Why Market on Ebay - key concepts and how to's

Market on eBay - because it's the closest to perfect market we have right now.

A market consists of buyers and sellers.

Any price is set by an agreement between buyers and sellers. This may be tacit or negotiated.

The best market has a conversation between the buyer and the seller. Open-air markets are the best at this, since you can see both what is being offered and its quality, as well as play the horse-trading game with the seller. Both of you end up satisfied that you got the best deal for the circumstances. But the buyer who went before and the one that comes after gets a different deal - your price is custom-made for you.

Online auctions are near perfect (especially eBay) as you can see the product info. (As well, you can link product pages to your eBay item, which could contain videos and product manual PDF's, etc.) The seller has to start off the auction at an attractive point, otherwise people go to competitive sellers or suppliers. So the buyer more than likely can get that item cheaper than through brick-and-mortar sources (though in many cases, the ease of buying through eBay and home delivery is worth paying slightly more than driving and paying local sales taxes).

The 4 points of economics at play

Besides supply and demand there is also information and service. All four factors inter-relate with each other simultaneously. You are selling a widget. If you just put up, "Widget. Starting Bid $.99". Not many takers. Add pictures - you get more interest. Add an interesting headline and copy - more takers. This is information at work improving demand.

Now, if you have a poor record - lots of negative feedback - your supplier may not want to sell the product to you. I've heard of several sellers who block problem buyers from bidding on their items. One problem purchase (go ahead and be snide, rude, or nasty) and they don't want to do business with you ever again. This is information decreasing supply. Get on their bad side and now you have fewer suppliers for that product.

More information, or having multiple copies of an item might drop prices. On the other hand, I've heard a local scheme where three Angus breeders in different states are partners. Each has a major sale every year for their "particular" genetic line of beef. Each partner attends each sale and "bids" high on aution items - taking the top line item (usually a prize-winning bull) into the 10's or 100's of thousands. Of course, the bull never actually changes farms, just ownership on paper. (They ship the semen to the partner instead.) But you see, it's a paper deal - not actual. These partners are already sharing resources in this line of work - they're partners. But that top bid drives up all the lower bids into the thousands. And those bulls are delivered. Lots of supply, but the overall value is driven higher based on an inside marketing campaign. Profits are higher.

Service also figures. There is an auto-repair business locally who does nearly no advertising other than the yellow pages - so people can find their phone number. But he is flooded with business. Because he services each person as fast and professionally as he can - because he knows that all of his business is local and depends on repeat and referral business.

Another version of this is adding bonuses - providing better service with every purchase.

Inverses of these also work - like telling them that the offer expires (like auctions). You have a limited time for this offer, and it may never be repeated at this (low) price. That information increases demand and by limiting supply. But the product didn't change, just the artificial time-window. That product might exist in massive volumes at the warehouse, and many versions at the seller's website - but this exact particular offer is going to expire "if you don't act quickly..."

Similarly - "I'm only going to sell 500 of these and then destroy the mold." Disney pulls a great one with their DVD's and videos: "...for the first time this decade, and available only until sold out, we've reproduced this classic movie..." Of course, then they bring it out again in 5 years in a slightly different format - they can do this as many times as they want, since they have the masters locked up in their digital vaults.

And, finally, the common and ordinary can be arbitrarily distinguished from other (identical) products. "I've personally re-edited this from the online versions to ensure that you have complete ease of reading both online and in print." But the text was scraped or downloaded from a public domain site. It's better service, which also increased demand. It also lowers supply, since no one else has this particular version.

7 Types of Headlines - 7 Common Benefits for any product

There are at least 7 types of headlines you can use to attract interest and state/imply a benefit:

1. Promise a Major Benefit
2. Ask a Question
3. Offer a Solution to a Problem
4. Give a Warning
   
5. Flag Your Target Customer
6. Use a Testimonial
7. News Announcement

These are pretty self explanatory. Each draws in the customer in some manner, either saying why this is good, or what you should look for, or who says its great, or "Hey Baseball Lovers...", etc.

But you can see that these apply to every product you've ever used or looked at. Take apples and you can think up an example of each of these.

