Submitting Article - Article Writing for Affiliates Day 6

Day 6 - Submitting Your Article

If you have followed all of the steps in the course, you now have a complete article to submit. Review your article at least one time before submitting it to the article directories. Check your spelling, grammar and flow.

The easiest way to do this is to read your article out loud. You will catch about 70 percent of your grammar mistakes by using this step.

If you aren't a very good speller, you may want to have someone else proofread your article before you submit.

Use the Best Practices Guide to Article Marketing prior to submitting your article to make sure you have formatted your article correctly. Also make sure you have included everything you need to include in your article (The 8 Minute Article Writer will also help you with this).

Next, sign up for an account with Article Marketer. If you are on a tight budget, then you can sign up for a free account. This account allows you to submit up to three articles a week to 29 article directories and 11,000+ publishers. This is an excellent way to get started with article submission.

If your budget is a little less tight, the upgraded account allows you to submit unlimited articles to over 5,000 article directories and over 67,000 publishers. This includes a one-day turnaround on your article.

If you prefer to submit your articles manually, see the distribution list at Article Marketer for more details.

This completes the course. You now have all of the tools you need to make money writing and submitting your articles.

Summaries, Beginnings and Conclusions - Article Writing for Affiliates Day 4

Day 4 - Summaries, Beginnings and Conclusions

Once you have written the heart of the article, it's time to put the finishing touches on it.

You can write these parts in any order you like. What's important is that you put these parts in the right place in the articles.

Your summary is not actually part of the article. The summary is usually what readers see when they visit article directories or blogs where the excerpt function is used.

The purpose of your summary is to entice readers to read the article. A good summary is no more than 400 characters long. It should contain your keyword phrase you are using, and you want to give readers a taste of the actual article. "Sell" them on reading the article.

The beginning is the opening of your article. It is very similar to the summary in that its purpose is to tell the readers what your article is about. It is an extension of the title. In other words, it gives a little more detail than the title.

How long you make your beginning is up to you. It's really not necessary to write anything longer than one or two paragraphs and then lead into the article.

The conclusion summarizes your article and belongs at the end. It is also a lead in to your resource box where you tell others about your business.

Each of these elements should contribute to getting readers to click through to your site.

Keep your summaries, beginnings, and conclusions short and sweet. To write an effective article, you want to keep it within word guidelines, which is 400 - 700. Give your readers a taste of what you offer on your site. This will get you the click.

Get the most from your articles. Read the Best Practices Guide to Article Marketing. This guide will help you get the most from your article submission because you'll write articles the article directories want and readers will love.

Writing Tools Recommendation

Stylewritter plain english writing software can help you improve your article writing skill.

Whitesmoke 2009 english grammar software is the best grammar & spelling check software for ESL

Ready for the next lesson?

Go to Day 5 - "How to Write Your Resource Box"

How to Write Your Resource Box - Article Writing for Affiliates Day 5

Day 5 - How to Write Your Resource Box

Although every element of your article is important, the most important are the title and the resource box. The title will determine if your readers read the article. The resource box will determine whether or not visitors click through to your site.

The resource box is like a mini ad for your business. You don't want to write something that is too commercial. You want to create a resource box that gets your article readers to click through to your website.

There are two types of resource boxes you need to create: a text resource box and an HTML resource box. The text resource box is plain text, something you could write in a text editor like Notepad. Text resources boxes are no more than 250 to 300 characters long. You create this resource box for sites that only accept a text resource box.

In an HTML resource box, links to your sites are made clickable. This means that when readers click on the link, it will take them to your website. You will need to write a small piece of code to create an HTML resource box. An HTML resource box is no longer than 500 characters.

What do you include in your resource box?

1. Establish your knowledge of the topic in some way. Tell others you have more information on your site. If you offer an e-book, newsletter, e-course, or some other resource, you can use this.

2. A link or links to your websites. One link to a website is good; two links is even better provided both links are relevant to the topic.

For example, if you own two websites, a hair loss resource and a gardening resource, you don't want to send readers to your gardening site if the article is about hair loss. The purpose of your resource box is to lead your readers to your site. Make the links you include relevant to your topic.

