Article Writing & Article Marketing - 7 ways to Increase Prospects and Profits

Article Writing & Article Marketing: 7 Ways Articles Increase Your Prospects, Publicity & Profits

Writing articles and marketing with articles is one of the best and fastest ways market your business. In fact, if you can write a 7 item grocery list, you can write an article that will help you increase your prospects, publicity and profits.

Here are seven ways that you can benefit from articles.

1) Articles will quickly position you as an expert in your field.
The written word is incredibly powerful. Writing articles sets you apart from your competition. You never have to say "Listen to me, I'm an expert!" Your articles do that for you, because articles increase your "expert-ability."

2) Articles can become little 24/7 salespeople.
Once you have an article published, especially on the internet, you now have a 24 hour, 7 day a week, 365 day a year international salesperson working specifically for you and your business.

3) Just one article can be used in many ways.
This is called leverage. Just one article can be used a free report, a bonus, featured in a newsletter or ezine, become part of an online e-course, become part of a book, and many other ways.

4) Articles spread the word about your business and your services.
One article that I wrote 5 years ago was recently used in one of my internet newsletters. A newspaper reporter that is on my mailing list saw it and interviewed me for a story. When he pitched it to his editor, the editor liked it so much that they turned it into a feature article. They ran it on the front page of the paper, and it has been picked up and run across the country.

5) Marketing articles is simple, easy and inexpensive, especially when compared to other ways of marketing online.
It costs you nothing to write an article. It also costs you nothing to have it listed on article directories such as EzineArticles.com. Imagine what it would cost you to pay for that kind of exposure and publicity.

6) Articles can help you build a mailing list that you can market to over and over again.
Once you have a few articles out there, you will reach a certain critical mass where the prospects begin to flow in. Continue to grow past the critical mass, and you will grow to the point where you could not stop the traffic and prospects flowing in if you wanted to.

7) Articles allow you to stay in touch with customers/clients and sell more products.
We know that it can take from 5 to 8 contacts or more for new prospect to be ready to become a customer. Articles allow you to stay in touch with prospects and provide them with quality information.

These seven benefits are really just the tip of the iceberg of all the many benefits of article writing and article marketing.

Tips For Starting An Import and Export Business

Trade makes the world go round. The world is a smaller place, thanks to the way in which import and export has changed. These days, almost everything is available either in shops or by order over the internet. It is, of course, possible to get great bargains if you travel and explore but this is time-consuming and expensive unless you buy in bulk and there are language barriers. People like their shopping to be as easy as possible, which is why they don’t mind paying a bit more for their purchases. This is where the importers and exporters come into play. Import and export is a business you can easily do from home. You need very little to start up, just a computer and some common sense. There are great benefits in working from home, as you can imagine. You can choose your own hours and have great flexibility. The first thing to do is to create contacts. This is even easier online than offline because you can talk to anyone in the world from the comfort of your home, using the Internet. You can browse online advertisements and buy in bulk using a credit card over a secure site. You can advertise and sell your products online. In fact, in some trading methods, you can buy and sell without even having to receive or ship the products yourself! As with any business, it is important to be efficient, keep perfect records and keep your customers happy. An unsatisfied customer will not return and might criticize your shoddy service on the internet, so don’t be a bad trader! You need a business plan before you begin. You need to work out what you are going to trade, how you are going to trade, how much money you need to make, which countries you want to trade with (if you speak another language, this might help, although English tends to be widely spoken), what method of payments will you use and what about foreign regulations? You need to research everything. Don’t let the preparation put you off before you get started. Every new company requires adequate preparation and it will be worth it in the end, once your business is up and running well. You need to decide what scale your business is going to run on – are you going to work alone, as a partnership or a limited company or something bigger, or will you start small and work your way up? You should decide what kind of products you want to sell. This depends on what your interests are (it is easier to sell something you can rave about!), what you are knowledgeable about and, of course, what is available. If you buy in bulk, you can make good money but make sure you are going to be able to sell it again this end. If you plan well and are successful, you can make enough profit to cover your travel expenses and earn a good living too.