If you are looking for a way to make real money online, you are going to need to find a way to drive people to your promotions. One of the most effective ways to do this is with article marketing. Why is article marketing such a hot topic around the internet forums and blogs recently? Because it works! Writing original articles and submitting them to popular article directories WILL result in traffic generation.

Here's the basics of effective article marketing:

1. Choose a keyword phrase that is relevant to your site and that has a high amount of daily searches but a lower level competition in Google's search engine results. You will need a keyword research tool for this.

2. Once you have chosen a strong keyword phrase, then write an informative article based around it. Keyword stuffing is frowned upon and really isn't necessary. Be sure to create an attention-grabbing title (that also includes the keyword phrase that you are targeting). The more informative the content of your article, the better the chances of readers getting down to your author resource box.

3. Your author resource box will be at the bottom of your article and gives you the opportunity to include two links. Be sure to use at least one (if not both of them) that will go back to the homepage of the site you are promoting. Also, make sure that you include a strong call to action to give readers a reason for clicking on your links.

4. When you are done with your article, be sure to submit it to an article directory with a high Page Rank. Currently, EzineArticles.com is the biggest and baddest article directory out there, so be sure to make them your first stop.

Simple, right? But to truly make real money online, you are going to have to write and submit more than one article. The exact number of articles that need to be submitted before seeing consistent traffic can't be pinned down. It varies from niche to niche. But what is known is that the more articles that you submit, the greater the traffic will be. So if you want more traffic than you have now, you will have to commit to writing and submitting more articles.

There are two suggestions that are recommended with article marketing. One, be sure to vary the keyword phrases that you are writing about. Some keyword phrases will generate more traffic then others, so you may need to target a few different ones before you find a winner. And secondly, make sure that you write and submit on a regular basis. It's more effective to submit one article a week over 10 weeks then to submit just 10 articles and stop. Those that use article marketing to make real money online are those that have the determination to faithfully submit articles over time.

Making real money online is not rocket science. But it does take some skill and lots of hard work. If you want to use the internet to make a stable stream of income, then you are going to have to use a reliable strategy to generate traffic. Article marketing is one of the most popular marketing methods because of how effective it is.