On that webpage...

On that webpage (http://www·johndoe·com/weightloss·html in the example above) you would create a short review of the weight loss eBook you selected on ClickBank (describing the pros and cons, etc.). You would then add your affiliate link several times throughout the review. Since these people reading your short review are interested in weight loss (they just read your article about weight loss), it is likely that they will check out your affiliate product and seriously consider buying it.

As you can see, this is a very effective way to use articles to advertise and sell affiliate products, since the article traffic you are receiving to your website is highly targeted traffic, aka, people that are very interested in the topic your affiliate product is about (in this example - weight loss). Now that you know a couple ways to use articles to market your online business, lets talk about distributing your articles. Distributing an article can be a very time consuming task. Many people outsource this work, and pay a fee for someone else to do the distribution work. Other's do it themselves using software that automates the process.

You should distribute your article to article directories. There are hundreds of these in existence, and some are better than others. For these directories, you will need your article, the title, possibly a sub title, your author's resource box, your website URL, your email address, a short description of your article, and a list of keywords, separated by commas, for your article. So, you would visit each article directory, either sign up for a new account or log in, and copy and paste all of the information into a form that is provided for article submissions. Most article directories have a manual approval process, so it may take a week or more before your article appears on their website.

Here is a list of some excellent article directories to submit your articles to:
http://www·ezinearticles·com/
http://www·articlecity·com/article_submission·shtml
http://www·ideamarketers·com/
http://www·articledashboard·com/
http://www·searchwarp·com/
http://www·goarticles·com/index·html

Once you have submitted your article to the article directories, you will want to distribute your article to ezine publishers that cover topics within your niche. You can build your own database of these publishers. You can find them by visiting ezine directories, such as The Ezine Directory. Look first for ezines in your niche, and then check each ezine to see if they accept articles. Load those article submission email addresses into your autoresponder, and each time you write a new article, send it to these publishers, asking them to publish the article.

Next, you should visit forums that are related to your target market. If your niche is weight loss, then visit weight loss forums, and look to see if they have a place for articles. If so, submit your article there. If not, post the article on your own website, and then become an active member in the forum. To find forums related to the topic of your article, just perform a search in Google like "your topic + forum", where you replace "your topic" with the topic of your article. So, if your article is about weight loss, you would enter "weight loss + forum" into Google.

It is perfectly acceptable to make a post and say that you have an article about a topic (weight loss, etc.) on your website, and leave the link directly to the article. Just make sure that your post is relevant and on topic, and that your article provides useful information that is also relevant. Also, make sure you add an opt-in form to the webpage that contains your article, that way you can capture email addresses of forum members, to build your list (Building your list is critical for maximizing your profits from article marketing). All of this is essentially what article marketing is, and how it is done, however, there is a great deal more to learn and know about article marketing in order to become successful at it.