Affiliate marketing depends on website traffic. Article marketing is one of those ways to funnel great amounts of free traffic to your website.

Writing articles, submitting them to article directories, and then waiting for people to read them is still a great way to deliver quality content to the masses. The articles are indexed by the search engines, and – if your keyword research has been done right – it will be ranked relatively high. But, that all seems a bit archaic today. Sure, it still works. I write tons of articles every month for clients and submit them to article directories for free traffic. But, there is more to article marketing than just the basic write/submit routine.

Getting More Affiliate Traffic From Your Articles

I have always believed that the true beauty of online marketing is the creative aspect of it. There are no real limits to what you can do with your marketing – this is so true for affiliates. Affiliate marketing is more than landing pages, PPC campaigns, and writing articles. Affiliate marketing is really about creativity. How to get your message, or a certain product, out to as many people as you can for as long as you can.

In my business, one of the things I have always strived to be is in the forefront of creativity. All of the marketing materials, consulting sessions, and advertising campaigns that I have put together are based upon this one principle… creativity.

Article marketing is a great way to keep the creative juices flowing. Of course, article marketing is also a great way for sustained free traffic. A lot of people think that this will mean spending long hours writing hundreds of new articles. And, it does. I do not want to make it sound like writing articles does not take any time. (This is why outsourcing your article marketing needs is a big benefit!). However, you can get more use out of one article than just submitting to an article directory. Here are 15 ways that you can do that.

1. Create A Video From It – Creating a video for affiliate marketing is a great way to get further free advertising. It is pretty simple to do and can be quite fun. Use your article and create a video on that article. You can read it into the camera, but it probably will not be very popular. But, if you spend a little time rehearsing your presentation, you can turn that article into a video.

2. Develop A Short Report – Articles for affiliate marketing work the best when they are within the 400 to 500 word range. Short, concise and easy to read. Expand on that article a little more and create a downloadable report. This can contain more information, more tips, special newsworthy items, or other things you feel are important. You can host this report on your own site, on a landing page all its own, or on a site like Scribd.com or Docstoc.

3. Rewrite Article Different Ways – I have an older post about this way to get extra mileage out of an article. The idea of this is to create three different articles, based on one, and submit to other article directories.

4. Tweet It – Twitter is a great way to get your message out. One way to be creative in your article marketing is to send a series of “tweets” that cover your article points. You only have 140 characters to use at a time, but you could break up the different points of your article into smaller bite size portions.

5. Create A Longer Squidoo Page From It – Squidoo is a place you can create a “lens” on the topic of your choice. It is like a blog only in the respect that you can write about what you want. You monetize each lens through different affiliate links an Adsense. Use your article to create a Squidoo lens. You can reword it a little if you want, add more content, embed videos, and other cool things to make your article more interactive.

6. Develop Autoresponder Series – You can do this either with one article, or with a bundle of articles all on the same topic. Create a short email series that breaks up a longer article into different main points, or uses a series of articles.

7. Use Article In Teleseminar – Setting up a teleseminar is a pretty easy thing to do. And, you can host your own teleseminar for free. The amount of people who can attend is limited, but usually there is not a problem. Host a teleseminar on the topic of your article where you can simply read it over the course of the seminar. Pause for questions or remarks, and even invite a special guest. If you have several articles, then you can have a series of seminars on all of them.

8. Get Article In Someone Else’s Product – Getting extra exposure for your article will help you gain more traffic that you might not have gotten otherwise. This extra exposure can come from other website owners. This tip will take a little digging on your part, but it is worth the time. When you find out that someone is writing a report, a course, an ebook, or some other type of product, strike up a conversation with them about the topic. From there you can introduce them to an article you wrote. Ask their permission to send a copy and maybe they will include the information – and your byline – in their new product, on their website, on their blog, or mention it somewhere else.

9. Use As A Facebook Note – Facebook has a great feature called Notes. This is where you can write down different information in the form of short articles. You can even connect the notes to your blog posts. Reprint your article within your Facebook notes and your connections will be notified of them.

10. Send To Mailing List – When you write a particularly good article, make it a special mailing to your email list. This does not need to be in the form of a newsletter or an ad. Simply a personal letter with the article in the body, or a link to it on your site.

11. Combine To Make Ebook – After you have several articles on the same topic, you can combine them into an ebook form. With a little rewriting, rewording, or editing to make it all go together smoothly, you can even sell it for a small fee.

12. Use Article To Answer Question – Participating in forums is a powerful way to get extra traffic. Combine your forum activity with your article marketing only creates double exposure. When someone asks a question that is directly related to your article, you can either repost the article as the answer (if this is allowed by the moderator) or direct the forum readers to it through a link to your site where it is hosted.

Article Marketing Creatively For Extra Free Traffic

Writing articles for affiliate marketing does not have to be a dull activity. Use these different methods to get extra mileage out of your current, and future articles.

