Article Marketing Strategy

The first step is sign up as an affiliate with a company/companies that will pay you sales commissions.

There are a few ways to do this, but the two simplest ways that I know of are to become an affiliate with Amazon.com, and with another affiliate network site called ShareASale, which helps to connect you with companies who need people to sell their products.

Sign Up as an Affiliate with Amazon.com

Sign Up with ShareASale.com

If you've completed step #1 above, you now have products available to you that can be sold. In fact, you have thousands of them!

What to sell?

The items that are selling already like hotcakes are my favorite choice, and likely what will make the most money. (Another good strategy is to pick items in which you have knowledge and can write interesting articles about.)

The best place I know of to research hot sellers is on eBay. There is a section called "eBay Pulse" that lists out generally what products are selling the most - right now. Here is a link to that page:

Click Here for eBay Pulse

Decide what type of product to sell, then do one or both of the actions below:

A. Go to Amazon.com and do a search for the product that you are looking for, then to the affiliate area of the site and create a link. Copy link to a Notepad (.txt) document - you may want to use links more than once, so save them in a folder on your computer where you can easily find them again.

B. Go to ShareASale.com affiliate page and do a search for the product, apply as an affiliate with a company that carries the product. Once approved, you can create a link. Copy the link to a Notepad document and save it.

Signing up with Amazon.com and ShareASale is free. :)

OK, the next thing for you to do is place ads on a website that has a high ranking in Google. The best place that I know of to do this is USFreeAds. You'll need a premium account ($9.99 per month) - it's a bit of expense but is well worth it. With that you get unlimited placement of ads, ability to add as many pictures and links as you like, and ads are automatically updated so that you don't need to update them yourself. (Other classified sites automatically expire the ads and you have to place them again.)

USFreeAds also has a high placement in Google, which greatly increases the chances of having your ads show up on the first search page when someone types in the keyword phrase you are using (the title and first lines of your ad).

Click Here to Sign Up with USFreeAds

**A note about keywords: You will want to use a highly searched keyword or keyword phrase in the title of your ad, and perhaps in the first line of the ad text. One of the best tools that I know of to find highly-searched keyword phrases is the Yahoo! Overture keyword tool - Click below to use it:

Overture Keyword Tool

Note: It sometimes takes quite some time to load the tool, but worth the wait. :)

After you get to the Overture tool, type in the term that you would like to use, and it will list out the most highly searched keyword phrases relating to the term. Pick out a highly-searched and appropriate term and use it in the title and text of the ad.

If you like, you can also use the Google labs tool to research keyword phrases - you can access that here:

Google Labs Tool

As you type a term in the textbox on that site, it will give you some recommended, most highly searched keyword phrases in a list below the textbox.

Writing articles about the subject of your product (or a subject that compliments it) and then linking the article to your ad site can greatly help to increase the traffic to your ad.

Here's an example: If you decide that you would like to sell a certain line of camera, you could write an article about how to take a good picture or perhaps how to care for the camera, with a link to the ad for the camera in the Author Block section at the bottom of the article.

There are two sites that I highly recommend to submit articles to - you will need to sign up for accounts with them (free). They are:

EzineArticles.com

And:

Associated Content

Create a well-written article with good content that you believe will be interesting to your readers. Use a highly-searched keyword phrase in the title, first and last paragraph of the article. (They should be similar, or the same phrase.)

Tip: Keep in mind whether the article would be helpful to your audience. (That will help to increase your traffic and rankings.) If needed, do some research on the subject/product you will be writing about.

Optionally, you can hire someone to write an article for you, and it's not very expensive. You can do that at a site such as Elance.com.

Next -- Now is the time to find that html link to your product advertisement and place it in the article. If it's appropriate, place the link within the text of the article, and then place a link in the author's block part of the article. (This is the "About the Author" section.)

Now, write some more articles! At least 5-10 on any given subject will usually give a good amount of traffic to your ad, providing the content is good.

Use this technique over and over for other products and you could be well on your way to making some serious income!

If you already have a bit of experience with affiliate marketing, or if you feel comfortable with adding some steps to your actions as given above, you can add a couple of items to your campaign that will further increase your traffic, search engine rankings and sales.

There are 2 steps, you can do either of them or (even better) both:

A. Create your own Squidoo lens on the subject of the product, or a complimentary subject, with links to the product. Squidoo is ranked highly in the search engines, and if your content is good, your lens will likely rank highly as well.

Use the same rules for your keywords/keyword phrases (title, first and last paragraphs). Also, pay attention to tags. It could be time to do a bit more looking up keywords, expanding on the original keywords that you already have used for the articles and ads. Use the keywords for tags for your lenses. (You can create up to 40 per lens - Make sure that they are relevant to the subject of the lens -- using irrelevant keywords could actually decrease your rank in Google, thus decreasing your traffic.)

Click the link below to start your own lens:

Start My Own Lens

B. Create a Hub Page: Hub Pages are quite similar to Squidoo lenses, and are also very highly ranked by Google.

You can create your own account and start your hub page by clicking the link below:

Create HubPages Account

Final Steps - as they apply:

A. Add a link to your product ad and your Hub Page (if you created one) to your Squidoo lens.

B. Add a link to your product ad and your Squidoo Lens to your Hub Page.

C. On the articles you wrote, add a link to your Squidoo Lens or Hub Page. (I don't recommend that you add both to a single article, just one or the other in addition to the link to the product ad.)

Now you have created a sort of a "funnel" where your visitors will be directed ultimately to the product you are selling from your articles as well as your Squidoo Lens and your Hub Page.

Another benefit of these added steps: Having all of these elements creates a sort of a "network" whereby Google's search engine will likely rank you even higher due to the fact that the articles, Lens and Hub Page all link to each other, and to your product.

This article marketing strategy can be very effective. If you get started and feel frustrated about it for one reason or another, don't worry about it. :) Just keep practicing, and you will get familiar with how it works and before you know it you'll start seeing some profits roll in!

Note: This lens contains the basic steps involved in creating a "bum marketing" campaign with articles and ads. There is quite a bit more detail that is not specifically the subject of this lens, and is not given here. I have included some links to some very helpful lenses and hub pages below to give you some help if you need it.

Also, feel free to contact me if you have questions. I'm happy to help! You can email me by the "Contact Me" link right here on this page.

Good luck and happy marketing!