This is an interesting list I ran across in this research and included it as it updates all I've told you (here or in the book) about headlines. Basically, you are providing beneficial information in each category, but they are also a way you can quickly re-write an eBay auction entry without having to re-write all the details and re-do your keyword research, etc.

Otherwise, what I've covered before on copywriting holds. Tell a story, engage the audience on an emotional level, be personal in your writing style, etc.

Essence of eBay marketing is learning to walk before you try to fly.

You want to

1. first, sign up on ebay
2. second, buy something on ebay
3. third, find something to sell on ebay
4. sell it
5. fourth, find something profitable to sell on ebay and sell it
6. find repeating, profitable items to sell on ebay
7. cut your overhead
8. improve your profits.

First, get registered. Simple. Any name will do, but you can also use keyword research if you know how you want to brand yourself. The thing is to get started - and you have to sign up with eBay.

Next, go buy something - so you have the buyer's experience. Doesn't have to be something big, just get the data.

After that, look around your house and find something to sell. You have to be able to ship it (cheaply) and something you don't have to explain why it's missing...

Now - sell it. Go through posting on eBay and endure the wait. Ship it promptly, get the feedback (and payment). Review what you just learned from it. (Of course, you are doing all sorts of homework by reading all the PDF's you can find, taking courses, etc.) But get your feet wet - really wet. The more the better.

Next - find something profitable. Means you buy something and sell it for more than you paid, plus fees and shipping costs (not necessarily your time at doing it). But you get a tidy return after you've covered all your overhead (and taxes are overhead).

Here's the next step upward - find products you can buy and sell on a regular basis at a profit. Means you either make the product cheaply, or buy someone else's manufactured product cheaply - then you post it on eBay and sell it on a consistent basis for a profit. The more profits you make, the more you can invest in other products to sell - plus you can set it up to work less at your day job (or quit it entirely) if you can cover your other life-bills.

And now you can start figuring out where your costs are. If you produce the product, can you do this more cheaply? If you buy the product from someone else, would it cost less if you buy more at one time (volume discount). Can you use cheaper packaging?

A hidden cost is your own time. I've seen some people spending 60 hours a week at their auction business. Time is something you don't get back, no matter how you invest it. Being rich is great, but can you enjoy it? If you enjoy everything about auctions and it's improving your health - fine. Otherwise, look to see if having someone else drop-ship your goods will pay you back. The idea that you can leverage your time off into new business opportunities. Or you can work as long as you can everyday and peak out - you can't increase your income because you'd have to hire someone and you can't afford it. So look over your operation and look for time savings as well as money savings.

Improving your profits goes along with the savings. But if you improve your description copy and headlines, this might make more sales for you - at higher prices. Less work, more money for what you're doing. As well, look over what you're selling and see if you can find more profitable items to sell. Keep those proven items, but as you find more profitable ones, keep these relegated to your web-site and sell them for a fixed price. Same goes for loss-leaders, selling something below cost in order to get their email so you can offer them other products. Or just invite them all to your website for fixed (low-price) items they can buy direct without having to wait out an auction.

In all these, you want to offer someone something they can use to improve their lives - at the least work and cost to you, as well as the most income for each item. Play these all back and forth and you'll wind up with a great lifestyle and just as much work as you want to put into it.

Get more prospects through your auction listings

An interesting thing I ran into was the point that you can link to a "more info" page on your own site (while you can't send someone blindly to your site). Now on that page, you can (subtly) offer other offers on that page, such as sign up for special offers, etc. as well as providing links to your online catalogue of products.

To avoid violating eBay's limits - these should really be no more than links at the bottom, although it's arguable that a sign-up box on the right side would be permissable, as well as a list of product categoriess and/or PPC ads there.

But that's a hot, new cross-over business idea for your marketing. Leverage your auctions to get leads to your site - without violating eBay's silo rules.

And if you are personally shipping the product, make sure you include a flier or catalog - at least a single page with this month's offer and your website. Info products on CD - simple, give a PDF catalogue with all your links included, plus a form that sends data to you. Bonus for them, pre-sold lead for you. Don't forget offering the up-sell version to that product, while you are cross-selling them.

Now you can also harvest the emails of all bidders - offer them all a free bonus on the web site for visiting, another for signing up. And of course, there are always sending them to a thank you page with these offers on them.

