Many people who are involved in a multilevel marketing business are finding that it isn’t as easy as it might seem to find that ever important lead – people who will come and look at what you have to offer. Before you can actually call them a lead, you must first get them to your website. This article will introduce you to steps that you can implement in your marketing strategy that will effectively make it impossible for anyone looking for your type of business opportunity to not come to your website. You will be in too many places to avoid it. Your strategies WILL bring to you Free MLM Leads. This system will require a little bit of work at first but it really isn’t that hard.

By far the most effective solution to free mlm leads is to use article marketing. Article marketing is the act of writing short articles that are then made available for distrubution and publication on sites that are set up for that very purpose. These sites will submit your article for free. There are literally hundreds of them on the internet.

Articles consist of the following structure:

#1. A short title.
#2. A summary – one or two sentences that describe your article’s content.
#3. The content – should be from 400 – 600 words, any more than that should be broken down into two or more seperate articles.
#4. The bio or resource box – which will give the reader a brief description of who you are. This is where you promote yourself, not in the content portion.
#5. Keywords – the internal structure or content of the article is written in words or short phrases that are known as keywords.

Now we will discuss a plan to get your content out on the web to help bring people to your site and make them a lead that is so targeted that they will be calling you instead of you calling them to sign up for your business opportunity. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to call your prospects and instead have them call you? We’ll show you how to do just that. Follow along.

In order for me to keep within the 400 – 600 word limit that I just explained above, I will need to write this article in more that one submittal. The following topics will be covered in subsequent articles:

#1. Set up the system.
#2. Write the article.
#3. Turn article into a blog post.
#4. Submit the article to article directories.
#5. Rework the article into an audio/video release.
#6. Create article into a Squidoo Lens.
#7. Use social bookmarking and social media.

Once you set up your system and then write the first article, the rest can be easy. Follow along in subsequent articles at darwinfarr.com. You’ll be glad you did.

The previous articles have dealt with the important factors in preparation for and actually writing articles. This post will deal with submitting the article to the article directories.

The concept in article submission is that you write an article and then set up accounts at numerous article directories and then submit the article to those directories. They benefit because you are placing content on their website which they can use to promote whatever it is that they promote and you benefit because, through your resource box link, they can click on your website and you get free traffic. Everybody wins.

There is a bit of a controversy about actually submitting articles. The controversy is over whether to submit to a few or a lot of directories. Some will say that if you submit to a lot of directories, you will receive a penalty because there is more than one page out there with the same content and therefore Google will not index it or maybe even not rank it at all. The other opinion is that if you don’t place your articles on a lot of directories, you don’t get seen as much and so what good is the ranking.

I do not work for Google and therefore don’t really know what the truth of the matter is. I will only give my opinion. I have written quite a few article and have tried both ways of doing it. I have not noticed any noticeable difference in the two systems. I would therefore suggest that you try it out yourself to see which works best for you.

One disadvantage to submitting to multiple directories is that it will take you a long time to do it if you try to do it by yourself. That means that if you want to submit to numerous directories, you should use an article submission service or program. The issue here is that this particular article is about free mlm leads and therefore, I am suggesting that you just submit your articles to 5 and not more that 6 directories. The time that it take to do that is not too bad. You can usually submit your article to 5 or 6 directories, once it is written and an account has been set up, in about 15 to 20 minutes.

It is not difficult to set up an account at a directory. They will require you to give your informtion and then verify it through your email and then you are set to submit your article. Article directories usually have a format that they follow and direct you to different boxes that contain the five different items spoken of in my first article written on this subject.

Determining which directories to submit to can be a challenge. There are literally hundreds of directories that can be used. The way that I do it is through two sources that rank websites. Neither is perfect but the combination of the two will give you a pretty good idea of which ones will be seen the most and therefore present the greater opportunity for readers to read it and Google to rank it.

The following is a list of 10 directories that you can be assured are dependable directories and you can’t go wrong in submitting to them.
Alexa rank is the number after the site:
#1. EzineArticles.com – 131 – the best by far.
#2. Buzzle.com – 1305
#3. GoArticles.com – 1601
#4. ArticleAlley.com – 3157
#5. ArticleDashboard.com – 3230
#6. Amazines.com – 4521
#7. SelfGrowth.com – 4726
#8. ArticleCity.com – 8459
#9. ArticleSphere.com – 20359
#10. ArticleBase.com – 146,274

By submitting to the directories listed, you will be assured that people will see the article and the more you do it, the more your name is out there and the more people will read your articles.

This is the fourth part in an eight part series about article marketing and how to use it effectively to obtain free MLM leads. This article will deal with turning your article into a blog post.

This should be a fairly simple process but has some important parts that if followed will send more prospects to your website. This step of article writing should be done before submitting the article to the directories. The reason for this is to be able to place the link to your blog page in the resource box of the article in order to drive traffic to your blog from the article itself.

I usually write the article in an article submission program first (I don’t actually use the software to submit the article I just use it to write the article because I like the format of the software). Then before submitting to the directories I can insert the link from my blog site in the resource box which will direct prospects to my blog.

One more thing needs to be said about the resource box. Most directories will allow at least two links in the resource box. It is a good idea to use both of the links to promote your opportunity. I usually, not always, but usually link the article to the source of the article which is my blog, but I also link the article to a lead capture page that I have produces which encourages people to look further into the opportunity that I am promoting. If the wording of the resource box is done in a thoughtful way, the resource box can actually drive traffic that would not normally click on your link.

