Writing articles and submitting them to directories for marketing purposes is one of the most efficient ways to get a continuous stream of clicks, or views, through to your website. It can also help boost your site's link popularity and increase the opportunity of getting a better position in search engine results. Consistent submission of articles can help you gain respect and recognition in your particular field.

This article reviews the pros and cons of the most effective methods for article submission currently available.

1. Manual Submission

The manual submission method for article submission is ideal for people who have the time to go through the process themselves or have the means to hire someone to do it for them. This method requires that you make a list of suitable article submission directories and then submit your written article separately to each one.

Using this method gives you total control of the process. You can prepare your own list of directories and keep them updated by adding new sites and removing those that are no longer appropriate.

The manual submission method is however, clearly labor intensive, as creating the directories and working through the manual submission process for each article can take considerable time.

2. Using an Article Submission Service

Many article submission services are now available online. Such services usually require a fee for every submission. The amount often depends on the particular submission package on offer. Some require a fee upon every submission of each article, while others require payment on a weekly, monthly, or yearly subscription basis.

Compared to the manual submission method, an article service can save you considerable over all time as it will submit your article to thousands of publishers simultaneously. Since you are freed from the submission process, you have more time to write and submit further articles and consequently increase your website traffic. Article submission services offer almost one touch access; you just need to provide the article details and the service handles everything else for you. It is also possible to schedule your submissions in order to obtain maximum impact with a longer series of articles. With this method there is no need to purchase or set-up costly, and sometimes complex, software yourself.

However service costs can be high and lack of total control over the entire submission process are the downside of paying for an article submission service. Convenience can be expensive, so you should be ready to pay its cost.

3. Article Submission Software

Such software can be bought online and downloaded to your computer. As with the article submission service, you will need complete all necessary article details. Once the software is initially set up, it will automatically distribute all of the articles for you.

Using an article submission software can save time. In this method you control the over all process as you can choose where to submit the articles and schedule the submission appropriately.

Although there are no recurring charges for each submission, good article submission software can itself be expensive. Further, its database of directories do not usually automatically update, so it may be necessary to occasionally update the software to account for submission sites that no longer exist and new ones that become available.

Finally, as software needs to be installed on a working computer, it becomes dependent upon the performance of your computer unit and therefore becomes unavailable in the event of computer crashes or lack of internet service.

You should consider carefully which of the above three methods for article submission is most appropriate to meet your personal situation.