Article writing is actually a style of simple, product oriented and informative form of advertising where the real object of publicity is more or less hidden beneath the grand objective of the latest news in a particular service, industry or value added product. It is an outcome of a mutually accepted solution between the author and the publisher for the benefit of both the parties. The author or the advertiser of a product gets free publicity for writing the content while the publisher gets to fill up the available free space without paying anything in return. The main reason as to why a publisher allows this type of content filling in allocated spaces free of charge is that it brings in related or other revenue earning advertisements. This coupled with quality content writing helps in getting increased readership for the newspaper, magazines, directories and websites. A brilliant piece of writing of a product or service taking into consideration all related social, economical, environmental and health views can substantially increase the goodwill of the publisher or website. Besides, each article usually contains a bio box and a byline. These are used for inserting references and contact information of the service or product for the benefit of the business.

Unlike a simple paid advertisement, content or an article provides very useful general information for the industry as a whole and even gives further news about related developments and thus the readers too benefit from it. For instance, a yoga institute may write an article on the benefits of yoga for bringing down stress in ones working life or even incidents of migraine. Again, say an organic fertilizer company may write and article on ‘low cost benefits of organic fertilizer in a health conscious environment’. This is then written as content several weeks prior to rainy season. The result is the author or the industry increases it sales while the publisher gets an excellent and informative content for his readers.

A website where an author can post an article is known as an article directory. Here too the modus operandi is more or less the same. An author can place free content in a directory and the owner of the website places advertisements from other parties for a fee. The article in turn increases the search engine popularity and gets a higher ranking for the website. In other words when articles are distributed via higher ranking pages through search engine optimization then it attracts more visitors most of whom become potential buyers of a product or a service. Surely, articles today are the true modern tools of marketing.