- - - -

That's about all for today. Studies continue. I'm getting into the hands-on stuff tomorrow and will tell you about my test-cases as I go.

Basics of an eBay Online Millionaire Plan

Why use eBay to as a key starting point for an Online Millionaire Plan?
Because it's an established community of buyers and sellers. Almost all the bugs have been worked out, saving those which scammers and spammers have recently flocked to.

Means you can easily and quickly get established with a profitable base, for the low entry cost and know-how every work-from-home Online Millionaire is starting out with. That's why more millionaires are being made through online or online-related venues than brick-and-mortar - low entry costs.

And, where you start with a profitable business, you can then leverage that positive cash flow into other venues. Also, this could replace your day job so that you can then spend more time (with less stress) perfecting other marketing approaches.

I "eat my own dogfood" - with relish.

This hit me when I posted a comment to someone's blog that social marketing is a oxymoron, since you can't build a market, only promote and find unqualified leads through social networks. It's the nature of the "beast". I stated there that anyone looking for sales should go where there is an active sales community, one full of buyers, like eBay.

That was a haunting comment. It was one area of making an online fortune which I hadn't investigated. A lot of that due to the other venues being exclusively concerned with making it on their own, another that auctions hadn't "been my thing," since they seemed filled with a lot of work in order to make any money - the cost-benefit ratio seemed a bit low for what I had to do in order to earn money in that area.

However, when I started looking for data in this area, I found that there was a great deal more data about this than just going to yard sales and putting stuff up for auction - hoping it would sell big. And by cursory investigation of eBay, I saw that a great deal of auctions were completing with nothing bought. You pay your 35 cents and takes your chances.

Auction basics: buy low and sell to the highest bidder - profitably.

Interestingly, I had actually started this research years ago when I stumbled upon a bootleg copy of "Deep Analysis". Like most bootleg copies, it was dated and didn't run all that well. Promising, but not ready for prime time. However, during the years, this had matured into an intensely viable research tool for finding hot areas where there were high numbers of bidders for certain items routinely. In short, you could find profitable "buzz niches" where sales were brisk and hugely profitable.

But where to get these products cheaply and in volume?

While Deep Analysis matured, another company, called WorldWide Brands, had grown from the itch that its founder, Chris Malta had to scratch. You see, Chris realized that his highest profits would be to buy in bulk and sell individually. Simple. Basic to all commerce. However, he had difficulty in finding wholesalers who wanted to work with individual eBay sellers. Either they didn't understand the market possible through affiliates selling their products directly through eBay, or didn't understand the scope of eBay - or were being represented by scam artists, who were simply out to make a buck.

What Chris did was to find the real manufacturers for these items (not the corporate brand names which are on the label) and then contacting those manufacturers for a list of wholesalers they recommended. By contacting those wholesalers, he was able to piece together a list of companies who would actually work with individual eBay sellers.

Chris's work continued, as it was personally profitable to him - but also because he had found a niche others appreciated: validated sources for bulk wholesale items. And so his company now maintains the largest database of its kind in the world - some 9,000 (yes, that's 9 thousand) companies willing to sell directly to individuals so they can re-sell them on eBay.

You might now be asking yourself, "but those pallets of goods arrived on my front step and I filled my garage with these - great. What if the market tanks? Not to mention the fact that I still have to package and ship these by hand."

Ok, we've covered that slightly above with Deep Analysis - research before your buy. But Chris also had that same problem and worked around it with a couple of solutions:

• He found companies which would drop-ship your item directly to the customer with your name on the package. You sell it on eBay, contact the company, they ship.
• He worked with the larger companies to create arrangements where you could buy partial pallet of goods (or just a single pallet instead of twenty). So you can start small and keep on top of the market as it changes, while your overhead (time and money) of shipping is kept low.

Chris Malta's Worldwide Brands isn't the only company like this out there - but it is by far the biggest, well worth their 0ne-time fee for access.

Ok, back to our story of the new eBay Online Millionaire:

Now, I'm going to tell you in the next few posts, of my own experience with this area. I've already published several books on becoming an online millionaire, but have also stated that all this data needed to be tested and verified. I know that the people I've studied had become millionaires through using this data - and either made their millions through the Internet, or added more millions to those they already had.

