Once you've determined the affiliate program you'd like to make money with, registered your domain and built your first blog then you're all set to get started on the 30 day article marketing challenge.

1) Set Absolutely Ridiculous Deadlines for Yourself

The chances are pretty good that you don't want to spend your time writing. Why then should you labor for hours over your articles? When it comes to article marketing through article directories you should lean more towards quantity than quality.

Ensure that you're able to meet your challenge by giving yourself only an hour to write each 750 word article. And that includes edits. If this doesn't light a fire under your behind then article marketing might not be your marketing bag, baby.

2) Organize Your Article Before Writing

Your grammar school teacher gave you the same instructions. She was right. Always organize your thoughts before you begin writing. Having to shift mental gears between planning and writing is deadly to your momentum. Writing articles is all about momentum so take out all the stops!

3) No Research

If you have to conduct research then you're writing the wrong article. Sure, you might include 5 minutes of fact checking in your hour-long article writing schedule, but if you find yourself on a 10 or even 15 minute meandering trip through search engine queries about your subject then you need to get back closer to writing from your own personal knowledge. Write what you know. And only what you know.

4) Focus on 10 Tips Style Articles

Again, it's easier for you to write these kinds of articles because you don't have to pay as much attention to process and you can simply stay in your writing flow. Further, 10 tips style articles are popular, accessible and by their very nature force you to write more compelling article titles.

5) Target SEO Keywords with Your Articles

Each article you write in your 30 day challenge should focus on different keywords - unless there are only a couple of keywords that you know for certain bring you paying search engine traffic. Again, don't spend too much time doing research, but do give it at least 5 minutes on the keyword research tool of your preference.

6) Expect a Learning Curve for Automated Submission Services

It's naive to expect that you can purchase an automated article submission service and get your articles through on the first pass. It will take time for you to learn a service and figure out their ins and outs. Expect that, allow for it and plan it into your time allowance for article marketing.

7) Write Different Articles to Test Different Services

Don't put the same article in all the article submission services out there. Also, don't expect just one service to cover all of the article directories out there (more and more pop up every day). Plan to spend some time with testing various services and tracking their value in your article marketing efforts.

8) Have Appropriate Expectations for Your Efforts

After you distribute your first article don't expect instant checks to start pouring in. You have to wait for the hundreds of directories you've submitted to, you have to wait for secondary publishers to accept your work and finally you have to wait for the search engines to see that these sites are linking to you.

9) Write 750 Word Articles

750 words is a good round number for a length of your articles. For one thing, that's the minimum word allowance for one prominent article submission service. For another, it allows you to really round out an idea or concept. Further, it gives you a goal for each of your top ten tips - they have to be around 75 words each.

10) Plan for the Devaluing of Article Directories

It's simple to create your own article directory. This means that there are thousands of folks out there who are contacting the article distribution services with their urls and accepting articles. It's inevitable that search engines will value links from article directories less and less. Therefore as you distribute your articles and get in the swing of writing you should be on the look out for potential publishing partners who will publish your one-off original articles on their site.