IMPORTANT: THERE HAS BEEN A BIG UPDATE TO THIS POST THAT YOU CAN FIND AT ARTICLE MARKETER REVIEW. DESPITE MY DISSATISFACTION WITH THE FREE SERVICE, I HAVE INDEED GONE AHEAD AND PAID FOR THE LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP. PLEASE READ ABOUT MY ONGOING EXPERIENCE WITH ARTICLE MARKETER here.

(note: Below is my review of the FREE service only)
Why do companies give away free samples? Is it because they want you to try their product and find out how bad it is? Probably not. I would think it is because they want you to see how great their product is and decide to buy it sometime in the future. Unfortunately, this is not the case with Article Marketer.

I really wanted to like Article Marketer. I mean I wanted to like it so much that I was willing and ready to shell out the $399.99 for a lifetime membership. I don’t like paying monthly fees and I would just rather pay a one time fee and be done with it. However, $399.99 is not an amount to be taken lightly and so I thought I would try out their free trial first just to see how I liked it. I’m sure glad I did.

Here are the Article Marketer payment plans

I hate submitting articles to directories and there is an assortment of free software out there than can help speed things up. Still, it is a fair amount of work and if I could find a service that was reputable that would do it for me, I would be willing to pay for that service. I was excited when I discovered Article Marketer because I thought maybe I had found that service.

I must remind you that this is all based on my experiences with the free service. I have paid for nothing.  I have paid for nothing and in over a month now I have gotten nothing as well. I signed up and entered two articles in their system withing a couple of days. I had some trouble getting the number of words right and figuring everything out but that was no big deal. I actually like their interface and like the fact that their whole system is rather simple in design. There is nothing really complicated to learn and once you figure it all out you are set to go.

The system will immediately send you an email if their automated review finds anything wrong with the article and it is easy to go back in and fix it. Once you have done that, your article then needs to be reviewed by a real person. For the free trial, the wait is about 5 days which is understandable and fine. For the paid version, your wait is supposed to be 1 business day. Note the word “supposed“.

After the waiting period I went in to find that there was a new message. Due to some “hiccups” and other things like training new reviewers the message said, there would be a slight delay. It didn’t say how long a delay but just that it would be a short time. Well, I guess the “hiccups” lasted about a week and after that time passed, my first article was approved.

The same thing happened with my second article. Only with that one, after the second week went by I got that article rejected because I apparently used the wrong category. OK, no problem, I went back in and carefully picked the correct category and hit the submit button again. Well, whenever you submit something the 5 day waiting period starts over! So, for my second article there was the first 5 days, the delay of about 7 days, and now another 5 days. I assume when those 5 days are up there will be the “hiccups” again and if they ever get around to reviewing it and still dislike the category I have chosen or anything else, it will be more waiting on top of that.

Get used to seeing this message if you are a member!

Meanwhile, it has been 2 weeks since that first article was approved and supposedly distributed to the many sites. I know once this is done there are then waiting periods for many of those sites and it is probably out of Article Marketer’s hands at that point. However, as of today, I still cannot find my article anywhere on the Internet.

The bottom line is that it has been a little over a month and I have been successful in getting only one article approved with them and that article shows up no where on the Internet. Curious as to other peoples experiences with AM, I set off to find some reviews of the service on other blogs and forums. What I found was generally the same thing I had found. Most people expressed displeasure at the same delays I am dealing with and it seems this happens to all members whether they have paid or not. I did find some people who said that they were happy with the service and hadn’t really experianced too many delays, but for everyone who was happy it seems I can find one or two people that are not. I feel sorry for those that have paid for this service only to find that their articles are NOT approved in the 1 business day as advertised.

The amount Article Marketer charges is not insignificant and for that kind of money you should be getting the service that is promised. Again, I really wanted to like AM but I obviously can’t legitimize paying that kind of money to get 1 article submitted per month. It is too bad and I would be interested in hearing if anyone else has experiences with them. This Article Marketer review is NOT a paid review and I have not bothered to link to them but it is  http://www.articlemarketer.com/ if you are interested.