If you have a company website, you may offer articles relating to your product or service for your visitors to read for free. You may also have articles at online article sites that drive traffic to your website. This is a great strategy, because it a.) increases your website traffic, and b.) allows your prospects to educate themselves about your product or service and become convinced of their need for it--without pressure.

These articles can take several forms. Here are some of the most common--and the benefits and pitfalls of each:

--Links to other websites with copyrighted articles. The good thing about this tactic is that it costs you little in time or effort. You simply search your niche, find good information, and provide a link to it on your site. The downside is that your readers may get sidetracked with something interesting they find on that website and forget about you. The other negative is that someone else owns the copyright to it, and you can't use it--other than direct your visitors to it--without their permission.

--Articles on article sites like EzineArticles. The pluses here are that, especially if you choose articles by Platinum Authors, it's fairly certain to be good material, and that you are free to redistribute it. The minus is that you must keep the authors' resource information intact--giving credit to someone else and sending traffic to someone else's website.

--"Private label" articles. This may seem like the best of both worlds: you get the information relatively inexpensively, and you can adopt it as your own, changing it however you want and passing it around freely. Bad news: it's really the worst of both worlds. Most private label material has been so used, misused, and overused that the search engines eventually recognize it as duplicate content; worse, your readers may also recognize it, which harms your credibility.

There is a solution: professionally ghostwritten articles. Work with a professional copywriter who will write quality articles just for you. Put them on your site. Get them published in print publications. Repurpose them into video scripts. Compile them into an e-book or a print book. Give them away at first to give your audience a taste of what you have to offer...then sell bigger and better material.

Publish them online to send traffic to your website; if others use it, they must keep your resource information intact. All these strategies have the same purposes: to generate traffic, establish you as an expert in your field, and create a mental "stickiness" that ultimately leads to your goal: sales.

The big bonus is that you own the copyright. Once you've paid the copywriter his or her ghostwriting fee, it's all yours. You'd be best advised not to change the actual content, as you're paying the copywriter for his or her skill, and changing it will weaken it in ways you might not notice. You can always ask the copywriter to revise it as necessary and update it occasionally. So find a copywriter who includes ghostwriting in his or her repertoire.

Your very own professionally written, informative, lead-generating articles: the very best choice. Find a copywriter who's passionate about your niche and start building a library of your very own articles!