Making Money with Articles: Free Article Content

Some webmasters when first starting out with a low budget will use free articles from free content directories to get visitors to their site and make some money. This is mostly important for those who have just begun working as an affiliate for several companies and do not yet have any funding, yet need to build small niche websites to get visitors to their site so that they can begin making revenue.

Although this can sometimes be the only option for those who are running on a non-existent budget, it is not a way that will effectively build your website or revenue. There are a few potential problems why this may be detrimental to your business building efforts.

Problem #1 – Search Engines

If you have the same content of other sites, the search engines will not like this and actually look down upon your site.  It is not wise to duplicate content.  The more sites that you share your content with, then less thy will help you achieve good search engine rankings and that is your goal.

Adept search engine rankings are necessary in getting visitors to your internet site so that they have a opportunity to click on your affiliate links. If you can’t even get visitors, then will never make an profit. Working on the search engine optimization of your internet site so that you will finally be high enough in the results to get clients, should be priority one.

Problem #2 – Getting visitors to click

Though getting your site high on search engine result pages and growing site visitors is arduous work, regrettably this is only half of the battle. You must also be able to convince those visitors to click on your affiliate links. If your visitors see the same content they have seen on a multitude of other sites, they’ll be least expected to click on your links. This is because most people would like to buy things that are suggested by people that they trust or whom they feel like are an expert on the subject.

If your content is just repeated from other places, you will be discovered as someone who doesn’t really know what they are talking about and therefore will not look heavily on your product recommendations. This will cut down the number of website visitors who will be willing to click through.

Problem #3 – Author Bylines

Most free content is only afforded to you if you agree to place the authors byline beneath the article (you can get into trouble if you try to use it without following the specified rules). This poses an issue because most author bylines include links. When a reader gets done reading a really fascinating article, there is a substantial possibility that they will click on the author’s byline link instead of your affiliate links. This is the entire reason why these authors offer free content in the first place, so that they may get their name and links out there to the world. Using this type of content may mean shooting yourself in the foot and losing potential fruitful website visitors.

If you put all three issues together then you’re considering a probable severe problem.  This will cause not only no growth, but in reality a slump in income and this all because you used free content from articles taken from a free directory. Although it might be the only choice for some, if you have the funds to purchase your own original content, then you should go this route. If you don’t have the funds, however, you may be better off composing your own content and then employing professional services once you’ve made a profit to work with.