“Not what you think” refers to the common practice of writing online articles in order to improve your offering’s natural search results. There is nothing at all wrong with this. But when I talk about using articles to market your writing services, I mean publishing articles on your area of expertise in industry journals.

These articles may or may not be paid. This seems to run counter to my insistence on “dumping the cheapskates” but here is why: trade journals are enormously influential in their areas. Think of writing articles for them not as a cheap (or non-paying) gig but as a marketing expense. The expense is not in money – this is not self-publishing – but in your time. Ideally the trade journal will allow you to place your contact information in the tagline. Any trade journal that accepts contributed articles will do this, while paying markets may not. In any case you should add your published articles to your sample portfolio and host it on your blog. There may be a question of copyright so read your rights carefully when contributing to trade journals. You can always link to the site with your article, but it’s always best to have a copy of the article that you can host yourself.

Use your published article in several ways:

• Include it in your print and online portfolio.
• Attach it to emails to prospects.
• Do a press release if it is an in-depth article in a good publication.
• Notify your email list that you have published the article and include the link.

You might squirm at the thought of “working for free,” but again consider this marketing, not sales. You might contribute the article without compensation but you will also gain paying clients from it. Remember that we are not talking about pitiful $5-per-article online clients but $1-a-word business clients.