But most of these didn't really leave a viable blueprint behind them of how to make your own millions.

And that's where my own frustration (at this point, I'm still working on my first million - and still need that day job) lead to my taking a great leap of faith.

I signed up with a company to coach me on how to become a PowerSeller on eBay. Name: Bright Builders. You can check them and WorldWide Brands out on the Internet and find they are both represented far more highly than any detractor can throw mud their way.

The reason I'm blogging as I go is for several reasons:

1. To tell you all this story as it unfolds - and a good story is worth retelling.
2. To add to my research on An Online Millionaire Plan - and I've always blogged my research as I go.
3. Teaching others is one of the most effective ways of learning and retaining new data.

At this juncture, my first coaching session is still over a week away. Too long for my taste.

Since I got access to their website, I started clicking away, downloading everything I could, and digesting all this stuff - comparing it to other data I'd already accumulated in my few years of research into online marketing.

Some data started dropping out immediately.

Napoleon Hill enters, stage left.

I started my whole online marketing research from the point of needing to sell my own published works. And the first of these was "Go Thunk Yourself!" self help techniques. That book boiled down the entire genre of self help into a study of a double-handful of highly successful authors. It turned out they were all running on the same underlying system of self help.

How this ties into eBay Online Millionaire planning? Hill starts out his "Think and Grow Rich" by requiring the reader develop a "BURNING DESIRE". In the coach-speak of Bright Builders, this becomes "Business Vision Statement". Same basic points. You figure out what you want to achieve, write it down in detail - in the past tense, as if you've already accomplished it - and then read this over 2 to 3 times daily so that you constantly hold this in front of you.

Get a copy of "Think and Grow Rich" and read this chapter. See if I don't speak sooth here. While you're at it, take a gander at the remaining ones and see if they don't also apply exactly to anyone starting an ecommerce business.

Reprogramming yourself for entrepreneurial success

And this brings up the next point. You have been trained through public school systems and all your family contacts to be an "employee" - all of your life up to this point. And the ads and programs on TV, radio, "news"papers and other sources all tend to confirm this view. Your highest achievement is to become a junior partner with a corner office. Right.

How about working any hours you choose, on whatever you like to do? And make money hand-over-fist at it?

Well, you're going to have to change that programming that we've all swallowed. This, again, brings up self-help books, tapes, videos, etc. to change your habitual thoughts in this area.

Now any habits, especially mental ones, can be changed in about 30 days - if you constantly re-inforce the new idea daily by repetition. Some people call this affirmation, others used to call it "auto-suggestion". Both have their roots in antiquity, but were most popular with Emile Coue' during the early 1900's. And fell out of favor because people didn't understand why they had to do what they did - and what underlying laws made this work.

While I've gone over this in some detail in my books, Napoleon Hill covers the essentials in his book above.

The simplicity is that you have to turn off sources of data which tell you constantly to remain an employee and surround yourself with new sources that tell you how competent you are as an entrepreneur. The new sources replace the old sources. In about 30 days, you'll start seeing the changes in you take hold. And you will also see some interesting synchronicities happen around you, as your life begins to change to reflect your new attitudes.

This happens because your thoughts and opinions create the world around you. As you change your chronic thought patterns, new opportunities present themselves and you start looking for them - and are prepared to take advantage of them as they show up. (Practically, a lot of these opportunities have always been around, but you never decided to pick up that magazine, or click that link.)

You are going to want to turn off the TV and start listening to MP3's or inspirational CD's on your daily commute instead of the radio or pop music. Keep a copy of an inspirational book or article to hand at the office, for times when you are put on hold or during your breaks. And if you get to listen to podcasts at work, then fill it with such recordings.

Listen to these recordings over and over. You learn with repetition, especially when you come back to it after a time away from it. Eventually, you'll find the datums in these recordings start to prompt you with solutions - even if you never learn the whole recording verbatim. Getting the concept and understanding of it is the way to really learn anything - not just the rote words.

End Notes

Ok, that's enough for today. There are a lot of technical details in this and I'll be going over these in future posts. They all relate to brick-and-mortar basics, most of which I've covered in the earlier posts on my blogs, but have also published in the first sections of An Online Millionaire Plan.

