If you’ve been around working from home online for even a short amount of time you’ve probably heard of article marketing. In simple terms, article marketing is where you promote products – either your own or as an affiliate – by submitting articles to directories which include a link to the product in the author bio. This link is your affiliate link, so every time a visitor you send buys the product you get paid a commission.

It’s a simple technique, but many marketers spend huge amounts of time doing it without ever making a lot of money. Does this mean it doesn’t work? Far from it. If you know how, article marketing can be extremely profitable.

The problem arises when marketers don’t actively track their efforts. To start with, picking the right product is vital. If you pick a product to promote that doesn’t have a good sales page or is in an obscure niche you will get less success. It sounds obvious, but many article marketers blindly churn out article after article promoting a product that’s almost impossible to sell. This is something you can and should test yourself. When starting to promote a product only write a certain amount of articles, for example 25, and if you haven’t made an acceptable amount of money after those then forget it and move onto a different product.

Once you’ve picked a popular product (you can find many at the Clickbank marketplace) the next stage is optimizing the actual article. There are several key steps to writing a successful article, and each one can make the difference between earning a small amount of money and a huge amount of affiliate sales. If you want to do article marketing properly, you need to test how to make an article get the most views, have a high CTR and ultimately give you the most conversions.

The most important components of an article are:

• The headline. This is arguably the most important of all. You need to make sure it grabs the reader’s attention and makes them want to start reading.

• The first sentence. Like the headline, this needs to intrigue the reader to make them continue.

• The author’s bio. Once you’ve got your reader to the end of the article you need them to click through to the products page.

There are many theories about how to achieve the best CTR, but again if you want to do article marketing the right way you need to examine your own results. For example, don’t always use the same bio box with each article. Instead, try a few different versions and see which gets the best CTR. Once you have found the one that gives you the highest CTR, slightly change it to make variations and test again. By following this process you will zoom in on the most efficient types of bio boxes and know which ones are going to get you the best results, rather than just using the same one repeatedly.

Just by using simple tracking and testing techniques you will have a big advantage over many other article marketers. Ultimately, you want to get the most profit for the least amount of investment in any business and article marketing is no different.

The internet is becoming increasingly accessible. It is perhaps the biggest source of online information. But have you ever wondered where all this information comes from? Most of them have to be written or keyed in. 90% of the websites need written material. Thus, there is a constant need for writers.

Online marketers require to publicize their products. Almost every product can be bought online, from electronics to books to pen-stands. But someone needs to write out the advertisements. The internet can be a good source of income for people willing to provide their writing services. This brings us to the topic of working as an online freelance writer.

What exactly is online freelance writing?

It usually refers to writing assignments you take on a contract basis. You have to finish and submit them by a stipulated period and then you get paid. Most of the written material online, from promotional offers to webpage content, are written by freelance writers.

Certain bidding sites like Elance.com, guru.com etc offer various types freelance jobs, including content writing. You can sign up in these websites, start posting your proposals and almost instantly find yourself with a job. The kind of jobs varies but signing up with these sites ensures timely payment, provided you use the site’s escrow system.