Jeff Herring is The Article Marketing Guy and he spent some time convincing me that article marketing can give you a far greater return than Google AdWords as a way to drive traffic to your site:

Jeff explained that he has got one article that he wrote in August of 2005 which sends people to an opt-in page where they can get a sample of an e-book. And on that page there’s an offer to buy that e-book there too. It’s a $27 little e-book that sells all day every day. And how does Jeff continue to make sales? Because in the time he’s had that article up since August 2005, it averages 1,500 unique viewers a month. Let me just repeat that: Every month 1,500 brand new people come in to read that article. All that cost Jeff was the time it took him to write and submit that one article.

Now, let’s compare that to Google AdWords (and by the way Jeff uses Google AdWords too, he’s not knocking it!).

To get that same 1,500 unique viewers a month, let’s say that it costs Jeff 25 cents a click for a Google AdWord (a reasonable estimate). That would cost me $350 a month to get those same 1,500 clicks or over $4,200 a year.

So you’re getting the same result for free by using article marketing, but not only that but it’s a more qualified result.

Let me explain.

With Google AdWords, you can place four or five lines of text and a link. In an article, you could go up to 1,500 words (but Jeff normally recommends 300 to 500). Because of this your reader is getting to know, like and trust you, learn how you approach problems and learn how you solve problems. By the time your reader is getting down to where the links are, they’re ready to go. They want to click on those links and they want that information.

Even if you pay a writer $15 to $25 an article, article marketing wins this competition I reckon!

What do you think? Are you using either/both/neither?