Article marketing is an advertising tool which is free to use by just about anyone who wants to promote their business. All the person has to do is write a few articles and then put a link to their site.

But it is not enough to just upload the articles. In order to see if it has helped with the business, there are two ways to measure it.

First, you can check if traffic has increased after the articles were uploaded by signing up with a site that monitors this as their service.

But since some of these people will not buy that very minute, you can get back to them on that by offering them the chance to become a member by signing up and getting a special report. To make this work, you have to get their email address so this can personally be sent to them.

From there, you can keep them updated on new developments such as new products or services. Who knows, they might buy an item from you next week or next month. If they are very satisfied with it, this will surely be recommended to their friends so you don't only make sale but also get to establish a regular clientele.

If the traffic has not picked up, find out the cause. Were the articles you wrote informative? Did you use the wrong keywords? Are you promoting something that is relevant to the times? There are so many possibilities. For those who want more exposure, try to post your articles with links to your site to other websites.

The other way of looking at things is called profit per sale. Good or services have expenses. You spent some money on developing your website, finding a webhost and maybe even getting an article marketing service provider.

By looking at how much you have sold on a monthly basis and deducting this from your expenses, you can tell if you are making a profit or you should work harder. It is simple mathematics to see if you are in the red or green and should things look good for you, then the challenge now is maintaining it.

The two ways of measuring whether or not you are making a return on your investment for article marketing is applicable for any business. One way to sustain that is to add new content and new products to your business.

It will also be a good idea to post your articles in other sites so you get to capture a larger share of the market which translates to sales.

You have to be realistic when owning a business. Naturally it will take some time for sales to pick up so don't panic if things are not going as progressively as you hoped. One way to help you get a return on your investment and more without shelling out additional funds is with article marketing.