Article Marketing & ClickBank - My Documented Journey

Yeah don't give up, bum marketing truly works.
- I wanted to give you some pointers but my pm's are never returned

-lol, so i'll just say stay focused, and keep up the hard work.

 

The number of clicks you get is really low - you can get so much more. I did a little test with ezinearticles. I wrote 2 similar articles, and had them accepted.

The first one, I just put my link, said I was an expert for this topic, and only 8% of the people clicked the URL. No sales, bounce rate 70%.

The second article, 35% clicked. All I did was say: "For Part II, go to www.###.com. I checked the traffic from ezinearticles, the bounce rate was 4%, and I got 2 sales.



Good luck - I think you can get so many more clicks for each article.

 

wow man.

great advice here!

thanks man, I'll definitely test that technique.

 

i also use links in my articles and they seem to be accepted.. however i am promoting my own clickbank site, which could make a difference.

 

Do you actually have a part 2 of the article when you say this? Do you guys think my bounce rate would be high if I claim to have a part 2, but it actually leads to a pre-sell page?

 

can you show me the site on which you convert on?
Those are some nice clickthrough rates

 

I led them directly to a pre-sell page.

I'm trying to submit another article right now, it seems a few of the ezine editors don't like the use of "Part II" (Associate Editor #32).

"...articles must not require you to redirect away from
EzineArticles.com in order
to finish reading the article or to get the full story about the
subject."

If you don't write a conclusion to your article and put up Part II, many people click. Guess they don't like people clicking on your url - but isn't that the whole point of us spending time to write these articles?.

 

I'd say the reason given by the editor is valid - they want the full article on the site and not require the user to navigate away from EZA to finish reading the article (or "part two" in your case). Still, that's a fantastic technique... your CTR is incredible!

I'm hovering just under a 10% CTR for my articles which I think is pretty respectable. I'd love to get the kind of traffic you're receiving but I think the same number is achievable through submitting a constant stream of articles.

Day 8 - September 7th, 2007

No sales today. The 10 articles that are currently live did attract 100 views and 10 clicks though. That number seems to be pretty stable now, so I think I'll be able to constantly achieve 100 views a day with only 10 articles.

Today was spent writing a bunch of articles for various products, so I'll be ready for when my account is eventually upgraded. Does anyone know if EZA have anything against pre-writing articles and copying and pasting them into the article body field?

 

They are very strict with this policy. But it is not guaranteed to bring you sales. If it helped you sell something than you were lucky. Ezinearticles basically gets the traffic from it's subscribers who have subscribed to notifications. Sales will only come when a big site or search engines pick up your article.

 

It takes much more than that buddy. Selling is a tough task, try to browse through other ezinearticle.com articles and you would be astounded to notice how many competitors you already have selling the same product.

 

Has anyone noticed that everytime you submit articles, after roughly 5 days, you start receiving no traffic? I get all my visits and clicks these first 5 days, and after that the article is dead, unless it gains a high spot in search engines.

On average, I'd say about 40 clicks on average from ezine- per article assuming it's decent, and it takes about 20 minutes to write a 700 word article (if you already know the topic well). I guess it's still worth the time to write them.

So, what should we do with articles that aren't receiving traffic?

 

Yup that's exactly what I am talking about. You get traffic as long as it's on the ezinearticles first page. But still that traffic is not quality traffic, It's more like blank hits specially webmasters looking for content. Quality traffic only comes when your article hits the search engines.

Or maybe you can write hundreds of articles each day and try to stay on the front page. And this can only be done if you are a robot lol.

And well about the articles that arnt recieveing traffic. Well it's useless unless it's been optimized for search engines. And trust me if you work on optimizing each and every article you would not write much.

 

I disagree. The traffic I got was very targeted. I had 2 people email me about how my chain of websites (which helps people solve a specific problem) really helped them out a lot. They asked me questions about the products I recommended.

The average number of page views I get from ezinearticles is 8.2 pages/visitor (stats based on my last article). I get little search engine traffic, and search engine traffic give me 70-80% bounce rate, with on average 1.3pages/visitor.

But yeah, once your article hits search engines, that's a ton of quality traffic. Guess that's how some articles get 100,000 page views. What's the best way for this? Keyword every other sentence?

 

Keyword every other sentence will most likely do more harm than good. I tried having my keyword once every paragraph but I'm thinking even that was too much. Having it in the title is the most important when it comes to bum marketing.

 

Yeah all of you make valid points
after about the first couple of days, my clicks have dropped substantially.

Lucky for me, all my articles rank high in search engines for specific keywords, so my articles get some clicks which = higher converting visitors.

I recommend focusing on microniches as well. Things such as Meal plans, poker stategies...etc.

For the major niches such as the "make money niche", "internet marketing niches", and "video games etc." you should use ezinearticles, and have a landing page, with an opt-in form

for microniches, you should definitely use Searchwarp, or Goarticles & just direct them to the affiliate link.

honestly? your articles will never die, I see articles leading the search engines that were made approximately 2 years ago.

Just find the best keywords, If you get about 15 or more searches a day for a certain keyword, you have yourself a fantastic keyword.

 

Great thread, it has inspired me to do a little bum marketing myself. I am starting with GoArticles first, mainly because they allow direct links to affiliates.

I have been scouring google for keyword phrases that I can write about. It is kind of addicting. Once you write one article you want to write another. I look forward to the updates in this thread.

 

In the 10 days that my article on GoArticles has been live, it's yet to receive one click. I'd just go with EZA and redirect top level .info domains to your affiliate link.

Day 9 - September 8th, 2007

Well 9 days in and finally, I just received my first sale a couple of hours ago. I went out tonight for dinner - there is no better feeling than coming back from a fantastic night out and seeing money in your ClickBank account. As stupid as it sounds I had to log out and back in again multiple times just to make sure it was true. While $20-odd really isn't anything to be jumping about, this one sale has really confirmed that article marketing does work if you put effort into it, and has definitely motivated me to work even harder.



I was upgraded to Basic PLUS today. I wasn't given any reasoning as to why I wasn't upgraded to Platinum, but I'll just assume that the URL error was to blame. I've only had time to write 3 articles today, but I'll get a few more out before I go to bed. I have the whole day free tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be able to use up my remaining submissions by tomorrow night.

 

Can you trace the sale and say which article/affiliate u used?

edit:ignore this question i already found out

 

I'm not really counting on people clicking my articles through GoArticles. I am targeting keywords that will get me ranked high in search engines after they are indexed which will give me more sales over time (hopefully).

Basically, I am trying to prepare for the long haul.

Congratulations on that first sale too. It does feel good.

 

Which product were you promoting if you don't mind me asking?