Making serious money online is not as easy as most people assume. If it were, there would be many workplaces void of staff and a lot more people enjoying the comfort of working from home. Whilst earning untold riches from the internet may be out of reach for most people, earning a nice bit of extra cash to help with the bills, or pay for that much needed vacation, is something that can be achieved by anyone with a computer, internet connection and reasonable writing skills.
Most online marketing requires a web hosting package, fancy websites and the need to learn some graphical or computer programming ability. All of which can be time-consuming and expensive. This simple method requires none of those and is the ideal solution for a beginner, or anyone that has a limited budget. Additionally, the whole process could easily be up-scaled and outsourced to provide a more substantial income if required.
This article explains how to earn money from commission-based sales using one of the oldest and most reliable forms of online promotion – article marketing. The great thing about this method is the initial financial outlay is under a dollar and the internet already provides all the research content and inspiration you will ever need.
Here then, is a step-by-step tutorial for earning extra cash from article marketing.
Step 1: Signing Up for a Promotional Account
The very first thing you need to do is find a product to promote. The simplest products to promote when first starting out are digital products.
These are downloadable products – like software and eBooks – and offer the highest commissions, due to the low cost of overheads to the content producers. If you are unsure what commission means, it is simply a percentage of the actual product sale that is awarded to the promoter (i.e. you).
There are many websites that provides commission sales services but the most popular and easiest to use for a new starter is probably Clickbank. This is a website that is reliable, reputable and pays on time every month. Visit this website, and follow the instructions to sign up. Remember, you are interested in promoting products so need to follow the instructions for that service. Once you are done, it is time to move to the next step.
Step 2: Choosing a Product to Promote
Once you have an account, you will need to find a product to promote. You can locate these by selecting the Promote Products tab, or by looking in the Marketplace. There are many options to choose from but the smartest choice is to search for a category that you are familiar with – something that you have firsthand knowledge of, are interested in, or maybe already do as a hobby. If you can find something that you already know a fair bit about, then this will mean less research and will make the actual article writing a much easier experience.
Once you have found a category, have a look at the products that are available to promote within that option. The main factors you need to look at are:
Avg $/sale: This is how much money you will earn from each sale that comes via your article promotions. Look for at least $20 per sale.
Avg %/sale: This is how much commission the seller is offering. Only choose products that have a commission percentage of 60% or higher.
Grav: This stands for gravity and the higher this score, the more successful the product is. There are a few grey areas with the gravity factor and you will learn more about this as you become more experienced, but for now, look for a product with a gravity of 50 or higher.
There are other factors that can be studied but for the purpose of getting started and earning money as soon as possible – these 3 factors will be more than enough to find a suitable product to begin with.
Once you have found a suitable category and a product that fits the 3-point criteria – click on the actual product name and have a look at the main sales page. Look to see if the website looks professional and that the content is free of poor grammar and cheap graphics. A good benchmark to set yourself when judging a sales page is if you were to land on that page would you read what it had to say, consider buying, or click off it immediately.
If the product page is cheap and unbelievable, ignore the product. If the page looks good and has compelling content, add it to your list of possibilities. Never go with the first thing you like: have a look at a few and choose a winner. You may want to promote a second product after you get the hang of article marketing, so open a notepad file and keep a list of your top products.
When you find a suitable product, click on the Promote button next to the product description on Clickbank and this will open a new window. Enter your account ID and you will be given what is called a HopLink. This is your affiliate link and is how Clickbank keeps track of your commissions – if anyone visits the product page and buys via this link you will be credited with the sale. Copy the top HopLink (the one in black) and save it. The best place to store this is with the top products you have already saved.
Step 3: Simple Keyword Research
You are not looking to have a website ranked in the search engines and the article directories you will be submitting your articles to have excellent authority and high quality scores, so your articles can easily find their way onto the first page of Google, Bing and Yahoo.
You do need to perform some simple keyword research, so that you can select optimized article titles, give your article a better chance of been located via a search engine query and assist with choosing a suitable domain name.
Once you have chosen your product, try to think of the word, or phrase, that you would type into a search engine, in order to find that product. Pretend you do not know the name of the product.
For example, if the product was a system for reducing the time it took to study for exams, you may search for such a product by entering “speed study” or “study fast” into a search engine.
