I dont claim to be an article marketing expert, but I do both. I run about 10 article sites and I submit articles using an auto submitter. I feel that you can make money both ways.
I submit anywhere from 5 to 25 articles per weeks using a free, online article submitter to post my articles to hundreds or thousands or sites. The articles run from 500 to 1,000 words and are related to whatever it is that I am selling.
For example, I write articles about Thailand while promoting my affiliate hotel sites geared specifically to Thailand. I also write marketing articles and point them to a variety of sites that I run.
Using the auto submitter, I can get my articles and more importantly, links to my sites, all over the Internet. The more links that point back to my sites, the better the search engines like me.
I have about 10 different article sites and a few blogs that accept articles automatically. I manually approve each and every article. I like to check to make sure that the articles are following my submission guidelines. The biggest violators put links in the text and more than 2 links in the resource box. I try to contact them to advise them...