Don't get surprised when you write a perfect article on a super long-tail keyword, that has literally no competition and you rank no where near the top 10... That's how Article marketing works. Even if you SEO your articles properly for keywords with low competition, there's still no guarantee that you will rank. Even when you DO rank, there's no guarantee that your article will stay at the top. Google keeps bumping links from article directories up and down all the time. And as some people already said, while quality is important, quantity is often more important in Article marketing, considering that LOTS of articles are "hit and miss". Some will get thousands of views, while others will get 20 views and die forever. Those guys, who make $xx,xxx monthly with Article marketing write at least 20-100 articles per day, because when you are going BIG, quantity makes the difference, while of course keeping your articles readable and informative. From my personal experience I can tell that the results you get from Article marketing are not worth the time and effort. Assuming that you are going to write yourself, you will be spending quite a bit of your time on writing and submitting regularly, which quickly becomes really tiring and boring. Unless you have real passion for writing or you are willing to make some "quick cash", Article marketing is not the best business model. It is recommended by lots of people, because it's a good way to get started, but if you are planning to make a living for that, then you should do something else... Again, not saying it's impossible, but it's not exactly the "4 hour workweek" lifestyle.
Very correct in that you can have the written the best book in the world!...But no one will know that or even read it unless you publish and market it. Organically, the informational content that is good will eventually find its way to the readers, but if you're looking to actively promote and push your creations to the top of rankings; the Queen of promotion, as you put it, needs to be closely married to your Contentious King. There's no need to go crazy on the advertising as it would most likely make your pages seem like scams and the usual only-for-profit sites that turn off the average (educated) reader. Deliver unto others what you would like others to deliver unto you. - True with all things -
Day 7 - Decided to set up a PPC campaign, just to get a sense of it. Don't click my ads, I'm on a shoestring budget here! - Main article on "getting rid of scars" started showing up in page 1 google SERPS shortly after I had released my adwords campaign. Coincidence? I cannot help but wonder. - Article keeps bouncing up and down between page 1 and 2, I've seen it rank in several positions between 2 to 17. I guess I'll need to keep getting more links to get a hold of the best spots? - So far 60 hops, 5 order form impressions, 0 sales. Maybe LPB will start picking up some traffic now one of the main articles seems to be ranked. - Thinking about writing a bunch of articles today, and perhaps setting up LPC. Do you think I'd be better off linking those new articles to main article on "getting rid of scars" or writing another main article focusing another keyword? Perhaps both? I agree, and that's exactly I think I might get good at this game: I'm a content creator at heart, and this is not about making quick bucks - neither it's about tricking Google or filling the Internet with more garbage.
Day 8 - After doing this for a week: no sales. A bit frustrating, but I suppose it only means I have to work twice as much in week two. For the time being, I'll keep focusing the same product. - After being briefly listed in #2 for terms "getting rid of scars" and "get rid of my scars", my main article for this term dropped to page 2 and beyond. I suppose I have to reinforce back-links to that article. I've only released about 20 articles so far; I'll make sure to at least double that number next week. - I've been using mostly articles base, I'm hoping my articles start getting auto-approved very soon. With eleven articles, I've only had 79 total views so far. Am I doing something wrong, here? Should I persevere, or consider putting more effort into other article directories? - Current plan: keep whipping out articles until I have a notion of what it takes to secure a top 3 placement for the 2 keywords I've chosen. I've already linked about 6 secondary articles to main article on "getting rid of scars"; rather than linking more articles to that one, I'll instead link some articles to each of the 6 secondary articles: -Just started social bookmarking / forum posting / blog commenting to generate back-links to secondary articles. My feeling is that will make the link structure towards main article look more natural and pass more juice to help it climb the SERPS. Can anyone recommend good automated solutions for forum posting / social bookmarking? Should I even bother with social bookmarks anyway? Day 9 (today) - Even though I'll mainly be focusing the same keywords I've just mentioned, I'll of course keep myself from putting all proverbial eggs in the same basket: which goes to say, I'll gradually start targeting related keywords in the next few days. I'm somewhat proud of this one article I did yesterday for keyword "how to get rid of scars", I'll appreciate if anyone cares to review it. Never mind the typos, I'll fix those as soon as my AB account auto-approves articles (hopefully by tomorrow). What I want to know if you think the approach I've used in this article makes up for a good sales warm-up. - Started looking for other products to promote. I'm planning on doing about 3-5 articles for each new product. I'm planning to use the throw-mud-at-wall-and-see-if-anything-sticks approach. Ideally I'll be targeting a new product each day, so that by the beggining of next week I have hopefully found at least one winner product. - Started doing a little yahoo answers, that's actually a fun site. - I also better start tuning up Landing Page B before it starts picking up some traffic. Any suggestions on this matter? Current stats: 72 hops to LPB, 9 order form impressions, zero sales.