Once you have thought of a few ideas, go to the Google External Keyword Tool, this is free and can be found at: adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Complete the Captcha form to access the page and then add your selection of keywords into the “Word or phrase box” (found at the on top left of the page). You will be given a long list of results based on your keyword searches. You are looking to see that your keyword(s) have a Global Monthly Search of 500 or above. The two example given (speed study and study fast) had 6600 and 9900 searches respectively, so either would be fine.
You will probably find a few variations of your keywords in the search results, if these have over 500 searches, and are relevant to your topic, note them down. You should create a list of suitable keyword phrases as you will require these shortly.
Step 4: Get a Cheap Domain Name
The only reason for purchasing a domain name is that the main article directory used in this tutorial does not allow direct affiliate links to your chosen Clickbank product’s sales page. In order to send readers to that page, you will need to use a domain name redirect which is perfectly legal and permitted by the site. You will not need to create a website, or obtain web hosting.
At the time of writing the cheapest domain extension found is a .info extension from GoDaddy. GoDaddy are selling .info extensions for 89 cents. Whilst .com and .net may be better for websites, for article marketing .info is a good extension as many people see this as an extension associated with further information.
It is free to sign up for a GoDaddy account. Make sure you choose the option to search for available .info domain names, then enter your first keyword into the search box and click to see if it is available. If it is then buy it – if not – then you will be offered some variations. Remember, you can add a hyphen (-) between words if the initial keyword is unavailable.
You may have to try a few of your keywords before you find an available option. As long as the .info domain name contains your keyword phrase that will be fine. Once you have found a suitable domain name, purchase this by following the instructions the site provides.
You will need to add a redirect to this new domain name once you have completed your first article, so keep your GoDaddy account information saved in an accessible place for the time being.
Step 5: Writing an Article
You now have the product you wish to promote and a suitable domain name. Now it is time to start writing those articles. If you have chosen a subject that is familiar to you, this will be easier than having to research entirely foreign subject matter.
Keep your primary keyword to hand and also one, or two, related keywords as you need to include these within the article title and body.
Have a look at the actual product page and get a feel for what the product is about and use your keywords to perform some search engine queries. Look at some of the search engine results and see what information is contained within those websites.
You need to create a compelling title: “How-to”, “Top 10 (or 3, or 5 etc)” and “How You Can” titles always prove popular. Whatever title you choose, it should contain your primary keyword. This will be the keyword that should be contained within your domain name.
Now write an article that is 350-500 words. The article must include your main keywords in the first and end paragraph. You need to have the main keyword, and the other secondary keywords in the rest of the article but they MUST NOT amount for more than 3-5% of the total word density of the entire article. This would be seen as keyword spamming and would lead to your article being rejected.
Never try to pitch a sale or tell people to visit the affiliate site within the article itself and do not include links within the article body.
Once you have written your first article you need to sign up to an article directory.
Step 6: Submitting to Ezine Articles
Ezine Articles is probably the most popular article directory available today and its content commands a lot of search engine results space. Ezine Articles is stricter when it comes to submissions, and quality, but the end results are worth the extra effort. Visit ezinearticles.com and sign up for an author account.
Once this is done, you can submit your first article. Login, go to the Article Manager tab and then select Submit Article from the drop-down menu. You will be taken to a page where you have to fill in your articles details. This is fairly straightforward:
Select your author name
Select a category and sub-category: You will be presented with options – simply choose the best genre that fits your article topic.
Fill in the article title
Write a short summary: This is what visitors will initially see and is what will entice them to read your full article. You can simply paste in the first paragraph from your article, but it is better to summarize the whole article and what advantages there are to reading the full version.
Paste in your actual article: There is a text editor here with the usual functions.
Keywords: Ezine Articles will suggest some keywords for you based on your article content, but you can select your own. These are terms that people may use when searching for articles on the site.
Resource box: This is an essential part of your submission and will be the subject of the next step.
It would be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the rules and regulations of Ezine Articles. Read their available information and check out their tutorials. They do offer some sound advice that will help new writers.
Step 7: The Resource Box
This is the only place you can place your links and is where you will encourage the reader to click on these and be taken to the affiliate product website.
There are many techniques that can be employed here and as you start to submit more articles you should try different resource box styles and see which style produces the better results. Ezine Articles provides an excellent author area for article analytics and you can track article views and URL clicks.
