There are many places where we can learn about an [1] affiliate marketing business.  Unfortunately, it is much harder to find someone to do the actual difficult work for you.  Well, I may not have found that elusive source of free labor, but I have discovered what I think is the next best thing.

I do affiliate marketing, although I also sell my own information products and physical products.  My online business is made up of a number of traditional sites and blogs.  I am a firm supporter–make that “enthusiast”–of SEO for traffic generation, but that is a long term process; good search results take time to build.  In some cases, I have used PPC for affiliate products with success, but more often I am lucky to break even. 

Consequently, like many in affiliate marketing, increasing traffic at a reasonable cost is one of my most vexing challenges.  Especially difficult are those times when I have to pass on a new affiliate opportunity because none of my websites are optimized to bring in targeted traffic for the product, so I face the age old question:  How do I get the visitors to the vendor’s site with my embedded affiliate link?

My approach to directing traffic to the vendor’s site is just like many other affiliate marketers, I take them first to my own site, where I ply my skills of subtle persuasion.  I hope they’ll click the link that will take them to the spot where they might actually buy the product that will earn me my pittance.  I would like to make that process a bit less involved and take the prospects to the vendors a little more efficiently.

I use content syndication for all of my sites.  While I get some traffic directly from the articles, my primary reason for article marketing is its SEO value, which is considerable.  However, especially for an affiliate marketer, there are two major problems with traditional article marketing.  First, the major article directories don’t allow contextual links within the body of the articles.  Typically, the links are isolated below the article itself in a sort of no man’s land called the author’s box or the resource box.  Second, the major article directories do not allow affiliate links or even links to redirected pages or domains.

Finally, there is an article distribution service that solves those two problems and allows direct linking using our affiliate links which can be placed contextually within the article.  It’s called My Article Network–and, yes, once you are a member, you can join its affiliate program.

My Article Network is like a [2] consortium for article marketers and content publishers.  (That link will let you know what I have to say about it on one of my sites.)  It’s another of those Callen projects that most of us who hang around online business for any period of time have come to know so well.

Since I am writing for affiliate marketers, I’ll cut short the presell message and let [3] sales page of My Article Network persuade you on its own.  I’ve been using it for less than two months, and I am a complete convert to the system.  I joined it for the article distribution, but I became so enthused that I set up four new blogs to take advantage of the free content in some of my niches.  {(Go ahead.  Click the link, you know you want to.)(Do it!  You know you want to click the link.  Come on…don’t you think I deserve it?}