I’ll tell you. I’ve heard every excuse, misconception and myth about why people can’t profit from article marketing. And to tell you the honest-to-God truth. They’re all myths! Lies even!

The bottom line is article marketing has never been more effective. A lot of the people who are promoting these myths just don’t want to put in the small amount of work (yes there is a bit of work involved) necessary to excel in and get all of the benefits of article marketing. And believe me, the benefits are many. They include - but are not limited to:

● increased traffic ● more subscribers, and ● higher sales of your products and services.

That being said, let’s lay everything out on the table and debunk the myths that others are saying to prevent you from getting all of these benefits.

Myth #1: It doesn’t work anymore.

The Truth: Article marketing does work. But you have to work a bit, too. Learn about your audience and give them quality articles. That’s really all there is to it. The people who say it doesn’t work are the ones who’ve spewed out endless amounts of poorly written articles with little or no value in them for their audience. If you do the exact opposite, your articles will be popular, they will be published and people will visit your Web site for more information.

Myth #2: No one’s publishing articles anymore.

The Truth: Some ezine publishers have shied away from publishing other people’s work - with “some” being the operable word here. Fact is, there are still ezine publishers who both want and need good content. You do have to work to develop good relationships, though. I suggest that in addition to distributing your articles to article directories that you also send them to a core group of the most influential ezine publishers in your industry.

Don’t send them an article at first. Just soften the ground by introducing yourself and inviting them to see the articles on your Web site. Or suggest they Google the title of one of your previously published articles. That way, they’ll see the quality in your articles without feeling like you’re just another one of the page rank fanatics who only want to shovel out keyword-rich articles instead of content-rich articles. Yes, there is a huge difference, see Myth #5 for more information on that one.

Myth #3: The page ranking fanatics have ruined everything.

The Truth: Granted page rank fanatics - the people who pay $10 per article for a ghostwriter to churn out keyword-rich articles - have made it a bit more challenging for us content-rich article creators. Not to worry, there is a solution to all of this. Write creative articles. The bottom line is these types of marketers have actually raised the bar of those of us who are focused on quality. We just have to be even better at giving our audience the content they’re hungry for - without giving away our most valuable information. After all, we have to save something for our fee-based information products.

Myth #4: It’s too hard to write a good article myself.

The Truth: No, it’s not too hard. In fact, it’s rather easy when you have a system. I know, you’re thinking that since I’m a professional writer that of course it’s easy for me. Actually, I still have to follow article templates sometimes when I write. And the way I became such a pro was simply by following a system. Another thing, although I am paid considerable sums to write articles - they’re travel articles. That’s a far cry from the content-rich article industry. Bottom line: Professional writer or not, anyone with a decent command of the English language can write clever content-rich articles. The key is to stay firmly focused on the needs of your target audience. Bottom line: If you can give a colleague advice on a problem he’s having in your profession, then you can write a content-rich article.

Myth #5: It’s impossible to write a quality article that’s also rich in keywords.

The Truth: It’s important to have a certain amount of keywords in your articles. After all, that’s also a very important of getting your article published on the Internet. I usually just write my articles without a care in the world about keywords. I focus on my target audience and nothing else when I’m writing. And my articles do very well in terms of page views on article directories such as http://www.ezinearticles.com. I also get several incoming links to my site from the articles being published throughout the Internet.

Final thought: There’s no need to shy away from using article marketing to get more traffic to your Web site. In fact, it’s one of the least expensive, but most effective ways to create a flurry of activity and traffic for your site.

Boost traffic, get more leads and increase sales by learning the secrets to writing well and writing fast. Get Lisa Sparks’ no-cost special report on the secrets to making article marketing work for you by visiting: http://www.ArticleSecretsRevealed.com

One of the most important things you can do to maximally monetize your list is to create a sales funnel.

So what is a sales funnel? Imagine a regular funnel, like the one you might use at home to help you pour something. At the one end, the funnel is really wide, and at the other end the funnel is really narrow. Now imagine that your email campaign, or subscriber base is the big end of the funnel – everyone on your list enters the funnel at the big end. For example, they all entered when you ‘sold’ them a ‘free’ ebook – they really bought it from you by paying you with their name and email address. At the small end of the funnel is the few people who go all the way through your sales funnel and buy your most expensive product – for example, a $5000 training course. And in between the big end of the funnel and the narrow end of the funnel are people who are sequentially buying increasingly more expensive (and more advanced, more valuable) products in your line of products.

