This is a guest post by Henri Junttila. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Do you want thousands of new subscribers and lots of traffic sent to your blog virtually overnight? I’m sorry to say this, but it’s not going to happen. I do have something else for you though. It will require hard work, but if you plan it right, you’ll reap the rewards.

The title may have given it away, but in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am talking about article marketing. I’ve practically built my online income with article marketing, which has allowed me to move to Spain with my girlfriend and our dog.

Many will claim that article marketing doesn’t work, but I’ve used it and it has worked beautifully. In this article I’ll explain exactly what I’ve done and how I made it work.

The sooner you realize that you will have to work your face off if you want to make a living online, the faster you’ll start heading towards your goals.

Article marketing is just one of the tools at your disposal for driving targeted traffic to your blog, that is, if you do it right.

What is Article Marketing?

I’m going to explain this in very simple terms, because I personally view article marketing as a very simple process, so there’s no need to complicate it.

You write an article of about 300 words, you submit it and you’re done. We can always go into more detail, but that is the basic strategy.

This article assumes that you know the basics of how to submit articles, use keywords and links. If not, you can check out this post, which will help you with that.

My Story

I’ve been into Internet marketing since 2007, but I didn’t start making money until 2009, which was when I figured out that I had to focus on something for more than one week to make it work.

I started with niche websites, but I quickly moved on to article marketing. I mainly point my traffic from articles I submit to EzineArticles.com to small affiliate sites where I help people improve their lives by choosing great products.

I have also used article marketing in building a list and responsive traffic with great success, so the benefits are numerous.

I’m a big believer in only promoting products you can stand behind. I use the products I promote. Even my mother uses them, so I’m very confident in them, and that shines through in my writing.

Since starting article marketing in July 2009, I have submitted a few thousand articles to EzineArticles.com.

I realize that this is an incredible amount, but realize that I worked hard in the beginning. I wrote a lot, but I then started leveraging the income I made and started outsourcing, which I will talk more about later on.

Why I Only Submit to One Article Directory

I know many will argue that I should submit to several article directories to build links. If you want to do that, that’s fine, but my strategy is different.

I’m after the direct traffic that I get from the largest article directory available, which is EzineArticles.com.

You can, of course, mix it up by submitting to many article directories, but you would mostly be doing that for the links, and to be honest, that isn’t really as effective as it used to be because the search engines are getting smarter.

I have tested the amount of traffic I receive from different directories and by just submitting my articles and letting them be, EzineArticles is the definite winner.

Plus, I like to keep things simple, because the more complex you make things, the more you’ll procrastinate, overwhelm yourself and in general get stuck.

5 Common Article Marketing Mistakes

If you ask bloggers about using article marketing to increase their blog traffic and subscribers, you’ll no doubt run into many nay-sayers.

The truth of the matter is this: most bloggers are never going to make it online until they change their mindset. It isn’t until you start working hard that you can make anything work.

When you switch your mindset from blaming to taking action, the tools you use become secondary.

This doesn’t mean that you can use any tool, but as long as you use something that has been proven to work and you do it right, you will accomplish great things.

I’ve helped a handful of people get into article marketing and worked with a few consulting clients, and these are the five most common mistakes I see over and over again:

1. Consistency. This isn’t an overnight thing, nothing online is. If you want to succeed with getting more blog traffic and subscribers, you have to do it consistently, no matter what you do. I’m not going to lie to you and say that you’ll get massive amounts of traffic by submitting 10 articles, or even 100. But if you work hard and keep writing, you will see results.

2. Testing. When you’ve written and submitted a few articles. You can use the traffic reports that EzineArticles provides you. You can look at which articles are doing well in terms of traffic, which keywords they are getting traffic from and what kind of click-through rates they are getting. All this is valuable information that most bloggers don’t use.

3. Keywords. If you want to keep receiving traffic from your articles for a long time, you should check out what keywords your audience is using to look for content, and what they are looking for. The only tool you need for this is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. I use it all the time with awesome success.

4. Complexity. Like I said above, the more you can keep things simple, the more you can get done. Don’t fall for new traffic generation strategies until you’ve gotten one to work. Write a set amount of articles each day, submit them and keep doing that consistently and you will see results. I use article marketing myself and taught my girlfriend how to make $300/month, so I know it works.

