Article Submissions - Worth It?

I agree with what has been said but I will say that there are some very successful article writers out there who primarily do article writing. It can help create backlinks among other benefits but like everyone has said don't make it the only way you drive traffic! Also as an added note if you are just getting started then only focus a couple of lead generating ideas and become an expert at them before moving to the next or adding to your arsenal.

Hope this helps,
Shawn Phillips

The truth of the matter is that most article directories don't get any traffic to speak of. Nor is their intent to send you traffic. Most of them are focused on generating Adsense clicks for themselves.

Even EzineArticles.com, by far the best of the lot, offers you two links in your resource box, but presents ten times that many options for people to click their Adsense or go to another EZA page.

And you can ignore anyone who says stuff like "look at the PR or Alexa ranking of Directory X." The only pages on the site that matter are the one your article is on and the ones that link to it. Traffic to any other page on the site is meaningless.

Another common tactic that worked well five years ago is broadcasting your article to thousands of "directories" for links. Penguin killed that move. And 99%+ of those directories haven't seen a human eyeball since they were created. Anyone who tries to convince you that this still works, and offers to sell you something to do it, can safely be ignored.

On the other hand, content marketing (be it articles, video, audio, graphic images, etc.) is still alive and well. Search engines, Google in particular, have always advocated creating content for human audiences. Say what you will, they are putting their money where their mouth is and implementing algorithms to emphasize quality and relevance of links over sheer quantity.

The whole point of content marketing is putting your content in front of engaged, targeted humans in order to entice them into your world, onto your sites and onto your lists. Figure out your ideal customer and find ways to put content created for them in front of them.

How to do that? There are many ways just the other side of the forum search function...

I don't second article submission, for me it's worthless. Instead of article submission, I think you should submit your blog links on social media sites like stumble upon, Twitter and on similar sites targeting your primary audiences.

Along with this, you can also participate on blogs where similar discussions carrying on and share your link after some thoughts on the topic.