Is Experience Needed to Make Money With Articles?

A quick answer to the title question might be: “No experience is needed to make money with articles! And the reason this might be the most appropriate “quick” answer, is that when the subject of article marketing is studied for a longer period, the answer might be very different. The quick answer is easy because there are no applications to fill out – no employment history to provide – and therefore no questions about a job applicant’s experience. This is because article marketers do not often begin their careers as salaried employees within a company structure.

Most article marketers acquire knowledge and writing skills, as well as the tools and resources (computer, Internet access, website, etc.) needed to become top-tier article marketers through trial and error in the early stages of what can otherwise be referred to as independent agent careers. So the independent nature of this type of business might categorize those who are active participants more as self-employed entities than prospective employees who must provide proof of their abilities/histories.

That having been said, the road to a successful article marketing career is well traveled, but not without the collection of hurdles, obstacles and pitfalls, as well as the inevitable setbacks that article marketers can expect to encounter along the way. For any individual to make money with articles, s/he must have the unique ability to write in a way that is satisfactory to both humans and machines; and while s/he begins writing articles to attract readers to a website or blog it soon becomes clear that in order to monetize articles there is a lot more to be learned.

Acquiring the skills necessary to make money with articles can only be made possible with trial and error, which effectively translates to experiences the article writer accumulated during a period long enough to be considered meaningful in academic terms. So while that individual doesn’t really need a previous career as an article marketer in order to become one, s/he can certainly learn the ropes over a period of time.

Most article marketing skills are self-taught; some picked up along the way while writing for self-owned blogs/websites, and others from the teachings (books, articles, videos, etc.) of those already successful in the field. In view of this particular method of “learning the ropes,” aspiring article marketers would seldom enter such a competitive field devoid of any knowledge about that field in which they expect to make a satisfactory income. They would, at a minimum, need a working knowledge of a few basic steps similar to those outline below.

 

First, they’ll will need to know how to select article content that is most likely to make their marketing websites successful, because these websites will most likely be the showcase for their work. Types of article content range from free content (self-written and rehashed) to high dollar content, and each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages (although high dollar content is more likely to provide more of an opportunity to achieve success).

Second, article marketers will need to know how to choose keywords that can help them attract a good amount of traffic; although such keywords should not be overly competitive, but can compete for first or second page ranking. They must realize that selecting highly competitive keywords used by large, mammoth websites are likely to impede ranking on the much desired first or second search results page.

Third, they will need to know how to optimize their websites for various search engines (a skill they should really try to develop – at least partially – during the early days of website/blog ownership), especially if they wish to attract generic (free) traffic from search engines. These search engine optimization (SEO) skills will be the foundation upon which an article marketer’s career will be built, because they will enable marketers to consistently get high rankings for their chosen niche keywords, thereby attracting more visitors (from the search engines) which will often translate into income.

Fourth, an article marketer must choose early on between a large website on which to base his/her internet marketing career, or a small website. Each size will attract a specific type of of reader and the marketer must take the time to study, track and cater to that readership. This is all part of knowing how to market a particular sized website to the intended audience, and whether or not certain ads (paid banner ads, text links, videos, etc.) will appeal to that audience. Small niche sites are usually 2 to 5 pages, and large sites can run into the hundreds of pages.

Article marketers who have developed and mastered these skills and attack them aggressively while still in the early stages of website ownership, or the first few months of learning the ropes of writing articles for money, will eventually become experts in this field and achieve success. Keep in mind that nothing can replace hard work and determination; but if an aspiring article marketer studiously learn the ropes and glean all the available information (tips, techniques, sales tactics, etc.) before s/he delves into a new career, knowledge acquired and skills developed will alleviate some of the grind from such hard work.

Give it all you got

 

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

Affiliate marketing programs are great for generating income from your website if you created a website with that goal in mind, and are committed to working toward such a goal. These programs can also be instrumental in introducing you to the fascinating world of eCommerce. That having been said, it is important to point out the one inescapable fact that most affiliate marketers learn very early in their careers: As website visitors increase, so does the probability of generating income.

An affiliate marketing program can be described as: A company (also referred to as “vendor” or “merchant”) offers to pay website owners/publishers (affiliates) a set amount for either a click-through from their websites, or a set amount for visitors signing up to their service via the affiliates’ links. The most popular method of payment, however, is a percentage of purchases made by visitors as a result of being referred from the affiliates’ websites.

There are some protections built into affiliate programs to safeguard affiliate commissions in the sense that, understanding that visitors often decide against making purchases immediately, a majority of affiliate programs utilize a cookie duration of between 30 and 90 days. What this means, is that as long as the visitors have the cookie in their cache (a small computer file), the affiliate will still recieve his/her as long as that visitor returns and completes the purchase during the specified time.

Proper maintenance of an affiliate’s website combined with searching and implementing affiliations with various merchants constitutes the most important work a new affiliate marketer might have to do in the early days of his/her affiliate marketing business. Yes, there is a lot of money to be made in affiliate marketing, but those who excel in this business take the time to keep their sites up-to-date and well-maintained; but they also search for the best programs to form affiliations with.

So if you’re thinking about affiliate marketing as a career or means of generating income, the one thing that you should keep in mind is to do proper research in order to find reputable programs (vendors/merchants) with which to establish affiliations, while providing them with an active and viable website on which to promote their products, because many merchants will ask to review the site on which their products/services will be promoted.

One other thing to keep in mind is keeping your site competitive, but also neat; so you may not want to place too many banners on your website because this will have an adverse affect on your site in more ways than one. First, too many banners or links placed on any web page will confuse and irritate visitors; second, such displays will drown out your valuable content; and third, visitors will click away from your site, thereby spending the bulk of their time on other sites; fourth, its distracting.

Affiliate tracking can also be a problem in the sense that once you apply to become an affiliate with a company, you will be issued a personalized link or code by that company; and it is very important that you implement (embed) this code into your page correctly, or you could end up sending visitors to the company’s website without recieving compensation for your efforts. Keep in mind that a majority of snippets in that code will contain a unique user ID, which the company uses to identify you as the referring affiliate and insure you receive payment.