3. Don't give your life history. Unless your article is about child care, potty training, or another topic where it would be relevant, readers don't care about things like how many children you have. Your resource shows others you know what you are talking about. What you say in your resource box must be relevant to your article.

4. Don't include affiliate links in your resource box. You already know not to do this with your article. The same principle applies to your resource box unless the site you are submitting to accepts affiliate links.

If you do include affiliate links, you may be able to bypass this rule by using a redirect page. A redirect page will make the link look like the page is part of your site instead of leading to a different site. Some sites allow this, and others don't. Check the guidelines before submitting.

If all else fails, you'll need to buy a new domain and point it to the affiliate site you are marketing. Your best bet is to simply build a content site and send readers to it. Point readers to relevant pages within your site that offer more information.

Once you've completed your resource box, the only other element to consider is your keywords. If you chose keywords for your article at the beginning, you've already completed this step.

In our next lesson, it's time to submit your masterpiece to the article directories.

Get the most from your articles. Read the Best Practices Guide to Article Marketing. This guide will help you get the most from your article submission because you'll write articles the article directories want and readers will love.

Ready for the next lesson?

Go to Day 6 - "Submitting Your Article"

Writing the List Article - Article Writing for Affiliates Day 3

Day 3 - Writing the List Article

The list article is the easiest type of article to write. It is a list of related things.

For example:

Top 7 Article Writing Tips for Affiliates
Top 10 Tips for Getting More Business Now
Top 7 Ways to Start a Business

If you use the 8 Minute Article Writing software, each of the steps is clearly laid out for you. You have the ability to "jump around" in the software, add your tips, and then write your explanations.

Before writing your list article, write your title. You need to know how many tips you will need.

We will use the "Top 7 Article Writing Tips for Affiliates" to write an article.

Your first step is to create a list of tips. All of your tips must be related to your topic. In this case, we are writing an article about article writing as it relates specifically to writing articles for affiliates.

For example:

1. Choose a product.
2. Create a title.
3. Write your list of tips.
4. Write an explanation of each tip.
5. Write the beginning, conclusion, and summary for your article.
6. Create a resource box.
7. Submit your article.

Now that we have a list of tips, we want to write one or two paragraphs to further explain each tip.

***********************

For example:

1. Choose a product.
As an affiliate marketer, you have a large amount of products to choose from to sell. To choose the right product to promote, you want to select a product that solves your potential customers' problems.

You also want to consider the amount of commission you will make, whether or not the product fits your topic, and how you will promote the product.

***********************

Next, go through each of the tips and write one to two paragraphs to explain each tip. Keep your words, sentences, and paragraphs short. Remember, your article only needs to be 400 - 700 words. Keeping your article short and answering your readers' questions will get them to click through to your site.

Don't forget to use your keyword phrase you have chosen throughout the article. Three to five times is enough. This will help you further optimize your article for the search engines.

In the next lesson, we will finish writing the article. Lesson five covers Beginnings, Conclusions, and Summaries.

Get the most from your articles. Read the Best Practices Guide to Article Marketing. This guide will help you get the most from your article submission because you'll write articles the article directories want and readers will love.

Ready for the next lesson?

Go to Day 4 - "Summaries, Beginnings and Conclusions"

Crafting an Irresistible Title - Article Writing for Affiliates Day 2

Day 2 - Crafting an Irresistible Title for Your Article

How you craft the title of your article is up to you. You can create a swipe file of good titles you have found and model your title after these titles.

Don't copy these titles. If you do, you will have a hard time finding your article in the search engines. You want to make your article title as original as possible.

There are four types of titles we will examine here. You can use these title ideas to help you write your own title. Remember, the purpose of a good title is to get your reader to read your article and click through to your site.

1. The Question

The purpose of the question title is to engage your readers. You want them to get involved in the topic of your article. With all good article titles, you want to present the problem and then the solution. You will elaborate these points in the body of your article.

