You may have heard advice from Internet marketing gurus that ezine ads are one of the best forms of advertising. You may also have heard that Google AdWords and other pay per click search engines are one of the best advertising methods. But when it comes to marketing your web site, article submission trumps ezine ads and Google AdWords anytime.

The advantage of article submission is trust. Suppose you subscribe to an ezine in the form of an email newsletter. You’ve just sat down at your PC, coffee in hand, to read your email. There in your inbox is a copy of one of your favorite ezines, the one you read every time.

Clicking on the newsletter, you see that this edition starts with a sponsor ad and then has a couple of great sounding articles and a couple more ezine ads. Sipping your coffee, one of the articles catches your attention. You read the article, and you were right. It’s a great article.

At the bottom of the article, there is a link to the author’s web site and a short biography. You notice the author has a link to pick up a free report with more information about the article’s topic. Then you notice that right below that there’s a sponsor’s link in an ezine ad. The sponsor’s link is for a different web site, but it also offers a free report about the same topic.

Now you might click both links. But if you could only click one, which would you choose: the one by the author of the great article you just read or the one in the ezine ad?

If you would click on the one from the author of the article you just read, you’re not alone. Most people would, wouldn’t they?

Now suppose you’re surfing around on the web. You do a Google search on a topic you’re interested in, and you follow a link to a great article with some excellent advice on the topic. Again, there is a link to the author’s web site and a link to a free report with more information on the topic. Right beside it are five Google AdWords ads on the same topic. As luck would have it, they are also each offering a free report on the same topic.

You would still be most likely to click on the author’s link at the bottom of the article, though, wouldn’t you?

Article submission trumps ezine ads and Google AdWords because you establish a relationship and build trust with your reader. You are obviously the expert. After all, you wrote the article. And the webmaster or ezine publisher wouldn’t have published the article if they didn’t think you knew what you were talking about, right?

Years ago, I used to do direct sales in people’s homes. I learned that one of the first things you need to do is the “warm up.” You’ve just entered someone’s home, they don’t know who you are as a person, and they know you’re going to be trying to get money from them before you leave.

If you don’t establish rapport quickly, it’s difficult to overcome people’s natural sales resistance. In direct sales in the home, you do that by talking a little with people before you begin your sales presentation. They get to know you as a person, and their resistance is lowered.

Most people can’t do sales because they remain the “enemy,” the horrible sales person who wants to sell them something. Let’s face it, people hate sales people!

But imagine if you could warm up to people easily – and not just one or two people, but thousands of people. Imagine if instead of selling them something, you could educate them about something that will solve a problem and be of great benefit to them. That’s entirely different, isn’t it?

Article submission allows you to do exactly this, and on a massive scale. If you submit many articles to article submission sites and article directories, many will be published on web sites and in ezines around the Internet. People will read your articles and warm up to you. Solve their problems and they’ll want more.

It’s hard to accomplish that with Google AdWords. You only have three lines and a few words to build interest and trust and to get the click. It’s also hard to achieve that with ezine ads. Even with solo ezine ads, everyone knows they are advertisements.

Article submission is the secret. Writing and submitting articles is relatively easy. Just write very helpful articles on your topic and link to your web site. Through article submission you will build your reputation. Through article submission you will gain trust. And through article submission you will get visitors to your web site that already like you, value your advice, and want to know more about what you can do to help them.

That’s already an incredible benefit, but it gets even better. Article submission is usually free, or low cost if you use an article submission service. Ezine ads and Google AdWords can be very expensive, and it is unlikely you could ever get traffic coming to your site as open to listening to you and trusting you as they will be from an article submission.

This is why article submission trumps ezine ads and Google AdWords.

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When you create and market seminars, as I do, you are nothing less than “The Master” of all pertinent variables.

One of the most significant, yet underestimated of these variables is when you offer the program, as well as its length.

Should you do a breakfast meeting that starts at 7 in the morning, and adjourns at 8:30?

What about doing a half-day program, say from 8:30 to 12:30 or from 1 to 5?

And of course, you can do one, two, three day and even longer programs, if you wish.

Moreover, the days of the week will be significant, too. Should you offer programs on Saturdays, or for entire weekends?

Much of the desirability of a session will hinge on the time at which it convenes and adjourns. For example, if you want to attract busy senior executives, scheduling breakfast or noontime sessions is best.

Many of the most achieving and busiest people will rationalize fitting your session in before hours, or possibly at the lunch hour, if it is nearby or at their site. But making them dedicate more than an hour or an hour and a half at any time, is risky, because they just won’t surrender much of their schedule for your purpose, no matter how important you believe it is.

Whether you should offer a session on a weekday or during the weekend depends on two significant variables: who is attending and who is paying? Companies will normally allow people and pay them to attend and will pick up the tab if it is on a weekday.

But it is very difficult to get companies to persuade their people to sacrifice weekends for training purposes.

Accordingly, if a person wants to qualify for a new career, you can’t expect their current bosses to willingly pick up the tab. These sessions can be offered in the evenings and on weekends.

I conduct a seminar, “Building Your Consulting Business,” and it is scheduled on Saturday, because most attendees are paying their own way and their employers wouldn’t dream of sending them, unless they too, are in the consulting business and they’ll benefit from the information.

If I offered the session during normal working hours, I’d probably be lucky to attract a fifth of the participants I get on the weekend.

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