Writing a great article takes some time and since you've gone through all the hard work it’s time to make use of it. Once you send it off to an article directory, is that it?  Are you done with it? No way! Don't let all that sweat go to waste, use your article over and over to squeeze every last drop of usefulness out of it.  In other words, leverage your articles. By doing this you won't have to spend so much of your precious time writing new ones.

As long as you have a well-written article that’s at least 400 words, here are some ideas for getting the most out of that article:

1) Submit to Ezine Articles. This is the largest article directory, so it makes sense to start there. Ezine Article’s traffic ranking is very high so you'll stand a better chance of getting more traffic. In fact, if you do a search of your targeted keywords, you're more likely to find your article showing higher in the search engines on Ezine Article's website than from your own website.

2) Send to your list. If the article topic is something that would interest your list, send it to them in an email. This works best when the articles are shorter.

3) Entice your list. Alternately, you could change the title and lightly rewrite the article to use on your blog. Then rather than sending the whole article to your list, you can send them a short email to pique their interest or a call to action to entice them to click the link to read it on your blog. This strategy gets them to your blog where they might take further action; like comment on your post, buy one of your products or click on your AdSense.

4)  Use in your newsletter. Valuable information never goes out of style so repurpose your article for your newsletter that goes out to your list.

5)  Create your own article directory on your website. Set up a page that lists all of the articles you've written for this niche. Each article can have a short blurb at the bottom that tells people they can publish the article on their own site as long as they don't change the article and keep the bio and link intact.

6) Share in forums. To help brand yourself as an expert in your niche, you can post your article in a niche related forum. Doing this with your best articles that have gotten a lot of positive feedback will get new people looking for more information about you, ultimately bringing you more traffic.

7)  Use it in your affiliate toolbox. Affiliates love having material they can use rather than having to come up with something from scratch. With this in mind, rewrite your article and give it to affiliates to use. You’ll make your affiliates happy plus the more tools they have in the toolbox the better they will be able to promote your products.

8)  Create an ecourse. Break your article into 3-5 main parts then add more detail to each part to come up with your new ecourse.

9)  Bundle. You may have written several great articles on a specific subject. Bundle them together and create an ebook to sell, a free report to give away, enter in a giveaway, or add to another product as a bonus, etc.

These are just a few ways you can leverage the articles you write. Remember that every time you write an article, use it as many ways as you can and you'll find you don't need to write quite as many new articles. This will free you up to focus on another aspect of your business that needs your attention.