This is a good idea. I find that too many people start out by putting all their eggs in one basket (Starting with one program), and when it fails they give up. Many times it's not the webmaster or content that is not working, it is the product itself or something else not in your control. Maybe that product is too expensive, looks or seems cheap, or they get to the checkout and there are other issues. Shipping may be too much, they don't accept paypal, they need it by tomorrow and there is no overnight shipping, etc. etc. From what I have seen, the affiliate programs that do work for people have MANY MANY times more sales than the lower performing programs. So if you actually started with a lower performing program, you are stuck in a rut. Once you get a handful of items being promoted, and one starts outperforming the others you can start to put more time into that program. You will find duds, and you will find studs. The studs bring home the bacon!
I saw you on page 1 for the term 'natural scar removal' so congrats on that! The downside is that the article on page 1 links to another article rather than your landing page. I'm guessing you're trying to build links to rank the other article, but if you're already on page 1 for that article, you may want to include a direct link to your lander. You'll lose a lot of visitors by making them go from one article to another to a landing page to the sales page. Also, you may want to shorten your article titles a little bit. I've had the most success with a short title that contains my keyphrase twice. For example: "Scar Removal - Natural Scar Removal Techniques" That contains 'scar removal' twice and could also rank for 'natural scar removal'. Make sense? It's a bummer you've got 70 hops and no sales but I can assure you that the product is converting. Thats from this past week. I don't know why some affiliates get high conversion rates and others dont. I assume its because the product is brand new and people are still skeptical about it.
I read an interesting article on carlocab.com He explains that content is not king, that marketing is! It's the marketing of the articles that count not the content of the articles! Here's the link: http://www.carlocab.com/i-have-a-secret-content-is-not-king/
I think both are partially true. To get ranked you need good content but if you don't market well it won't turn into conversions. It takes a while to really get the hang of article marketing. The way that you write your articles will GREATLY effect your conversion rates. I always hear people speaking about 1:200 conversions and other outrageous numbers. If you're writing convincing articles and really selling the product you should never see numbers that high unless the sales page is just awful. I rarely ever get conversion rates worse than 1:50 for any product that I promote. You just need to be able to convince the reader that they need this product now and absolutely nothing else will do. It takes practice.
Day 10 Didn't write any articles today, it was more of a thinking Tuesday. Rather than just keep churning them mindlessly, I want to make some research into the most appropriate linking structure between articles, as well as the best way to employ links within each article. Should I stick to one keyword and just hammer it down repeatedly? Should I aim 50% for a chosen keyword and 50% for a few alternate keywords? Does social bookmarking those articles still good for anything, these days? I've got to read some literature on this subject otherwise I'm wasting my fingertips for nothing. For my 11 articlesbase articles, I have only 124 views. That's a lousy average, especally considering how AB is supposed to be good for traffic. Maybe it will just keep building up? I've noticed that even though my active landing page (B) is getting 30-50 daily visitors, I'm only getting 5-8 hops a day. I guess that means it's about time I get doing some fine-tuning. Any ideas? Today I had my almost first sale: there's now one order form submit, along with 12 order form views, and 82 hops. Why were there no less than 2 people already, who mentioned that blog post by that 13 year old marketeer? Are you perchance his uncles? There's nothing wrong with that, I mean ... I'm just thinking what are the odds? Is that kid really so great? Anyway - I obviously differ with the point Mr. Carlo made in that particular post, and we've already reached that conclusion earlier in this thread. In that post Carlo concludes with with the idea that nowadays, it's marketing who's king. Myself? I am now of the firm belief that even though content is indeed King, promotion is Queen; and it takes a couple to make a kingdom, right? I see no point in arguing whether woman or man is best, whether content trumps promotion. It seems quite apparent they're just as important, in the grand scheme of things. You can't have a coin with just one side... not in this reality, you can't!
