This is the final post in the five part “Article Marketing 101 for Affiliate Marketers” series. If you missed them, you can read part one here, read part two here, read part three here and read part four here.

Now that you know what article marketing is, how it can help you as an affiliate marketer, the criteria for articles that will sell your affiliate products, and how to avoid the duplicate content trap, you’re ready to submit your original and well-written articles to article banks so that you can begin reaping the benefits of article marketing.

How to Efficiently Submit Articles to Article Directories

Automated Article Submission: If you haven’t already, you’re going to see a ton of advertisements for automated article submission software. We advise against using automated article submission software for a number of reasons:

• The top article directories don’t allow automatic submissions. Many of the smaller but reputable ones don’t either.

• Automated article submissions are considered a form of SPAM.

• Different article directories allow different numbers of links and article submission software can’t determine which directories allow what.

• Article submission software can’t really determine which category your articles should be submitted to

• Quality is better than quantity is the article marketing game.

Article Submission Services: You’ll also see advertisements for article submission services. Many of these services are very good but they are not all the same … and they are not free.

First, be certain that the article submission service is submitting articles by hand (manually) and not using article submission software.

Three article submission services we recommend are:

Article Flicks
WMHaven
Submit Edge

DIY Article Submission: Submitting articles to article directories should really be done by hand and one by one. It’s not fast, but you’ll get better at the procedure as you go along.
The top ten article directories are:

Ezine Articles
Affsphere
Go Articles
Article Dashboard
Search Warp
iSnare
Article Base
Buzzle
Article Factory
Article City

You can but you do not have to submit your articles to all of the above listed directories.

Visit each site you plan to submit articles to and CAREFULLY read the article submission rules for each site!

Now, set up a spread sheet for each niche you are submitting articles for.

Record the name of the article directory and the date of the submission for each article you write for that niche.

This ends the five part “Article Marketing 101 for Affiliate Marketers” series. You’ve learned what article marketing is and how it can help you. You’ve learned how to write articles and avoid the “duplicate content” penalty. And you’ve learned how to submit articles to article directories. What are you waiting for? Go make some money with your article marketing!

• NOTE: Even though Lurn, Inc. receives compensation for products and services promoted in our blog posts, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences about those products and services.