A Unique Traffic Source For Affiliate Marketers Or Anyone

There are plenty of places where we can read about an affiliate marketing business, but there aren’t many places where you can find someone to do some of the hardest work for you.  Well, I may not have found that elusive source of free labor, but I have discovered what I think is the next best thing.

I sell my own digital and physical products, but a sizeable chunk of my income still comes from affiliate marketing, where I began.  My online business is made up of a number of traditional sites and blogs.  I rely quite heavily on search engine optimization (SEO) to secure traffic, but that is a long term strategy.  In some cases, I have used PPC for affiliate products with success, but more often I am lucky to break even.

Consequently, like many in affiliate marketing, increasing traffic at a reasonable cost is one of my most vexing challenges.  It is particularly difficult for those times when I discover a new affiliate product but for which none of my sites are well optimized.  How do I get the visitors to the vendor’s site with my embedded affiliate link?

I use the same, standard approach that most of you reading this use; I bring the visitors to my own site initially for an introduction to the product or, perhaps a comparison of competing products.  I hope they’ll click the link that will take them to the spot where they might actually buy the product that will earn me my pittance.  I have always wished that I could cut out part of the middle of that process.

I use article marketing extensively for all of my sites.  While I get some traffic directly from the articles, my primary reason for article marketing is its SEO value, which is considerable.  There are two major problems with the traditional approach to article marketing, especially for the affiliate marketer.  First, the major article directories don’t allow contextual links within the body of the articles.  Typically, the links are isolated below the article itself in a sort of no man’s land called the author’s box or the resource box.  The second big problem, maybe the biggest of all, is that the top ranking article directories all refuse to permit affiliate links even in those little boxes.

At last there is a content syndication service thall allows both contextual linking and inclusion of direct affiliate links.  Yes, you will be able to join the affiliate program of the amazing My Article Network once you become a member of the service.

My Article Network is something of a cooperative that brings site owners (publishers) together with article marketers.  (That link will let you know what I have to say about it on one of my sites.)

Since I am writing to and for the benefit of affiliate marketers, I’ll cut short the presell message and let sales page of My Article Network persuade you on its own.  I’ve been using it for less than two months, and I am a complete convert to the system.  In fact, I even set up four new niche blogs to make use of the free content that my colleagues provide.  {(Go ahead.  Click the link, you know you want to.)(Do it!  You know you want to click the link.  Come on…don’t you think I deserve it?}

Article Marketing in Order to Search Engine Optimize Your New Mini-Site

Many businesses choose a mini-site to market a niche product or service. If your business hopes to receive long term value from the small site, you need to focus nearly all of your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts on obtaining high value external links, because choosing a smaller site means giving up the inherent advantages of larger sites with a number of internal links pointing toward the most important pages.

There are a variety of ways of obtaining the links that you need, and you should use them all. However, I want to focus your attention on one of the most important of the link building methods. That, of course, is article marketing.

Article marketing offers several advantages for improving your SEO through external links. First, if well done, it allows you to obtain links from a variety of websites who publish your article, and many of the websites will be from unique IP addresses, something that is important to search engine algorithms. Second, article marketing allow you to exert control over the anchor text of those links, and the anchor text (sometimes called “linking” text) is a major way for a search engine to determine the topic of a particular web page. Third, article marketing is quite inexpensive and relatively easy when compared to some of the alternative methods of obtaining high quality links. The ease of the process is largely attributed to the development of specific software to facilitate article marketing.

I average about fifteen articles per week, but I spin those articles so that I actually end up with the equivalent of hundreds of unique articles that I distribute to several article directories (for further distribution) or syndicate directly to individual sites to which I have access. I am able to reach that level of productivity because of two important memberships that I maintain.

One of the membership sites offers a free article spinner, available to anyone. When you first register to use the high quality spinner, you will also receive a free trial membership to an amazing directory submission service that will distribute a unique version of each of your articles to literally hundreds of article directories.

The other membership is to a service that also has a built-in article spinner. This system, though, distributes the uniquely spun article versions directly to niche specific websites (including blogs).

Both approaches have their advantages, which is the reason that I maintain memberships in both. If I had to choose one, I would choose the second, but it’s a very close decision. However, I can belong to both for a monthly fee that is less than I pay for a decent dinner for two in my home town. Consequently, a combination of the two is what I would recommend for use in the SEO efforts for your mini-sites.

Distributing Articles Directly to Websites

The traditional method of article syndication is to submit the informative content to article directories with links to your own site in the author’s box or resource box that the directories allow you to include. I certainly endorse that option. However, there is another method of article marketing that you should employ as well.

If you submit articles directly to websites in your niche, you will find certain additional benefits beyond those that come from limiting yourself to article directories. For example, you will be able to control which websites are publishing that content. You can select websites that recieve targeted traffic from which you might profit. You can make sure that you have longer lasting search engine optimization (SEO) benefits by providing each website with unique content. You can make sure that it is unique by writing a fresh article for each or by thoroughly spinning articles to get more benefit from the same article topic and basic treatment. Still another advantage is that you can place the links to your website within the context of the article. That placement has definite SEO advantages.

There are two ways of actually executing this method of content distribution. One is to contact individual websites, hope that the webmasters will actually read your email (or answer your phone call, if you are lucky enough to locate a phone number) and persuade the decision makers that it is to their advantage to accept the free content that you are offering. You will find that your efforts are occasionally successful, especially if your articles are well written. Unfortunately, many of your attempts at contact will fail or be met by a negative response.

Another way in which you can directly distribute to individual sites is through an automated distribution system that distributes spun versions of your articles directly to niche specific sites who have expressed a positive interest in receiving free content. Such is the foundation of a relatively new service called My Article Network, which I have reviewed elsewhere.

In this unique cooperative, webmasters can enroll their sites without any charge. This assures that the network will always have a growing number of willing and ready websites available in almost any niche with which you would probably want to be associated. (There are no pornographic sites or sites that promote illegal activity.)

Whichever method of direct-to-site distribution you choose, I recommend that all article marketers take advantage of the benefits of expanding your syndication plan beyond only the top tier article directories. I know from experience that the benefits far outweigh the costs of the additional required effort.