Branding, Control, and Results - Submit Articles in Your Own Name

Article distribution is currently booming on the internet.Authors do it for a number of reasons:

• It is a good way to be picked up by the search engines.
• The backlinks from your resource box can help your searchengine position.
• You have the possibility of secondary traffic if yourarticle is picked up by a popular website or ezine.

a) Software that speeds up maunal submission, or can in somecases do this automatically.
b) Services that distribute articles in your name
c) Services that distribute articles on your behalf, but intheir own name.

The Double Edged Sword

Many people pay a premium rate for article distribution ontheir behalf, without the worry of having to join variousarticle directory sites as a member, giving their own emailaddress, and receiving lots of emails from various Yahoogroups.

Unfortunately what they don't realise is that often thisdevalues their work.

1) In the author section on many sites, the name of thedistribution service will be shown, not that of the originalauthor.

2) Author sections of many article directories are a uniquemarketing venue. Many visitors will visit the author profilebefore reading an article all the way to the bottom. Mostprofiles could have one or more websites listed.

3) Within RSS feeds from the article directories, thedistribution service might be shown in the byline, not theoriginal author.

4) Many article directories allow an author to change ormodify their resource box. If an article was submitted usingan account owned by a 3rd party distribution service, thatavenue will be closed.

Complete Control

For authors who want complete control of their branding,either submit manually, or use article submission software.You will receive more emails, but can always have a specialemail address for this purpose. Googles Gmail service I findis an excellent choice.Article Announcer and Article Submitter Pro are two examplesof such software.

Limited Control

Use an automated submission service that ensures you are theauthor. There are services that signup for members todirectories on your behalf, using a username and password ofyour choice.One such service is Article Marketer.

The Inconvenience

You will have to confirm your membership to manydistribution points, and some will continue to send emailscontaining articles from other people. Yahoo groups normallyallow you to select a digest mode, or to not receive emailedarticles at all.Most of this is a one time effort, although you will have tobe on the lookout for important messages on the emailaccount you use.

The Massive Gain

They are your articles, and you should gain maximum benefitfrom them.

Using article distribution is much like a varient ofPareto's 80/20 rule. You potentially gain 80% effectiveresults compared to manual distribution, for 20% of thework.

However if your method of article distribution doesn't giveyou all the possible credit for your articles, rather than80% effectiveness, you might only be getting 60% or less.

Managing your own article distribution with toolssuch as Article Announcer or Article Submitter Pro gives youcomplete control to achieve your 80/20 goals.A service such as Article Marketer which gives you fullcredit, and reasonable control, might be 70% effective, for10% of the work.

Refining your processes, and only using the most effectivemethod where it benefits you the most, you can maximise yourreturn for the work invested.

I use a combination of service and software for my owndistribution.

Andy Beard has worked in Sales, Marketing and Localization for the last 15 years, primarily in the computer games industry.On his blog Exploring Niche Websites you can read his review of 3 killer article submission products