If you're looking at free methods to generate prospects for your new complementary therapy business, especially if it has an online shopping cart, the best way is Article Marketing because it's free and the traffic keeps coming, month after month, from one piece of work. So if you are looking for product launch ideas read on.

Article Marketing isn't an instant way to get started online, but it's a low-cost, no risk tactic anyone can adopt. First let's compare it with some different ways to get online traffic. Let's take the example of promoting a new shopping cart.

A traditional way of getting traffic to your new site, taught by other on-line marketing courses, is to get in touch with other website owners requesting a link exchange. This can work, but it's a slow process and you need to be careful who you target. For instance, if I sell dog collars by mail order I may be happy to do a link exchange with someone who runs dog training classes, but not someone who is selling dog collars.

Another method is answering questions on forums in your niche, with your website in your signature. Also effective, but time-consuming.

In theory a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign is quick to set up and you could see traffic within an hour. In practice unless you're experienced at these campaigns, you can spend ages testing for the optimum settings and exhaust your budget without making a single sale. I did! And being cynical , I often wondered how many clicks were by my competitors, to waste my money!

Additional online strategies include FFA (Free For All) sites and traffic exchanges where you view other people's sites, in return for them viewing yours. This strikes me as a waste of time. I want to sell, not buy, so why sit bored, clicking on other people's sites so that they will sit bored clicking on my site? They probably never even look at my site. With tabbed browsers the temptation is just to open the following tab to click on the advert, without reading the adverts.

These methods are time-consuming and ineffective for a serious product launch.

Offline promoting methods include networking to exchange cards at business clubs. Time-consuming, expensive and again in general, people are there to sell, not to buy.

In contrast, article marketing targets people who have indicated that they are interested in the subject your website targets. Choose the correct keywords and visitors will be actively looking to buy, not sell.

The idea of article marketing is that you write an article and submit it, with your website details, to article directories from which publishers can draw content for blogs etc so long as they publish your website details with your article. Then as interested parties read your article, they can click onto your website.

The article you have produced in an hour or so stays (theoretically) online forever and you have the potential to receive targeted traffic from it in perpetuity.

For example, I submitted an article in October 2005 and 4 years later it is still generating traffic, with no extra work, and had received 28,897 lifetime views, with 5,961 clicks through to my website. How much would that have cost in PPC? Another advantage is that the best article directories send you statistics showing the keywords from which your article is being found.

In my opinion article marketing has so many advantages over alternative methods that I cannot imagine why it would not be one of your marketing strategies.

Much of my success with article marketing was learned through trial and error. With a little free, or low cost, training I would have realized the potential much earlier.

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