5. Strategy. Last, but not least, you have to have a strategy and plan in place. Getting more blog traffic is all well and good, but how are you going to turn them into subscribers and what are you going to do after that? Long gone are the days of making money through slapping ads on your site, so you have to have a plan on how you will monetize your blog traffic.

Crafting Your Sign-Up Incentive

Before you start increasing your blog traffic and sending visitors to your website via article marketing, you want to have a plan in place, just like I said above.

The thing that has worked great for me is to craft a sign-up incentive. This just means that I have a free e-course that I give away, which is the Discover Your Passion in 5 Days course.

By looking at my sign-up page, you can see what I’m doing. Nowadays, you have to really convince people to get your free stuff, because there’s so much of it out there already.

Make people want what you have to offer, then send relevant traffic to your sign-up page to convert visitors into subscribers.

This is the first step, you then want to start thinking about what you can do to monetize your subscribers, but that is another topic and one that Daniel covers well here at Daily Blog Tips.

Most bloggers have trouble increasing their traffic, so that is the first step. But if you already have a product in mind, I suggest you work backwards from that.

For example, if you have a cooking blog and you have an awesome ebook on cooking that you intend to sell.

You can now work backwards and create your sign-up incentive. You want to do this without giving away what you’re selling, so your sign-up incentive might be something like “7 Deadly Cooking Mistakes People Make and How to Avoid Them”

4 Proven Tips for Article Marketing Success

There are common elements in any successful article marketing strategy. I’ve written thousands of articles. During this time I’ve picked up a few things and learned from experience what works and what doesn’t.

1. Relevancy. If you want to not only increase your blog traffic, but translate that traffic into subscribers, you have to keep everything relevant. Let’s go back to the cooking example. If you have a cooking blog with a free cooking ebook that you’re giving away, you should write and submit articles around this topic, because it’s relevant and the people that come to your website are looking for the information you’re providing. It’s a perfect match.

2. Headline. If your headline isn’t grabbing your visitors by the collar and dragging them to your article, your success may be limited. Crafting effective titles is an art-form. It’s not something you’ll pick up instantly, but when you keep working on it, you’ll start to understand it more and more. In the beginning, I was horrible at writing headlines, but I’ve gotten slightly better. Practice makes perfect, right?

3. Resource box. Once you’ve gotten your reader interested with your headline, and they’ve read through your article, now it’s time to keep them interested and take them back to your blog. Tell them what you have to offer in the resource box. For example, if you have a free cooking ebook that you’re giving away, your resource box should go something like this “If you want to learn the 7 biggest cooking mistakes people make and how to avoid them, click here and grab this free report”.

4. Balance. Article marketing is not about writing a few articles and stopping. It’s hard work, like I said above. But you have to find a balance, because if you’re too focused on quality, you will not be able to write many articles. On the other hand, if you’re too focused on quantity, your articles will get rejected. As you write more, you’ll find a balance and be able to crank out 5+ articles a day easily.

How to Take Your Article Marketing to the Next Level

There comes a point where you can only do so much. This is where you want to think about how you can leverage your article marketing and put it on auto-pilot.

This is by no means the push-button, leave it and go to Hawaii kind of stuff that you keep hearing about. I am talking about once you’ve started making money, you can start outsourcing and using more advanced strategies, such as:

1. Research. Once you have a big repository of articles, you can look back and see what has worked and what hasn’t. If you see one article getting a lot of views, try to figure out why that is so. Has it been re-published many times, does it get a lot of links or did you stumble upon a good keyword?

2. Steal. After a while you will start running out of ideas. A great place for keywords and posts is to look at other people’s content. EzineArticles gives you free research data below every one of their articles. You can see 15 articles under the Most Viewed column, which gives you an idea of what gets traffic and what keywords work. Use that to your advantage.

3. Outsource. We as humans have limited capability. You can’t write 50-100 articles a day, but you can leverage what you have. I outsource a lot of my article marketing campaign so I can focus on my blog, and partly because I’m just plain lazy. You get to this point by planning and not being afraid to monetize. If you provide value to your visitors, you can and should produce your own products and services.

Let’s Be Honest For a Moment

I’ve given you practically everything you need to increase your blog traffic and subscribers with article marketing in this article. Now it’s up to you to take what I’ve shared and put it into action.

