Making Money with Articles: Free Article Content

Some webmasters try to use articles from free content directories to get visitors to their site and make some money. This is important for those who have just started working as an affiliate for several companies, have no funding, yet need to built small niche websites to attract paying visitors to their site.

Although this can sometimes be the only option for those who are running on a shoestring budget, it is not a way that will effectively build your website or revenue. Here are a few potential reasons why this may be detrimental to your business building efforts.

Problem #1 - Search Engines

Search engines will only look down upon your site if it has the exact same duplicated content than other sites. The more sites that share your content, the less it will help you achieve good search engine rankings.

Good search engine rankings are essential in getting visitors to your site so that they have a chance to click on your affiliate links. If your site can’t even get visitors, then you will never make any money. Working on your site’s search engine optimization so that you will eventually be high enough in the results to get customers should be your first priority.

Problem #2 - Getting visitors to click

Yes, getting your site high on search engine result pages and acquiring visitors is hard work. Unfortunately, this is only half of the battle. You must also be able to convince those visitors to click on your affiliate links. If your visitors see the same content they have seen on a multitude of other sites, they will be unlikely to click on your links. This is because most people want to buy things that are recommended by people that they trust, or whom they feel like is an expert on the subject in which they are interested.

If your content is just duplicated from other sites, you will be exposed as someone who does not really know what they are talking about and therefore will not look heavily on your product recommendations. This will reduce the number of website visitors who will be willing to click through.

Problem #3 - Author Bylines

Most free content is only given to you if you agree to place the authors byline under the article. You can get into trouble if you try to use it without following this rule. This poses a problem because most author bylines include links. When a reader gets done reading a really intriguing article, there is a strong possibility that they will click on the author’s byline link rather than your affiliate link. This is the entire reason why these authors offer free content to begin with, so that they may get their name and links out there to the public. Using this type of content may mean shooting yourself in the foot and losing possible profitable website visitors.

Once you put these three problems together, you are looking at a serious decline in revenue simply because you used free website content from article directories. If you have the funds to buy your own original content, then you should. If you don’t have the money, however, you may be better off writing your own content and then hiring professional services once you have made a working profit.

About the Author

A longtime programmer who has recently switched to the “dark side” of the Internet, Gayl Seager wants to help other newcomers to the field of Internet Marketing. Find out how at gen211.com