When writing for free article directories it is strongly recommended that you write original content. You don’t want to take an article that is currently appearing on your site and submit it to a free article directory. You want to keep the content on your site as unique and original as possible. If you take an existing article and submit it to a directory, hundreds of webmasters can take the same article and put it on their site. Now, your website has the same content that hundreds of other websites have. (I’m telling you this from experience). You will be competing with your own articles for traffic.
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Article Quality

Make sure the use the same standard of quality when writing for free article directories as you would if you were writing for yourself. Make sure they are optimized for search engines and written in a fashion that webmasters would be pleased to have your article on their web site. Think of your article as your online business card. For some of your visitors, it may be their first introduction to you or your website. You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression so make it work for you.

What about your Bio?

Make sure that your bio is not overwhelming. Webmasters tend to shy away from articles whose bio is just as long as the article itself. Too much self-promotion is a definite turn off. Your bio should be enticing enough to encourage the reader to click on your website’s link (I also learned this the hard way).

When you’re writing an article for free article directory, pretend that you are a webmaster looking for content for your website. Ask yourself, “Would I place this article on my website?” If so, why? If not, why not? Once you can satisfactorily answer those questions, your article is ready to go.

The Submission Process

I tend to use EzineArticles.com because they are a reputable and well respected website. They’ve been around for some time and have a high standard for their articles. I don’t bother submitting articles to all of the available free web directories. I have found that by writing one article and submitting it to Ezine Articles, they always seem to end up on other article directories, Therefore, it is not really necessary to go and place them into a ton of different directories.

If you’re in a rush, however, then by all means submit them to other directories. Here are a few that I’ve used to help populate other websites in the past:

1. Article Base.com
2. Article World.net
3. Article Dashboard.com

In my experience I’ve found that being in a rush to earn money on the internet tends to cause frustration and unrealistic expectations. If you’re looking to earn money and generate traffic on the internet, be prepared to hang in for the long haul. You may not receive hundreds of hits a day from your free articles, but free traffic is good traffic.