Is it true, that when you submit an article for a high volume keyword to an article database, that the article database site itself (like ezine) could potentially steal one of your customers or visitors. When that visitor decides to click on one of THEIR ads, this takes away a visitor from you. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of trying to get a visitor to your OWN Adsense ads? Isn't it better to just start a website yourself, and get 100% of the traffic volume, than 50%, as a result of depending on an article directory? Just a thought.
Well, it's something absolutely normal. If you would have an articles site wouldn't you try to optimize your adsense so that more of your visitors would click on them ? It's part of the game, but it's surely not a reason to not do article marketing. It's something you just can't control and in the same time is more then ethical from all points of view.
Well high traffic article directories, namely ezinearticles.com, have their articles indexed by the search engines quite quickly, and with a little strategic keyword density your article shows on the front page of Google for that keyword, so you can get traffic to your site that way as well. You could start your own website, but then it's entirely up to you to generate all the traffic to your website. The way I see it is article directories have to fund themselves somehow, for hosting your articles and practically giving you their traffic.
a very strong marketing strategy is leveraging traffic. when you submit your article to the article directory and land on the first page of google for your keyword, your leveraging their site to your advantage and they are leveraging your writing skills. so its really a little of "i'll scratch yours if you scratch mine"
Most of the articles in article directories are crap and mainly contain links to articles or online stores, which helps drives traffic to them. If you feel that you can rank as number one for a keyword on your own, then why would you write an article targeting that keyword and then submit it to an article directory?
I think article marketing can work well only if you submit great articles. If you merely do it for the purpose of getting some free backlinks and therefore do not care about the quality of that article, i think the marketing won't be effective.
No man is an island. We need help from others, right? Once you establish your sites, go crazy with it, forget the article directories etc but you need to first establish your site (either through search engine rankings) or other methods. If you want to use search engines, ezine articles can be the quickest way to get your message to the top. The conversion won't be as high as people landing on your landing page but you gotta start somewhere. You're just using their "power" to do things quickly. You could get your site to the top possibly in 6 months but your bank account will probably not be very happy. Plus, is it really so hard to write 7-10 articles on your niche to "giveaway". Your site will have lots more. If it's hard to write 30-40 articles (for article directories and your personal site), perhaps the niche is a bit too small for profits. And, of course other websites will start spreading your message by using your articles. Doesn't sound too bad to me!
Just about all forms of marking, with the exception of good ol fashion grass roots word of mouth campaigns cost money weather its directly or indirectly. Its your job writing your articles to make sure people visit your site and not click the other ads on the directories site. You do this by writing and updating your site often and only submitting the best of the best of your articles. Marketing at the end of the day is all about using the resources given to you to there full extent to drive leads to your website.