Article marketing is exactly what the name implies, marketing with articles. The idea is to write an article and submit it to an article directory. The reason that you would want to do this is because some of the article directories have a large number of readers and also because they will allow other websites to use your articles. Perhaps most importantly the authority of the top article directories is enough that articles submitted to them can often rank well on the search engines for terms that are not too competitive. This can result in a lot of people potentially reading your article. Of course the article will contain a link back to your site, this is what makes article marketing worthwhile, you need to get people to click that link and visit your website.
The key to getting people to click on the link in your article is to have an article that actually provides useful information, it doesn't have to be brilliant but it does need to be useful. Some people actually advocate writing bad articles in the hopes that people will click your link just to get out of there, this rarely works, you are better off writing a good quality article. The other important factor is that you need to have a compelling resource box. The resource box is where you put the link to your site, far to many people fail to put the required effort into creating a good resource box and don't get nearly as many clicks as they could. A good resource box needs to give the visitor a reason to click on your link.
One of the most important aspects to being a successful article marketer is doing good keyword research. You need to able to write articles that target keywords that get a decent search volume while at the same time have weak enough competition that you stand a reasonable chance of ranking well for that keyword. Keyword research takes a lot of practice, it really is an art. There are a number of different theories on how to do keyword research and which ones you should be targeting It is a good idea to take some time and learn about the different approaches and find one that works for you.
On the surface article marketing seems like the perfect way to make money online, what could be better than free promotion. There are however some downsides to article marketing the biggest being that it takes a lot of articles to be successful. Writing a few articles here and there isn't going to cut it, you need to write dozens of articles and keep writing them every week. Article marketing is a volume business the more articles you write the more money you will make. You also need to factor in the time involved in submitting the articles to the directories it really adds up when you have dozens of articles. Factor in keyword research and a lot of time needs to be invested to be a successful article marketer.