An example would be:

Are You Losing Your Hair? Avoid These Three Things

2. The Statement

In the statement title, you make a statement of fact. Use a statistic. Be specific.

For example:

27% of Men Are Losing Their Hair...What to Do to Keep Your Hair Without Losing Your Mind

3. The List

The list is a list of related items. It's very similar to the How-To because you use a list of tips.

For example:

Top 7 Small Business Start Up Tips

4. The How-To

With the how-to, you are telling others how to do something. It's like a recipe. You are teaching them how to do one thing.

For example:

How to Double Your Investments in 30 Days

When writing your titles, include your keywords. This will help you with search engine optimization. Keywords are an easy way to optimize your articles for the search engines. Don't overdo it.

Keep a swipe file of your title ideas. With a swipe file, it's easier to avoid writer's block. Write down all of your title ideas and review them when you want to write a new article. It will make it easier for you to get started writing your article and stay on track.

If you haven't downloaded the 8 Minute Article Writer software, do so now. This software will make it much easier for you to write your article. Download it here.

We also recommend you browse Article Marketer University for additional help, including Maria Marsala's audio, "The 8 Minute Article."

You may also want to listen to Ewen Chia's Affiliate Article Mastery for more tips on making the most of your articles.

In the next lesson, we will examine the easiest type of article to write.

Writing Tools Recommendation

Stylewritter plain english writing software can help you improve your article writing skill.

Whitesmoke 2009 english grammar software is the best grammar & spelling check software for ESL

Ready for the next lesson?

Go to Day 3 - "Writing the List Article"

How to choosing your topic - article writing for affiliates day 1

Day 1 - Choosing Your Topic

Whether you are new to affiliate business or you have been around for a while, you probably already know what topics you will use to choose the products you sell. These same topics can be used to write your articles.

We covered keyword research in the main affiliate marketing course. For those who haven't read that course yet, we will briefly touch on keyword research here.

First, you need to choose about three general topics in which you are interested. If you choose more than three topics, you may want to consider writing under different pen names. You are less likely to be taken seriously by readers if are considered a know-it-all on too many topics.

Since you are selling affiliate products, you have a wide range of choices for products as well as for topics.

If you aren't sure what you want to sell, there are plenty of resources to help you find topics and products to write about. Here are three:

1. Lycos Top 50 - The Lycos Top 50 will tell you what is getting the most buzz each week.
2. eBay Pulse - Offers a list of the hottest selling products on eBay.
3. Yahoo Buzz - The latest news by category.

If you already know what topics you are interested in, you can go to your favorite search engine and research those topics.

To help you find out what others are searching for, you can use tools like:

Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool

SEOBook Keyword Research Tool

Keyword Discovery Keyword Research Tool

WordTracker Keyword Research Tool

Compile a list of keyword phrases. Using these keyword phrases to write your articles will help you rank well in the search engines.

Checklist

1. Choose at least one product to market.
2. Choose at least one topic to write about.
3. Create a list of keywords to use in your article writing campaign.

Our next lesson is about creating your title. The title is one of the most important elements of your article because it tells the reader within seconds whether or not they should read your article.

Article Writing Tools Recommendation

Stylewritter plain english writing software can help you improve your article writing skill.

Whitesmoke 2009 english grammar software is the best grammar & spelling check software for ESL

Ready for the next lesson?

Go to Day 2 - "Crafting a Title"

Article writing for affiliates: 7 days mini course

In this seven-day course you'll learn how to write unique, interesting articles that get widely distributed and build those backlinks. Writing those articles is easy when you follow this step-by-step system.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Day 1 - Choosing Your Topic
• Day 2 - Crafting a Title
• Day 3 - Mastering the List Article
• Day 4 - Summaries, Beginnings and Conclusions
• Day 5 - Writing your Resource Box
• Day 6 - Submitting Your Article

Introduction to Article Writing for Affiliates

Internet marketer Travis Sago calls it "bum marketing". Whatever you decide to call it, writing articles to promote affiliate programs is one of the most effective ways to promote affiliate programs. In fact, it's one of the best ways to promote any product or service.