You know what... You couldn't have put it any better. I totally agree with you. I like the idea of personification, where the king is the content and the queen is the marketing= couple to make a kingdom. Love it!
Blackman makes some excellent points. The only other thing I would add is, the game of article marketing has changed. It used to be about write solid content, SEO keyword targeted articles etc etc, you know the drill.. that is only half the game now, and why so many who try see limited results and just land up thinking they need to write 150 articles in order to see enough traffic. Article marketing starts AFTER your article goes live. Not before, and it doesn't mean you move on to another article, that's spinning your wheels.. The question I'll give to you is this...what did you do with those articles AFTER they went live on EA? If the answer is nothing...then you shouldn't have been surprised by your results.
That's actually a very intriguing argument, but without further development, it comes across as nothing but a little commercial tease towards your article marketing product. That's a shame, because I would genuinely appreciate some editorial guidance, here! I might even be willing to throw in a bonus for anyone who provides me with genuinely useful advice that genuinely sets me on the way to losing my CB virginity. How does a 1000 word credit sounds as a reward for anyone who wants to help me get another extra couple of zeros to the right of my articles view count? Anyone who's interested kindly contact me via PM; I'm sure you can put those words to good use, and I'll make good effort to make them useful! Now, onwards to the Captain's Log: Day 12 "He who fails to prepare... prepares to fail!" - Stopped trying to break trough the SERPS by mindlessly writing keyword-specific articles. I've already got about 20 of those leading to both landing pages, and for the time being, I feel it's better to let current articles simmer and think about setting up the second campaign. - I've noticed this evening some of my articles started ranking on page 1 google SERPS for "getting rid o scars" and "get rid o my scars". This is a good sign, but I prefer waiting to see if the position holds before I crack the fireworks. I sure could use that extra traffics, been getting just a couple dozen dailies these days - translating in 2 -3 daily hops. - Been making some research to decide next products. I think I'll be going down the tough road, and try my luck in the crazy world of FOREX marketing. Day 12 "Alternate roads leading to the same goal: Internet Marketing" - My yahho answers account was suspended! I tried to appeal by stating I hadn't posted redundant information, and also that I'd always tried to provide useful responses. Let's see what they think of my argument. This is too bad, since I was getting fond of Yahoo Answers, and about to break level 2. I feel this is a wonderful source of targeted traffic. - Today I've been playing with Google Trends, and I came across some interesting tidbits. I created a QUICK (or should I say "flash" ;-) post in my flagship blog about "dancing with the stars no panties", I submitted the article to DIGG, and no later than 2 minutes, both my post and my digg submission just popped into page 1. This was an amazing feeling, and it made me think that revitalizing Slices of Life might be a good idea. I think google likes this website, even tough it has long been slapped to PR0 for selling links. I was young and reckless, back in the day! :-/ - I think I'm never again doing a post without first doing the appropriate keyword research. I now begin to grasp the means through wish I could turn my 3-year old blog from back-when-I-started into a decent moneymaker. - While meddling with Google trends, I picked up on a couple of sleezy marketeers who'd been exploiting the trend with somewhat questionable monetization tactics. I think I won't disclose their exact methods, unless you're really curious? - I'm begginning to think that full disclosure on all my marketing efforst might be an unthinkably great idea, for reasons I might digress upon but I won't - not just now. Quite often a little thinking out of the box is required, for great things to happen. - I've been toying with the idea of spinning off this thread into an affiliate journal, and quite possibly make it lean towards the vblog side. Would anyone be interested in such a thing? That's all I can think of for now. As usual I'll edit this post if I think of something else. If you want to keep this thread going, make sure to do your part: I'll of course have to keep myself from double posting.
