Why am I laughing? Because every linking campaign I’ve done for the past few years has turned a profit all by itself. That’s right – if search engines didn’t exist, I’d still be counting up the profits from my link-building efforts, while the poor guy with the $3,000/month link-rental bill stares at his search engine ranking reports and wonders if it’s really helping.

I have no doubt that some of those paid links *are* helping folks get their websites better exposure, whether through search engines or otherwise, and I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t submit to directories. However, if you had an opportunity to promote your website and build links without spending as much, wouldn’t you take a look?

The reason I make money on my link-building campaigns is that they aren’t really linking campaigns at all – they’re content-distribution campaigns.

So, what’s a content-distribution campaign and how does it work?

Well, you’re looking at one right now.

Jill is happy to run my article because her readers will enjoy it. Her readers are happy too, because they get useful information. When readers like my article, some will click on the link that appears in my bio, and some of you (I hope) will buy something from me. That’s where my immediate profit comes from – the cost of writing and distributing my articles is far less than the added profit I gain.

In fact, all of the back issues of the High Rankings Advisor are archived online. When this issue goes onto Jill’s website, I get a link, but it doesn’t stop there.

A lot of people will read my article and they will want to send the same information out in their own newsletter or put it on their own website. When they contact me, I will be happy to have them distribute my article and post it on their website. In fact, I might even update it a little and give them a personalized version to use.

It’s a lot easier for me than it used to be because I have a recognized name, but even when nobody knew my name, I made a profit on every article. That includes the very first one I sent out, which generated over $1,500 in sales in one week for my then-new e-book, SEO Fast Start.

So how can you get started? The first step, and it’s very important, is research. You need to find out what kind of information your target audience is interested in. If you’re a mortgage broker, for example, folks might enjoy an article explaining what the heck “escrow” is. I still don’t know, so don’t ask me, but I’m curious and I’d open any email offering to explain it.

You can find good topics and good information on websites like About.com, which conveniently enough shows a list of the most popular articles on each topic. Just pick a topic and search About.com for information – you can use the built-in search, or another search engine like Google (try searching for “mortgage site:about.com” and you’ll see what I mean).

Once you’ve selected some topics, you need to write the articles or pay a professional to do it. Good ezine articles run 500-1,000 words, are written with simple language, and provide clear, useful information. Many professional writers (like our friend Karon Thackston of <http://www.marketingwords.com>) will write articles for you.

My recommendation for those just starting out is to produce no more than 2-3 articles at first. Once you’ve written your articles, it’s time to distribute them. I’d recommend sending out no more than one article per week. You have a few good choices for this:

1) You can distribute them yourself via the “article announcement” mailing lists that many ezine publishers use to find content. Start at Kevin Bidwell’s site, where he provides some great information on a group of announcement lists he manages: < http://www.all-in-one-business.com/groups/>.

2) If you’d rather not do it yourself, you can hire someone to distribute articles to ezines. Phantom Writers <http://www.thephantomwriters.com> can help with this, as can iSnare.com, and others.

3) You can submit to article database websites, such as goarticles.com, ideamarketers.com, isnare.com, valuablecontent.com, and others. You will find a regularly updated list of article databases at <http://www.arcanaweb.com/resources/article-directories.html>.

4) You can use also software like Article Submitter Pro <http://www.articlesubmitterpro.com/> to submit your article to multiple databases at the same time.

In addition to the above methods, a little research will usually uncover dozens if not hundreds of topical websites that carry guest articles. A little trick of mine is to use the “Site Targeted Campaign” tool in my Google AdWords account to find websites that are running Adsense ads related to a topic. These sites are often very hungry for content.

One downside to writing ezine articles is that you can’t always tell your whole story in 1,000 words or less, and this is one of those times. There’s plenty more I’d like to tell you, like how we follow up on our articles to double or triple the number of links, build partnerships, create joint ventures, and more. But I guess that’s an article for another day.

I wish you success.