There are several reasons article writing is superior to other methods of promotion:

1. You don't have to know anyone to create an effective promotion.
2. You don't have to know search engine optimization, although learning how to research keywords helps.
3. Article writing is more viral than most other methods of promotion. Write a good article on your topic, and it will promote the product for you for years.
4. It is an easy marketing technique to automate. Write an article a day or a couple of articles a week, submit them, and Article Marketer's automated submission takes care of the rest.
5. You are building value into your product. By providing helpful information to your potential customers, you influence their buying decisions. They are more likely to buy from you than someone who just posted an ad.
6. You don't need a website. Although it is easier to market affiliate programs with one, you can improvise. You can easily create a free blog or Squidoo lens to promote your affiliate products.
7. You don't have to be a writer or a copywriter to write great articles. Writing great articles is about sharing information with your reader in a conversational manner.

Anyone can write an article. Knowing something about your topic certainly helps. For those who don't know how to write an article, this course will teach you.

In the next lesson, you'll learn how to choose an appropriate topic for your article.

Ready to get started?

Start with Day 1 - "Choosing Your Topic"

Squidoo Optimization

Introduction to Squidoo.com

Making money online doesn’t need to cost you an arm and a leg in advertising costs. Actually it doesn’t have to cost you anything at all! All of the major search engines are now giving natural search rankings to websites with quality and freshly updated content. So, if you want to get free natural listings in Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, all you need to do is learn how to become an efficient article marketer using Squidoo.

This tutorial focuses on using Squidoo.com to quickly build articles (or "lenses" as Squidoo calls them) that can earn you $1,000s without having to spend a dime in advertising. You’re going to learn exactly why Squidoo is so strongly recommended for article marketers, how to master the tools available to you at Squidoo, and most importantly how to optimize your Squidoo lenses so they get picked up by Google!

If you have read through the success forum at WA, you will see many stories of members earning thousands of dollars a month essentially for free! Article marketing with Squidoo is a great starting point for any marketer! It can help you earn seed money that can then be spent on other components of your business (like PPC) or allow you to earn a continual stream of income from your articles.

Creating a Squidoo Account

The first thing that you need to do in order to start benefiting from Squidoo is to create an account. Here are the steps to creating a Squidoo Account:

1 – In your browser, visit: www.squidoo.com
2 – Click on “Sign Up” in the upper right-hand side of the page and follow the instructions to open your account.

Upon opening an account you will be asked to create your first “Lens”. Here are some screenshots to help you through this process:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Step 4:

**Don’t forget to go to your email and confirm your Squidoo Account

What Should You Write About

You can literally write about anything that you want in your lenses as long as you don’t break Squidoo's terms of service (adult content, spam, fraud, etc.). The “KEY” to creating a successful and highly visited lens, is to target search terms that are not highly competitive within the search engines. Details of how to find these keywords are given in our full guide and tutorial on Article Marketing.

Article Marketing Tutorial

Adding Modules

A Squidoo article, or “Lens” is created by piecing together “modules”. In this tutorial we will focus on the most useful modules for affiliate marketers. These are the Introduction, the “Text / Write” module and the RSS Feed Module.

When you first create your lens it will have some modules pre-populated for you. You can choose to keep these, or simply delete them and start from scratch. We suggest you delete all but the following:

• Introduction
• Text / Write Modules
• RSS Module

Introduction Module: This module will be present on all of your lenses and is very important. The Introduction Module allows you to add an image by simply uploading from your computer. Click the “Browse” button to add a relevant image for your lens. A product screenshot is always a good option!

Text / Write Module: The Text / Write module is the most common module that you will use as an article marketer. It allows you to have a headline, text, images, and to add HTML links.

Optimization Tip: We suggest that you use multiple Text / Write modules to build your lenses, rather than using just one. One reason for this is that headlines and breaks in text will allow the reader to quickly scan your page without having to read every single word. It will allow you to utilize Optimized Headlines to grab the attention of the visitor! Another reason for multiple text modules is that, to stop spammers, Squidoo now asks lensmasters to have at least 4 lens modules. You can publish a lens with fewer modules but it will only achieve a very low Squidoo rank.

