This strategy has become very popular. There are some obvious reasons for that. One is that you can get started right away. Two is that it doesn't cost you any money. Three is that someone doesn't have to be an experienced marketer to do it.
There are some things that you should know before you do it or you won't make any money. The biggest problem that people have who attempt this strategy is they don't work hard enough. They don't put in enough time and effort.
This is true in a lot of make money online strategies, but especially with article marketing. I think one reason for this is because people believe all of the hype. "Everyone can do it" "It's so easy" blah blah blah...
Well, obviously everyone can't do it because people fail with it. The reason they fail is because they don't do any research before they write the articles. they don't research the niche, they don't research the keywords, the competition etc.
They have failed before they have ever begun. Another reason why they fail is because they don't write enough articles. Even if they do all of the research and write a few great articles. It's still a few great articles. You can't sit there and write a few articles and call it good.
You can start out with bum marketing, but I think eventually you should get into product creation instead of bum marketing. You can affiliate products more effectively if you have your own products.
It also makes it easier to build your mailing list, if you have a product or products. Another thing that you can do is make money off of selling your products. If you try selling your articles, you really won't make that much. One article really isn't worth that much and people will want you to limit the amount people who have the article and you give them the rights to it.
If you have your own product, you can sell it for pretty much any price you want. You can also sell it to as many people as you want. You can also change the rights on the product or do a lot of different things with it.
Product creation is better for all of those reasons. It also gives you a very valuable asset or assets that you can use to build your online business, how ever you want to.