One of the more important ways affiliates can increase their bottom line and boost sales volume is through the use of product recommendations and product reviews. Many marketers are already aware that this is one of the most effective ways to promote products in which they are interested.
If your customers and visitors trust you enough then they will tend to trust your recommendations. Please, be very careful when using this approach, though. If you promote everything by recommendation, your credibility will, over time, wear thin. This effect can be seen, in particular when recommendations are exaggerated and without much merit an, as is often the case, it is obvious that the writer has not even used or seen the product about which he is writing.

Never be afraid to mention anything that you do not like about a product or service; rather than lose any credibility for you, this will often make your recommendation more realistic, when they come, and will tend to increase your credibility and thus overall sales volume.
Furthermore, if your visitors are really interested in what you are offering they will be more than happy to learn what is good about the product, what is not so good and how the product will benefit them – this last point is VERY important – readers need to know how a product will make their life better. If you can show somebody that a product will make life easier, safer, more fun or more wealthy than there is a good chance they will buy that product and through your affilaite link!.

People will still buy through your links even if you mention bad points because, apart from any other reason, the things you might think of as bad may make the product a ‘don’t miss’ for somebody else. Do not assume that all your readers are the same as you!

When you are recommending a product there are some things to remember about how to make recommendations about products work effectively and to your advantage.
Sound like the true and leading expert in your field.
Remember this simple equation: Price resistance diminishes in direct proportion to trust. If your visitors feel and believe that you are an expert in your niche, they are more inclined toward making that purchase. On the other hand, if you do not show confidence and self-assurance in endorsing your products, they will probably feel that same way and will go in search of another product or service which is more credible.
How do you establish this aura of expertise? By offering unique and new solutions they would not get anywhere else. Show proof that what you are promoting works as promised. Display prominent testimonials and endorsements from respected and known personalities, in related fields of course.
Avoid hype at all costs.
It is better to sound low key and confident, than to scream and seek attention. You would not want to sound unprofessional and have that thinking stick to your potential customers and clients, now would you? It is always best to appear cool and self-assured at the same time.
And remember; prospects are not stupid. They are actually in the process of becoming experts and may already know the things that you know. If you back up your claims with hard facts and data, they would gladly put down hundreds, or even thousands of dollars toward to your promotions. But if you don’t, they are smart enough to try and look at your competitors and what they are offering.
Give out promotional freebies.
People are already familiar with the concept of offering freebies to promoting your won products. But very few people do this to promote affiliate products. Try to offer freebies that can promote or even have some information about your products or services.
Before you write recommendations for your chosen product you should (must) try out and test the product and its support. Do not run the risk of promoting junk products and services. Just think how long it took you to build credibility and trust among your visitors. All that will take to destroy the hard won trust is one big mistake on your part.
If possible, have recommendations of products that you have 100% confidence in. Test the product support before you begin to ensure that the people you are referring it to would not be left high and dry when a problem suddenly arises.
Have a look at your affiliate market and look at the strategies you are using. You may not be focusing on the recommendations that your products need to have. You plan of action is sometimes not the only thing that is making your program works.
Try product recommendation and be among those few who have proven its worth.

The most common way in which articles are distributed is through article directorties, websites, and ezine publishers. This is held to be among the most effective ways to market a service or product on the Internet. The effectiveness of conventional article marketing can be enhanced by the use of an autoresponder – a service that will automatically send emails to subscribers without you haveing to do any addional work after the initial autoresponder setup.

You begin by setting each article up in your autoresponder. You must ensure that each article has its own autoresponder address, so you’ll need an autoresponder service that will allow you to do this (Aweber or Email Aces both allow this to happen. Next, make a master list of all your articles, with the autoresponder address for each article listed beside the title. You could even add descriptions of the articles to your master list if you want – that will help when you come back to look at the list in future.

Advertising your articles one by one can take a great deal of time but advertising one autoresponder address – the one for the master list – won’t take very much time at all. All you need to do is to add your master list to your newsletter and/or on your websites You can even allow other ezine publishers to use the list and the articles as an additional free resource for their subscribers!

Obviously this is just a start on the large topic of using autoresponders for article marketing but we will come back to it later.

Written in a style that is both friendly and humorous, the Super Affiliate Handbook is shot through with real world examples of just what Rosalind did to become one of the most recognizable Super Affiliates in the world. And she doesn’t just tell you what she did right — she also exposes the mistakes she made along the way — all to help you avoid the same potential problems.

Exceptionally well written, the Super Affiliate Handbook covers absolutely everything you need to know about making money as an affiliate marketer. As a kickstart to your affiliate/article marketing business I give this a solid two thumbs up!
Get the Super Affiliate Handbook today!

I wrote in much more detail about this tool here: Backlink Magnet.

I see this a a neat complement to tools such as Article Marketing Automation from Marc and Dan at PLRPro not a replacement for it, after all, we can all use more decent content and backlinks, right?

Check it out!

Information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers, is right at the forefront of modern web based communication. This is why article writing, submission and publication has become so very popular.
There are many tools that article marketers can use to make the process of distributing their articles more easily. Although this is invaluable in getting the contents more exposure this is only half the story.
Let us first take a look at some mistakes that many people make even before submitting their content to article directories:
1. Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.
In article writing, there are three key reasons why you are using articles as a promotional tool; branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization effort.
However, there is only one reason why you write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If the article is not focused on this primary and most important purpose, your article will fail to achieve the three promotion benefits because no one will be interested in reading it.
You need to figure out first how to get people to read what is in your article, then make them click on your resource box. You can achieve this by producing better quality content.
2. Failing to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.
You may already know that your articles can help you to get additional backlinks to your web pages but were you aware that it was possible for your to get more visitors and better search engine rankings from those same articles?
a) Mention keywords at strategic places, just be careful not to overdo it – if the article reads natuarlly then you are probably safe in the eys of the search engines. Some writers are even using anchor text links in their articles – also an effective method; sadly it is important to know that majority of the directories are not able to support this.
b) Remember that is just about the backlinks to your webpages or sites. Part of doing well in your article marketing is getting picked up by publishers with a large readership and gaining the ability of leveraging the traffic of other sites through the republication/syndication of your work.
Better search engine results also are great benefits.
These benefits will not put very much money into your bank account; there are other factors that will turn your article marketing efforts into a profit opportunity as opposed to simply increasing the number of visitors to your web pages.
Set out a plan and see to it that your article will best serve the function that you intended it to have.
3. Publishing content that does not help your readers.
Perhpas in the process of article writing you are thinking that all you want is backlinks to your pages and additional visitors are a pleasant bonus.
But, guess what? Not all article banks and directories will publish your content automatically, often they have guidelines and specifications as to the content that they will accept.
You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles that the directories want to share with other people; all it takes is one publisher who takes your article and syndicates it one site or email list with a hundred thousand readers to increase your potential audience overnight.

Write articles that publishers want in their publications if you want your article marketing to work in the most effective way for you. This also means you have to obey the standard guidelines, do spell checking, good research on a worthwhile topic and even hiring writers to produce a good content on your behalf.
At the final analysis, it is all really a matter of choice on your part. You can start getting a little exposure from increased links back but on a very basic level. Or enjoy massive exposure from a little extra time producing high quality content.
The outcome is down to your choice. You may not be aware of the fact that an article submitted on an article directory is not meant to have the same level of exposure as highly-targeted content on a site aimed at a narrow group of people (niche).
Learn the difference between these two modes and it will surely help you know what kind of articles to write and to submit.