Good luck on this Mariner, I'll be following this thread. I think it's great you are using a thread/journal similar to pete. Using it can help keep you motivated and show others the work that is involved in terms of monetization.
You've never BS'd an essay in high school huh? Take a subject and talk about it in as many different ways your brain can come up with.
@Michelle the 1st thing I tried was unconventional and it was 25 exposures (they weren't normal articles) at 7 different websites. That particular strategy did not work, so I've reverted to more normal methods. I've since bought some PLR and have re-done the titles, 1st paragraph and made changes throughout. I'm now up to 5 articles, which I have submitted to around 120 sites. Not all of them have been approved, so I'm now only going to submit to those sites which have done so already -- I'd say about 15 tops for the 1st article I submitted about a week ago. @KsNitro Thanks, it's certainly helping so far. @khir rahman I come up with questions about the product/service to write about. The easiest answer to the question the article poses is the product I am promoting. I thought things were getting ready to move at 125 unique visitors and 2 sales, but I was wrong. I've now had 257 unique visitors to the order page, and still only 2 sales. I found an inexpensive traffic source, so am testing that and I have a person helping me do the research for articles, which will speed things up. I'll probably get another 25 articles from that, so will look to have about 50 articles submitted to my selected directories by the time I head back to the US, which should be around the 20th of Sept.
A quick update: 361 visits, still 2 sales. I'm putting this down to unqualified traffic and landing page issues. I'm testing out different variations and have also started with CPA offers. I've been side tracked by other business things, so am still getting through the initial lot of articles. I've tried to write titles/articles that are Digg worthy, so haven't just whipped through as many as I can. I've also been trying some things on Twitter to bring in traffic, which have so far brought in some additional clicks to my landing pages. Will keep going with that as well. It certainly is frustrating to put in effort and get no reward, but hanging in there is the name of the game.
August -- 296 visits, 2 sales Sept -- 448 visits, 0 sales I've been side tracked by other business things and visa issues, so no return to the US and no more work on this for the time being. Still visits coming in for the work I've done so far, will test a new lander.
Good luck mariner , its great to have people around this forum motivated to write journals this way we all learn together since all affiliate marketing is trial , maybe we can speed things up not doing the same mistakes others have done already, of course you would say "Hey but won't this actually affect the competition by revealing certain facts regarding your personal campaigns ?" No! For sure it will not I can tell you 99.99% of the whole information you can find online is vague , can inspire you and let you do the thinking alone , basically I want to say that the tricks are only around the corner , waiting for you to figure them out Again good luck with your journey and keep us updated A
Sounds to me like your doing the standard article marketing approach, which used to work well, but things have changed. Article marketing/bum marketing what ever you want to call it used to be simple write keyword focused articles and watch the traffic and sales pump in.. It doesn't work that anymore. most article marketers using this method of article marketing experience the following.... article goes live on EA article gets about 100-200 views or so (give or take) article falls off the rss feeds and recent page lists article dies a horrible death article marketer...posts another 25 articles only to see the same results.. article marketer then posts on forum that XYZ niche sucks or CB sucks.. Truth is nowadays, Good article marketing starts AFTER the article goes live. Just publishing an article doesn't mean hops or sales anymore...those days are long gone.
I've done a combination of youtube, blogs, tweets, pdfs and articles. I don't submit to EA and like Pete I submit the article to 1 directory then link to it from all the other submissions. I'd say I've only done 8-10 articles in the proper manner, so am not dissatisfied with the results. I'll be back into it once I finalize a few other business things, which are hands on, but make me money. This appeals to me because once it's setup, it will tick along nicely. As Pete mentioned, he has 822 articles, some of them have had 10,000+ views and he had 200 sales last month. Yes, there are some simply strategies to follow, but a lot of it comes down to sheer volume of content you have out there for people to find.
@grayth: Now, where have I read this? .... you naughty, naughty hustler. All tease and no tricks? Shame on you. :-/
Yet another journey that seems to crack, doesn't it? Affiliate marketing involves lots of outsourcing in order to succeed and make a living. Most people just can't understand that.
Yeah I agree. That would be the best long term strategy unless you're very determined. It seems people take on too much- like they try to write articles at the same time as link building and building content for their sites so they become overwhelmed and give up. I think it's best to break it down into managable steps. Not that i'm an expert or anything far from it.... I'm doing nothing except for writing articles but i'm coping well, because I'm not doing anything else, like link building. You could say i'm not utilising my time very well but I think it's important to do what you think you'll be able to deal with. I'm doing 10 articles for each product and have chosen about 15 products to test. Then I'll work on the landing pages once I've written those articles. And then I'll do the linkbuilding. When I see what products convert I'll start outsourcing. Hopefully it will be as straightforward as that anyway.
I imagine it would be hard unless you're good at multi tasking though. A lot of people crack under the workload.
I use article marketing in a different way. I populate a site with 30 keyword focussed articles. Often Google finds it already simply from automatic pinging. Then I write approx 30 articles for EZA. I get a few views and sales. Now start on your next site, and your next one. Handfuls of sales continue. Within months, your sites are getting good rankings in Google. About 6 months on average to emerge from Sandbox. Now the traffic money from SEO of your site should match the early article promotions. Need at least 10 sites for this I reckon. This is my current project.
I think it was the petehols thread which made me actually focus on article marketing instead of PPC. I know this is an old thread, but OP must be done something seriously wrong, probably didn't do keyword research or just had a "bad" product, since Article Marketing worked out quite well for me. As for outsourcing: If you have a niche/product where you know it works, then YES. Outsource more quality articles and you make more sales, keep constant flow of articles going. And yes, Article Marketing and Organic SEO are a good combo..not only do you get traffic from the articles, you also strenghten your sites. why do you make a conclusion based on ONE day? Those are good views for one day, but the problem is your CTR...or some reason people dont feel they want to buy. There are just too many factors playing a role..its hard to say without seeing the actual article(s) and keywords which drive traffic to the articles, even your landing page..etc..etc.. I cant point out enough how many factors there are from someone searching on Google (or EZA ) and actually PURCHASING on your site.