Here's to all of us creating the best luck possible! Cheers - and - Good Hunting!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

How to write a good book review - and take over top SEO ranks

There's not much to learning How To Write A Good Book Review - in 200 words or whatever you want.

I assembled various pages on writing book reviews, as part of assembling an online press kit to promote my books and myself as a great radio guest. In doing this, I figured that all this could be rewritten/reauthored/paraphrased into an article or chapter (or both) for updating one of my books or to appear in An Online Millionaire Plan Newsletter (sign up here).

When I started researching keyword phrases for it, I found that there seemed to be limited competition for the long phrase "How to Write A Good Book Review." Just 4 sites seemed to be optimized for that phrase.

So I took my overlong article and split it up into four parts in order to make a mini-web out of it.

While I was working on that mini-web, I also took the first section of it and started submitting it to article directories, since it didn't show up as an article anywhere.

These mini-webs are getting easier as long as I learn and stick to the discipline of setting them up right to begin with. Of course, you have to have a great deal of attention to detail, but you do learn where to put what pretty quickly (after you go through the agony of spending a whole afternoon trying to figure out how you screwed it up - the editing program always only does what you tell it to...)

Now that the mini-web is up and some 50-plus articles have been posted, I decided to take a breather (as I just finished posting another major ebook promotion and my next step on that will be both articles, audio, and video - plus more social bookmarking.)

When I looked back on it, I could see that I needed to test my ideas on Web 2.0 with this little mini-web and from this blog.

My last claims to fame resulted from blogs. (At least the instant Google positions.)

The sequence of this test:

1. Create the article.
2. Keyword research for the title.
3. Set up mini-web with article as text.
4. Meanwhile, set article submitter program going to high pagerank directories first.
5. Mini-web goes live.
6. Blog about the whole thing.
7. Then I'll social bookmark this blog post.

And we'll then see what we see. Stay tuned for updates.

- - - -

update 080228

The interesting thing is that I picked a heavy competition wordphrase, although my tools said it wasn't. I didn't get the articles submitted to the top directories first, but set the article being populated on the article directory "bottom feeders" - which is useful, but not anywhere near a top SEO tactic.

I did get some social bookmarking going, although this is still something I'm researching more and more. (There'll be a following post on this...)

Still some more to learn about SEO. While the term "book review" supposedly has no real competition, there are tons of sites out there which still trump my "optimized" mini-web.

The real deal? Go for lower-end, longer tail in order to "dominate" the rankings. My Digg post winds up higher than anything else - as will this post, after its been social bookmarked.

Right now, you get high on the rankings (apparently) by
1) having a lot of pages on your site which talk about the same thing (site LSI) or push your general pagerank up,
2) Web 2.0 attention via blogs and social bookmarks.

The solutions are the same:
1) Build several mini-webs each week which add to your mini-net. Main site needs to be purposed a bookstore or affiliate clearing-house.
2) Continue article marketing to those key article directories which actually do a) send you traffic, b) post active links which show up in SERP searches. (And meanwhile bulk post to a wider net of article directories to find more that will link to yours.)
3) Blog every mini-web you create, and social bookmark that blog post and that mini-web's index page.


BUT - the most efficient sequence right now:

A) Create your work and build a mini-web for it (plus your sales page and Clickbank links).
B) Blog about it
C) Social Bookmark the blog
D) Social Bookmark the mini-web index page
E) Comment Market this on key blogs and forums (back to a forward burner for research)
F) Then Article Market it to the top five directories.

These B - F steps are all done the same day - within minutes or an hour at best, after you've built and posted the mini-web.

Once you've gotten all this done, then you can put an article submitter posting to the "bottom feeders", long-tail article directories.

I'd also then recommend that you use other social-oriented sites, such as creating a video for YouTube and an MP3 for Archive.org - which will give you more exposure. And of course, you social bookmark all of these as well.

Looks like I've got some more notes to post on social bookmarking...

Postgrad SEO - using Web 2.0 instead of article marketing to promote your book

Just too good an idea to pass up.

Health keeps coming up as some outrageously searched-for keyword. Helps that 'Boomers are getting older (and Europe/Japan have worse problems than ours) and so they are all interested in extending their health and lives.

