There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there doing what I call “dirty marketing” every single day. I should know — I was one of those solopreneurs. Back in 2003, when I started my first online business, I was desperate to figure the whole internet marketing piece out. I needed traffic like yesterday! I needed to build my list like nobody’s business. And I needed to come up with a system to ensure that – that traffic flow never stopped.

So as I joined more and more internet marketing lists, joined the forums, and kind of started getting my feet wet with internet marketing I began buying reports, systems, joined coaching programs, going to seminars — anything and everything that I could afford to start generating momentum in my business. I call this dirty marketing, and that’s because your marketing plan or system is really not a system at all. It’s just a dirty, muddy, mucky pool of marketing “stuff” from every guru on the planet.

I participated in dirty marketing for way too many years then I’d like to admit. It’s addictive for some reason. Even though it never works — there’s always the hope that this next thing will do the trick. I guess it’s sort of like a gambler hoping that his next trip to Vegas will be the jackpot winner.

Frustrated and disillusioned with the whole online business thing, I decided to take a look at my stats one more time before I made it just another one of my “hobbies”.

I noticed that most of my traffic was arriving to my site organically through Google, Yahoo, and MSN (in that order) via the articles that I posted on my site.

People were searching for keywords or keyword phrases and were finding my articles – and me. Now I didn’t do this strategically or purposefully at the time. Back then I was just writing whatever I wanted to write and posting them on the site. But then suddenly a light bulb went off. Duh!

Maybe if I write more articles, I’d get more traffic. Especially if now I added a little purposeful keyword strategy to the mix. But I questioned the time factor. Didn’t articles take a lot of time? Writing. Editing. Publishing.

Well the answer was yes and no. Sure, it took more time and brain power then so many of the other quick-fix marketing strategies out there at the time. But once I decided to let go of so many of the other marketing tactics I was trying (and failing at!), I realized that I would be able to free up my time for more article marketing.

And that was it! I effectively cleaned-up my marketing, stuck to one simply strategy — and then ran with it. Thank goodness I did, because writing articles has not only made me abandon the whole dirty marketing syndrome — but it has really elevated my business and allowed me to live the life at home with my family that I so hoped and wished for.

Several years ago, online entrepreneur and author Lisa Angelettie MSW, “GirlShrink,” helped herself get noticed and attract buzz in the over-crowded self-improvement market by using articles and other content to triple her list and her traffic. She has been making money online ever since. If you’re ready to learn how she did it, grab her free report: 3 Simple Secrets To Making Money Using Articles…How To Explode the Income In Your Business by Harnessing The Power of Article Writing & Marketing! – over at http://Articology.com/index2.html

© Lisa Angelettie

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