Sean D'Souza: Building your business on words alone

Refine your writing skills to increase the chance of your business being noticed. Photo / Thinkstock

Imagine you were to start up an internet-based business. And told that to promote your business, you would not be allowed to do any affiliate marketing. Or joint ventures. Or any external publicity. No Twitter, no Facebook, no social media. No pay-per-click advertising. No search engine optimisation.

All you had was one weapon: the ability to promote your business through article writing alone. Would that be possible? You guessed the answer, didn't you? You instantly knew that it is indeed possible to drop all of the possible strategies you see online, and still generate enormous traffic - and revenue - through article writing alone.

Everyone will give you the idea that you need 10 or 20 methods to get traffic to your website, and you don't. You can use just one method - article writing - and have more than enough customers to keep you very comfortable.

But it's not going to happen tomorrow. Blogging or writing articles for a year probably isn't enough to begin with. It's like having a baby for a year, and saying "why can't this baby walk, talk and dance?" It usually takes more than two or three years for a business to really be walking, talking and dancing.

When we began our business way back in 2001, we had no customers. No subscribers. Nothing. Besides, I was a cartoonist, not even a writer. But I sharpened my writing to the point where others started to take notice.

So who were these "others"? They were other websites (blogs didn't exist in such a big way then) that were publishing good content. They'd publish my articles. I'd open my inbox and there would be 50, 60 even 200 subscribers. Can you imagine going to bed and waking up to find 200 emails in your inbox that are not spam?

Back then, there wasn't as much distraction as you have today, but even so, if your article is outstanding and it gets published elsewhere, you can get 20, 30 or even 50 subscribers from a single article. And these subscribers eventually turn to clients if you get them through a sequence - but you already know that.

What you may not know is the power of a single article. A great article has amazing endurance. An article is not an article is not an article. It's the starting point to an incredible journey. Let's look at why articles (and the ability to write articles) are so darned important. First, let's take the leverage tour? How far can one article go?

Let's take where I can possibly put a single article that I write:

* In the newsletter at Psychotactics.

* In someone else's newsletter.

* On the Psychotactics website and/or on your blog.

* On someone else's website and/or blog.

* In our membership site at 5000bc.

* In someone else's membership site.

* As material at your event, or as part of training.

* As material at someone else's event (even if you're not showing up).

* I can make it a report.

* If I add more articles to it, it can be sold.

* I can use the report as a bonus to sell something else.

* I can use it as an award or prize (when packaged correctly).

* I could then make an audio out of the article.

* And a presentation.

* And a video.

But there are no shortcuts. You can't just submit to some article or ezine site and hope to get these kinds of results. If you look around you, you'll find that those who succeed aren't lazy bums. They're hard working, and work smart too. And they don't take shortcuts. They find a medium that works, and they work it like crazy.

Which brings us full circle to the question: can you build a business on article-writing alone?

The answer is yes. We've been in business all these years with no affiliates, no joint ventures, no fancy publicity, no search engine positioning, no ad words - nothing. Yes, we've done the odd thing here and there, and yes we do have a so-so social media presence, but as you've worked out, the main strategy has been article writing.

All we've ever done is write good stuff and make sure that our customers pass it on. We write good stuff and that good stuff then gets leveraged, making us not just a very sizeable income, but also allows us to take a "three-month vacation" every year since 2004.

Can you build a business on article-writing alone? I guess you know the answer, don't you?

Find out more

For more articles by Sean DSouza - and a report on "Why Headlines Fail" - go to psychotactics.com

Sean D'Souza is chief executive of Psychotactics and an international author and trainer. He is the author of The Brain Audit - Why Customers Buy (And Why They Don't).