I personally use two article submission services - SubmitYourArticle and ArticleMarketer. I submit the same article one week apart to the two databases.
I don't agree that you need to submit different articles to each database. I submit mine to 100s of databases at once and I don't do too bad
I don't submit the articles to my own sites though. I try to use unique content on my blogs but link to them from my articles.
Find yourself a list of less competitive keyword phrases, save them to a notepad file, then work through them, working each one into your article resource box. Many of the article databases will allow link text, some will not.
Link to your sites internal pages from your articles resource box too, besides the home page.