Article marketing seems to be the latest rage and with good reason. It's by far the best free method of promoting your business and increasing your sales and opt in subscribers.

By submitting your articles to article directories, article announcement lists, and ezine publishers, you accomplish several things.

First, you establish yourself as an expert in your field. Readers are more likely to listen to you if they feel you know what you are talking about.

Second, by attaching a resource box to your article, you are giving the reader a link to your website. If the reader is impressed with your knowledge, they will likely click on your link to see what it is that you are offering.

Third, you increase your search engine page rank by providing a non-reciprocal link to your website. Search engines seem to give extra weight to non-reciprocal links in their page rankings.

But many marketers are not comfortable writing their own articles. They just do not know how to put their thoughts into words. Or worse yet, they do not have any thoughts worth printing.

That is why private label articles are in such high demand these days. There are several of these services available and more seem to be popping up every day.

Therein lies the problem. Depending on how these articles are used, the results can be good, bad, or downright ugly.

The Good: As stated previously, private label articles, when used correctly, can give the non-writer a big advantage over other marketers. They can increase your traffic, sales, and opt in subscribers. That is good.

The Bad: A common mistake made by marketers using private label articles is getting lazy. They simply copy and paste the article and submit it, as is, with no personalization.

At the very least, you should change the title. Most article directories require that your article be approved before they are posted. But do you really think they read every article that comes in? Not likely.

They get dozens, even hundreds of submissions every day, so it's unlikely that your article will actually be read.

But most directory software will automatically search their database for duplicate titles. If the title of your article matches one in their database, yours will be rejected.

So do yourself a favor and at the very least, change the title. It might also be a good idea to change the wording in the first paragraph.

The Ugly: Many marketers load so many links in their article that it becomes one long ad. This will not only get you rejected, but eventually banned if you do it often enough.

A good article contains useful information to the reader whether they buy your products or not. Give them good content and you will increase the chances that they will click your link in the resource box.

Private label articles are a great tool, but do not get lazy!