Linking

Yes, and this is a very good strategy for getting good quality contextual backlinks.

A great strategy is to link to two different domains, this adds a little diversity and credibility to your articles and can essential backlink your backlinks to create stronger funnels into your money-pages.

Here is the strategy that I find works very well for all my clients sites.

I submit an original unique article to Ezines, and then spin it thoroughly to create hundreds of unique copies (that still read fluently) and submit to a few hundred directories per month.

I then grab the link to the ezines article (and a couple of other high-pr domain articles) from the previous month and create a spin syntax to randomly link to one of these quality articles while also always having at least one link to the money-page.

This helps index the backlinks and create stronger funnels the the site. It can also pass some great link juice when done correctly.

Yes, it does mean 50 backlinks, but they'll nearly all be zero-pagerank, non-context-relevant backlinks, and collectively their value's actually very small indeed. (Don't forget that even in the so-called "high pagerank directories", your article will still start its life on a zero-pagerank page).

I don't do that at all.

Article marketing isn't about how many article directories you can submit to. It's about whether you can produce work of the quality necessary for other people to syndicate it from article directories to other, higher-PR, more context-relevant sites from which the backlinks are really worth something, so that you can gradually build up well targeted traffic and get opt-ins and sales through your site.

That's where the money is.

I'm not trying to negate what you're suggesting; simply trying to make the point that the people who end up here, a year later, starting the threads titled "Article Marketing Doesn't Work Any More" are invariably people who have done 'spinning' and mass submission to article directories (for their "50 backlinks", or "hundreds of backlinks", which don't actually help them very much!) and then don't understand why they haven't built up any real income from it.

If you want to make a living through article marketing, it's essential to think well beyond article directories.