Check out this Google Trend search for "health, life, nutrition, diet, fitness". See what I mean? The things that would save their health and improve their lives (good food and exercise) are lower ranked than the goals themselves - which makes sense once you think about it. (But if you want to check for a sheep mentality, look up "life insurance" or "health insurance" - which are completely solutions for the after-the-fact-problem of losing your health or losing your life.) Health and Life are re-active scenes - the people who are proactive are more the minority.

But - searching various keyword programs for "life health" gives low response. Few people search for this combination.

So you wouldn't use that combination as anything on your pages or link text. (I can think of some catchy book titles with these two, however...)

However, your mini-web could use various versions of these above in the page titles in order to capture those niche Google-search positions...

And I have a ton of PLR articles which are useless for article marketing, but prime for ebooks.

Of course, this is all old-hat stuff.

Enter Web 2.0

The test is if videos can replace articles. Now, I don't have a great deal of video sites like YouTube. Frankly, like my tests in article marketing, it doesn't much pay to submit to very many to get the key effects you want, which is people finding and buying your book.

Now, the recent research (and it worked for me, too) is that videos and social bookmarking, as well as blogging, get to the top of Google faster.

With TTS, and these short PLR articles, I could conceivably produce a video a day, based on the content of that ebook. You'd then become some sort of expert on health-related stuff. Sort of. Just like article marketing - on steroids.

Sequence is to create the ebook first - post to Lulu. (My clickbank is bugged, this would be preferable, since you could sell the book via affiliates and increase your sales.)

Take the text articles, add audio headers and footers - create the TTS audio (save in own directory).

Build your master mini-web, using your main keyword phrase you selected. This promotes the book. FTP that up and getting running.

Take time here and set up your opt-in page for that subject. Plug in some articles to your autoresponder sequence.

For each MP3 audio, make a video using clipart and stock photos. (Camtasia...)

Post the videos on YouTube and the MP3's on Internet Archives.

As you post each video, create a new mini-web which links to the first one (and gives it all the pagerank). Each media file links to your Lulu product, but has individual keyword niches (where most of your geek time will be spent, other than making the videos.) Each mini-web also invites people to opt-in for more information on the subject.

Social bookmark each video and MP3 and mini-web index page as you post them.

Blog each video and link to the MP3 and mini-web. Social bookmark that blog-entry.

What you are doing is creating a buzz for each of these inter-related keyword niches. You rise to the top in each of these niches - which in turn give their pagerank over to your main mini-web, which promotes the book (as do all the sub-webs on your mini-net).

And all that should add up to a nice set of Google Page Rank which plops viewers to your main mini-net page and sells books. Plus it should give you a number of subscribers to your list, where you can interest them in other related products.

Just to add frosting to the cake, sign up with some affiliate programs which pay you per lead for insurance policies. Put these links prominently on your site and rake in some extra income.

Test of video's and article marketing

This is a test to see if you can get faster response than the months it takes to get some volume out of article marketing. Certainly you wind up at the top of Google faster - but does it translate to sales? Sure, there are lots of factors present. And TTS is a cheesy way (perhaps) of making soundtracks for videos.

But it would be an interesting concept. Definately worth a test drive...

- - - -

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Article Directories and Submitters - making money and getting fame one article at a time..

I promised long ago (on another blog) that I'd some day do a review of article submitter programs. But I had so many and I was acid testing them at the time. Plus I got into other fascinating research about optimizing web pages and then the wonderful world of Web 2.0 and video.

Today, however, I went back into that strange world of article marketing.

Right off, there are many, many programs out there. And they all do more or less what you pay for. Some are much better than others. I'll tell you what I've ran into and what I've tested.

Now the articles I had submitted were to some very interesting article directories. These directories tended to shrink after awhile from a few hundred down to around 80 and then - after an upgrade - back beyond three hundred. And that's just for one submitter I used the most. (The reason they shrunk was that there was a natural shake-up in directories. Many had flawed scripts and wouldn't accept my articles or didn't pay for enough bandwidth. Another problem was that many had never secured their site, so some unscrupulous hacker got into them and not only changed their directory around, but also set them up to spread his little trojan around - you see, this submitter, like most of them, is IE based and so is inherently insecure. Only my anti-virus and firewall saved me, but I still had to manually run some clean up programs. But that program's administrators were on top of it and gave me a good explanation.)

