A good article will answer a question, provide information or deliver news within your niche. If you are stuck for a topic for your article you can go to places like Yahoo Answers to find out what information people are looking for. This is a great place of not only inspiration but also a great place to find information yourself on any given topic.

If I am researching an article, I often will post a question on Yahoo Answers and then use the answers people have provided as a means of gathering information to include in the article. In essence, other people pretty much write the article for me. I just put it all together into a nicely flowing story.

Another source for inspiration are article publishing websites themselves. What are other authors writing about? Spend a little time in the article sites and you will quickly get a sense of what makes a good article. Was it an entertaining or informative read? This will give you an idea of what your articles should look like.

Do not ever, under any circumstances, directly copy another article and claim it as your own.You might take the basic principles of an article and rewrite it in your own style with your own opinions added.

It is certainly okay to re-publish an article. Most authors hope you do; but be sure to also publish the author’s full credit as supplied by the article website. These articles are great for niche blog content and newsletters.

That is precisely the reason you are writing the article in the first place. You want people to read it and share it because it will have your website link in the author’s credits. This is a way for you to get the most back links to your website or blog without having to go out and search for them yourself. You do the work of writing the article and submitting it to the article publishing site and then it becomes a set-it-and-forget-it way of generating traffic and back links for you. Every article you publish about your profitable niche will become mini traffic generators for you. The growing back links will help you boost your page rank in the search engines.

Another benefit of article marketing is that the article publishing sites rank very highly in the search engines. You may be struggling at first to gain page ranking and search engine placement. Your published articles may out-perform your website when it comes to search engine positioning so while your niche website might be sitting on page 5 of the search engine results, your article may be on page one for your keyword.

In the next lesson of the niche marketing course I will cover the basics of writing effective articles for your profitable niche.

Today’s action: Visit Yahoo Answers and several article publishing sites and gather ideas for articles within your niche market. Get at least 5 ideas for articles and read articles to determine what makes them good or bad.

Lesson 14