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Article Marketing: Is it Worth It to Submit to Thousands of Directories in One Click

Posted by on 27th Jan 2009 Promote your blog 12 comments

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.

Freelance writer and web entrepreneur. Learn more at InkwellEditorial.com's "About" page.

12 comments - Leave a reply
  • Posted by Omar on 27th Jan 2009

    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

  • Posted by Yuwanda Black on 27th Jan 2009

    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.

  • Posted by Omar on 27th Jan 2009

    Thanks Yuwanda. I understand your point. It helps a lot.

  • Posted by Melissa Donovan on 27th Jan 2009

    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.

  • Posted by arshad on 27th Jan 2009

    i have never tried it.maybe i will try it soon.

  • Posted by Yuwanda Black on 28th Jan 2009

    @Melissa, the selling is done in the resource box. You always get a link there. Log on to ArticleMarketer.com to learn more.

  • Posted by Shivanand Sharma on 29th Jan 2009

    Thanks for warning in advance. How would it be to know no html and .com after I sign up?

  • Posted by Las Vegas Personal I on 30th Jan 2009

    This is truly innovative and insightful information- thanks a lot for the post.

  • Posted by LinessaSay on 30th Jan 2009

    Thank you very much for this useful article and the comments. I love this site as it contains good materials.