Writing original and unique free reprint articles is a proven and effective way of driving traffic to your website in the longer-term. Compared with other ways of getting visitors, does it create the highest visitor value, and if so, why? This article answers those questions.

Writing original and unique free reprint articles is a proven and effective way of driving traffic to your website in the longer-term. Compared with other ways of getting visitors, does it create the highest visitor value, and if so, why? This article answers those questions.

To answer these questions we must first look briefly at the main characteristics of other forms of marketing. Essentially they are all forms of advertising; some paid for and some free and it does not matter whether they are on-line adverts such a Google Adwords or banner advertisements or printed advertisements. They all use the following format:

1.  States the problem to be solved
   

2.  Offers a solution
   

3.  Provides contact information  - usually a link to your website
   

This is just enough information to attract the attention of those people who might have a general interest in what you are offering. If they follow the link to your website, they do so to discover whether you really are offering the solution to their problem. As your advertisement has not qualified the leads that come from it, most of them will not be your target market.

The small number of visitors who are within your target market know nothing about you. People are more willing to buy from people they like and trust. If you take them direct to your sales page, you are relying on the copywriter's skills to create that relationship for you, which for the most part it will fail to do.

What then is the value of each visitor to your website who comes to you through your advertisements? One way of calculating this is to divide the value of sales or affiliate commission (less the cost of advertising) by the number of visitors - most of whom will not buy from you.

One other characteristic of all advertisements is that once it has appeared, its benefits are short-lived. To gain maximum benefit, you will need to be advertising regularly.

We already know that writing free reprint articles is a proven and effective way of driving traffic to your website in the longer-term. That is because over a period your articles are listed in the organic results of the search engines. That means your article will be found by a prospect that is searching against the key words you have used.

If your title attracts them, they will read the opening paragraph. They now have more information about what you are offering than they could have got from a typical advertisement. You are already qualifying the prospect. Some readers will leave your article at this stage because you are giving them what they want. Some readers may read the whole article before reaching the same conclusion. Others will get as far as your resource box and then leave. These prospects were not going to become your customers, so you have lost nothing.

Those prospects that do click on the link in your resource box are highly qualified leads. They are in your target market and are interested in what you are providing.

They know something about you from reading your article. Subconsciously, they are forming a relationship of trust with you. People are more willing to buy from people they like and trust. Consequently, they are more likely to buy from you.

What then is the value of each visitor to your website that comes to you through your article? One way of calculating this is to divide the value of sales or affiliate commission by the number of visitors. The differences here are that there are no advertising costs and your visitors are targeted specifically on what you are offering. More of your visitors will buy from you.

There can be no doubt that this method creates the highest visitor value because writing free reprint articles pre-qualifies your prospects and builds a relationship of trust with them. People are more willing to buy from people they like and trust.