By this point, I think just about everyone has heard of the power of using articles to market your sites and products.

Essensially, the process is

• Write keyword rich articles about your niche
• Submit them to various free article directories
• Include a "resource box" which can link back to your site, and include a few lines of text (for you to plug your products, yourself, or whatever)
• Give permission for other people to put your article on their sites or blogs, on the condition that they publish your "resource box" along with it

With a good article, this can easily build up hundreds of links to your site, and bring the search engines running.

However, submitting articles to the big article directories can have other benefits - one being that the search engines already love them.

So, how can we use this to our advantage?

Big article directories already have the hard work out of the way, they already have regular search engine visits, high PageRank, and high search engine rankings.

Take a look at the following Google searches, off the top of my head:

• day job killer
• guru slayer
• duvet dollars

All pretty high profile internet marketing products, and not one of them ranks at the top for their own name!

The top results are all some form of article directory (and a few blogs) - each claiming to review the product in question (and usually convince the viewer to buy).

Check them out on the SERPs and look out for the resource boxes. They'll all have some form of affiliate link, giving the author a commission if you buy after reading their review.

Article directories are cracking down on linking directly to an affiliate link from your resource box, so many reviewers will take you via a page on their own site, and maybe offer you a bonus item (like a complementary ebook, or a tutorial video series) for buying the product through their affiliate link - some even go as far as asking you to sign up to their newsletter, collecting email addresses for later and gaining an affiliate commission.

It's impossible to get more targetted visitors than this - they're searching for the product by name - so they're more than likely ready to buy - you just need to get them to click on your affiliate link first, to claim a slice of the pie.

Next time you purchase a product, join their affiliate program and write yourself a review. Just be completely honest - there's really no reason to mislead people (unless you like refunds). When you're done, submit the review to a few article directories (I've linked to some below) and include a link to the product in your resource box, with your affiliate code.

If your article is rejected because of the affiliate link, Gary has a tool to create redirects which you can use to "cloak" your affiliate link.

Remember, a negative review can still include an affiliate link, and people may still purchase! You may even end up ranking *higher* than a positive review, due to people linking to your criticisms.

This system will not cost you a penny, and once it's set up, will operate as an AIS, requiring no more work. You have literally nothing to lose, so get out there and try it

Article Directories:

• Ezine Articles
• GoArticles
• Article Dashboard
• And thousands more!