And so the first program I'll recommend: www.submitsuite.com's "Article Submitter".

Now I think that is is based on the code of another program, also called "Article Submitter", which is a freebie and also gives away the source code. (Some day, I'll make this available through an opt-in list, but right now, I can't take the time...) Anyone can tailor-make this program with their own graphics and links and what not. I've even seen another free version of it that has rotating banners...

And that last one was the second program I'd recommend.

Here's why for both of these:

They are built on Article Dashboard's free script and so are able to simply enter your articles almost automatically - at least SubmitSuite's. Once you have registered at all the article directories (you have to do this for each one, though their program help speed the process quite a bit), then unless that directory takes you off their list or quits performing, it will generally just take your article and submit it right through. This is because of the scripts they have to handle the submission to Article Dashboard's script.

The second program, the freeware Article Submitter (found for free download in many places), does it on a semi-automatic basis - supposedly you only have to select the category you want to submit it to. The best point of this one is that you can add new directories. (If you don't like the hundred plus it came with, you can delete them - but never get them back without manually adding them.) No other directory submitter program I've used does that. They all have some sort of central clearing-house or approval process.

And that's why I use that second, clunky program.

None of the programs I have can access the most popular and probably the most effective article directories - ezinearticles.com - so I have to add it.

That's the theory and practice of my submissions - all articles to a few, and the best few to hundreds. Those few are the top-rated, top 10 article directories. Those hundreds are all those that I can use with a mostly-automatic submitter.

Mostly-automatic - lets look at that: with SubmitSuite's article submitter, you have to keep it open on its own screen to see when it when it hangs. Then you simply write down the address of that hung article directory site. Then go to the next site. Oh - and watch out for the pop-ups and web rings. These can also stop the program.

Another glitch - it does keep track of the articles you submit, but no data besides the title. So you have to keep track of these in a text editor. You can live with that as long as your hard-drive is fairly organized - and backed-up. I presume this program does this to keep its speed. Too bad it doesn't keep a simple address on your hard-drive. But I can wait for the update.

One other caveat - use a spam-magnet email address. These article directories are also being used to accumulate email addresses. I use gmail, myself, since while they want you to accept their (spam) emails as part of your agreement, you can set up a filter for each email which simply trashes them before you have to see them. Otherwise, your email gets deluged with junk.

Now, I've tried other article submitter programs and even high-priced ones. Don't go this route. And that doesn't mean you can't - but I've done enough research for my end of it and have some working tools.

(There's another "Article Submitter" clone - a "Pro" version, which has over 1,000 article directories, but is very, very backward on use. My little free one is still faster, despite its drawbacks.)

How to use that little free one: Keep your text editor open. While the program logs you in, you're going to have to select your category, as I've said. While you're there, correct it's other little nasty, that is gives you a very small bio to use. (If I wanted to load in my old Visual Basic, I could probably fix that...) Just cut and paste in your new, improved variety of bio.

Now this other problem it has is that it will only put in one article at a time. You actually have to delete the other one to get your new one to be used.

As for other free programs - you get what you pay for. But by the same token, I don't think you have to pay hundreds to get a program that simply works. I'm happy with SubmitSuite's product and their customer service. Others are more based on their marketing pitch, which includes inflated prices.

About those article directories:

1. The best fit no mold. They are so uniquely tailored that no program can automatically access them. And factually, those directories probably don't want them to (spam).

2. The best have features like wysiwig editors for the articles. And I could simply live in Ezinearticles, because it is more like a blog interface than an article directory. These guys to a helluva lot to keep improving their services.

3. Low-end intro article directories "might" be useful in terms of getting you some pagerank - but it is going to take a lot of these to do any good. I don't see that your spending a great deal of time with PR0 sites will get you anywhere. These sites will grow in stature as they improve the service they provide. Then they will become valuable.

4. However, that said, using a semi-automatic submitter like above, can help both of you. And so the theory of using a simple submitter to keep your access to the top sites available, while you pick the best articles out of those many to submit to the vast amount of others that play nice with those programs.

Best of luck with all these articles of yours...