If you’re a regular reader of my posts here on BloggingTips, then you know that I recently started to get into affiliate marketing. My promotional method of choice is article marketing. I’ve been doing this for years – with great success – for my own products.
An Overview of ArticleMarketer.com
A couple of weeks ago, for the first time, I signed up with an article distribution service, ArticleMarketer.com. And I have to say, I love it. It’s quick and easy to submit. And, even though I still submit to some top-rated directories manually, this service has made the process so much easier.
Following are some do’s and don’ts of using the service if you decide to go this route.
Article Word Count: Articles submitted to ArticleMarketer must be at least 400 words. Anything shorter, and it won’t be published. This is important because when I submit manually, I sometimes have articles that are shorter (usually 350-400 words). But, these won’t fly at ArticleMarketer, so just get in the habit of writing articles of at least 400 words.
No Dot Com: The body of the article cannot contain a website name, even if you write it like “BloggingTips.com” or “BloggingTips dot com.” I actually don’t like this about ArticleMarketer, because sometimes you do want to point someone out to another source.
I tend to use major news sources in the articles I write for my affiliate product, but instead of saying, “In the MSNBC.com article, XXX,” I just write “In the MSNBC article, XXX.” That way, if someone is really interested, they can at least Google the article title and find it.
No Hyperlinks or HTML: None whatsoever. This is reserved for your resource box. They give you two resource boxes, one with just the “http://” as part of the website name, and one with an active hyperlink (ie, “a href=”). They distribute them both, according to what the corresponding directory/site will accept.
In tomorrow’s post here, I’ll talk more about ArticleMarketer.com, ie, how your articles are distributed, the cost, what to watch out for when you sign up (really important) and give a few tips for writing effective articles.
Affiliate Marketing Posts
FYI, you can read the series I wrote about my affiliate marketing experience in the following three posts:
Article Marketing or Free Classifieds: Which Works Better to Promote Affiliate Products?;
How to Overcome Buyer Skepticism When Selling Affiliate Products and Services Online; and
Newbie Affiliates: How to Choose Affiliate Products to Market.
Hi Yuwanda,
Have you found a notable impact on traffic using article marketing?
I have weighing my mind if the time and effort is worth it.
Omar
Omar, read any of my stuff and you'll see that I'm a big proponent of article marketing. It takes a sustained effort though.
I submit 3-5 times a week for my affiliate site AND for my regular website (InkwellEditorial.com) to promote my ebooks. I've been doing this for a few years. If you want quick traffic, do a PPC campaign. But, if you want long-term, steady, organic, FREE traffic — and you have the patience and diligence to submit regularly — article marketing works like a dream.
And I don't measure traffic so much. I could really care less about it. I measure sales. Since I started article marketing steadily, my sales have reached a predictable level. When I was doing it hit-and-miss style, they weren't.
Hope that helps.
Thanks Yuwanda. I understand your point. It helps a lot.
I hear lots of good things about article marketing but I don't understand how an article can help promote your site or blog if it doesn't contain any links. There's probably some angle I'm not considering, so I'd love to hear more about how article marketing works and what the benefits are.
i have never tried it.maybe i will try it soon.
@Melissa, the selling is done in the resource box. You always get a link there. Log on to ArticleMarketer.com to learn more.
Thanks for warning in advance. How would it be to know no html and .com after I sign up?
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