Guide to make money online!

Alright, so I've been walking you through how to set up your very own customized article marketing strategy which you can use to guide and motivate yourself throughout the year.

The first two steps were setting you up to be able to measure and track your progress.

In Step 1, you established a baseline for your website and set up a spreadsheet where you'll do monthly tracking of certain stats.

In Step 2 you figured out who your top competitors were and you entered your baseline information for them.

In Step 3, we get down to business–here is where you organize your article marketing campaign.

I've noticed that the #1 reason why some people give up or don't see success or simply say "I don't have time to do this" is that they haven't planned their marketing activities out very well.

When you own a business, whether it is an internet business or a traditional business that has a website, you need to take your marketing activities seriously. No matter what type of business you have, if you are able to position your site at the top Google, you will receive more targeted traffic to your website, and traffic translates into more business for you!

Many people use Article Marketing as their primary marketing tool, and in order to see the results you're looking for, you need to take an organized approach. If you do not, you will likely quit in a month or two be back at square one.

So, let's do some pre-thinking on this, and I will tell you exactly what I did as I was launching my most recent article marketing campaign.

1) Set a goal as to how many articles you'll submit each month–something between 1 and 8 articles.

I know some top article marketers who submit just one article a month and see excellent results, but you'll see better results faster if you lean towards the upper end of that range, especially if you're just getting started. You might give yourself some time to get used to writing articles on a regular basis and start off slow–perhaps Month One submit 3 articles, Month Two submit 4, and then gradually work up until you're submitting 7 or 8 a month.

2) Determine which days you'll write and what time–put it on your calendar.

For myself this is imperative to success–if I tell myself that I need to write 5 articles before the end of the month and I don't set any specific times/dates for doing so, before I know it the end of the month will be on top of me, and I'll be up against the wall. Not many people like the feeling of being in a tight deadline, and I like to do my articles at a leisurely pace so that I have time left to edit them and be sure they're of the quality that I like.

I write on my calendar exactly which days are writing days, and I do my writing first thing in the work day. Some people say morning is best as that's when our minds tend to be clearest, but some of us don't start working until the afternoon or evening–whenever is the start of your workday, try to do your writing then. It feels good to have that accomplishment behind you, and I like writing when my mind is fresh rather than at the end of the day when it's mush.

You'll want to make this calendar as visible as possible to remind yourself–I even have a special dry erase board calendar specifically devoted to my writing schedule. It sits on the wall beside my desk, and every day when I sit down to work, there it is staring me in the face. After I write the article I mark that day off on the board. It's very motivating to see the writing days being checked off.

3) Start brainstorming article ideas–remember, these are article topics that are on the topic of your website. You don't have to make your brain hurt by trying to think of article topics that have your keywords in them–let's keep this simple. Just start thinking of topics that your target readers would find valuable and that are also on the same topic as your website.

This is a brainstorming list, so there's no commitment here. Just start writing down as many ideas as you can think of, and get your creative juices flowing. When I'm jotting down ideas, I usually end up jotting down titles. You'll find that when you start writing down ideas, the ideas will start to flow. Write down as many as you can and keep them in list form. This is a list that you can use all month long and depending on how many ideas you brainstormed, perhaps for several months.

By creating a list of article topics, you're making it so much easier on yourself come your writing days–you won't have to sit down and try to think up a topic and then write. All you have to do is sit down, look at your article list, pick a topic that appeals to you, and then write. Believe me, working like this is a million times easier than taking it day by day, article by article.

And that's it for this step–pretty easy, eh?

Easy, but indispensable–I caution you, do not skip this step.The stuff you're doing in this step will keep your whole article marketing campaign on track, even when you don't feel like writing and even when you don't think you have time. A little prep now can set you on the right path for the rest of the year.