Here’s the #1 secret to making article marketing pay off for you: Become a white knight — let other people use your articles.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by letting others use your articles: If you’ve ever promoted a product as an affiliate you’ve probably been given promotional materials to use, such as the copy for Adwords ads, emails, and even articles. Smart affiliate managers know that most affiliates are either too busy or too lazy to create their own materials, so if the product is going to be promoted, materials need to be provided.

So why is an article so special? Because the people who are going to promote products don’t want to inundate their lists with just pitch after pitch — if they’re a good internet marketer they’re trying to build a relationship with their readers, and one way to do that is to keep putting good content in front of them.

But since we’re all in this to make money, if that content, or article, can serve multiple purposes, everybody’s happy. Readers get content, and affiliates make commissions.

Maybe you can see how this would work if you ran an affiliate program, but what about the 80% of marketers who don’t? If you’re in that category I’m going to let you in on how this same idea can work for you.

Those people who have a weekly or monthly newsletter or ezine, and those people who have regularly updated blogs, all have one big thing in common — they all need fresh content. And while doing that yourself for a few weeks or months isn’t that hard, after a while you can find yourself scrambling for something good.

That’s where you come in with a simple little article and save the day. Most publishers don’t care if you pitch your product at the end of an article as long as the body of the article itself has good content. If you can provide them with a way to continue to deliver good information to their subscribers, they’ll be happy. And when some of the readers click on your link in the resource box of the article, you’re going to get targeted traffic right to your web site. And you’ll be happy.

For this tip to work the best you need to have a strong call-to-action in the resource box of the article.

Becoming a white knight by writing simple little articles you let other people use is a great way to make article marketing pay off for you.

There’s more to article marketing than submitting to directories. Get a free copy of the Article Marketing Power Tips special report at Article Marketing Explained and see how simple little articles can drive pre-qualified, targeted traffic to your site.