If you're looking at no-cost ideas to generate leads for your new complementary therapy business, particularly if it has an online shopping cart, the ideal way is Article Marketing because it's free and the traffic keeps coming, year after year, from one article. So if you are looking for product launch ideas read on.

Article Marketing isn't an instant way to get started online, but it's a low-cost, risk-free plan anyone can adopt. First let's compare it with some alternative ways to get Internet traffic. Let's take the example of promoting a new shopping cart.

A traditional way of bringing prospects to your new site, taught by other on-line marketing training, is to contact other webmasters requesting a link exchange. This can be successful, but it's a slow process and you need to take care who you target. For instance, if I sell dog collars by post I may be happy to do a link exchange with someone who runs dog training classes, but not someone else selling dog collars.

Another method is answering questions on forums in your market-place, with your URL in your signature. Also effective, but time-consuming.

In theory a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign is quick to set up and you could see customers the same day. In practice unless you're experienced at these campaigns, you can spend ages testing for the optimum settings and exhaust your budget without making a single sale. I did! And being cynical , I often wondered how many clicks were by my competitors, spending my budget!

Additional online launch strategies include FFA (Free For All) sites and traffic exchanges where you view other people's sites, in return for them viewing yours. This strikes me as a waste of time. I want to sell, not buy, so why sit wearily, clicking on other people's websites so that they can sit bored clicking on my web-page? They probably never even look at my site. With tabbed browsers the temptation is just to open the next tab to click on the advert, never reading the adverts.

These ideas are time-consuming and ineffective for a serious product launch.

Offline promoting methods include networking to exchange cards at business clubs. Time-consuming, costly and again in general, others are there to sell, not to buy.

In contrast, article marketing targets people who have shown that they are interested in the subject your website targets. Choose good keywords and visitors will be actively intending to buy, not sell.

The idea of article marketing is that you publish an article and submit it, with your website URL, to article directories from which publishers can draw articles for blogs etc so long as they include your website details with your article. Then as interested parties read your article, they can click through to your website.

The article you have produced in an hour or so stays (theoretically) online forever and you have the potential to receive focused traffic from it in perpetuity.

For instance, I submitted an article in October 2005 and 4 years later it is still generating traffic, with no extra effort, and had received 28,897 lifetime views, with 5,961 clicks through to my website. How much would that have cost by PPC? Another benefit is that the best article directories email you statistics showing the keywords on which your article is being found.

My belief is that article marketing has so many advantages over alternative methods that I cannot imagine why it would not be one of your marketing strategies.

Much of my success with article marketing was learned through trial and error. With a little free, or low cost, training I would have realized the potential much earlier.