Sharing your knowledge on the web is a very powerful way to establish your online presence and credibility. First, you write a thoughtful and informative article on a topic in your area of expertise. Then you submit it to Article Directories (e-zines) to be read by the general public and possibly re-published on other web sites.

At the end of your article is a resource box containing your name, a brief promotional message and a link to your website. Webmasters who wish to reprint your article on their sites are required to include your resource box along with any live links to your site.

This is the Resource Box I use for my own Articles:

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The benefit that you get from your article is two-fold. 

• Your article will be read by visitors to the e-zine site. If they find it helpful and  interesting,  they will likely visit your web site to see what else you had to offer. 
• Webmasters who find your article useful to their visitors may re-publish it on their sites, giving your article additional exposure.

Every time your article is re-published on a web site, you gain an additional one-way link to your site through the live link in your resource box. This adds to your link popularity and ultimately increases your search engine rankings.  As you can see, the true potential of your article lies in its ability to propagate virally in cyberspace.

Keep in mind that your goal is hold your readers' attention long enough for them to get to the resource box. If your article is boring and uninformative, few people will read it beyond the first or second paragraph.

These are the main points to consider when writing an article:

1. Give your article a catchy title.

Your title is the first and often the only thing that visitors see. Put some thought into coming up with a title that grabs the reader's attention right away. Words like "Secrets", "Free" and "Successful" tend to attract more attention than others.

2. Your article should not read like an ad.

What benefits does your reader want to get out of an article? Cater to your reader's interests rather than your own. 

3. Offer lots of free, useful information.

Keep in mind that your readers are looking for specific "how-to" instructions to help them achieve a certain goal. Offer lots of tangible information that is immediately useful to them.

4) Be succinct.

Get to the point quickly, preferably in the first or second paragraph. Avoid lengthy paragraphs. Use lots of white space to separate your paragraphs to make them easier to read.

5) Your article should not be too short.

If your article is too short, however, some webmasters may feel hesitant to reprint it on their sites. They may, instead, borrow your ideas and write their own article, gaining authorship without having to give you credit for your ideas. I suggest to write at least 800 words, preferably longer.  Longer articles give webmasters the impression that you have put some thought and effort into your work and, thus, are deserving of publicity on their sites.

6) Use clickable links in your resource box.

Many e-zines permit clickable links in resource boxes. Whenever permitted, you should spell out your URL as well as make it clickable so readers can go to your site simply by clicking on it,  and search engines will be able to record it as a link your web site, adding to your link popularity and search engine rankings.

7) Avoid hyping in your resource box.

Your resource box, while promotional in nature, should be brief and tasteful. The purpose of your resource box is not to sell your readers something, but to lead them to your website which does the actual selling.

8) Put some thought and effort into your writing.

Do a good job and be honest. If your article comes off as half-baked, readers may make a similar assumption about you and your business practices.

9) Submit your article to as many e-zines as feasible.

There are dozens of e-zines on the web that welcome submissions from independent authors. I recommend that you first submit to only a handful of the more popular ones. I use Article Submitter and Directory Submitter, but there are many, many more. Just do some Google Search and chose what you like.

10) Conclusion

Be yourself, be a help to others, give solutions and, most important, have fun. There are thousands of sources and information all over the internet. Make a swipe file, snip all content you like and collect it as a great resource for your article writing. Some 1 to 3 articles a day should become your routine. This is excellent for your branding and the search engines will like you too. Finally use your articles or excerpts of it on your blog, creating even more traffic and back links.

Best success!