One of the most touted ways to generate links and traffic to your sites is by submitting articles to websites and ezines. 6 weeks ago I set out on a mission to see if there was an article submission program that would produce link results. I choose 2 vastly different programs, one I suggest in my intern program and the other one was simply as trial. Here are my results.

I only submitted 1 article using each program. I used the same article but the pen names I used were different. The pen names at the beginning of the test had no results for them in either Google or MSN. These results only show the ability of each program to generate incoming links and results for the search engines, traffic and sales are beyond what I am willing to cover.

The first program was Artemis Pro using PostCast Server as the smtp server, since my host limits emails to 50 per hour. Artemis Pro submits unique articles via email to an external self built list and to a hosted network of Munius (an article listing program from James Brausch – you’ll have to find your own link) sites. I had an external list of around 1,300 addresses. The pen name I used to submit was "Bert Sandan".

The number of results on Google or MSN when I search for that pen name today? 0. Zilch, Nada. There weren’t even any results from the internal publication list for Munius directories.

The second service I used was the Content Spooling Network from Chris Crompton. This service also uses a way of generating unique articles for each submission. I had to set up an article directory for 3 of my sites that I wanted to promote and then submitted the article. CSN submits articles over a long period of time and this article hasn’t been submitted to all the sites that CSN says it will be submitted to. The pen name I used was "Ernie Sandan".

The number of results on Google at the time of this publication is: 320. I expect this number to grow a lot as it looks like the article has only been submitted to around 50% of the sites currently available for the topics I choose.

Now, even if I completely screwed up the external publication list of Artemis Pro, I would have expected at least 1 result from a Munius directory. The fact that I got nothing from it was stunningly shocking. 

Let’s just say that I did it right as Jim Sansi recently reported and I got 60 some results for submitting under 10 articles a few weeks ago. The difference is still drastic. 1 article, 320 results (with only 50% of submissions) with no need to build an external ezine list. Compared to several articles, time spent building an external ezine list and the end result is somewhere between 0 and 60.

Can I say that the result makes the choice a no brainer? I think you can safely say that I’ll be removing my suggestion of using Artemis from my intern program. Lesson learned. I’m still exploring submitting unique articles to a self built list of ezine publishers and have a solution that is currently being tested to ensure it produces results. Same list, different pen name from the Artemis Pro submission above. I’ll let you know how it goes.

But for now, check it out  (there’s 21 day trial available and the service after that has a monthly fee):

Content Spooling Network