In the last couple of years, I've come across an amazing, no-cost, way to obtain great publicity for your company, website, or organization. And all it takes is a little elbow power (or a few bucks to hire a writer with same) and the information about where and how to get the notice.

Today there are over 300,000 online newsletters and electronic magazines (often called ezines for short) and the numbers grow daily. They cover virtually any topic you can think of, ranging from working at home to parenting to genealogy.

But here's the biggest secret of all: Most of them rely on outside contributors for their information. In fact, many ezine publishers are starving for quality content. Consequently, they need experts (and you are an expert on something, aren't you?) to provide short articles, tips, and advice to their readers. And we're not talking major treatises or giant tomes here; most ezines publish articles as short as a paragraph or two.

Usually, you won't get paid a dime for your contribution. However, because the publication will run your byline (which includes your name, company, and address - either physical or cyber), you'll end up getting leads in the dozens or hundreds every time your article runs. That's dozens or hundreds of new visitors to your shop, website, or publication. For free.

So, just how do you go about finding ezines that want what you have to contribute? Well, you can find and approach individual publishers and offer your articles or tips. But that's often time-consuming, frustrating, and difficult. The single best approach is simply to post your contribution to one of the growing number of free article distribution services that are sprouting up across the Web. These services are frequented by ezine publishers looking for content and posting information about your article is the quickest way to get noticed.

Depending upon the individual service, for you to post your article on their site, set up an autoresponder (a reply service that sends your article automatically to anyone who requests it through a special email address, all without your intervention), or include the article or information about it in an online announcement service that they offer.

Here are my favorite places to announce your articles:

EzineArticles website
Provides an ezine and a web site with archived and autoresponder-based articles. You can subscribe to the E-ZineZ Article Distribution Digest at http://www.e-zinez.com/publishers.htm. You can find articles at http://www.ezinearticles.com. You can submit article summaries to both the ezine and the website.

Free Content ezine
This ezine lets authors submit article summaries and publishers list needs. The editor prefers article summaries, but recent issues of the ezine have included complete works. To subscribe, send a blank e-mail to: Free-Content-subscribe@onelist.com

IdeaMarketers website
A very thorough site. If you're looking for broad exposure, I'd make this one of your first stops. You actually post your complete article to the site. http://www.ideamarketers.com

InfoZone website
This one offers a pretty thorough directory of articles designed for both publishers and authors alike. All articles are stored online at the InfoZone site and you can also link to your site. http://www.MakingProfit.com

IQLibrary website
This site is a new one and is owned by my company, Intellectua.com. Our plan is to offer a broad range of professional, business, how-to, computing, and Internet articles for publishers to use. However, we will be highly selective in the authors that we include at the site. Please check back frequently to see what we've added. http://www.IQlibrary.com

MediaPeak website
Provides free content to over 2,000 online publishers. The content is distributed to publishers via an email service, to which you can subscribe by sending a blank e-mail to: e-wire-on@mail-list.com. Submit complete articles and up to four-line tag lines to either: mediapeak@mindspring.com or submitnews@aol.com. Articles are archived at the website, http://www.mediapeak.com. The website also has a content exchange section where publishers announce their needs.

PublishInYours ezine
Designed primarily for you to post complete articles. To subscribe, send a blank e-mail to: PublishInYours-subscribe@onelist.com

Web-Source website
You can submit your article reference, as long as it's available through an autoresponder, to the website at the following: http://www.web-source.net/links/Articles_For_Publication/. You can also subscribe to and submit articles to the companion ezine, the Writer and Publisher Connection, by sending a blank email to: article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com.

WriteBusiness website
In the Articles Reprint section.
http://www.writebusiness.com

Writers & Publishers Online ezine
If you're a publisher with article needs, or an author with articles you want to distribute to online publications, you can send a summary of your needs to: submit@list-content.com

To subscribe to this excellent monthly publication, join-wpo@list-content.com. I suggest subscribing first to get a feel for a style of the publication and the format of your submissions.

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Michael Werner is the former President and founder of two-time INC. 500 company, InfoSource, Inc. He is currently the CEO of Intellectua.com, a publisher of how-to, business, computing, and Internet ebooks and tools. You can subscribe to the company's award-winning, all original-content ezine, The DirtSmart Netpreneur, featuring weekly news and tools for the small enterprise and home-based business webmaster. Subscribe at: http://www.dirtsmart.com/cgi-bin/sub.cgi?aaa