Where Are Articles Worth the Most: Ezine Articles or My Website?

I read a forum thread the other day regarding where to put your content (and by content I mean unique articles), and it sparked a lot of thoughts in my tiny brain. The question was where to put your content. Should you spend all of your time writing articles to submit to article directories like Ezine Articles and Go Articles or should you put all of that content on your own website?

Now before I answer the question, let me just say that I think both philosophies are bad and there needs to be a balance between the two. But there is one method I prefer and if you want to make serious money online in the future you should prefer it as well.

You need to ask yourself if you are trying to make money online in the short term or the long term. Both would be nice, but if you are only writing all of your content to submit to Ezine Articles then you are building wealth for the short term. These articles will get indexed fast and shoot to the top of the search engines in no time, but then after a few weeks you will be saying “Where did all my visitors go?”

Don’t get me wrong.  There are great ways you can use article directories, but you need to know the facts and see some positives and negatives to just using one method.

Here are the Pros and Cons of only putting your content on Ezine Articles:

Pros:

• Fast indexing by search engines.
• Quick exposure to your website or blog.
• Chance to get picked up by other sites using your article.
• Builds another link to your site (link juice = higher ranking = more traffic).
• Can help build up your status as an author.

Cons:

• The link juice is very minimal.
• The traffic dies very quickly.
• You have to write a lot of content to get noticed.
• It really helps Ezine articles more than it helps you i.e. adsense.

So why should you concentrate on building content on your own website?

• Your websites becomes more valuable the more content you have.
• Traffic starts slow but can be recurring as you continue to write.
• You can use affiliate links if you choose. (ezine does not allow them)
• You can monetize your article on your site (i.e. adsense, chitika, infolinks, etc..)
• In the end, you can sell your website for a lot of money because of all the content.

The last reason is a biggie.  By building page after page of great information on your niche for your site, you are adding to the value of your website and a potential buyer will be willing to pay more for an established site like that.  Now, say in this scenario, instead of putting your content on your website you just used an article directory.  In the end, what would you have?  Your website is empty and has little or no value, and that website that has your articles benefits more than you do.

Now I am not saying not to use an article directory.  I use them all the time.  I am just saying to focus MORE on your website than articles sites.

Here are some situations in which you should use an article directory:

• You have some brand new information to get out.
• You can use it as a press release for new products.
• You want to build your email subscriber list with article traffic.
• You need a short burst of traffic.
• You are testing the waters for a particular niche.

I have notices that when I get my hands on some information that very few people know about but soon many will WANT to know about, my articles on Ezine get tons of traffic.  I recently wrote an article on a new type of fashion product coming out soon.  I got my hands on some pics which I put on my website.  Well after only one week, I had 1,500 visitors form that one article.  That’s a  home run right there.  But guess how many visitors I am getting from it now…. 10 a day.

With articles on my website I can make a ton of money with Chitika too.  And it can be used with Google ads so it works well.

What do you think about content on article sites or your own? Leave a comment to let us know.