Once you become more proficient you will learn which resource box method works best: short or long; hard sell or gentle persuasion; one link, two links or three. To give you an idea of the type of resource box entry you should be looking for, here are two examples using the “speed study” example from Step 3:
“If you are interested in reducing the time it takes to study and want more free time, why not visit speedstudy.info (this would be your URL)”
“Are you sick of wasting hours studying when you could be socializing? Do you want to learn how to speed study (this can be an anchor text link)? Then go to speedstudy.info and learn to cut your study time by half.”
You will be required to add links using simple HTML. If you are unclear how this is done, here are two examples you can copy:
<a href=”Your .info domain URL here”>Domain URL here</a>
<a href=”Your .info domain URL here”>keyword (i.e. speed study) here</a>
Once you have completed the resource box, you can preview the article to make sure everything looks fine and that your links are good. Once you are happy, you are almost ready to submit your first article.
Step 8: Redirecting Your GoDaddy Domain to Your Clickbank HopLink
You will need to visit GoDaddy, login, go to your account and then click on the tab for Domain Forwarding. Now all you do is follow the instructions and add the Clickbank product HopLink you saved as the redirect. This means that whenever anyone clicks on your resource box links, they will be redirected straight to the affiliate sales page.
Once this is done, you can now go ahead and submit your article.
As a new author, it may take up to 7 days for your article to be approved. Don’t waste this time, start writing more articles using the same methods explained in Step 5.
Step 9: Ping-o-Matic and Submit Express
Once your article is approved, wait one day then go to pingomatic.com, fill in the relevant details and ping your article to numerous RSS aggregators. Many people read online content via RSS readers and this will give your article greater visibility. If you are unsure how to find the exact URL for your article, go to your Ezine Articles author section, locate your article and click on the title. This will take you to the actual page where it is displayed. The actual URL for your article can be found in your web browser address bar.
Now visit submitexpress.com, go to the Free Webmaster Tools area and enter your article URL (as explained above) into the Free Submissions box, then submit. This will submit your articles URL to over 40 search engines.
These two extra steps provide greater visibility for your articles and could result in many more affiliate link URL clicks, increasing the chance of more affiliate sales and boosting your commission-based earnings.
Step 10: Submitting to More Article Directories
This final step can also assist in more sales. The more article directories that display your articles, the more people will see your links and the more chance you have of making sales.
Ezine Articles should be the first directory you submit to and the site insists on original content. This means that you cannot submit articles to other directories, or use the content elsewhere except your own website.
Your best articles should be reserved for Ezine Articles, but if you can easily write more articles and feel that they would be best served elsewhere, then submitting to lower-rated directories is a good option. Another advantage is that many of these directories will accept articles immediately and have a lower standard of editorial guidelines (i.e. they will accept direct affiliate links and are less strict about grammar, sentence structure and original content).
Here are a few alternative article directories:
GoArticles
Article Dashboard
SearchWarp
Article Alley
ArticleBase
Practice Makes Perfect
Article marketing is by no means a method for overnight riches. To begin with, this is a system for earning a steady rate of reasonable money every month and it does include some actual work. But it is an ideal solution for somebody that has a decent amount of free time, anyone that finds themselves with nothing to do between dropping the kids of at school and picking them up, or anyone unlucky enough to be out of work.
Once you master the steps and get more proficient with article writing, the whole concept gets easier and less time-consuming. Some products will convert better than others, some links will lead to more sales and some campaigns might rake in an unexpectedly big monthly paycheck.
One of the best advantages with this system is that the articles you submit can still convert to sales and commission earnings many months after submission. This is the beauty of search engine archiving. Article marketing is a popular system that has been a proven money-earner for many people for many years and is an excellent resource for earning extra money every month.
Utilizing Outsourcing and Upscale Article Marketing
Many people become very successful at article marketing and decide to concentrate more time and effort – turning it into a full-time career. Some clever marketers hire people to write the articles for them (known as outsourcing) and due to the volumes of article submissions they achieve, they achieve more visits to affiliate sites via their links and increased commissions through extra sales. After subtracting the cost of the outsourcing from the amount earned from commission, some full-time article marketers earn a very comfortable living working from home.