Can somebody kindly explain article marketing?

Have you read ANY of the responses above from Warriors Alexa Smith and MYOB?

The heading for this thread is: "Can somebody kindly explain article marketing?" What you have referenced in your post is Article Directory Marketing. Two entirely different animals.

Please, please read the detailed, helpful replies from Alexa, and in future, refrain from replying to threads without first studying the responses from Warriors who actually know what they are talking about.

If you're judging by how any single article performs, you're looking at it wrong. Article marketing isn't like paid traffic, where you can pretty much turn it on and off at will.

For an article published online, outside of the article directories, you tend to get a push of traffic that could last one to several days, depending on how frequently the publisher adds new content. After that, you'll get dribs and drabs of traffic from that source for as long as it exists online.

For an offline publication, like a print source or an ezine with no online archive, it's similar in the initial push, but without being available later, the ongoing bits of traffic aren't usually there.

What will happen if you capture some percentage of those visitors to your own house list(s), with the ability to continue interacting with them for as long as they open and read your emails?

Then those surges and later dribbles of article traffic, from sources already interested in your topic, accumulate over time.

As "side" benefits, you build a reputation in your market (which leads to more syndication opportunities, as well as chances to be a 'quoted source' in other peoples' articles) along with accumulating natural, relevant links.