Article marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services by publishing articles that attract qualified buyers or increase the ranking of web pages in search engines by creating back links. Article marketing can be performed by contributing articles to magazines (byline articles) or submitting them for listing in article directories. A 12 page white paper can typically be divided into 3 to 5 articles.

Byline Articles - Byline articles are media content segments which credit the contributor for the creation of the article (the byline). The byline may include the author’s name, the company name and a resource link that is located at the end of the article.

Magazines and other media publishers have a strong need for contributed content that is of good quality. The magazine has a choice of paying a writer $500 to $4000 to create an article, or to publish a contributed article at no cost. In many cases, the writers of contributed articles have extensive knowledge of an industry, and the article topic may resonate with the readers of the magazine.

To submit a byline article, contact an editor of the magazine and suggest your byline article topic. A good time saving tactic to use for submitting byline articles to magazines is to provide a list of 5 to 10 article titles to the editor announcing their availability for publishing. It is not necessary to begin writing until the editor indicates which article(s) they have an interest in publishing.

Article and White Paper Directories - Article and white paper directories are lists of articles and information documents that are searchable or can be sorted by keywords or categories. Article directories exist to attract readers (high traffic) so they can earn advertising or other revenues.

Submitting documents to article directories commonly involves setting up an account along with a writer profile. For some directories, the writer profile may contain one or several links to web sites that the author provides, which typically point to their company or a white paper page. Examples of article directories include www.ezinearticles.com, www.ehow.com, and www.squidoo.com.

Article Rewrites - Articles may be rewritten to allow for listing on multiple web sites without publishing duplicate content. Articles may be rewritten for different audiences. One version of the article may be business focused for executives, while another version may be technically focused for operations managers.

To help with the article rewriting process, an article rewriter program or service can be used. The program converts text content into a new form. While the new version of the article contains the same knowledge elements as the original, it appears to the reader as a different article. To help make rewrites of the article appear significantly different, small portions of content may be added to or removed from each version.