Thank my friend Travis Sago for the explosion of article writers in the Internet marketing arena. With his Bum Marketing taking the Internet marketing community by storm, there isn’t a marketer worth his salt who isn’t writing an article for the purpose of selling his products. Well, the problem with this is that they don’t know how to do it the right way. If you’re going to write articles for the purpose of selling, you have to think more like a copywriter and less like a writer. I’m going to try to explain why and how to do this.

The why is simple. If the purpose of your article is ultimately to get people to trust you enough to buy from you, then you have to write a certain kind of article…one that not only informs but sells as well. This is a tricky thing to do because articles by their definition are more informational pieces than sales pieces. As a matter of fact, many directories won’t accept your articles if they are too sales oriented. So how do you get around this?

Well, the most important thing is to have a title for your article that attracts attention. You want it to stand out, much like the headline of a good sales page. So if your article is about the new Gears Of War 2 game and you want to give people some tips on how to win it, you might come up with a title like “3 Killer Gears Of War 2 Tips Guaranteed To Make You A Winner.” It’s a little wordy, but trust me, it will do the job. Anybody who is into the game will want to read the article and learn these tips.

After you’ve done that much, the next step is to actually give them what you promised them in the article. Yes, you have to deliver or they’re going to come away from the article feeling very cheated. This is also similar to copywriting. The copy of your sales page has to deliver on the promise of the headline, either through testimonials, proof or guarantees. The more proof you can offer the prospect, the more likely they are to buy whatever it is you’re selling.

Finally, in your resource box of the article, you need a very strong call to action to check out your site related to whatever it is the article was about. In the case of Gears Of War 2, it might be a manual for the game or maybe the game itself for those on the fence about buying it. If you delivered on the article’s promise, you’ll have a better chance of getting them to buy. This call to action is very similar to the call to action that a copywriter uses on his sales page.

So you see, writing an article for the purpose of marketing is not much different from writing a sales letter. Follow this guide and your articles should perform very well for you.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

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