Here is an example of what your page could look like with a few Text / Write Modules.

http://www.squidoo.com/aWealthyAffiliateReview

RSS Module: Adding an RSS feed to your module keeps the search engine "spiders" coming back to your page over and over again. This is because an RSS feed keeps the content FRESH. So, adding an RSS feed module to the bottom of your lens can really help with your search engine rankings.

Here’s how to add an RSS feed:

1 – You can use any RSS feed from any Blog or feed site online, but if you want your lens up in a flash, visit Google Blog Search:

http://blogsearch.google.com/

2 – Do a search for a relevant keyword or phrase in Google Blog Search

3 – On the results page you’ll see an “ATOM” link to the left of the results. Right Click, and copy this link.

4 – Use this link in your Squidoo RSS Module where is asks you where to pull RSS from.

TIP: If you have your own blog, you can add your blog posts as an RSS feed to your Squidoo Lens too. If you use Blogger.com, visit your blog in your browser then copy the link at the bottom left hand side of the page where it reads "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)".

Optimization

When it comes to optimizing your Squidoo Lens (or any other article that you write), you should go about it in the same way as you would when building a landing page.

You want to make sure you have/or do the following:

1. Relevant Headlines for each of several text/write modules
2. Lots of “Call to action” links that use your website or affiliate link
3. Lots of relevant images to help break up the text
4. AVOID use long paragraphs without breaks, links or images
5. Un-Max your lens so that your article content is the focus of your page
6. Add fresh content to your page by adding an RSS feed module

Here are some great resources that will help you:

Landing Page Optimization Tutorial

Remember, you should optimize your lenses in just the same way as a web page.

Forum Post 1: 3 Days On Google Front Page With 30 Mins Work + Proof

Forum Post 2: Dominating The SERPS with Squidoo! For the Bums

Tags

Squidoo allows you to use something called “Tags” to describe your lens, and this is one reason why Squidoo articles get picked up by the Search engines under the keywords that you choose to write the article about. In many cases, you can get a listing under a keyword that you have in your tags, and not even within the lens content itself. Adding tags is one way that you can utilize the power of Squidoo.

To update your tags, enter “edit mode” for your lens, then scroll down the right-hand side to the “Tags” section. Click on “Edit”, and add some more highly relevant keywords to the list.

Example: If you wrote an article that focused on the keyword “Wealthy Affiliate Review”, then you may want to add the following keywords to your “Tags”.

Internet marketing university
Making money online
Wealthy affiliate review
Wealthy Affiliate
The Wealthy Affiliate University
Best Place to Learn Internet Marketing
Internet marketing training website
Etc..

Maxing Your Lens (is it a good idea?)

There is much debate about whether you should “Max” your lens or not. From an Internet marketing perspective, maxing your lens does nothing but take focus away from the content of your lens. You want your visitors to focus on the main content of the lens, and this is why we recommend you “Un-max” the lens.

To do this you simply log into your Squidoo account, and click “Edit” on the lens you want to un-max.

Scroll down the right hand-side menu and under “Lens Stats” un-check the “Maxed” box.

Monetizing Your Lenses

How to Monetize Your Lenses

Using Squidoo can make you thousands of dollars a month in pure profits, but you cannot expect to earn money from every single lens that you create. We suggest that you create yourself a manageable set of weekly tasks and use them to stay on track. You need to pump out as many quality lenses as you can each and every week. Some articles may get picked up in the search engines immediately, while others may take months, but the more you have out there, the more free traffic you will receive.

Here is a sample “Schedule” that works very well:

Each Sunday make a list of 10 lenses that you want to build in the coming week. It will only take you about 10 minutes to come up with a list, including the exact keywords and phrases that you want to target with your lenses.

Each day of the week you should be aiming to write the text for 2 Squidoo lenses. Many of you will have full time jobs, but if you can write a 300 – 400 word article during your lunch break everyday based on the list you created at the beginning of the week, you will be in great shape. That’s 1 article done for the day. When you get home, spend another 20 minutes to build the article into Squidoo using the techniques we’ve discussed in this tutorial.

