jatiN mahindrA doT coM

This is a guest post by Donny Gamble. who writes a blog about creating wealth by combining Internet marketing with network marketing. On it, Donny explains why Internet marketers should have an MLM business.

Article marketing is a very effective way of bringing in sales and many affiliate marketers are already taking advantage of the method. Article marketers submit their articles and reviews to the following places:

1. Article directories
2. Blogs – their own and other related ones

Both are good options, but since this is more or less a blog about blogging, I’d like to give some tips to those of you writing articles on your blog.

Affiliate Marketing for Blogs – Product Reviews

As a blogger, you start off with a big advantage – especially if you’re a blogger who’s been around for some time. You have the benefit of having a readership that trusts your opinion and thus making money is much much easier. Your readers respect your opinion and you should be able to get them to take out their credit card when you recommend something.

Of course this will only be true if you’re a trustworthy blogger who has been around for a long time and have consistently published valuable content. But if this is the case, then your endorsement can be enough to get readers to buy a product. Use this power with caution!

The perspective that you take in your product and service reviews should be that of a user or critic. Nobody wants to hear infomercial material biased towards only the hyped up features of a product. Go over the pros and the cons so that you come across as a legitimate reviewer instead of just another salesman. If you’re honest about a product that you truly endorse, then people are still likely to buy after reading the review.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you can’t promote low quality products! Your readers will abandon your blog and begin to distrust your opinion. All those authority points that you built up by writing post after post with quality content will just go down the drain. So again, do not promote bad products! You will lose your readership and it’s just not worth it.

However, that’s not to say that some marketers do promote bad products are still able to make money. For example, I recently saw a blog that was clearly intended only to be a shady Clickbank money earner. Basically the site had 15 reviews of scammy paid survey products. Although the owner’s readership was zero, he worked on getting traffic to each specific post using article marketing for backlinks and he made a decent amount of money.

I can’t do that because I want a blog – with readership, comments, and interaction with my readers.

When marketing with article directories, people don’t necessarily know who you are and so you can promote bad product after bad product without anyone knowing. You could potentially find some scammy forex product that gives you a $100 commission, start writing related articles on sites like EzineArticles.com and start earning money. All you really need is a domain name and an affiliate landing page.

And you know what, some marketers do use this questionable tactic to earn money. But it’s definitely not a good long term strategy.  In fact, if I was earning money by writing fake reviews, I’d be very worried right now. If you haven’t heard, the FTC is starting to crack down on this market.  People were writing fake success stories for certain products only to promote them and make a commission. As a result, many people bought into it and were obviously scammed (and sometimes even experienced negative health consequences).  The acai berry diet is notorious for this. With the new FTC rules, the bloggers themselves will be held responsible for false reviews and fake testimonials.

Writing false testimonials is illegal and pointless. Sure, you can make a quick buck but you end up hurting others and it’s just not worth it in the long run. The real money is in promoting quality services and it always will be that way.

My advice: Promote quality products. You’ll be able to write real honest reviews, get sales, collect large commissions, and not have to worry about being sued one day.

Internet Marketing Blog – Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.




Article Marketing, Blogging, and the Real Truth About What You Should Promote and How

Related Posts:

• Does a Paid Review Mean a Positive Review? My Recent Blogging Dilemma
• 10 Reasons Why You Should Write Product Reviews On Your Blog
• 10 Easy Methods to Promote Your Blog Reviews
• Blogging is 100% About Building Trust – 8 Ways to Get Me to Trust You
• The 12 Essential Elements of a Highly Effective Blog Review – Make More Money

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