Instructions On How To Put Affiliate Links In Your Ezine Articles

The problem with this direct-linking approach (ok, technically it's not quite direct-linking because you're using your redirected domain-name) is that you're depriving yourself of both the two essentials of successful affiliate marketing: the ability to pre-sell effectively other than in the article itself, and the ability to build a list. So you're leaving most of the money on the table. Apart from all of that, it works ...

Well, actually, even then not necessarily - because (although many people do get away with it) it's also by no means unknown for EZA to decline articles on the grounds that the site linked to in the resource-box is "insufficiently informative for our readers" (i.e. "is a sales page").

So, all in all, quite problematic, actually. Sorry.

It totally depends on your goals for your articles. You can place a link to your site in the article and as long as you place it where allowed by EZA (check the terms) it's OK.

However, it may keep others from re-publishing your article so that's another thing to consider. I'm not going to republish any article where someone has a link in the body but I might put a link in the body for some articles myself if it is part of the plan for that niche.

You can't link directly to the affiliate offer but I think this method would meet EZA requirements for a redirect.

There is no hard and fast rule on many IM choices - and this is one of them. Why are you submitting articles? For list building....affiliate sales...site traffic through syndication...branding? Identify your goal and write articles with your goal in mind.

kay

Thanks OP.

Funny how people just disregard this method and continue to jump all over list building like usual.

Yes we know list building is powerful, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of variety in your marketing.

If you can write up a really good article, people will buy the product. Period.

EZA would absolutely love you, I'm sure. Building backlinks to other people's sites isn't my idea of running a business.

I use article directories to get traffic from them to my site (and my list). Not to send my traffic (produced by my backlinks) to them.

I want to develop my properties, not other people's. EZA have 9 (or is it 11?) blocks of AdSense on every article page. What proportion of my traffic will be left by the time they've all negotiated their way through that, and how much will it cost me in lost customers? :confused:

I get some of my articles to number 1 in Google. But the copy that reaches that spot is the one that was originally indexed on my own site, not the one I subsequently submitted to EZA. The primary role of that copy is to display my article to other webmasters and ezine compilers who are using EZA as a directory, i.e. a depository of content freely available to them (with my links in it), for their own purposes, because from this I get future high-quality, high-PR, highly targeted backlinks, traffic, opt-ins and sales. That (i.e. the syndication) is what drives my business, and that's why I'm such an EZA-enthusiast and derive so much income through using their site. This is where the real money is, in article marketing. I don't doubt that you can catch occasional sales from the "fast-traffic, high-CTR, hit-and-run model" of article marketing so widely espoused, too, but it's a real "rinse and repeat" model of very limited long-term potential. Hence all the threads started off here by people saying "Article marketing doesn't work any more": what they're doing isn't really "article marketing" at all - they're trying to do it all through directories, and then wondering why they're not building up any real, residual income from it.

If you send your backlink-generated traffic to other people's sites instead of to your own, two things happen: (i) you lose some of it - maybe a lot of it; (ii) you gradually - but inexorably - bring about a situation in which article directories increasingly outrank your own site for your own keywords, so you're making your business harder to develop in future.

It's not directly on exactly the same subject, but I think you'll find much of the incidental conversation in this thread really helpful.

I'm sure they do, Alexa!

Being a veteran of precisely one EZ submission (I'm a *lousy* writer), I can't possibly speculate...but it would make perfect sense.

I was just pointing out that folks don't need to "splash out" 2 bucks on a new domain name for each offer they want to promote through EZ.

Of course, I would whole-heartedly endorse sending some/most traffic through a lead capture page.

Best wishes,
Steve