You may find that building 10 lenses a week will not fit into your personal timetable, as it does take time to write the content. So, adjust your article schedule to what you feel you can accomplish. If you skip the planning stage, you will not be as productive as you would like. Writing an article a day Monday – Friday for a few months will become routine and you will soon be making many sales from your work

Conclusion

Using Squidoo is a very good way to create an income stream online that does not cost you anything but your time. Treat Squidoo like a hobby, follow a schedule, and optimize your lenses using the techniques we’ve discussed in this tutorial. Marketing with Squidoo will allow you to earn money which can be invested to further expand your business, or used to take advantage of paid techniques like pay-per-click marketing.

Here is a link to the sample lens that we created for the purposes of this tutorial:

http://www.squidoo.com/whitesmoke2009

Article Marketing

Introduction to Article Marketing

Thousands of Internet marketers are taking advantage of article writing as a free way to drive traffic to their websites and to the merchant websites they are affiliated with. Article writing is one of the best techniques to use to obtain free search listings within Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

This is how the process flows. You write an article about a topic or subject that you are either interested in or are interested in getting listed under, submit it to an article website (usually free), and then wait for it to get listed. By submitting the article to these sites you are adopting their search engine ranking, meaning that you can get listed on the first page of the results in a matter of days. This is something that could take months if you tried to optimize a website for search engines. Article marketing is 100% free and is something that anyone could (and should be doing)!

Free traffic = Free advertising = No overhead

So how does article marketing actually work? Well, generally it takes months or even years to get a site naturally listed in the main search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. This is generally because a new website is not very "Popular". Popular means different things for Google, Yahoo, and MSN as they all have different search ranking algorithms, but they all have a similar ranking model. If you write an article and submit it to a "Popular" website such as "ezinearticles.com", your article will live on this domain and inherit the popularity of that entire site. This will give your article a head start by being listed in the top rank site, thus getting spidered frequently by the search engines.

Search Engine Optimization is something that marketers have been perfecting for years, but it can take a VERY long time to get your own website displayed at all under the keywords that you want. With article marketing, you leverage the power of these large sites (ezinearticles.com, squidoo.com, usfreeads.com, etc.) to get top natural listings for your articles in a fraction of the time.

We're going tell you exactly how to find the right keywords to use in article marketing, how to obtain a top listing in the search engines under these keywords, and how you can create profitable article marketing campaigns

Research Before You Start

Before you write an article, you should determine whether or not there is potential to receive traffic, how much competition you are up against, and which keywords to optimize to get maximum results. There are several ways you can search for keyword niches.

Analyzing Competition With Google

In order to determine whether or not a keyword is competitive or not, you should go to Google and check out how many search results come up under any particular keyword. You do this by typing in your search using "….." (quotes) as this will grab the results for the EXACT search phrase.

Here is an example search:

"wealthy affiliate university"

At the time when we wrote this, there were 689 results retrieved from this search in Google. A good rule of thumb is to aim for keywords where the results are less than 5000. This will make it easier to get your keywords listed as you will have much less competition to deal with. A keyword like "make money" has over 39,000,000 results. What do you think your chances are of getting your "make money" optimized article listed under this search term? Not very good! So, focus on lower competition keywords.

The next thing you will want to do is take a look at the top ranked natural listings under the search term. If the sites on the first page of natural listings have a lower page rank than the article site you are going to submit to, you have a very good chance of getting listed on the first page. To determine page rank you can either download the Google Toolbar at:

http://toolbar.google.com

Or you can use this tool:

Google Page Rank Tool

Analyzing traffic with the WA Keyword Research Tool

If you want to perform some keyword research, you should take advantage of the Keyword Research tool that we offer right here at Wealthy Affiliate. You can access this tool from the icon at the top of your Wealthy Affiliate dashboard. The keyword tool grabs search results from Google and will outline the competition and the keyword traffic volume, as well as allowing you to dig down and find more targeted, less competitive keywords.

