Article Marketing is and will always be one of the best ways to gain free traffic, If you write atleast 3 articles a day and send them to EZA, plus other high pr directories you will see a definite increase in traffic. The amount of traffic you want depends on you.
Yes, that definitely helps. It's also a good idea to invest the time into something that will be around for a while. ie: you don't want the offer pulled and than have no product / offer to where your links are pointing. CPS stuff seems to work good for me with article marketing...
I believe you'll get better return on investment if you do article marketing properly because you don't have to spend money every time someone click on your URL. You'll have to know how to research your keyword and spend some time to build backlinks for your article though.
Keyword rich articles submitted to top article directories gives first page results. Keywords with less competition is safer, long tailed keywords are even better. Article marketing gives targeted traffic. This is my favorite.
I agree with most of the coherent posters in the thread. Can article marketing work? Yep, without a doubt. Can it be fast? Sure, but only if you're systemizing/outsourcing. Can you make serious bank from it? Despite what some would say, you DEF can make real money doing it. But you have to do it like a big dog... not a cheap ass that's only doing it because they can't afford PPC. As for my contributions, I have two: 1. Don't look at the directories as the only place to post up "articles". :c) Use your imagination, and you'll be paid handsomely for the effort. 2. Don't get sucked into the kw density/ LSI/ SE0/SE1 game when it comes to article marketing. Use keywords...sure. But don't go overboard. Instead, focus on getting killer content up first, and subordinate the spiders to this goal. Trust me, it's much more profitable.
Article's take some time...it takes a bit for the article directories to approve your articles...if you keep submitting keywords related to your website, and over time the article sites approve your articles you'll have a TON of related keywords floating around.