The strategic question is not whether article marketing works. It is how to allocate a fixed budget between content that earns links and outreach that asks for them.
The unit economics are different
Bought or heavily solicited links have a per-link cost that stays roughly constant — you pay the same for the hundredth as the first. A genuinely linkable asset has a high fixed cost and a marginal cost near zero: it keeps earning links for years without further spend. The second only wins if the asset actually lands, which is the risk you are pricing.
Most linkable assets fail
Plan for that. If one asset in four earns meaningful links, the programme still works provided the successful one earns enough. Budgeting as though every piece will succeed produces a plan that collapses on the first failure and a client conversation nobody enjoys.
What reliably earns links
Original data nobody else has. A free tool that solves a real problem. A genuinely definitive reference in a niche where none exists. Opinion from someone with standing to hold it. Notably, "a well-written blog post about a popular topic" is not on that list, and it is what most budgets are spent on.
Measuring it honestly
Track referring domains earned per asset and the cost per referring domain across the programme, not per piece. A single asset earning eighty domains can carry a year of output, and a per-piece view hides that entirely.