Get article indexed?

Respectfully, Rex, this "direct linking" is an absolutely dreadful way to try to do "article marketing". Not only will conversions be extremely low, but it's not actually building a business at all - it's just a constantly repeated series of "hit and runs", except that most of them will be "miss and runs". An affiliate marketing "business" develops assets: websites (even if they're only one-page blogs on free hosting) and lists.

What you describe is a real "rinse and repeat" business model (that's not a good thing!). :p

Don't worry about that, Rex. It isn't so much a "dumb question" as a "necessary question about a dumb method", anyway. And that's not your fault.

See if this post helps you: it contains in just a few sentences the underlying basis of affiliate marketing (it refers specifically to "ClickBank sales" but don't let that put you off: that was just the context in which it arose, but the reality is that it applies to most other "affiliate sales", too): http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5210243

Now, to try to answer your specific question ...

Possibly, a very little bit, but it depends on whose sites they're published on, and it's such a bad business model that it's unlikely to make much real difference anyway. What you really need to do is to have those articles on your own site in the first place. That's barely any more difficult than what you've been doing, and it doesn't have to cost anything at all, and it builds a business.

It would be extraordinarily wasteful to spend your time and energy building backlinks to other people's sites, rather than to your own. It actually makes no sense at all. And in any case, it's hardly a very good idea to base your business on attracting its primary traffic through search engines. Especially not at the moment.

This wasn't even a good or viable business model in 2008, when I started off - and it's gradually got worse and worse since then, I'm afraid.

Apologies for being so realistic - and I hope it doesn't come across as critical - not my intention at all. The reality is that at the moment you're trying to do something that's actually stacking the deck very strongly against you.

Rex, this marketing method (loosely described as 'Bum Marketing'), had its heyday probably up until 2008. As Alexa has already pointed out, it's very hit and miss, and is absolutely no foundation for building a solid, expanding online business.

If you intent to use articles as a marketing backbone, this is great. Executed the right way, it's a superior marketing method that can free you entirely from any dependence upon Big G.

There have been hundreds of threads here devoted to true article marketing. Do some searches on expert Warriors such as Alexa Smith, Bill Platt, Celent, Joe Robinson, John Coutts, John McCabe, Mike Tucker, MYOB, Nicola Lane, Paul Myers, Richard Van, TiffLee (my sincere apologies to anyone I've missed). Their contributions are priceless.

I have to disagree with Alexa on one point - I have seen article marketing work for affiliate products, sure it may be an ancient way to do it but if you write a good page on a Web 2.0 Property like Squidoo or Blogger for example and the competition is low then a few backlinks to those articles can get you on page one of google.

Not all the time but it can work in the right area.

Sorry to put a spanner in the works but I think by saying it does not work when it has for so many people is maybe the wrong advice. It can work but not all the time.

I guess, as far as you are pointing to your product landing page, the backlinks will not help you to rank well on search engines like Google as far as it is affiliate link. Anyway, if your articles have good traffic - That may give more clicks to your affiliate product and that leads to more sales in return,