system unless you happen to be fortunate enough to be involved in a niche that isn’t saturated to all hell.

In the coming installments of this series, I’m going to go over some things you can do to supplement your traditional article marketing routine that will almost certainly bring you improved results.

Article marketing can still be very effective…IF you know how to properly utilize it.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
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