I'm really confused how to structure my campaign... I have a full-blown website, with lot's of affiliate links right. Now, how does my website fit in with article marketing and blogging? Should I host a wordpress blog beside my website? Should I choose a blogspot blog? Where should I send links from those blogs? To my website or to my affiliate links? Or both? Where should I point my articles? What should I point to my articles, and what should I point to my blogs, and website? It's so confusing. Any help or suggestion would be fantastic. Thank you.
There are so many different ways people pursue affiliate marketing, so you are likely to get a lot of disagreement about what to do. But, in my opinion, having a website "with lot's of affiliate links" plastered all over is NOT the way to go. What you want is targeted traffic, otherwise it is highly unlikely you will be successful. To get this, there are many avenues. What I prefer to do is have niche blogs targeting the topic related to the product (or products) I'm selling. So, for example, if I was targeting a guide to ferret care, I would have a blog all about ferrets - tips for caring for them, how to select them, what you need to know about their habits, etc. The posts would be fairly generic, making people want to learn more, at which point I encourage them to buy the ferret care guide I'm promoting. You will, however, need to learn about SEO to be really successful with my approach. To start, you need to research and find competitive keywords to use in the titles of your posts and choose one for your url as well. I generally try to build up the blog to 30 or more unique posts, each targeting a different keyword phrase that I feel I can compete with (hopefully getting at least on page 1 for that keyword phrase, and aiming for spots 1-3). I also write at least one review post for the product I'm reviewing, often comparing it to similar products. Then I start doing article marketing - writing articles for EzineArticles and other article directories that allow do-follow links. I link these articles back to the posts on my blog using the appropriate keywords as anchor text in my resource box. And I also build backlinks to some of the articles themselves from other web 2.0 properties, such as blogspot blogs, squidoo, hubpages, etc. However, I NEVER link TO any of the articles FROM my main blog. Two things are working with this approach: 1) In the short term, I get targeted traffic from the articles, that converts into sales; 2) With each article I write, I'm gaining backlinks back to my main blog for those keyword terms, which helps me in the long term to get targeted traffic directly from Google and other search engines. (I also get more backlinks from other web 2.0 properties to my website as well). Anyway, that's what works for me (although I'm always learning more and improving on the strategy). I hope that helps.
What an excellent post, Crafty Blogger. thanks for saving me from typing it all; I agree. The only things I'm doing differently from you are that I tend to put most articles on one of my own sites/blogs and let them get indexed there first and then submit a copy to EZA (without editing/amending) and then to other article directories, and I do more backlinking/SEO for my own little sites than to my articles elsewhere (though I'll do backlinks to EZA articles, too, according to the keywords - for some keywords it's easier to outrank EZA than people imagine, but for keywords for which I know I'll never outrank EZA I'll do backlinks for the EZA copy of those articles and just resign myself to losing some of my traffic to EZA's Adsense-site). I also put a lot of effort into trying to write excellent, long articles which other webmasters will re-publish: the original purpose of article directories and often overlooked by affiliate marketers, but you can get a lot of extra traffic and sales that way.
Thanks, Alexa. I spin all my original blog articles into new articles for directories and I find it only takes me 10-15 minutes to generate a new article from an older one, although as the number of sites I'm developing grows, I'll probably stop doing this and go your route. You're right about the importance of quality for gaining additional backlinks! I love it when my articles are picked up by other websites. I set up google alerts for the keywords I'm targeting with my articles, and I often find that the day after I publish an article with EZA it will be picked up and posted by at least half a dozen other blogs.