Can your website survive without traffic? Can you sell your product online if nobody stops by for a look around? Every webmaster who has a website is striving for the elusive surfer to visit their site. Generating traffic can be one of the hardest things in keeping a site active and prosperous online.

There are many ways to generate that traffic. One could use Pay-Per-Click advertising at any of the major (or minor) search engines to get the job done, but that could be an expensive exercise for a newbie to PPC. Many times people have ventured into the PPC arena thinking they had it all worked out, only to be chewed up and spat out and left with a hefty bill for the traffic. Don't get me wrong, Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing (Panama) is great sources of traffic and I use both regularly, but both require some knowledge for you to prosper from their use.

For newbie's starting out and for the seasoned professionals, Article Marketing is a great source of FREE website traffic. Whatever topic or niche it is you are involved in, writing a simple article about it and posting it to the multitude of Article Directories that are out there could mean the world of difference to your traffic problems.

Article Marketing has a couple of major benefits for your site in the long run. Firstly you are creating valuable one way links to your site. This will help your sites ranking in each of the search engines, in particular Google who put a big emphasis on backlinks to rank a site. A great place to place a hyperlink to your site would be in the author bio box. Imagine submitting the same article to over 1000 directories. You get the picture.

Secondly you build credibility and brand awareness. You become an expert in your field by sharing your knowledge with others. Most article directories allow publishers, webmasters or ezine owners to use the contents of their articles as long as the author bio box is left intact. Your article could (and more than likely will) get picked up by one of them and instantly puts your site in front of countless more viewers.

The best part about this whole process is that it's absolutely FREE. It doesn't cost you a cent. Well I don't know about you, but a FREE source of traffic is one thing that I can't pass up.

There are programs out there which can streamline the whole article submission process for you. They can automatically submit articles to countless directories at the click of a button. Also there are many sites out there who also offer Private Label Rights Articles which you can claim as your own. Many people are jumping on this bandwagon and writing their hearts out knowing the long term benefits are in their favor.

I'll leave you with a simple thought. I like to think of Article Marketing as ?Driving Traffic to my sites with my Words?