Some keywords like "make money" are way too broad to create an article around. This is because it’s an extremely popular keyword and thousands of sites are already listed under it. Instead, you should focus on writing articles for more relevant keywords that are not as competitive. For example, you will be able to achieve top rankings if you promote under the term "how to make money as an affiliate" as there are just over 800 results!

Without having to do a TON of research, you can find terms that are high volume but have limited competition if you look for keywords that pertain to brand new products.

For instance, when we have launched any of our products in the past (Who Loves Money, Beating Adwords, etc) it has been very easy for members here at WA to get their articles naturally listed pre- and post- launch because there was limited competition within the search engines. With a new product, you can literally get an article listed in a number of days under the product keywords.

This is VERY powerful information and can lead to a flurry of sales for a new product. This is explained in further detail on the next page

Jumping on New Products

Writing articles about new affiliate programs or brand new product releases is a great way to get listed fast within search engines because the competition is limited.

Commission Junction and LinkShare send out notifications of new merchants quite regularly and you can take full advantage of these by writing an article or two about the new products/services that are offered. In order to do this, you will need to be an active affiliate of these networks. You can sign up here:

http://www.cj.com
http://www.linkshare.com

A great tool for finding new products is available right here at WA. Our Clickbank Research Tool will not only give you access to the hottest products within Clickbank, it will also alert you about brand new products that are in the marketplace. You can find the Clickbank tool within the WA homepage menu.

TIP: When a new product comes out you can write an article for it using the product keywords. Doing this will get you a listing under that keyword very quickly. Use the following tool to find new products on Clickbank:

WA Clickbank Research Tool

Where else can you find information about new products or services? Magazines, commercials, television, focus groups and news websites are all great places to find out about current trends, new products, and release dates.

Taking advantage of new products and services will allow you to get listed within the results before a lot of the competition catches up.

Alright, now that you know what kind of keywords are the most effective to use with article marketing, we're going to tell you exactly how to write an article that will be "fine tuned" for the search engines. In the next section we are going to outline how to go about "Writing Your Article"

Writing Your Article

Your articles should range anywhere from 300-500 words in length. This is the ideal size to get listed within engines, and allows you enough text to promote or provide adequate information on the particular topic. If you have an article that is longer than this you may want to break it down into smaller topics that make sense and submit them separately.

Insert a title, keywords, and description within the meta tags on the webpage. You may also want to include a headline (or

tag) with your keyword phrases you are trying to obtain positioning on. The higher up on the page you have a relevant headline, the greater your chances of getting listed.

When it comes to actually writing the text, you need to use basic grammar. Your article must also contain some sort of personality. If you bore your audience, they will not read what you've written, limiting your success. Ways to captivate your audience include telling a story, giving a testimonial, or reviewing a product or service. You must also provide enough information to make them feel they have gained from reading your article.

Forget the fact that you are writing an article. Pretend that you are writing an email, letter, or instructions to a friend. Make it easy to read, give step-by-step instructions, and add a personal touch. It is much easier to connect with a visitor on an emotional level if you show a personal side, rather than appearing as some automated webpage.

In terms of keyword density, or how many times your main keyword phrases should appear on any page, you should have between 3-7 occurrences (or between 3-5%). Any more than this will appear as content "spam" to the search engines, and any less will not be enough to get listed under those search terms. There are tools available that allow you to quickly analyze your pages and determine the keyword density:

Keyword Density Checker

Here's a quick checklist of guidelines to use when writing an article:

	Use the keywords you want to be listed under in the title of your article
	Use the keywords in a heading tag at the top of your page Keywords
	Use the keywords in your opening paragraph
	Use the keywords in your closing paragraph
	Have between 300 and 500 words in your article
	Try to use your main keyword phrases 3-7 times per article

Submitting Your Articles

Now it is time to submit your articles. We suggest that you only submit the same article to one place, or Google and other search engines will remove your listings because there will be exact replicates of the same content (not good). We suggest that, if you want to submit the same article to several article directories, you should change the content around so that each article you submit is slightly different.