You can run around and look for more information, or you can buckle down and run with it. It’s easy to keep looking for that perfect information that will make everything easier, but it doesn’t work that way.

Trust me, I’ve been there and done that. If you want to make a living online and have a successful blog, you have to work hard and persevere.

The only way you’ll succeed is by doing something that you’re passionate about and that gives meaning to your life. That is why I recommend that you find your passion.

The reason I have been able to do all this is because I love writing, helping people improve their lives and, of course, making money.

You can have a wildly successful blog. I believe pretty much every one can, but there’s something that separates the winners from the losers, and it’s the fact that winners are constantly moving towards their goals and taking action.

Henri Junttila owns the Wake Up Cloud, which is a self improvement blog that helps conscious people make a living online following their passion. Remember to subscribe to his RSS feed for more awesome articles.

This is a guest post by Nicholas Z. Cardot. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Far too often I find that people are getting caught up with the technical aspects of blogging like which plugins are the best, which designs are the most appealing, which methods of SEO yield the greatest results while at the same forgetting about the most important aspect of all, connecting with real people.

It’s certainly a good idea to work on creating an appealing looking site that can also effectively draw in traffic from search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Yet if people are instantly clicking away from our material and never return again then we’re failing as bloggers and as authors.

At my site I want people to browse through the articles. I want them to interact with the content by leaving comments and sharing the material. I want users to get involved and feel compelled to read my articles as they get published.

The most powerful element to accomplishing all these goals and to building a prominent online presence is developing genuine connections. People will visit your material and read what you have to say because they’ve bought into who you are as a person. You don’t build that with new plugins and fancy post titles. You do that by connecting with real people.

1. Connections provide you valuable feedback when you need it.
2. Connections provide friends to share your content across social media sites like Twitter.
3. Connections provide explosive ‘word of mouth’ marketing for your site.
4. Connections provide guest posting and back link opportunities that might otherwise not exist.

There are two major arenas that you need to learn to use to build connections and it’s important that you don’t pick one or the other. Use both and multiply your efforts in building relationships online.

The Command Post: Your Blog

Successful bloggers understand that in order to draw people in and get them involved then we have to create a sense of community throughout our site. We have to encourage conversations and feedback.

1. Encourage participation in the conversation by asking questions in your posts.
2. Point people to connect with you through other forums like Twitter and Facebook.
3. Provide a contact page that makes it easy to get in touch with you.
4. Respond to comments with more than just “Thanks for the comment.” Actually be conversational.
5. If you want to you can even invite people to connect with you via Instant Messenger.

The Outposts: Social Media

If you’re only communicating with people at your blog then you’re missing out on a lot of potential relationships that could really help you.

1. Connect with like minded bloggers on other blogs by leaving genuine, valuable comments.
2. Connect with people on social media sites by responding to people, sharing other articles that are valuable, etc.

Whether you are at your command post or out at one of your outposts, the key is this: be real with people. Respond to people. Answer questions. Ask questions. Be conversational.

Talk to people the same way that you would talk to someone face to face. The medium might be different. The technology might be constantly changing but the principle remains intact.

Connect with people. Connections are a powerful asset.

Nicholas Z. Cardot is the creator and author of Site Sketch 101 where he publishes daily articles for bloggers and webmasters.

This is a guest post by Ann Smarty. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

The two best known ways to find blogs accepting guest posts are:

• Looking around your current contacts. Guest posting at your friends' sites will only make your old relationships stronger and more active. Besides, this is a good way to "learn" to guest post: adapt to various types of audience and blogging atmosphere.
• Searching Google. I've posted about some advanced tips on searching Google to hunt great (and tightly targeted) guest posting opportunities previously, so you just need to go and check it if you haven't yet.

But as an active (and long-term) guest blogger, I've become somewhat creative in hunting guest blogging opportunities and in this post I am sharing the three of them which turned really effective for me.

1. Look for New, Rapidly-Growing Competitors

Well, the first thing to keep in mind here is that there are no real competitors when it comes to blogging (this is one of the reasons why I love it). Blogs can't really compete because each of them has its unique voice and thus takes its own place.

