You’ve done the market research. You have identified the hot products to sell.

Now it’s time to use one of the most effective tools to make money at home and that is writing articles.

How can you profit by using articles? Well, a lot of internet marketers are saying the same mantra: articles, articles and more articles.

Write articles then submit them to article directories and money will follow – the promise that never came. At least for me.

Money will not follow if article writing is not done right.

The gurus are not telling you the exact details on how to really make money writing articles.

You can make money online when people find your article, read it, click the link which will bring them to your site and then buy the product you are promoting.

If they do not buy right there and then, make sure that you capture their contact information, at least their name and email.

From there you can have tons of opportunities to sell and resell to them.

One of the entry points where people find you is thru the search engines. And people coming from search engines are, most of the time, targeted, especially if they type specific search terms.

When I say search engine, I meant it to be synonymous with Google.

Don’t bother with Yahoo or MSN anymore. With 64% of the market, Google is THE search engine.

So you have to get noticed by Google and placed higher in this mighty search engine’s pedestal.

These are the steps:

Step 1: Use long tail keyword phrases

Don’t just target general keywords.

Nobody will find your site at Google and it would take an incredible amount of SEO to put you on page 1 or even page 2.

Long tail keywords are those 3 – 5 keyword phrases which are very, very precise to whatever you are selling or promoting.

The chances to convert a search into sales are higher when the searcher types in a specific keyword phrase.

Here’s an example for you. ‘golf’ is the primary keyword. “golf club” is your secondary keyword. “cheap golf club” is a long tail keyword.

If you go down deeper, it would be like “cheap callaway golf club”. I mentioned this in how to find profitable markets.

You can use also use a free tool by following this link: keyword tool.

Before you go on using a long tail keyword phrase, check two things:

a) How many are searching for that keyword phrase

b) How many are competing for that keyword phrase

When determining for the number of searches per month, be sure to use the optimized search results.

“Optimized search results” are simply the Google results that you get when you type the long tail keyword phrase with the quotation marks.

That is, “get rid of cats” (search result = 53,700) is different from get rid of cats [without the quotation] (search result = 1,310,000)

You would not go ahead if the optimized search result is below 500 per month. That would not be profitable for you.

Well, there are cases when long tail keywords with only a hundred searches per month would turn out profitable but as a rule you would not go for it as it would take an enormous amount of time and effort.

Step 2: Put this long tail keyword phrase in the title of your article

If we use the example above “get rid of cats,” You can say “How to get rid of cats” or “3 gentle ways to get rid of cats” or “Get rid of cats quickly,” Be innovative.

Make sure your title grabs the readers’ eyeballs. Remember that the title is an ad of your article.

It should lure the reader to click and read your article further.

Also, put this long tail keyword phrase inside the body of your article.

I have experienced good results by putting the phrase in the second sentence of the first paragraph and another phrase at the last paragraph.

Don’t stuff your article with the keywords as this will signal Google of something spammy.

Remember that Google is older now and have grown a lot smarter. Two or three of your chosen keyword phrase will do.

And here’s another thing, with a lot of scraper sites (websites that copy your content without including the source or your link), make sure to put an anchor text inside the body of your article.

This way, the scraper sites could still carry along your link and add to your popularity.

If you noticed, I also put links inside the body of my articles. An added protection if somebody would just mercilessly scrape it without acknowledging the source.

Well, they could disable the link, but at least it makes their job a step harder.

Also, I’m including the URL of my site http://www.grandstart.com, in case they do this.

Step 3: Submit your article to ezinearticles only

Yes, you read it right. Submit only to ezinearticles, don’t submit the same article to other directories.

Do you know that Google plays favorites? Ezinearticles.com is one of its dear friends.

Maybe it could be of the fact that the good directory does not accept duplicate articles and the review process is done by a real person.

Or Chris knight and Larry Page are neighbors? :>) Don’t know!

Well, with a pagerank 6 and Alexa rank of 531, ezinearticles.com is the best place to submit your articles.

Hundreds of other smaller directories are picking up articles from ezinearticles so you don’t have to worry on the distribution.

Step 4: Create the resource box skillfully

This is an extremely vital component of the how to make money writing article process.

The efforts you put on writing that article would be put to waste if you just make a sloppy resource box.

If you’re unfamiliar what exactly is a resource box. It is the box right at the end of your article which gives some information about you or your business.

Here’s sample:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Baygon Kirk is the leading expert in blog traffic. He has helped hundreds of bloggers thru his book: “how to drive thousands of visitors to your blog in 24 hours” Click here -> http://www.grandstart.com to get your free copy.

A good resource box should have the following (With some references to the example above):

a. Your name: Baygon Kirk b. Your commercial: The leading expert in blog traffic c. Website address: http://www.grandstart.com d. Anchor text: blog traffic is used as an anchor text which would point to the author’s website. e. Call to action: Click here to get your free copy (would most likely entice targeted readers)

The resource box builds up incoming links to your website. With the proper use of the anchor text, it increases you Google rank and pushes you higher in the search engines.

It also helps build your brand and credibility within your industry.

The resource box is your micro sales letter whose goal is to persuade the reader to click the link which will take them to your site where you can sell them your own or affiliate product.

Step 5: Repeat steps 1-4 but this time use a different long tail keyword phrase

Listen, to really make money online, write at least 15-20 articles dedicated to one product you are promoting.

Too many? Too hard? In my succeeding posts, I will show you some techniques to make article writing easier.

Don’t shove many long tail keywords into your article. Use only one long tail keyword per article.

However, you can write 2 or 3 different articles with the same targeted keyword phrase.

If you are limited to the number of allowed submissions per author, you can always use a pen name.

Now, start writing! Most of the time people fail because of inaction.

Remember, it is not what you know that makes you a success, but what you do with what you know.