Take a look at the articles you have now. Can you do anything else with them besides sitting on a webpage? Choose some of these tips, or come up with your own creative uses for your articles. Doing so will give you extra mileage – or more free traffic – from the articles you have already written.

Have fun!

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Article marketing is something that many people just do not understand. Writing an article to promote your website is a very powerful marketing medium. Unfortunately, it is also something that is done rather poorly.

The state of article marketing today seems to be taking a turn towards the rushed. A bunch of articles that are what I call “google rewrites”. This is where the topic is simply googled and the article is a rush rewrite of something that is already written. For example, if the topic is something like use of solar panels you would simply google the term “solar panels”, find a suitable article and then just rewrite it by running it through a some type of rewrite software. All that does is change some phrases and words around making it sound a little different.

However, the information is still the same.

What article marketing is missing today is new information. There isn’t any real research going into the article or any real “defining” moments in the articles today. It is like people get caught up in the keyword instead of the actual words.

Article Writing Is More Than Keywords

Most of the time when I write an article for a client, I am given a list of keywords. That is fine, but I do not rely on the keywords totally for the article. While the search engines like keywords, people do not. They want real information that will help them with a…

There is nothing worse than trying to find something, go to a web page where an article is and see that it is simply for getting higher rankings for that page. There is nothing of valueto be found, or worse yet, it is the same information you’ve already seen!

What Is An Article?

An article that is used for article marketing purposes is something that must add value to your webpage and/or to the person who is reading it.

Did you get that? Here is my definition of an article again.

An article for article marketing is a writing that adds value to your webpage and/or to the person who is reading it.

Do your articles do that?

Writing Your Next Article

Before you open up that word processor, text editor, or WordPress interface, make sure that you follow a few things first.

1. Design it around what people need. Don’t just rely on keywords. Write for people.

2. You are not writing a book. People on the web do not have hours to sit and read your lengthy dissertation. They want to find the information they need quickly. Keep your article between 300 to 500 words in length.

3. Keep it on point. This is the hardest thing for me to do. I like to open with stories and a lot of background detail. But, if I am writing for article marketing purposes, I keep it on point.

4. Give new information. Please. Instead of stating the same obvious information. Give a new angle, a new opinion, or even go against the grain and do something entirely opposite.

5. Use correct writing principles. I’m not saying that you need to have a grammar degree. What I am saying is please have your article edited, or proofread by someone else. While you can go over it yourself, you will not pick out all of the mistakes.

6. Use Spell Check. Besides using correct writing in your article, run it through your spell checker. It might not catch all the misspellings, but it will catch most of them.

7. Have fun with it. It isn’t going to do any good if you dread writing your articles. Most of the time, this is because we put too much pressure on us to write great articles. They do not have to be great, but they should be decent enough to read. When you have fun with it, you will write better articles.

Article Marketing Is That Important

Content, no matter what anyone else tries to say, is still king. You need it. Article marketing is extremely important to your overall success that you should spend the majority of your time with it, or find someone else that can do your article marketing for you.

Remember what an article actually is, and then go write a few.

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I can’t get over how many people are still trying to churn out content for their websites that is just, well… crap. Recently I read two posts in my Google Reader that really stirred up the ‘great content‘ issue. The first is one by Joe Hall talking about creating great content or to hardcore porn. I love the in your face way that Joe talks about creating great content for your website.

That was followed up by another great post by Nick Stamoulis over at Search Engine Optimization Journal about writing great content or go out of business. And I love the way that Nick explains it.

“But, seriously, if you are so lazy and cheap that you’ll use a free service to ask someone for free advice on how you can get more traffic to your blog with less work and less-than-great content then you don’t need to be producing content. Imagine a business owner planning to start a laundry service in his neighborhood asking the home owners in that area, “How can I build a great laundry service without great laundering machines?”

Great Content IS Your Site’s Lifeblood

Anyone who is thinking about a new website or blog needs to think about the content they are going to be putting on it. It needs to be good. Maybe not great, but at least readable and enjoyable. There is way too much content on the Internet today. Every affiliate marketer is overloading places like EzineArticles.com with short articles that really don’t say anything. And they want this stuff to send traffic to their site?

Great website content is the lifeblood of your entire marketing. It doesn’t matter if it is an article, a report, an ebook, email ad, or even social marketing presence – you need to have something good for people to read. It’s just that simple.

Create Great Content

Before you go ahead and hit that publish button, or submit your article, take time to read your article or post. Is it any good? Does it make sense? Will people want to read it? If not, then change it around, rewrite it, or hire someone else to do it for you.

Your content should do three things to be valuable as website content or content for traffic.

1. Inform – Your article, or blog post, should inform the reader about your topic.

2. Presell – This is where you article works for you. You need to write it in a way that will get the reader to want to visit your site, read more information, or buy your product.

