If you need to find customers in a recession you will probably be looking for creative promotion methods, and I'm guessing it will be even better if there is a plan that's available to those with a rock bottom budget - or even for those in need of completely free advertising.

The best way I have found to get web traffic, without a doubt, is Article Marketing.

It's free, the prospects are targeted and they are looking for whatever service you are recommending, and what's even better, unlike an unaffordable month-long advert in the national press, new customers keep coming month on month. I have sites I haven't actively promoted for over 4 years - yet targeted visitors arrive over and over again.

You really don't need to be (or hire) a professional with website promotion tricks, although if you are able, that's great. But you do need to use article marketing correctly. Although you will get SOME traffic, with a hit or miss approach, it won't be the best you can achieve for the time spent.

Some people may be afraid to even consider article marketing because they worry they're not "literate" enough. This should NOT be an obstacle. Certainly your article needs to be properly punctuated and free from spelling mistakes, because that will reflect on you and your business as "sloppy". But a good spell-checker, in Word or even that in your browser, will warn of the changes you need.

If you still feel unable to create content for your articles, you can hire authors to write them for you at a surprisingly low cost and, if you pick a good author you can end up with excellent work. Tip - give authors a small project to work on first, as some are better than others. Just one of my initial mistakes!

Another alternative is to invest in low-cost PLR articles and rewrite them yourself. Please note that th rewriting stage is very important; it is what puts your own personality and stamp to articles that other people may already be using.

So having overcome worries about being unable to prepare good articles, you're well on the way to starting to use article marketing to get free visitors. It really can be that easy.

My original attempts were successful even with a few "raw" articles I'd written myself without considering any of the finer points. But with just a little extra time spent, using a few more tips and tricks, I could have done so much better.

A few of the article marketing ideas that can help you boost your results are:

- How to make up your mind what keywords to target?

- Are you trying to get prospects to sites that already have too many competitors?

- Which article directories are the favorite ones to submit to?

- Should you submit your work to many sites or just a small number - is more always better?

- What is the best way to compose articles?

- How to select the best title for your article?

- How to master writer's block?

- What about Google's duplicate content penalty?

Formatting your articles for the ease of the people who will download them

The REAL benefit of Article Marketing, that most people aren't even aware of.

Research some of these tips and you'll be streets ahead of most article marketers who don't even know the questions to ask.