Here is a list of the top article submission directories:

EzineArticles.com
Squidoo.com
USFreeAds.com
Hubpages.com
GoArticles.com
Wetpaint.com
ArticleDashboard.com
ArticleCity.com
EasyArticles.com
Amazines.com
ValuableContent.com
ArticlesBase.com

Search Engines

It is a good idea to submit your articles to search engines after you have obtained a URL of your page from an article site. This exercise can be redundant at times as it will not expedite the listing process too much, but it does let the search engines know that your article is there.

http://www.google.com/addurl

Getting someone to write articles for you

Since unique content is rewarded within search engines, it is important to write unique articles. This can be very time consuming, and time is one of those things that an Internet marketer cannot get enough of. For this reason, many article marketers outsource to people that do this for a living.

The great thing about this is that you will likely be able to get the work done for you right here at Wealthy Affiliate. The average article will run you about $5-$7, depending on who writes it for you. What you can do is post a job within the "WA Jobs" section and wait for the bids to roll in. You can also use other outsourcing agencies. These include:

Freelancer.com
Elance.com
Scriptlance.com

Say you wanted 10 articles on Internet Marketing basics that are 500 words each. You would specify this in your ad and independent copywriters will bid on the job. Often times this can be a very inexpensive way to get work done for you.

If you get someone to write articles for you, remember to specify which keywords you want them to focus on. You can always add the keywords in yourself, but if you specify this up front it will save you some time.

Note: We recommend that when you are starting out you should write all your articles yourself. This will not only give you good copywriting experience, it will save you money and allow you to learn some of the most important fundamentals of Internet marketing

Profiting with Your Article

Now we are going to answer the big question – “How do I make money article marketing?” Some of you may already have article marketing experience and will know the answer. But for those who are new to the process we are going to suggest four different methods of generating value from an article:

1. Promote affiliate product directly
   
   Sending your traffic directly to an affiliate URL is one of the most commonly used techniques associated with article marketing. You simply write a review, testimonial, or story about a product and link to the affiliate URL within or at the bottom of the article. How well your article converts to sales will depend on how captivating it is. Note that not all article engines will let you "direct link" to the merchant pages. In situations where a direct link is not allowed, you will need to create a webpage to send your traffic to.
   
   
2. Send them to your own product website
   
   If you own your own product you will obviously want to create articles to drive additional traffic to your website. You could write an unbiased review, an article full of useful information, or an article on a particular subject relevant to your product. If you have a product that shows people how to make money on eBay, you may want to write an article outlining the steps that someone should take to become successful on eBay, or some tips on how to set up an eBay account.
   
   
3. Send them to a squeeze page
   
   If you have a squeeze page, you may want to drive your article traffic to it. You can do this by writing articles that would attract visitors who would be interested in your mailing list, and then redirect them to your squeeze page. Make sure your offer is worthwhile or people will not subscribe to your list. Magazines, newsletters, reports, guides, and books are great giveaways.
   
   
4. Send them to a review site
   
   In the same way as you promote an affiliate product, you can write articles about particular products that you are comparing on your website and then send the visitors to your review website. By the time they get to your website they will be interested in one or several of the products and will be more likely to buy. If you have five products on your review site, you could write an article about each of them

Conclusion

Article marketing does take a lot of work, and in order to succeed at it you need to set goals. Set aside enough time during the day to write 1-2 articles and by the end of the month you will potentially have 20-40 articles bringing you in traffic (and hopefully sales). The advantages of article marketing are that you do not have to be a professional to write an article, and it is FREE!

If you are new to Internet marketing and have a limited budget, article marketing is one of the best ways to familiarize yourself with important marketing fundamentals such as research, copywriting, and building pages. It will allow you to generate income that you can use to fund your advertising campaigns (PPC or otherwise). We must point out that article marketing is not "guaranteed", especially with all the changes that Google and other search engines make to their ranking algorithms. Don't rely on just one article to bring you all your sales. Keep consistent with your article marketing and you will be much more likely to be successful with it