But there are blogs in the same niche as you are and it is a good idea to find new, emerging and rapidly growing ones and see what they are doing.

One of the best advice I've ever got was: when it comes to competitive research, think young. It is not easy to follow already established, high-authority blogs: they already have solid contacts and fans which help them move further.

New bloggers have nothing; they are hungry and they've got to be creative. Watching what they are doing and following their steps, you can learn a lot. It doesn't mean you have to copy everything they are doing – you'll notice yourself get inspired by watching those active bloggers; you'll notice yourself find plenty of unique ideas and finding your own ways as well.

Look out for "places I guest posted" and "my guest posts" sections to see where those new and active bloggers promote their content and how:

2. Search and Track Twitter

This is somewhat related to the previous one: you won't be able to (easily) find new bloggers in Google (because they don't have enough link authority to outrank more established blogs) but you will surely find them Tweeting. Besides, Twitter search is real-time – meaning that you'll find new and fresh guest posting opportunities.

There are plenty of tools allowing to search and track Twitter; I am using Seesmic Desktop because it is cool, feature-rich and clutter-free. Here's how it noiselessly updates me of new related Tweets:

First thing to do is to configure its settings to notify you of new search results. Go to Settings > Notifications and put a tick next to "Notify about new search results":

You are almost done. Now use Seesmic built-in search option to search Twitter for what you need. I was searching for "guest posts" in general, you may want to restrict the search to your niche like [guest post diet], [guest post money].

Quick tip: create a separate search for each synonym you'd like to track: [guest post money], [guest post finance], [guest post save], etc.

Your search will be saved automatically and from now on Seesmic will quietly notify you of new search results via small pop-ups:

Now whenever you have new results, just go ahead and check out the new blogs and what they are doing.

3. Join Blogging Forums

Bloggers' communities are plenty. Some are generic ones where people discuss all things blogging. Others are more focused and targeted like, for example, Blogher (which unites blogging women) and 20 something bloggers that unites bloggers aged between 20 and 30 (and thus having common interested, styles, priorities, etc).

I have recently created another community specifically targeting people looking for guest bloggers and / or guest blogging opportunities. It is called My Blog Guest and if you are interested in guest blogging and plan to do a lot of it, you may want to check it out.

I am doing my best to keep the bar high enough: I don't really want the forum to turn into buy-sell thing, so only join it if you are interested in long-term partnerships and "pure deals".

If you've had some success hunting for guest blogging opportunities, please share your most effective methods in the comments!

Ann Smarty blogs on search, social media, branding and blogging at her SEOsmarty.com blog.

This is a guest post by Eric Cummings. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

I loved Aditya Mahesh’s recent guest post, 4 Ways to Promote Your Blog Offline. We bloggers are used to thinking about blogging as something you only do behind a computer. There is the “real” world and the “digital” world, and never the two shall meet. Aditya’s post debunks this myth though she missed one obvious but often underutilized publicity technique area: reaching out to our existing, real world social networks. Or put simply, tell your friends, family and co-workers about your blog.

This may seem blindingly obvious, and in many ways it is. But whether out of fear, privacy, or embarrassment, many bloggers keep their digital and real lives separate. I know I did, and many times still do. For new bloggers, utilizing existing social networks will dramatically expand the reach of your blog in the rough, early days. It will help create a community, give you valuable feedback, and expand the reach of your blog.

So, how do you utilize your social network?

1. Start small. In the beginning, get feedback from trusted friends. Ask trusted friends to give you honest feedback. When my brother and I started On Violence, for the first three or four weeks, we only told five of our closest friends. They provided feedback that helped us re-format pages to make them easier to read. We also found out what posts grabbed their attention and they pointed out those pesky typos that dog beginning and expert bloggers. And your friends can tell you, as one of ours did, that your language sounds pretentious. (Not all of the criticism feels good, but it helps.)

2. Tell your friends and family. First, I targeted emails and phone calls to my friends who I thought would want to be part of our community. If you are truly passionate about your topic, I bet a bunch of your friends are too. But this is obvious, what about your Great Aunt Mable, or your weird uncle Ted? Surely they don’t care about your new blog on early 90’s hip-hop. Maybe, but maybe not. You never know who your blog will interest, or who your next loyal reader will be.

