Main Points of This Article:

• AffirmWare Special Report: Affiliate Marketing with Articles
• What is an article?
• Using Articles in Your Affiliate Marketing Business
• Writing Articles
• Submitting Your Articles to Free Article Directories
• Submitting Your Articles to FREE/Paid Article Directories
• Final Thoughts

AffirmWare Special Report: Affiliate Marketing with Articles

While there are many different ways you can market online and promote your affiliate links, one of the most successful is through a process known as article marketing. With article marketing you have many different options available to you, ranging from using your articles in your newsletter, using them as content for your website, to submitting them to free article directories. By utilizing a combination of all of your various options, you can see your affiliate marketing business explode with targeted traffic and growth.

What is an article?

The first thing you need to understand when we are talking about article marketing is what exactly constitutes an "article." Most people when they hear the mention of the word immediately think of the articles that appear in newspapers or magazines. While this is one type of article, online what constitutes an article is a bit different. For example, what you are reading right now is considered to be an article. Additionally, your informational-type e-mail marketing messages you send to your readers are also a form of an article. And finally, content written for your website is also considered to be an article as long as it is something which is informational for your reader. 

Making the connection of what constitutes an article is important because it helps you to clarify how these articles can be used in your affiliate marketing efforts.

Using Articles in Your Affiliate Marketing Business

Now that you understand what we mean when we talk about articles, you can easily see that they are simply chunks of written content which you can use in a variety of ways. Online you can use your articles to promote your affiliate URL in the following ways:

• "Website content
• "Blog content
• "E-mail marketing informational messages
• "Article directory submissions
• "eZine article submissions
• "As part of an eBook
• "As free giveaways for others to use
• "To help you build your opt-in list
• "To help drive traffic to your website

Offline you can use your articles to promote your affiliate URL in the following ways:

• "In letterbox drop campaigns
• "On promotional flyers or handouts
• "As press release submissions to print media such as your local newspaper

Writing Articles

The first tip in putting article marketing to work for you is that you have to create articles to use. This is often the biggest stumbling point for those interested in utilizing this marketing technique. While you may be a fabulous promoter, perhaps you barely made it through English class in school and the idea of writing content articles is right up there with removing your fingernails one by one. The good news is that you don't have to be a skilled writer to put articles out on the web. Additionally, if you don't feel like you want to attempt to write your own articles, you have two other options available to you in promoting AffirmWare products.

The first option is that we have many articles already written for you, located at the Affiliate Command Center web site. At the Affiliate Command Center we have a wide variety of informational articles and product reviews which you can choose from to get you started in your article marketing efforts. You can easily customize these articles and use them in any way you wish. 

Additionally, there are many freelance writers out there who are experienced in writing articles who would be happy to write them for you. You should expect to pay anywhere from $10-25 per 400-1000 word article if you choose to go this route. While this may seem like a lot of money, you need to understand that your articles will be written once but can then be used in a variety of ways over a long period of time! 

To find a freelance writer, you can go to a web site like www.rentacoder.com and place a free bid request. Freelance writers from around the globe frequent this website and will place bids on writing your articles for you. For your bid request, you will want to include the topic of your marketing efforts and what you would like your articles to be written about. Additionally, you will want to specify that your articles be between 400 and 600 words and must contain quality, unique content and any keywords you supply.

Whether you choose to use our pre-written articles, write your own, or pay a freelancer to write them for you, you will want to make sure that your affiliate link is included within the article or at the end of it - or both. This is vital because it is from your affiliate link that you will gain sales from your article marketing efforts.

IMPORTANT: For information specifically on how to write informational e-mail messages and tips for crafting subject lines to get them read, see the AffirmWare Special Report on E-mail Marketing.

Submitting Your Articles to Free Article Directories

One of the most powerful ways to utilize your articles in your marketing efforts is through submitting them to free online article directories. The primary reason for this is that search engines like Google seem to like the content on article directories - a lot. This means that your articles can obtain good rankings on Google and bring in many readers for your articles. Once a reader is brought in to read your article, they will then likely click on your affiliate link to find out more information and possibly purchase your product. By providing quality information on your niche topic, you can entice your readers to then click on your affiliate link and make a purchase or sign-up for your opt-in mailing list.

Article directories allow web surfers the ability to learn about a wide variety of topics all free of charge. And, for providing your information free of charge you are rewarded by being able to provide links to your website as your "payment" for submitting your articles for free to the directories.

If you have a squeeze page set-up (and you should) you can use your articles simply to drive traffic to your squeeze page and sign-up to be on your mailing list. Using free content articles in your list building efforts can really pay off in helping you to build a large list which you can then market to through your auto-responder series.

For more information on using auto-responders see our AffirmWare Special Report on Auto-Responders.

For more information on list building, see our article in the Affiliate Command Center named The Squeeze Page.

Submitting Your Articles to Article Directories

You have two choices when submitting your articles to directories. You can use an article submission service to do the work for you, or you can manually submit them yourself. The first option will save you a lot of time, while the second option is free and allows you to total control in where your articles are placed on the web.

If you will be submitting your own articles, you can find a comprehensive listing here www.sitepronews.com/article-directories.html of directories you can submit them to.

Once you have clicked on the article directory of choice from the above listing, you will then be led through the process of signing-up for a free account and then through the process of submitting your articles. Thankfully, both the process of signing-up and submitting your articles are simple and easy to do; they are designed for everyone to be able to submit their information without having to be tech-savvy or a web master.

Final Thoughts

To be successful as an affiliate marketer, it is vital that you take advantage of all of the tools available to you to promote your business to its fullest. Affiliate marketing is largely a numbers game and simply stated the more targeted traffic you drive to your affiliate link, the more sales you will make.

Article marketing allows you to proliferate your name and affiliate link to a very wide variety of places both online and offline as well. Through this effort, you will find that people from all over the world will be clicking your affiliate links and visiting your squeeze page and sales pages. Because this free traffic drives up your visitor count, it can dramatically increase your sales numbers and resulting income.

Affiliate Command Center 30/116 Shirley Rd
Wollstonecraft NSW 2065
Sydney, Australia
Ph: 612-9460-8098