Article Marketing or Forum Marketing

It's a huge plus. I often think "what you enjoy doing" plays too small a part in these conversations. Partly because the reality is that most people are going to do better, and work harder and maybe even longer hours, at something they really enjoy than at something they don't.

In which case (perhaps after checking it out and seeing that that really is the case), you're almost certainly making a good decision to concentrate on forum marketing, I'd think?

Yes, I've found article marketing to be far more successful for me than forum marketing. No comparison at all. I have done some forum marketing (in various niches, under my various niche-specific pen-names, and obviously in forums relevant to those niches) and not really enjoyed it much. I can't say it's been without benefits for me, but I happen strongly to prefer exactly what you say doesn't suit you. (Between us, we have it covered!).

The thing I like so much about posting here, apart from all the other/normal/obvious reasons that people enjoy interacting in the Warrior Forum (which include its undoubted educational value to me), is precisely the fact that I'm not in any sense doing any "forum marketing" here: nothing to sell, nothing to promote, and so on. It's probably even one of the reasons I've never offered a WSO or anything of the kind.

I don't believe this to be so.

I know people say they can (and those same people seem to imagine that writing articles very quickly and having a large number of them is a good thing :p ) but the reality is that those are articles for article directory marketing, not for article marketing, and I strongly suspect that most of them are not really making much money at all from those articles.

I can't write more than one article per day.

Fortunately, however, that gives me more than enough "article stock" to keep my 8 separate, unrelated niches well supplied with all their content needs.

The reality of article marketing is that it isn't really about the number of articles at all: it's about how widely you can get them published in front of highly targeted traffic for your niches. But most of the people who are talking about writing their articles in 10 minutes don't quite appreciate that.

I don't doubt that part (because that's trivially easy), but that in itself, as so many people have discovered, produces no income at all. An article directory is merely a stepping stone to re-publication in front of targeted traffic. 1,000 articles that just sit inside EZA but never actually get syndicated don't earn anything realistic for anyone: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872

I replace the word 'or' with the word 'and'. In other words, I do both.

When I in rhythm and everything is working, the two are almost symbiotic. Participating in forum communities gives the pulse of the market and almost endless article topics that I know are of interest to people in the market. How do I know they're of interest? People are already talking about them.

Actually participating is better than just sorting for busy threads and skimming because actually articulating cogent thoughts takes more investment. Especially when you get into a spirited debate on something and have to examine your own statements and those of others.

Which results in richer, more engaging articles. Articles you can easily link to as support for your points or resources for the community, especially if they are republished on a third party's site.

If you do this in a handful of niche markets, suddenly things start connecting in ways you don't anticipate.

The only downside to this kind of immersion is that it's exhausting if you keep at it too long. About two weeks is the best I can do. Which is fine, because the 'downtime' is used to recharge the batteries and deal with the mechanics of business.

I prefer forum marketing as you can see what are the problems and questions asked by the members in that forum. That are real goldmine. Another thing is the interaction nature of forum makes it more enjoyable than doing article marketing.