Writing your own articles creates unique content for your website. Submitting your article to article directories helps create traffic to your website which enables more people to read what you write.

In short, traffic = money.

If you write an article you may also be viewed as an expert on the subject matter, which will help with your sales or affiliate marketing.

Articles can be offered to or distributed to related websites so that you leverage the traffic to those websites. That is, if your article appears on someone else's website, then traffic that other person has developed will help increase the traffic to your website - assuming that your website is mentioned and linked in your article.

Distributing articles to other websites, thereby creating links back to your website, will also help increase your website's ranking in the search engines.

Here is a tip. When you write an article include a link to your website in the resource or bio box at the end of the article. Make sure you use html so this is a live link. For example, this link when I wrote it: http://InternetProfitUniversity.com is encased in standard html with a href tags.

I also recommend using html to create a live link somewhere in the body of the article because sometimes article sites, or people using the articles, leave the resource box off of the article. Remember to use html to make your links live.

Not every article directory allows links in the body of an article. They are concerned about spam - people writing articles just to include long lists of links in the content to their drug or sex-related website.

If an article directory you are submitting to does not allow links in the article body, make sure you review some articles on that site to make sure links in the resource box are clickable and work. There may be a few scam article sites you want to avoid.

When you write your articles make sure you are providing information that is informative and not a blatant sales pitch.

Keep your article content focused on just one topic. You can always write another article to discuss a closely related topic. Make sure the content relates to your website. Spend a second to confirm that you are correctly categorizing your article in the list of categories provided by the article directory.

Use a word processor to write your articles and make sure you spell-check and proof read what you have written. An article with many spelling mistakes may be rejected by the article directory, and even if it is published the mistakes may decrease the number of readers clicking the link to your website.

Additionally, once you have written an article it can be used for other purposes. It can be converted into a press release. It can be used or converted into content for your website. It can be converted into a promotional email. A series of articles can be combined into an ebook.

Once you create the article the content is yours to use over and over.

Overall, creating articles is a no-lose proposition. And after you have created a few articles you will find that you can start writing them in hardly any time at all.

Writing articles is an excellent and free traffic method of getting traffic to your website. So get to it, and write an article today!