In any aspect of Internet Business, it' vitally important to build a relationship with your prospects. If you come across as someone who just wants to sell something, you won't get many sales. By writing affiliate marketing articles which provide "free" information and tips, you appear as someone who wants to help, and you establish yourself as an expert in your field. It's a well known axiom that "if you help enough people get what they want, you will eventually get what you want".

If you approach your article writing with that philosophy in mind, you can't go wrong. Once your audience recognizes your name and trusts you to deliver valuable content, they will gladly buy from you!

Affiliate marketing articles can serve several purposes. "Articles" can be used as reports, solo ads, reviews, and of course, articles. You can put them on your website, submit them to article directories, use them in your blog or Squidoo Lens, post them in forums, RSS feeds, use your imagination!

The downside to affiliate marketing articles is that you lose many of the benefits of article writing if the URL in your resource box isn't your own. Articles are a major component in Search Engine Optimization. If you can send your prospects to your site first, then to the sales site, you will obtain the full benefit of article marketing. This will also allow you to build your own list of prospects.

But don't let that slow you down! If you don't have a website yet, don't worry about it. Get started with your affiliate sales, then work on getting your own site. The last thing I want to do is give you a reason not to start today. If you want to start a business, take action now and worry about the details later!

There are many ways of driving targeted traffic to your affiliate sites, but the best ones cost a lot of money. If you are starting on a tight budget, articles are one of the most effective means available. Internet ezines, newsletters, and thousands of websites are looking for fresh content every month. If you provide a decent article with pertinent content, they will publish it for free. At the bottom of every article, there is a "resource box" which includes your name and the URL to the website that you want to target traffic to. Make sure that your offer is closely related to the subject of your article.

You can submit your articles manually to thousands of Article Directories, but this would be very time consuming. It's better to hire a submission service to do this for you. Just Google "article submissions" and you'll find many companies that will submit your articles for you at a low cost.

If you are not a good writer, you can get PLR articles on any subject free, or very cheaply. You just edit them and change them around a little. You can probably write better than you think. Just pretend that you are telling someone about your topic, and write in a conversational manner. Put something of yourself in it, that will make it truly unique. If you're not a good speller, just write it in a word processor and use the Spellcheck function. As a last resort, you can have affiliate marketing articles written for you. Once again, just do a Google search.

In order to SEO your article, do a search for "Adword Keyword Tool" and enter the major keyword for your niche. For example, if your niche is "affiliate marketing", enter that in the tool, and Google will return a long list of related keywords. Choose one that is low in competition, yet gets a reasonable amount of searches. Then write an article based on it. Include the keyword in your title, and several times in the body of the article, but don't over do it! For this article, I entered "Affiliate Marketing" and found "Affiliate Marketing Article". It was very high in competition, but the plural form (see the title of this article) had nearly as many searches with much less competition! This gives your article (and the URL in your resource box) a chance at a high placement in the searh engines! Especially if a lot of people publish your article.

Don't be shy, write and publish! It will serve you well for years to come.