Blogging Tips

Article Marketing or Free Classifieds: Which Works Better to Promote Affiliate Products?

Written by Yuwanda Black from Inkwell Editorial

I write and promote my own ebooks to make passive income online. Recently, I started to promote an affiliate product to add to this income stream. It’s a product unrelated to freelance writing, which is my primary niche. And, this has proven to be eye opening on many levels when it comes to online marketing.

How Effective Is Article Marketing When Promoting Affiliate Products?

The only thing I’ve done to promote my affiliate product is to write and distribute articles – ie, article marketing. I’ve used article marketing for years to promote my own products, but I was curious as to how it would work promoting something outside the freelance writing niche.

Well, in short, it’s been amazing. I consistently make 5-6 sales a day of this product. My affiliate payout is $25/sale. Not bad, considering that all I do is write and submit one 350-400 word article a day. I only submit the article to three or four article directories. In total, I spend 45 minutes to an hour a day promoting this product.

How Effective Are Classified Ads When Promoting Affiliate Products?

A colleague who promotes the exact same product takes the classified ad route. She posts ads on free sites like Craigslist and Backpage. She consistently makes three to four sales a day, on average. Still not bad, but I consistently outsell her. In fact, sometimes I make twice as many sales as she does.

Why I Think Article Marketing is the Best Way to Sell Affiliate Products

The following is just my opinion, but I think the reason article marketing works for selling products and services online is because people like to know as much information up front as possible before plunking down dollars.

If they read article after article of good information, then they trust that you know what you’re talking about. So, they’re much more likely to buy from you – rather than another source (ie, another affiliate) – when they’ve made up their mind to purchase.

Article Marketing Tip: Write the articles yourself and make them as informative as you possibly can. At least do this in the beginning. Give real, useful information. Fluff articles that are thinly disguised sales pitches don’t work. Potential buyers can sense this. Many people are skeptical about buying on the web.

I had no idea how skeptical until I started promoting this product. You see, I mainly target the freelance writing niche. They tend to be pretty tech savvy and know about buying products and services online. The affiliate product I promote targets an audience who are none too tech savvy. So there’s inherent skepticism built in.

But good, solid information in the form of articles can overcome this. Tomorrow I’ll talk more about this, eg, how to overcome buyer skepticism when selling products and services online.

Written by Yuwanda Black from Inkwell Editorial
Posted on January 19th, 2009 and filed under Making Money
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16 Responses to “Article Marketing or Free Classifieds: Which Works Better to Promote Affiliate Products?”

Author comments are in a darker gray color for you to easily identify the posts author in the comments

Alex the Freelance Twin says:

January 19, 2009 at 4:26 pm

Sounds pretty good, I can’t believe you only submit to 4 or 5 article directories. Do you mind sharing which ones you submit to or is that classified? Either way I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s article too.
Blogging for Fun & Profit - Ethically! says:

January 19, 2009 at 6:45 pm

Hi Yuwanda!

thanks for your informative article. Am trying to work out my traffic generation strategy and there are so many! so its good to get some feedback as to what’s effective.

personally just from my perspective, I like the idea of writing articles much better as it gives some value – you’re giving the benefit of the time and energy you’ve spent researching the product (and hopefully competitors as well, to give a good informative review) and why you think one solution is better than an other or not

So your feedback on writing articles and submitting to classifieds is a welcome discovery to add weight to writing articles vs classified ads. . by the way do you submit to directories? and have you noticed how effective that is?

Look forward to your next article

thanks!

Derrick
File Lock says:

January 20, 2009 at 6:00 am

articles helps a great deal in bringing traffic to a website, a good source to earn money.
Yuwanda Black says:

January 20, 2009 at 7:04 pm

@Alex: The article directories I submit to are not a secret. I mainly submit to EzineArticles, Amazines, IdeaMarketers, GoArticles, AfroArticles and ArticleonRamp. When I have time, I submit to a few others, but these are the main ones. If I’m in a real time crunch, I’ll only submit to EzineArticles, Amazines and IdeaMarketers.

Hope that helps.
Daniel Molano says:

January 20, 2009 at 7:34 pm

Grrr @ Yuwanda! I submit atleast one article per day and I dont results like that! what in the world are you doing differently than me?
Yuwanda Black says:

January 20, 2009 at 9:01 pm

@Daniel remember, it’s the product you promote as much as the method you use to market. I just got lucky enough to promote the right product at the right time. The program is not open to other affiliates, which is why I don’t discuss it.
Jabna says:

January 21, 2009 at 12:10 am

Does your friend link to a landing page in the classified ad or do they send the information when someone sends an inquiry?
Goa says:

February 4, 2009 at 7:25 am

good stuff. But writing articles on a daily basis can be tough isnt it? Dont you feel bankrupt of ideas to write on? I mean how can you be so consistent?
Mr Javo says:

February 5, 2009 at 3:27 pm

Great advice Yuwanda… You are totally right about TIP, yesterday I read several things before buying a product, so you hit the nail!

Cheers
Ask Dr Smiley says:

February 6, 2009 at 3:41 pm

Hi Yuwanda,

Great information on article marketing. I have been using article marketing for over 2 years now and find it very rewarding.

The more quality and unique information you provide the better you do. Your points about article marketing and classifieds is great, you point out some very good ideas.

Thanks for the great information, keep it up
Yuwanda Black says:

February 6, 2009 at 3:59 pm

@Ask Dr. Smiley: Very true, ie, the more quality and unique information you provide the better you do. That’s why I say no fluff articles. I hate those and never buy from those sites. Give me usable info – please!

@Jabna: To answer your question, ie, does your friend link to a landing page in the classified ad or do they send the information when someone sends an inquiry?

She links directly to a landing page — which has national news coverage and all on it. AND, I still outsell her.

Further proof, IMO, that article marketing rocks!
http://www.thedotcomlifestlye.com says:

February 9, 2009 at 4:39 am

Article marketing is really one important tool in order to promote any business online. But delivering so-so contents is will no longer good. Better create good contents so that they will return.