It seems like it would be a simple matter. Write an article of two and then sit back and wait for the cash to roll in. Like they say, LOL. In reality, there are a lot of details to take care of. And if you really want to be successful writing articles for income, you need to focus on these details.

1. First and foremost, you need to have a list of products that you like and can recommend. It doesn’t matter if they are your own or affiliate items. For each of these products, you will need the web page where the item is available using plain text (http://blah blah blah) and the page listing in html using ‘a href’. I like to have both versions available so that I can quickly cut and paste the information when I’m writing an article. If you are promoting eight items, you have sixteen listings to keep track of.

2. Are you using pre-sale pages? This is a soft sell page that lists a number of features and benefits of the product and provides a number of links to the item. If you are using pre-sale pages, you will need to list the web-address for each item. Again, you will need plain text and html versions.

3. For each item you are promoting, you need to know if they have free downloadable reports available. For each report, you will need 2 web addresses, one plain text and one html.

4. If you are using affiliate products, you will need to know the web-address, your username, and password for each product you promote.

5. I like to keep track of how my articles are performing. In order to do this, I have two excel spreadsheets that I update every morning. These spreadsheets tell me which article directories are sending me the most traffic, which articles are getting the most page views, which articles are being published the most, and where I’m getting the most URL Clicks. It sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but it is worth it.

So, if we are selling eight products, according to my count, that is about 80 details that we have to keep track of. Wow! I use a word document called ‘Product’ to keep track of all that information. I post each item separately and list all of the details previously mentioned just below it.

By using this method, I can quickly and easily reference an item and use either the plain text or html version (depending on which method the site requires) of the address that I want to use in my article. If you take care of the details, the details will take care of you.