It’s obvious. When you write and publish articles you make money. If you want to send (free) highly targeted traffic to your squeeze page, then article marketing is one of the best traffic-generating strategies.

The search engines love great content, and if you can provide it to them, they will reward you by sending hurdles of traffic (potential buyers) to your website. Let's be honest here, you need new content.

An informative article well written filled with lots of keywords and an attractive title, is the best guarantee to getting countless visitors/buyers, and this without paying for it.

Another reason is that you can sell your written articles to businesses. Many business owners and webmasters (for example, those who haven’t read this) don’t have the skill or time to write their own articles or content, and they are willing to pay money for articles with content.

The Information Business is a HUGE market, and the Internet is all about delivering information. It’s a proven fact that the majority of web surfers are

looking for information online, be it free or paid. If you can’t provide good content to your site visitors or subscribers, then your business is doomed to fail.

You can pay a SEO company to send millions of people to your website. But if they can’t find content on your pages, they will click away, and never come back. Most people think that to write a good article, you have to be born with a special talent, study all the classics, and know all the rules of English grammar, usage, etc. Bolognay!

I know people who sold millions worth of products using the power of the written word, and yet, they flunked English in high school!

You should not be handicapped by thinking that everything has to be "grammatically correct".

When you are writing articles, you can forget all that stuff.

To write a great article, you just have to enjoy talking and communicating with your customer. It’s sad to see that many people don't get to the real

writing part because they think that it’s hard to put something down on paper. And so they look to hire writers at bidding sites like

Elance.com or RentACoder.com

BAD PRACTICE! Most of the writers on these bidding sites are from

foreign countries, and don’t speak English very well. Their copy is often badly written and full of errors and grammar mistakes. Sentences contain the wrong words for the context, and spelling is often different/wrong.

In other words, foreign writers may be bad for your business.

It may also lead to a ton of rewriting on your part. So, you’re much better off with writing your own copy. Don’t let that put you off. The more articles you write, the more likely it is that you will receive traffic to your website, and traffic means sales. It’s that simple.

You just need to get yourself started. Writing your first article is probably the most difficult part of article writing. It can be very intimidating to sit down for the first time in front of your computer with a blank Word document on the screen.

I know, because I remember the first time I wrote an article. I sat there for about 10 minutes looking at a blank screen, waiting for the muse to hit me…

And the muse didn’t show up.

The key to getting that first written article out comes down to knowing what you are going to write about. You should write about something that you have a passion for. You may love playing golf. Or have a passion for gardening.

Whatever it is, if you have a strong feeling for your niche, then you will succeed. Now that you know what to write about, it’s time to do

some research first.

Let me share a secret with you...Amazon "Search Inside". You can do your research with Amazon's books by actual authors who are experts on their topics. You will need to open a free account, but that's fine. Never forget about Yahoo search either.

Keep in mind, when you write an article keep it short. Your article should be between 600 and 850 words. Those who tell you 400 words are fine are not telling you the truth. (Maybe for a blog)

So now you know how to write an article. Start submitting them to drive traffic to your opt-in page