You'll often hear of making money with Article Marketing as "bum marketing" or the "free traffic". Do you need to be a bum to succeed? Hardly. However, if you are long on desire, and short on cash, article marketing is by far and away the most effective way to begin building traffic to your sites. 

Article marketing allows the author to connect with their audience in a way that other forms of marketing do not. This is because you have time to show your expertise on your topic, offer something of value to the reader, and establish a link to your site for more information (or sales). 

Keeping this in mind, there are three crucial points that need to be kept in mind before beginning any article marketing campaign. 

1.) Quality is important- The internet is chock full of people stuffing badly written articles into every conceivable place they can. Why anyone would do this, I don't know. I suppose it's for the same reason people submit sloppy resumes. It provides the writer with the illusion of doing something. However, it doesn't do any good to submit a bunch of badly written articles about a topic just to develop back links, readership or both. A poorly written article reflects on the writer, and destroys any credibility you may have had. In short, the sloppiness is its own message, which distracts from your primary message of your topic and your expertise. You may hear some guru's say quantity over quality. Don't buy it. One good article on a high page rank article directory is worth more than a bad one on 100 low page rank article directories. This doesn't mean every article needs to be a literary work of art, just competently written and carefully edited. 

2.) Know your Keywords- I'll give it to you straight. Don't write articles for anything unless you know what keywords you are targeting. Nobody will read them and nobody will click on the links, and that would be downright depressing, don't you think? So, do your keyword research and then make sure you write one article around each keyword, never exceeding a 1% overall density within that article. How do you find the keywords you will need? There are a number of different ways to do keyword research with the Google Keyword tool and others. You just need to learn the right techniques and then put them into practice before you attempt to make money with article marketing. Don't write a single article before you do. 

3.) Consistency over Time- This is where almost everyone falls down. Article marketing is a journey, not a destination. Sorry to get all philosophical on you, but it's true. You need to write articles consistently over time, on a schedule to be successful. It's easy to get caught up in writing a few articles, checking your stats, and then giving up. Don't. The only way it will work is to take the long view, keep writing on a regular (read weekly) basis, and to follow the same formula each time. Over time, the performance of your articles will average out. Some will work great, others will tank, but over time, the results will show. Depending on your topic or niche, you may need to write 20, 50 or 250 articles to get to where you want to be. The nice part about it is, once you start generating traffic, you won't need to do it again. 

While these three points are crucial to know when one wants to be making money with article marketing, there are other, specific techniques regarding keyword research, topic relevance and SEO that are important to being successful in your article marketing efforts.