Have you ever wondered why there is so much hype about article marketing? Perhaps there may be some truths in the midst of all that noise.

Let’s take a look at why a marketer should go into article marketing.

1) Immediate traffic.

This is something that every marketer wants. Who has all day to wait for traffic to arrive? You want to be able to test your conversions immediately. Article marketing can provide you with instant traffic. The traffic comes from the RSS subscribers.

2) Mid to long term traffic.

As your article remains online for an indefinite period of time, you get to receive mid to long term traffic. New visitors may still find your articles a few years down the road, click on the link in your author resource box, and visit your website.

3) There is a cumulative effect.

When you are just starting out, you may see just a trickle of traffic as you have too few articles online. But as you progress, you soon find that you get more and more traffic. That’s due to having more and more articles published on the world wide web. The more articles you write, the more you grow your traffic levels.

4) More back links for SEO benefit.

You may not be aware of this if you know nothing about SEO. But you are actually doing it. By publishing more articles, you get more back links to your site. Each link is counted as a “vote” for your site. In other words, the more votes you get, the higher your rankings will be in the search results.

5) Ease of execution.

Article marketing is so easy that anyone can get started immediately. You don’t have to worry about complicated software or anything like that. As long as you can write in simple English and can express your ideas, you can get involved.

6) Position yourself as an expert.

Write and submit articles that are useful and valuable. When you do that, visitors tend to see you as an expert in your field. In other words, don’t ever attempt to submit crappy information in an attempt to make a measly sale. Always think about the visitor and share your best information. In time to come, they will come to trust you and start to do business with you.

7) Free traffic!

If you really think about it, there is no such thing as totally free traffic. Free here means that you don’t have to pay a single cent to start receiving traffic. But you do have to put in some time to make this work. Time then, becomes the only price to pay. That means everyone can jump on the bandwagon and get traffic to a website. This method is especially useful for those with a tight budget.

Darren Chow is a full time article marketer and SEO specialist who has helped hundreds of clients promote thousands of websites. Join the article marketing newsletter to find out more about how he gets sites to rank well in the search engines.

Are you a beginner trying to learn how to get into affiliate marketing? If you have been poking around looking for more information, you now know that success is not something that will happen for you overnight.

Perhaps you may even feel a bit overwhelmed due to the plethora of information that is out there on the Internet.

Let me just give you the big picture here so that you know what you are getting yourself into.

You need these various components for your affiliate business to work.

A) Traffic.

This is a must. Without traffic, you won’t see any sales. Don’t think that you can set up a website and customers will come. They won’t. You have to actively promote your business. There are many methods to drive traffic online. Pick up at least one or two methods like you like doing, and go on from there.

I highly recommend article marketing. This is a traffic generation method that anyone can use. You can use it to drive traffic to your site in the blink of an eye. As long as you can write in simple words, you can use article marketing to drive traffic. Of course, there are various tips and tricks that will help make your marketing efforts more effective. You need to learn the ins and outs of article marketing in order to succeed.

B) Products that convert.

These are products that you own, or they can be other people’s products. Strictly speaking, affiliate marketing is about promoting someone else’s products. But you make a lot more money if you have your own products. As a beginner, just try to promote other people’s products so that you get a better feel of what converts, and what doesn’t. You can easily come up with your own products later on, and they will have a higher chance of success.

Don’t just choose a product just for the sake of earning money. You will have to promote these products. So you are better off choosing a product that is related to a niche that you are passionate about. That will motive you to market the products. Your strong believe and conviction will also help convince potential customers to buy what you are recommending.

C) A list of customers.

List building should be the core focus of your activities online. On the Internet, everything happens at the speed of light (maybe faster?). When things change, you want to be able to go back to your customers and update them.

In addition, you also want to be able to sell them additional solutions after the first sales. Don’t just sell them once, and then go chase after new customers. Your affiliate business will grow with your your list.

From the above, you can immediately see that there are various aspects of the business that you need to take care of. Don’t make the mistake of just driving traffic, and then neglect the other aspects of your business. You would just be wasting time and effort.

Darren Chow is a full time article marketer and SEO specialist who has helped hundreds of clients promote thousands of websites. Join the article marketing newsletter to find out more about how he gets sites to rank well in the search engines.

So you have been exposed to all the hype about the newest money making product on the Internet. You bought the product, devoured the information, and you can’t wait to start. But before jumping on to the band wagon, here are a tips for you.

Tip 1: Choose your web host carefully.

This is your most basic utility. If your website goes offline, you can’t make any sales. So choose a reliable host. Very often, you will come across promotions offering unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains, etc. You have to be a little careful here. Some hosting companies do go under because they simply don’t have the expertise and support resources to offer such hosting plans.

There are a few leading companies in the market that have been doing a great job so far. But there is no such thing as unlimited everything. Some limit you to the number of databases, while others limit you to the number of files per account. So read the terms and conditions carefully. If the plans don’t make sense to you, then head the opposite direction.

Tip 2: Choose a domain name with your target keywords in it.

You will be doing this for more search traffic. The search engines do rank sites with the primary keywords in the top level domain name. For example, if you are trying to target the golf niche, then choose a domain name like “golflessons” (without spacing) or “golfcourses”, etc. You get the idea.

Tip 3: Make up your mind about who you want to help!

Your business should always be people centric. In other words, making money is fine, but you have to know where you are adding value. Who are these people you want to help? Always remember, people are the main reason you are in business. Making money is just a by product. When you have a clear target market, it’s easier to maneuver.

Tip 4: Specialize in something.