As I have mentioned above, I use and article submission program to write the article. One of the reasons for doing that is to avoid any problems with my webpage recognizing the writing format of the article, such as paragraph placement or return key strokes and so on. Notepad on your computer will do the same thing, it’s just not as convenient as an article submitter. It will help avoid any problems transfering the article from blog to directory and vice versa. The submitter will also insert links in HTML format that can be a pain if you aren’t familiar with how to do that. Another good source for HTML links is MySpace Clickable Link Generator. Just type those four words into your browser address bar and it will direct you to where you can find the link to the site. Once you are on the site, you can generate the link, copy it and then paste it wherever you want. Works great!

The best blog platform to use for your blog, in my opinion, is WordPress. Almost all, if not all, of the major network marketing “gurus” use WordPress and their is a good reason for it. WordPress has a huge number of themes that can be downloaded, some for free and some that cost, that are available all over the internet. The second reason is because of its ease of use and availabilty of add ons and plug ins. It also has ping and trackback capabilities that most others do not. Just the fact that it is more user friendly that most others is a determing factor for me.

Adding the article to your blog should be a fairly simple task once the previously mentioned prerequisites are met. Make sure they are met before actually submitting the article to the directories.

This is a follow up on Article Marketing.

Writing the Article -

To start with, writing an article can be as hard as you want to make it or as easy, but the most important part of writing the article is to have it full of content. An article written just to write an article is a wasted effort. It can be easy if you do your homework or if you are writing about a subject that you are very familiar with. Where you get into trouble is writing articles that you know nothing about.

Article writing should consist of the following five parts: Title, Summary, Content, Bio or Resource Box, and Keywords, not necessarily in that order. When you submit your articles to the article directories, they will ask you for each of those items in the order that they place them. I use an article submitter program to write my articles. It helps to keep me focused on what I am doing.

The Title – The title is the most important part of the article. The reason the title is so important is because the title is what most people base their decision on whether or not to actually read the article. If the title is poorly written the reader will skip over it and go on to the next or they will realize when they start reading the article that it really doesn’t have anything to do with the title and will move on to the next. But there is another very important reason and that is that the search engines look at the title to determine what phrase or phrases the page should be ranked for.

The Summary – The summary is a small two or three sentence “teaser” that tells what the article is about. It’s purpose is to inform the person browsing articles what they will read if they read this particular article. The summary could be used in the search results listing for a description if it is used in the directories META description tag. In some cases, it doesn’t appear at all. Don’t spend a lot of time on this item. Write a short two or three sentence description and then move to the next item.

The Content or Body – This is the primary reason for the article. It is where you will be able to gain the trust of the reader. It is where you will either convince the person reading to click on the link in the resource box or skip over and go to the next. If you keep their interest long enough to get to the bottom of the page at the resource box, you have a pretty good chance that they will click on your link and go to your website. Don’t promote yourself in this section.

The quality of the article is important but don’t get stuck on that. You don’t have to win an award but you do need to make sense. Keep it on point and easy to read over or scan.

Bio/Resource Box – This section allows you to promote your business or opportunity and should be used for that purpose. If worded properly it can flow with the rest of the article and just seems like a natural ending that promotes your link and you as the writer.

Keywords – This is where you should have done some research on keywords that are available to be written about. If you choose a keyword that is very difficult to rank in, such as “Amway” for example, you will have a hard time ranking on the search engines and chances are not too many people will read the article. Keywords is a very important part and will be written about later.

This is the second part in an eight part series about article marketing and how to use it effectively to obtain free MLM leads. This article will deal with setting up the system so that you can get and then deal with the leads that you will get for free.

#1. You will need a website. The website that you have been given by your mlm company does not allow you any control over what is done to the people that visit your site. With your own website, you can design it in whatever fashion and look that you are pleased with to promote your business opportunity.

I recommend that you set up a WordPress.org site. This is a format that allows you complete control over the content of your website. They have templates to use that facilitate setting up the website and make it possible to brand you as the expert in your particular mlm business.

WordPress does not cost anything but you will need to choose a domain name and then host that name on an hosting account and then install WordPress on that server. It sounds hard but it really isn’t that difficult.

The cost to host your domain name and website will be around $100 per year. That cost can be broken down to monthly fees of around $7 to $10 per month.

#2. You will need to set up an autoresponder. Autoresponders are necessary to capture the persons’ name and email and phone number which can later be used to promote your business opportunity.

GetResponse.com is the autoresponder that I use. It seems to be the most user friendly and easiest to set up. There are a number of tutorials that help you throughout the process. Aweber.com is another very popular autoresponder. You should go to both of these sites and weigh the differences to see which will be the most effective for you.

The cost of an autoresponder will be from $15 to $20 per month depending on who you go with. You can also sign up on a yearly basis and receive a discount on that cost. There are free services out there and you can try one of them but I do not recommend a free autoresponder service. They are not effective. You will not receive satifacory service from a free autoresponder.

The two items above cost money but would be required under whatever system that you use to put your mlm business online. It is the most cost effective way to get your name and opportunity out there on the “World Wide Web”. Once these two items are in place and operating, you are set to start producing articles. The next step in the process will be to actually produce an article. This step will be covered in my next article.