Why Your Affiliate Marketing Articles Should (Almost) Never Pitch Products

As an affiliate, the main goal of your article marketing strategy is to drive targeted traffic to your website in order to sell the affiliate products you are promoting.  When trying to come up with article topics, the natural starting point for many new affiliate marketers is to simply write articles extolling all of the incredible benefits and fabulous  features of their product.

For example, let’s say Bob, our fictional “newbie” affiliate marketer is promoting an ebook called “End Panic Attacks Forever in Just 7 Days”.

Taking his first crack at article marketing, Bob would probably be inclined to sit down and write a nice short article entitled “How to End Panic Attacks Forever in Just 7 Days”.  The body of the article would  talk about how great the ebook is at curing panic attacks and conclude with Bob’s bio and a link to his affiliate website.

Bob would then submit his article, sit back and wait for the traffic to roll in.

Sounds like a pretty clever approach, right?  WRONG!

Remember that your aim with article marketing is twofold:

1.  to come across as an expert in your particular field who provides readers with high quality, valuable information which helps solve their problems; and

2.  to provide quality articles that publishers will want to publish (thus increasing the exposure and search rankings of your site).

If you write articles that sound “sales pitchy”, you will fail in your article marketing efforts.

Why?

Well, first, your readers can smell a sales pitch from a thousand miles away.  Readers are not interested in an article that looks like an advertisement for a product. As soon as your prospect senses that you’re trying to sell them something, they will lose interest and stop reading.  They will never get to the resource box at the of the article and won’t click through to your site.   And no clicks = no sales.

Your readers expect quality, helpful information and NOT a sales pitch when they open the article.  If you provide real help and come across as an expert source of relevant information, your article will build rapport and trust with your readers and they will be much more likely click through to your site to learn more and discover your affiliate product.

Secondly, most quality publishers have policies against publishing articles that are promotional in nature (i.e. articles that appear to be written specifically about the author’s own affiliate products, business or websites.)  So you could write a hundred articles about your affiliate products and submit them to a hundred different publishers but much of your work will be wasted if quality publishers aren’t interested in your content.

Be an Expert, Not a Salesperson

With the one exception noted at the end of this tutorial, ensure that all of your articles are informational and educational only.  Take off your “affiliate sales” hat and put on your “knowledgeable expert” hat.  The only place that you should ever refer to your site is in the resource box  (i.e. the author bio area underneath the article).

So, if you can’t write about your affiliate product or website in the body of the article, just what can you write about that will result in your articles being accepted by quality publishers, bring value to your potential customers and inspire people to click through to your website?

Although it sounds like a large order, it really isn’t.  You just need to be a little creative and follow the right step-by-step approach.  With a little experience, you’ll be pumping out quality articles in no time!

So, let’s go back to our fictional affiliate marketer who has a web site promoting an ebook called “End Panic Attacks Forever in Just 7 Days”.  We’ve already decided that it  would be a gigantic mistake for him to write articles promoting the ebook.  So, what would be some good topics for his article campaign? Well….

How about the topics suggested by these potential article titles?

“The 5 Symptoms Of Panic Attacks”

“What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Panic Attack Remedies”

“Why Severe Panic Attacks May Shorten Your Life”

“3 Easy Ways to Cure Your Panic Attacks For Good”

These are just a few possible topics that we came up with in less than 2 minutes and each of them  would be of great interest to someone who is worried that they are suffering from panic attacks.  They would also be seen as educational and valuable from a publisher’s perspective.  All of which means more clicks through by potential customers to your web site, wider publication of your articles, better search engine rankings and last, but not least, more sales.  Cha ching!

(By the way, If you’re having your own little panic attack right now, worrying that you’re not enough of an expert to come up with great article ideas and content, fear not!   We’ll be going through this in the next few tutorials.)

Now, as we’ve already established, Bob absolutely should not mention his web site or the product he is selling in the body of the article. Instead, he will use a smartly crafted resource box (i.e. bio) at the end of the article as the appropriate place for him to talk about himself, his business and his website.  It might look like this:

“Bob Smith has helped more than 5,000 people cure their panic attacks.  Discover more and grab your copy of his free report, Panic Attack Symptoms and Remedies at ==> EndYourPanicAttacksNow.com.”

Because he has written about a hot topic and kept the body of his article strictly educational, Bob’s readers will get to the end of his article and see his bio and link to his website.  Having established himself as an expert in the field (and in this example, offered a free bonus report!), his readers will be naturally curious to see what else he has to say and will click through to his site.  That’s where he can offer more information and a sales pitch for the ebook that he is promoting.  His readers will be much more receptive to his sales pitch because he has established some trust and credibility with them through his helpful article.

Writing as an expert in your niche instead of about the product you are selling is a much more subtle but effective way of driving traffic to your site and increasing your affiliate commissions.  So remember – always write about your niche and not about your product!

Up Next:  Submitting Your Articles For Publication.

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Exception for Product Reviews: The one exception to the advice given above is where you are writing a review of the product you are marketing.  In that case, you can obviously refer to the product in the body of your article but be really careful to make the review as objective and unbiased as possible.  In short, be honest.   Remember that your readers will always see right through the fluff and hype of a blatant sales pitch and they will ignore you and your articles if you don’t offer value.  Also, if you review a product, make sure that you don’t refer to the product again in your resource box/bio.  Again, it will give your article the appearance of a pushy sales pitch.

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