Don’t be a jack of all trades and try to sell everything under the sun. That’s just unwise. Be a specialist. Specialize in just one or two key areas and you are in a better position to help others. For instance, I personally specialize in SEO and article marketing. So that’s what I talk about most of the time. You have to specialize so that you become really good at something.

Tip 5: Acquiring trust online.

So many new marketers make the mistake of not promoting themselves as experts. In order to gain trust, you have to let others see you as an expert. Share your knowledge and information. Provide solutions to other people’s problems. When others trust you, they are more likely to buy from you. You will experience much better conversion rates.

That also means that whatever you are selling should not be evil. Be honest and sincere. Others will be able to connect with you in a much deeper level.

Darren Chow is a full time article marketer and SEO specialist who has helped hundreds of clients promote thousands of websites. Join the article marketing newsletter to find out more about how he gets sites to rank well in the search engines.

Are you starting a new website? If you are, then you have several decisions you need to make. First, you have to decide whether your new site is going to be a large site with hundreds of pages of content, or is it going to be a site with just a few pages. Knowing that will help you decide on the appropriate CMS to use.

CMS used to cost individuals and small businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fortunately, all thanks to the open source community, you now get fully functional software at zero cost. In fact, you may get confused over the right CMS to install because there are so many options out there.

My personal favorite, is a CMS known as Wordpress.

Wordpress started out as a blogging platform. If you are running a blog, then this is the software that you must install. However, it has since evolved into a much more versatile application. Let’s take a look at what Wordpress can do for you.

1) Template based.

This is very useful for a simple website. There are no lack of templates available for download on the Internet. Most of them are free, provided you add a link back to the creator of the template. If you wish to remove the credits, you can always pay for a template. Changing a template is as simple as pushing a button, and the entire website looks different in an instant!

2) Tons of additional plugins.

You have tons of useful plugins to choose from. These are developed by third party developers and most of them are free as well. My favorite plugins include Flickr Tag, Pretty Links, SEO all in One, and Akismet (for trapping spam comments).

3) Intuitive admin panel.

This is a bonus for me because I just hate complex admin panels! Wordpress has a very intuitive admin panel, which means that you can get things done without having to read lengthy and boring manuals. For example, installing a plugin takes just 2 easy steps.

Step 1: Upload all the files to the plugin folder.
Step 2: Click on “Activate” in the admin panel.

That’s all.

4) Active community.

Having an active Wordpress community means that the software is constantly being upgraded. There will always be new and innovative plugins that will be made available for download. Bloggers are constantly exchanging ideas and coming up with new stuff each week. Do you know that you can even add leads to your auto responder as soon as someone leaves a comment on your blog? That’s innovation.

5) Customizable.

Finally, Wordpress is a very customizable system. For instance, you never wanted a blog. You just want a website with a few static pages. No problem, you can easily customize Wordpress to become a website CMS. All comments can be closed, so that no one can leave comments. And you can add pages to the website like you would for a normal website. It even comes with an easy to use WYSIWYG text editor.

Darren Chow is a full time article marketer and SEO specialist who has helped hundreds of clients promote thousands of websites. Join the article marketing newsletter to find out more about how he gets sites to rank well in the search engines.

Many newcomers coming into the online marketing business try to avoid incurring expenses at all cost. So they end up refraining from buying everything. A domain name is just one example.

The question is, do you really need a domain name?

Let’s take a look at what a domain name is. In reality, computers don’t care about names and labels. When you send a request from a computer, the network uses a series of numbers to identify the computers and servers. This is called an IP address.

Every server has got an IP address so that when you send a request, the network knows where to send the data. That’s how computers and servers work - they remember systems using numbers. However, human beings operate in a completely different manner.

Most of us find it difficult to remember numbers. So someone came up with the idea of using alphabets to represent the numbers. These are known as TLD, or Top Level Domain names. Initially, there are only dot com, dot org, and dot net domain names. You can add any phrase in front of the com, net, and org as long as there are no invalid characters. The entire string of characters is known as a domain name.

You can own your own domain name by registering for one yourself. Before you do so, let’s take a look at how a domain name can benefit you.

1) Easy to remember.

If you are just starting a business, you want visitors to remember your website and revisit your site. So it doesn’t make much sense to try and register a long domain name that is very difficult to remember.

2) Branding purposes.

Once you own the domain name, you can brand it in whatever way you like. Remember, it’s your brand now. When done correctly, branding can lead to increase in sales.

3) Full control over your own site.

Sometimes, when you host sites on free hosts (yes, they offer you a free url or subdomain), you undertake the risk of having your sites deleted without warning. This can happen when free services close down, or they face database issues. You don’t have full control over your own site if you do not own the domain.

4) SEO benefits.

The search engines treat each domain separately. In other words, if you have your site hosted on someone else’s domain, your rankings get affected if the sites get penalized by the search engines. There is nothing you can do about this. In addition, you can choose keywords to target and have them in your domain name. This will help boost your search rankings.

5) Installation of useful applications.

Most free host will come with their own software (e.g. CMS). If you want to install additional plugins to help you power the site, you realize that you can’t do so. If you own your own domain, you can easily customize the site to suit your own needs.

6) Affordable!

Finally, be reminded that it’s very affordable to own a domain name! A Dot Com costs about $8 or so for a full year. Hosting comes rather cheap too!

Darren Chow is a full time article marketer and SEO specialist who has helped hundreds of clients promote thousands of websites. Join the article marketing newsletter to find out more about how he gets sites to rank well in the search engines.