3. Establish – With the content you write, it is not just for a one time shot of traffic. The content is to establish you as an authority on the particular topic.

Does your content do that?

Of course, the one piece of the puzzle that holds it all together is that your content must be good!

I am always amazed at the way things change online. In fact, I like to try and figure out what type of internet advertising strategy is going to be the next big thing. So far, over the years, I’ve had some services that have thrived only to see that they are being replaced with something else.

When I first started, solo email ads were the biggest service I offered. I literally wrote thousands of solo ads when I first started, which caused me to write an ebook about how I transformed my writing into a simple 7 step process. After the solo ads, came Pay-Per-Click marketing.

I offered this type of service after PPC had been out for awhile so I could learn the ins and outs of it. I did quite a bit of setting up, and managing, PPC campaigns in the few years that I offered it. I only do so now as contained in the overall marketing package.

Once the big rush for PPC ads subsided article marketing really began to come to the front of the pack as far prominently taking over internet advertising. Article marketing is one of those marketing strategies that is proving to be timeless and unaffected by advancing technology.

Since I began offering exclusive article marketing services it has consistently remained at the top of the services that I offer. As I begin to rework my copywriting and advertising business (cleaning out older services while replacing with newer, more sought after services) I will definitely be keeping writing articles as the top one.

Article marketing is the flagship of internet marketing. With this type of content you can easily;

Even though I see blogging and social media marketing as up and coming forms of internet advertising, I think I’ll continue on with the article marketing services as a top priority.

As Apollo Creed so eloquently put it… “ding, ding.”

I feel there is a storm a brewing and a fight that will change the way people market, and write, on the web. This might sound a little crazy considering I am a certified addict to blogging. I run several of them on a myriad of different subjects. I even ghost write on several more blogs. Blogging is great.

With that said, I do feel that “blogging” is poised to radically change the way that people market their products and services on the internet. (Eventually social media platforms like Twitter and Pownce will again alter the way things are done online.)

Writing and online advertising is changing.

What do I mean when I say blogging will change the way people advertise and write on the web? Basically it means that more and more people are relying on the writing that they do on their blogs to do their marketing for them. And the difference in writing is markedly different.

Article marketing has been a very strong way to get targeted traffic to your website for little, to no, cost. Websites like ideamarketers.com, ezinearticles.com, and goarticles.com have been the places to go to find pretty good content for your website and/or newsletter. It was also a way for people to market their own brand through their writing.

That’s the key word… writing.

I have forever been saying that the way to get more people excited about your website is to provide great information that speaks for you and what you/your website can bring to the person reading it. I stand behind that as I see it working all the time.

But, the writing on blog posts just isn’t the same as the writing in an article. I’m not condemning blogging as a form of writing or a form of advertising. But, should it be the only one?

Are blog posts articles?

Kinda sorta.

Blog posts are, and should be, short snippets of information that drop information in bite sized portions. That’s the intention. (Yeah, my posts can get long sometimes) What I see is more and more bloggers are putting all their efforts into writing on just their blog and calling it an article. But is it really an article?

Articles should be pieces of information that contains a lot of info about a particular, focused topic in a condensed form. Meaning all the fluff has been taken out and the meat remains. For instance, I was just hired to write 1000 articles on several different topics. Each article is to be about 300 to 400 words in length. But the topics are very keyword specific and I can cram a lot of info into each. I won’t be putting my own opinions or any off-handed, or off-colored remarks into the body of it. Just information that people can read quickly and get the info they want instead of my personal biases or, in a lot of cases now, filthy mouth.

Blog posts are personal in nature. That’s the beauty of them. They show you for who you really are. Your own writing style in a laid back, come as you are style. You don’t need to really follow any set writing rules (except maybe capital letters and punctuation) and you can pretty much say whatever you want.

Articles need to follow grammatical rules. An example would be a recent blog I stumbled across. No capital letters, no paragraphs, run on sentences galore, swearing, and a ton of misspellings. Did it bother me? No because I knew it was a blog and I was there because I wanted to be. But, I won’t read over an article if it’s like that. I won’t even visit the author’s website if the article is loaded with mistakes.

So, what’s the big deal?

The way I see it, and I could be wrong (I just won’t admit it), is that as more and more people see blogging as a great way to both write and get search engine rankings (pretty quickly) that they will give up on other forms of advertising and even worse than that not work on their writing skills.

Why put so much effort in crafting an article when I can just throw up a blog post and not think about correct grammar? Yes, an argument could be made that there are a lot of bloggers who follow correct writing form and have meticulous spelling. But, they are the ones who are also following other forms of writing and keep their skills in check instead of letting them go for an easier (seemingly easier) way.

Maybe I’m way off. Maybe nobody has even thought of this yet. Maybe it’s not something to be concerned about.

What do you think? Is your blog the only advertising you do? Is it the only website you have? Do you have static sites with articles for content? Do you send people to your blog? To your website? Or both?