If you’re subscribed to my newsletter, or have talked with me much, you already know I’m a big fan of article marketing.  It works.  So when Denise Willms followed up with me a few weeks ago I was happy to share with her some stats I had from tracking my article marketing efforts.  With her permission I’m posting a copy of the press release she mentioned me in.

Calgary, AB (October 10, 2008) WAHM Articles challenges small business owners to jumpstart their holiday marketing this year.

Uncertain economic times mean small business owners need to work even harder to earn holiday shopping dollars. WAHM Articles, a popular article directory for women and an active writing community, is helping small business owners expand their reach by giving prizes for writing articles targeted at mothers.

Owner Denise Willms, a Virtual Assistant who helps her clients reap the benefits of article marketing, launched the Holiday Article Marketing Challenge early this month. Home and small business owners can win one of nearly $300 in prizes by writing articles to promote their products for the holiday season. Prizes include advertising space, Tupperware products, ghostwriting services, and personalized article coaching sessions with Willms.

“I’ve been thrilled with the response,” says Willms. “It’s great to see online business owners discover how to write articles that increase their visibility and their sales.”

Article writers gain exposure for their businesses by creating articles that solve their readers’ problems, and including a link to their website at the end of the article. The author’s resource box invites the reader to visit the writer’s website for more information.

To date, WAHM Articles has published nearly 2000 articles by 500 authors, each written with mothers in mind. Article topics range from parenting to business issues and from crafting to personal relationships.

Willms took inspiration for this challenge from the 30 Day Article Challenge, created by Carrie Lauth of CarrieLauth.com. In the 30-day challenge, participants put their marketing endurance to the test by writing 30 articles in 30 days.

Lauth says, “Article marketing has proven to be a consistently effective traffic generation method for me. I launched this challenge to give myself  some public accountability but also to motivate others - it’s not as  hard as you think to write articles, especially since all of us internet marketers are already writing so much for our blogs and websites.” Others are invited to join the ongoing challenge at any time.

For those who don’t know how to promote their business by writing articles, WAHM Articles offers a free forum, where members can ask questions, and get answers from article marketing professionals, experienced article writers and article publishers.

Writing and submitting articles has proved to be an effective tool to gain targeted traffic and increase conversions. Michelle Shaeffer, The Small Business Muse™, recently conducted an experiment to track conversions from writing and submitting articles. She found the traffic she received from her articles came with more average page views per visit and a higher subscription rate to her newsletter. From general website traffic, Shaeffer noted a 20% subscription rate to her newsletter. However, 40% of visitors who read one of her articles then clicked through to her website signed up for her newsletter.

To learn more about writing articles to promote small business, submit articles for moms to read, or to participate in the holiday article marketing challenge, please visit http://www.WAHM-Articles.com

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Online Marketing, The Small Business Muse. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.