If you write a lot, wouldn't a voice dictation system help? I haven't even written my first article yet, but already thinking about using Nuance for that.
@michrrdn: hmm... if you paired that quantity with quality, maybe you'd profit $200 a DAY! Trust me, stranger things have happened. @michelle: well, in a way I guess this has been my internet marketing journal all along, even as I started pondering my role as a content creator. And you are very welcome here, with your insightful remarks! (okay, the present case not being the insighfullest, but I've been reading you around I know what I'm talking about!) @su962: Actually, yes! I've also been reading about such software, like Dragon Naturally Speaking. I was also delighted when I realized windows 7 comes with a decent voice recognition engine. I dream of the day where I'll be making my living reclined in an expensive office chair, in my third world penthhouse - my arms folded over behind my comforted shoulders, my speech leisurely articulating content shaped as thoughtful dictations addressed to my virtual assistant. LOL. Or something like that; regardless of my megalomaniac phantasies, voice recognition will likely be prominent in our future human-machine interactions. That and video-logging! Anyway, Here's to the internet marketist's dream come true, through hard work and perseverance!
You've just said it! Content matters and that is what send traffic to your website via article marketing. But there are several ways to promote a website that work wonders. Try SEO..
Day 13 "Success and failure, two sides of an ever-flipping coin" - Faced with these stats, I suppose the natural reaction would be getting a bit disappointed and depressed with the apparent lack of results so far. Well, that's just one way of seeing things! I say the more hops that go by without leading to a sale, the likelier it gets at every single hop for that sale to happen. It's just a matter of statistics - Also, you'll notice the 500 hops with only 5 order form impressions for the etvcorp directTV product. Well, that traffic was highly unfocused (a result of my google trends experiments) but I figured it would be worth giving it a try. - My articlesbase account already started auto-approving articles. That will likely speed up future promotions via article marketing. - I'm now ranking occasionally in page 1 for my chosen scar removal keywords. Will aim to keep writing 2-3 articles each day to try and get a consistent top rank. - Landing Page B seems to be much more effective than LPA; Both Landing pages generated approximately the same amount of hops, yet LPA only generated 3 order form views, from a total of 15. - I've been looking around for good landing page templates before setting up Landing Page C. Day 14 "Pause and Perceive, Rinse and Repeat" - Ok, so far I've achieved some of my lesser goals. I'm familiar with a few article directories, and I'm starting to get a feel of what it takes to get articles ranked in page 1 google SERPS; I've also learned a handful of tricks by looking around into what other people are doing. I still haven't had my first sale, but I'm keeping faith it's bound to happen soon enough. - Got my reply from yahoo answers, concerning my account suspension "We appreciate your inquiry about your suspension from Yahoo! Answers and/or the deactivation of your Yahoo! ID. We reviewed your case, and decided that your account is not eligible for reinstatement." I guess I'll have to be extra careful next time! Any ideas on marketing with Yahoo Answers without crossing the spam-threshold (I could have sworn I was being judicious with my first account, but it turns out they don't agree). - Today I'll try to write a bunch of new articles, and maybe start promoting my second product, as well as making a couple of little experiments like that DirectTV shot from the past few days.
Smitten: go start your own journal thread. Stop hijacking this thread with your daily quotations. Why can't people figure this out - it's all about efficiency. If you spend 45 minutes writing an article about a product and then submitting it to a couple directories, you will get nowhere. Actually, you will get to where Smitten is now: a few hops, minimal sales and no clear vision of how to move forward.