Can writing articles help you make money through affiliate marketing? You betcha, it can. There are several ways that article marketing can help you to promote affiliate products and make commissions. The great thing is, that once these articles are out there, they can pay off repeatedly.
Here are some tips to help you learn why this works and help you come up with a plan to get article marketing working for you:
Remember Keyword Optimisation
If you have affiliate products that you want to promote and sell, find out what keyword phrases people who may be interested in buying that product are using in their searches. By optimising your article for those phrases, you can get attention from search engines.
People looking for information on the topic you are writing about could read your article and then click through to your site where they may buy thus earning you an affiliate commission. The right keyword optimisation will help the site you’re linking to rank for desired keyword phrases – therefore bringing targeted traffic directly to your site as well as to the article you’ve written for someone else’s site.
Pique Interest
Articles submitted to directories, blogs, and social sites should pique the interest of the person reading the article. Try to provide enough information to pique that interest but leave a little bit to the imagination so that the reader will click the link in your resource box / byline to learn more. Then, the place they link to should work on compelling them to buy something.
Call To Action
A resource box or byline is generally allowed on an article that’s submitted to article directories like EzineArticles, Goarticles, ArticlesBase, and others. A combination of anchor text links and a call to action can help you get traffic to the site you link to, to the article you’ve written, and help you get search engine rankings for those words. Learn to craft a resource box on an article designed for article marketing and it could be profitable.
Follow Editorial Guidelines
Some article directories will accept anything you write. But most high traffic sites that are worth submitting to have editorial guidelines you need to follow. These guidelines help the site get traffic and gain favour with search engines so they want people to adhere to their standards. Learn about the standards of each site you submit to in order to maximise your chances of being approved and maybe even gaining front page exposure.
Article Marketing + Social Marketing
Article marketing combined with social marketing can make for a powerful and profitable combination. Use social media tools to get traffic to the articles you write and they could become quite profitable.
Allow Syndication
A great benefit of article marketing is that you typically make articles available to others if they are willing to keep the article and attribution (with links) intact. The more people that publish your article, the more SEO benefits and potential traffic you could get to your site. That traffic could translate to affiliate marketing profits.
Sean Rasmussen
Aussie Internet Marketer
Learn Affiliate Marketing with Year Of The Affiliate © 2010
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sean,
Great post on the benefits of article marketing. I always have trouble writing enough so the reader feels like it was worth their while to read my article and leaving enough out so they’ll click on my link.
Still, the increase in traffic and the backlinks you get from article marketing are awesome.
Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Learn and Earn – It’s a Marathon Not a Sprint
Hi Jazz,
I suppose it will get easier for us when we have a product we are totally passionate about and know it will help others.
Hopefully our writing will get more creative (mine anyway).
Jackie Stenhouse´s last blog ..Types of Child Anxiety Disorder
Hi Sean,
Article marketing is the next on my list of things to do. I am interested in visiting EzineArticles and submitting an article to this site.
I’m not the best article writer and my grammar needs improving but if I have a plan it will help. My plan is that: after writing an article I find someone who is willing to edit it before submitting it to an article directory.
The plan sounds good.
Jill Brown´s last blog ..Couples Marry at Common Law
Go for it Jill. Don’t worry about having to have the best grammar – at least at the start. Ezine.Articles’ preview system pick’s up spelling errors at least.
Don’t pay anyone to edit – just give it a go – use conversational style, make your point and provide useful information about your topic and see how you go. A bit of practice soon gets you going more smoothly and it becomes easier.
If you are really stuck let me know and I may be able to help as I have quite a few on there.
Hi Jill,
I’m with Peter. I’d be happy to help you out with the editing as well. There are a lot of us who’d be willing to help you out. You just need to write the article and then email it to us so we can check it for you.
I think between all of us you’ll end up with something great to submit to the article directories.
Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Finding Your Passion
I am feeling the love! Great support guys
Great guidelines here for article directories submission. Although I am not quite up to this stage at the moment I am working on my skills in this area. It is interesting that you mention allowing syndication as this is an area that I am just discovering and seeing the bigger picture.
I have submitted a few articles by now and am astonished how many clicks I get on my blog from these links. They are not yet optimized for Affiliate products, but nevertheless article marketing has proven its worth to me already.
Your post is a great checklist for articles to promote products.
Renee´s last blog ..Self Improvement Books – What Are Your Favourites
You are obviously hitting the mark – saying something which readers appreciate and then search for more onto your blog. Have you considered setting up a newsletter to capture their email addresses?
So far I have written and submitted a grand total of 1 article. I quite often see articles from ezine at number 1 ranking on google for particular keywords so using article marketing to promote your affiliate products woudl definately work if you do your keyword research beforehand.
Jackie Stenhouse´s last blog ..Types of Child Anxiety Disorder
Ezine can be a great resource and definitely one to use Jackie. It does seem somewhat easier to rank for certain keywords, however Ezine Articles does have a cap on the keyword density so that does sometimes put a level of restriction on what you may be writing about.
Cemil´s last blog ..4 Tips To Grow Your Website Traffic