3. Tell your co-workers and fellow enthusiasts. Chances are, unless you write a blog on making money from blogging, your blog is about a hobby or interest area. You have other friends in that area; take advantage of this. If your blog covers surfing, then talk to the surfers you ride with at the beach. If they aren’t interested in your blog, who will be?

4. Advertise with Groups and Associations to which you belong. Do you belong to a fraternity or sorority? An industry group? A church with a newsletter? Send out an announcement about your blog.

5. Target the real world recipients of your blog. Similar to tip number three, you need to target the people who are probably interested in your blog that you’ve never met before. If your blog reviews local restaurant, then talk to restaurant owners you know. Basically, wherever your blog can connect with real world people, you need to let them know about it.

6. Ask friends to guest post. There are tangible benefits to this. It is one less post you have to worry about writing, provides another voice to your website, and will help expand your reach into your friend’s social network. The biggest benefit I’ve had is in discovering another wonderful writer. My friend Matt contributed a post about his experience as an aid worker on the Thailand/Burma border. It was meaningful, well written, on topic, and a joy to read. If we hadn’t reached out, he never would have shared this story with us, and our blog wouldn’t be the same.

7. Ask your friends to comment. Nothing is sadder than a blog post with no comments. People want to go to blogs with community. Our blog, though small, has one. When new people come to our blog, they feel free to comment without feeling like they are the only one commenting. (Though to be fair, on some days we still struggle with this.)

8. Invite your friends on facebook/myspace/linkedin. I have over 300 friends on facebook, why would I not invite them to our blog? The more interesting thing has been connecting with friends I haven’t talked to in a long time, and restarting conversations and relationships with them. You have a social network already, use it.

9. Tell people you meet, in real life. This seems obvious, but was hard for me in the beginning and it still is. It is hard to put yourself out there and say, “I have a blog.” It seems pretentious. But again, you never know who or when you could meet a new reader. I met one of our most loyal readers at three in the morning outside a hostel in Munich. A tip: order business cards. They are cheap, practical and will help give you an opening.

Eric Cummings writes about for On Violence, a blog on counter-insurgency warfare, military and foreign affairs, art, and violence, written by two brothers–one a soldier and the other a pacifist.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post saying that I needed to hustle more, and one of the goals I set to myself was to reach 50,000 subscribers by July 21.

Many readers posted a comment or emailed me asking how I planned to achieve that goal. Well, I have many things in mind, and I’ll talk about them individually. Today I want to talk about the first strategy I’ll use: mass guest blogging.

You already know what guest blogging is, and why it is an effective promotional strategy. It basically allows you to reach a new audience, to network with fellow bloggers, and to receive some traffic along the way. But what about mass guest blogging? It is the same thing, but implemented on a mass scale.

For example, you could write and publish 20 guest posts on blogs inside your niche, all within a 30-day period. Alternatively, you could aim to get one guest post published a week, for 6 months in a row.

I like the mass guest blogging strategy because it creates synergy. That is, the results you will get with the 20 guest posts packed in a single month will be larger than the results you would get if you were to publish these same posts scattered through a longer period, say one or two years.

Why is that? Because when people see your name (or the name of your blog) everywhere on a short period of time, they start wondering what the fuzz is about, and they get curious or motivated to visit your site and possibly to subscribe to it.

Leo Babauta used this strategy when he was promoting Zen Habits in the early days. I remember I would see a guest post from him on popular blogs every other day, and that is how I discovered his blog and became a fan of his work (and probably how many other people did, too).

My goal is to write and get one guest post published every week, for the next 6 months. The one for this week is up on Problogger, and it is titled 9 Tricks I Used To Triple My AdSense Earnings In 30 Days. I’ll also try to double the efforts on some weeks, publishing two guest posts instead of one.

It will be a lot of work, but I am sure the results will be worth it. On top of that now I made the whole thing public, so I have some extra motivation to walk my talk.

But what about you? After all you read this blog to improve your own, right? That is why I wanted to invite you to this challenge. Can you write one guest post per week and get it published on blog relevant to your topic? I am sure you can, so get on with it. Make a list of 10, 20 or 30 blogs where you want to guest post, brainstorm some content ideas and start writing the posts straight away.

Within six months I’ll write another post with the results of the challenge, and I’ll be looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Good luck!