I am a mother of three, with two dogs, a husband with a demanding work schedule and I have a home-based online business. Let me just say it. I don’t get dressed! Not unless you count sweats and a headband. So I have been reluctant to get heavily into video marketing which is all the rage — until now.

Instead of getting all crazy about when and how I was going to ever produce enough videos to make an impact in my business, due mainly to time constraints and honestly – motivation (I like my college sweatshirt!). I decided to get creative and find a way to combine both videos and articles to get the best of both worlds.

It’s so simple — you can do it after you finish reading this article.

1. Write your article.
2. Create a powerpoint presentation of your article. If you are a mac user you can use keynote as well.
3. Add pictures if you want to get creative, or you could simply just type chunks of the article on each slide.
4. Convert your powerpoint file to a flash or quicktime movie file.
5. Upload your video to YouTube and any other video sites you can find.
6. Watch the traffic roll in!

You can learn about my other strategies for creating video articles in the most comprehensive article marketing weekly training program available — Articology.

Are you interested in promoting other people’s products? Do you have a few mentors whose products you loved and want to promote? Or would you rather start an affiliate marketing based online business – instead of a product driven one? Or do you have an information site that will only make money via advertising and affiliate income?

Well then there are three things you need to know about using affiliate marketing in your articles.

1. Writing product reviews is one of the best ways to combine article marketing and affiliate marketing. The reason why — is that if people decide to read your review it’s because they wanted information on that particular product and will probably buy or not buy straight from your affiliate link — based on your review of course:-)

2. If you write articles and submit them to article directories, make sure you check the writer’s guidelines. A lot of directories do not allow affiliate links in their articles or even in the bio or resource boxes. Some directories will allow an affiliate link if it links to a custom url such as http://articlemarketingsuccesskit.com – but not if it links to http://lisaangelettie.com/kit or some other domain name with a backslash extended url.

Some marketers like to have a few core products and services that they always promote such as web hosting, shopping carts, etc. and will create a custom url to effectively promote them in their articles. But I would only really do this if I know that the affiliate is a proven earner (in articles or blog posts on my site), and is even worth the effort.

3. If you own an information-based site like my flagship site http://GirlShrink.com, then you can really get busy and monetize all the content on your site. Advertising is a really good earning model such as Google’s Adsense, but I can make the same amount on one affiliate sale that my site makes during one entire day with adsense. So make sure that you cover all your bases when it comes to the articles on your own website. Promoting Clickbank products has always been a great earner for me on all my sites.

Ready to take your article marketing to the next level? You will when you enroll into Articology™ – The Article Marketing Training Program.

When I was first starting out on the web, I wrote a really weak newsletter for my subscribers. I mean I have a professional background as a writer — I had written for The New York Times for goodness sakes! But I had to face the fact that my newsletter wasn’t doing much for my business and I didn’t know what I was doing wrong.

It wasn’t until I found one of my mentor’s — Alexandria Brown and read her Boost Your Business With Your Own Ezine — that I realized what was missing.

One of the many things that I learned from her was that I could actually sell and generate sales straight from my ezine, and one of the keys to that was writing an info-packed article in every issue of my ezine.

When you write articles for your newsletters and ezines, there are a few important things that your articles should be doing…

1. Give the reader useful information. Your own newsletter is not the place for your more “fluffy” articles. As if you wrote those:-) No, your ezine is the place for some of your best work because you are building a relationship with your subscribers. They need to be able to trust what you say and like what you say.

2. Support a principle that you teach in one of your products or services. For example, if you offer relationship coaching sessions for couples — it would be great if you wrote an article on The Top 5 Reasons Why Your Marriage Needs Coaching. This is an informative topic that you could share a lot of tips in that also supports your business and the relationship that you want to have with prospects.

3. Promote a product or service of yours or an affiliate product or service within the body of the article. Remember that this article doesn’t have to pass the scrutiny of an article directory. You can promote all that you want inside your own article — but just remember to choose your promotions sparingly and cautiously. You do not want to overload your subscribers – just get them interested enough to click back to your site or your sales page.

Ready to take your article marketing to the next level? You will when you enroll into Articology™ – The Article Marketing Training Program.