* Attracts Prospects That Would not Have Heard Of You Otherwise.

With each submitted article, you are casting your net wider, reaching new customers and traffic that would have never discovered your website before.

* Boosts The Credibility of You and Your Business.

In the first instance because of the simple fact that you're the writer of a published article, and on top of that because submitting often to several article directories will cause your articles to be often seen in the search engine results.

* Increases Brand Recognition.

A connection is made in the reader's mind between the topic of the article and you.

* Creates Trust.

Your visitors are pre-sold through the knowledge displayed in your articles. That makes them more likely to investigate your products when they visit your website.

* Attracts Targeted Visitors to Your Website.

Anyone who clicks on the link(s) in the About The Author Box after reading your article is highly-qualified by the way they reached your website. You get traffic both from the article directory itself, and from the visitors to sites and readers of newsletters that reproduce your article.

* Provides Free Website Traffic For Many Years.

This traffic comes both from the sites of those who use your article and also from the directory itself.

* Improves Your Website's Alexa Rankings.

The more people who click on the links in the Resource Box, the more traffic your site gets. Since Alexa ranks sites based upon visitor numbers, this increases your rankings.

* Gives You Powerful Advertising At No Cost.

Your article makes you an expert. This warms visitors to you before they even arrive at your website. Article marketing empowers you to pre-sell your visitors effectively.

* Increases BackLinks And Google PR.

Search engines use the number and quality of backlinks together with the relevance of the anchor text to rank web pages in the search results. Having your articles found on many sites obviously means you will have a greater number of inbound links. This is from sites republishing the articles and also from the directories themselves.

* Enables You To Get More Out Of Content You Already Posses.

Your existing website content can be easily rewritten several times for submissions to article sites.

* Provides A Way To Get No Cost Ads in Targeted Ezines.

Your About The Author Box at the bottom of your articles is an advertisement for your website. You are basically getting a free ad in their newsletter whenever newsletter publishers use your articles.

* Generates More Profits.

The quality traffic and leads from the links in your About The Author Box naturally generates more sales. Article visitors frequently become purchasers. And it's very probable that if they do not immediately find what they are looking for, they'll click on your Adsense ads.

Hopefully you can now see just how much article marketing can do for your business. If you're not already submitting to article directories, it's time you got started.

Once you've got your article written and edited, where should you submit it? Your first choice is obviously article directories. I've provided links below to the best article directories -- best in the sense that they bring you the most return on the effort of submitting.

For more, see this huge list of article directories. I wouldn't bother to manually submit your article to all 850 places listed, just pick a few of those that seem to be of quality and show some PageRank or have a decent Alexa Rank.

But if you have article submission software that you can plug these sites into, then this list is a gold mine for you. The lower link value, exposure and traffic from the mediocre article directories listed is worth the effort it takes to submit using an article submitter.

Emailing newsletter publishers directly is another good way to submit articles. Especially those who keep archives on their website, providing you with a link back forever.

Article email lists like those found at Yahoo Groups and others, used by ezine publishers and people looking for site content, can also be a very productive route. People on these lists are actively looking for content to publish and receive notifications of all new articles submitted

Article Submitter from Brad Callen's Bryxen Software (creators of SEO Elite and Keyword Elite) currently contains 688 article directories in its database, however the free version will only submit to 68 of them. To get the full 688 you have to upgrade to the gold version for $67.

You simply set up your article in text or HTML format (or both), fill in your contact details and select article directories you want to submit too. The software remembers all your article information, so you never have to enter it again. Of course there are no monthly fees, and you can use Article Submitter to promote as many websites as you want. Download Article Submitter.

You can pick up a copy of My Article Submitter software here for $7. It comes preloaded with 138 article directories you can immediately start posting your articles to.