Recently there was an interesting article in Newsweek magazine about click fraud.

It seems that what has been the most effective way of advertising online, by far, is now under serious threat. The Newsweek article tells the story of a European entrepreneur who runs a web marketplace for cargo firms. His chief method of attracting customers to his site has been by putting pay-per-click ad links on major search engines. The strategy worked very well and the businessman was expanding rapidly when he suddenly run into problems last summer.

He started noticing that his site was getting an amazingly high number of visitors but there were no corresponding sales to show for it. It did not take him long to trace the problem. Somebody had written some simple software that just kept on clicking on his links. This false traffic was costing him a fortune. The businessman told Newsweek that he estimated that he lost a whooping $50,000 in potential business by the time he hurriedly pulled out his ads.

Click fraud is on the rise even as search engine executives desperately seek solutions. So far nobody seems to know what to do.

And the temptation for fraudsters is high. Using Google's AdSense program, Web site publishers can run the ads posted by Google and share the revenue. So it is possible for these unscrupulous swindlers to find a way to collect revenue from false traffic.

This is yet another reason to opt for articles advertising instead. Apart from the fact that you do not pay for the clicks that end up at your site as a result of an article, good articles that end up enjoying the viral effect of being re-posted at various other sites, will last for years.

And click fraud does not work with articles because you do not pay for the traffic. You simply post your useful articles in as many high traffic web sites as you can and then seat back and enjoy the attention and the profits.

Granted, the click through rate per single article is not as high as that of a strategically placed link on a search engine. Still, if you ensure that you constantly increase the volume of articles with your links out there, even as the viral effect takes place, you can end up with a sizeable amount of free traffic pointed at your site.

There is one other important advantage posting useful articles all over the net has. The traffic generated is usually highly targeted and much more likely to buy when they arrive at your site. As opposed to traffic from ad links at search engines where people read a few catchy lines and then click through, many times just on impulse. People who arrive at your site after reading an article will have much more information and will know exactly what they are looking for.