In theory, your opt in list acquisition cost (the cost of acquiring your new subscribers, for example advertising costs, the cost of your time in writing and submitting articles, etc.) should be recouped very soon in the campaign by the subscribers who purchase your entry level product (the next product after the free item). This, by the way, can often be accomplished by the redirect sales page the new subscriber sees after opting in to your list).

So the sales funnel is where you make your money. You make money each time someone on your list buys something from you over and above your entry level – big end of the funnel – product. The more effectively you build your sales funnel and add products to your sales funnel, the more money, the more profit you make.

In some way, you can almost think of the idea that the purpose of your free item and your entry level product are simply to get subscribers and buyers into your sales funnel, so that they can purchase the other items in your sales funnel.

If you can think about it this way, that the sole purpose of building your subscriber list is for the purpose of filling up your sales funnel and selling the items in your sales funnel.

I think that many people think that the purpose of their email list is so that they can sell their first product, but that product should really only break even. The purpose of the free item and the entry level product is simply to get subscribers into your sales funnel so you can sell them items from your sales funnel.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 600 articles in print and 9 published ebooks.

It seems that everyone wants to earn money online. Affiliate programs are an excellent way to help you attain your goal. The most important question is, how do you insure that you maximize the rate of return on your efforts. I have some suggestions.

There are numerous great and reputable affiliate programs available, that’s for sure. Some are certainly better than others. Before you choose, you should examine a few things.

1. How do you plan to market them?
2. How much money do you want to make?
3. How much time are you willing to invest to generate returns?
4. How long will the program pay you?
5. How much will you make on each sale you generate?
6. Does what you are promoting have good market appeal?
7. Is the product you are going to promote, good overall value?

Let’s look at each in turn. How do you plan to market them? If you will market passively, solely through a website, you can post banners and links. This will allow you to participate in a variety of programs. However, if you plan to market through your opt-in list or if you don’t have a website and wish to use some type of email campaign, you will want to be more focused on fewer more lucrative programs. Examine your effort versus return. How much money do you want to make? If you want to make $1000 per month, as an example, which scenerio will make more sense? Promoting a program that will pay you $5 per sale, (you will need to generate 200 sales) or promoting a program that will pay you $50 per sale? (you will only need 20 sales to reach your goal).

How much time are you willing to invest to generate returns? Again, promoting the higher value sale is likely going to give you the greatest rate of return on the time you invest.

How long will the program pay you? Affiliate programs track your referrals by placing ‘cookies’ on the customer’s computer. As the customer clicks through your link or banner to the affiliate program provider’s website, a cookie is placed on the customer’s computer. Cookies can be set to expire at different time intervals. Some programs set their cookies to expire in just a couple of weeks. If the cookie expires, you won’t be credited with a sale should your referral wait to buy beyond the cookie expiry date. Look for affiliate programs where cookies don’t expire or they have long expiry dates.

How much money will you make on each sale you generate? For my money, this is the key to maximizing your rate of return. Look for the best absolute dollar value, not necessarily the biggest percentage commission. 30% of $200 dollars pays significantly more than 50% of $20, doesn’t it?

Does what you are promoting have good market appeal? It’s pointless to put your promotional effort into something that no one is interested in buying, regardless of the price or the commission that you are being offered.

Is the product you are going to promote, good value overall? This element will have an impact in two important areas. If there is not good perceived value, the rate of sales relative to the number of referrals you send will be low, meaning you will be working for nothing much of the time. Additionally, your reputation may be damaged if you aren’t recommending something of real value.

Affiliate programs are a great way to get paid. And getting paid is good, isn’t it?

If you have decided that joining a high paying Affiliate Program is a good idea please visit http://www.gettingpaidisgood.com/ which is a free resource center website for those looking to develop ways to get paid more and more often. Picking up extra income may be a lot easier than you think.