Hi all. I've seen a couple of threads started on here recently that are putting it out there that you can make $400-$500 per week by submitting articles to sites like Ezine Articles and ArticlesBase. It's kind of making me sick to see all of these newbies (and others) eating this up like it's some kind of new miracle money making system. This is why I feel compelled to dispel the rumors. Can you make money by writing articles and direct linking to affiliate pages? Yes, you can. However, it's a lot less than these threads are putting out. I learned a long time ago that article marketing would best serve me when used as a source of traffic to my squeeze pages, so that I could build my list. Now, I have solid evidence that I am going to share with you. I have a personal Clickbank account, and this is the one that I started about 3 years ago when I was new to internet marketing and only doing Bum Marketing. I bought into this whole thing jyust like many others. Fact is, it used to work really well, that is until about 2-4 years ago when everyone and their mother got into article marketing and started spinning and resubmitting like crazy, etc. Another thing that has killed it is the whole video hysteria. A lot more people are watching videos instead of reading articles. That's why I have developed a great formula for turning my articles into videos and slides, PDF's, etc, but that's another thread. Anyhow, to make a rather long story shorter, I'm going to share with you my Clickbank stats that are just from article marketing alone. I currently have around 250 articles direct linked that are working for me. Here are my October stats: These are the typical results that you can expect from 250-300 articles. Granted, my articles are all keyword optimized and many have SEO and backlinks as well, so take that into consideration. I'm not trying to burst anyone's bubble, or rain on anyone's parade. I'm just trying to show you that 250-300 articles will realistically make you $200-$300 per month, NOT $400 per month. If you can get 1000 articles submitted, you may be able to make $800-$1000 per month. Bottom line - It's just not worth it. You need to BUILD A LIST. I can make $200-$300 in 15 minutes with my list, and it isn't even a huge list! So do with this what you will, but I am an experienced internet marketer, and I'm just laying it out straight for you.
Really liked your tips on article marketing. I am just starting out and submitting articles. Do you recommend using an article submission service or are they spam?
No, they aren't spam, but why don't you just get a simple article submitter software? Those work best. However, you really should only be submitting articles as a means to drive targeted traffic to a squeeze page. Leads from articles are extremely targeted most times and with a list you can market to them over and over instead of just trying to get one quick sale. Here is a video from the last ebook I wrote. This is my Article Marketing On Steroids system: [video=youtube;87HCStBvif8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87HCStBvif8[/video]
This is exactly how I do it too! I always link to a squeeze page! I agree with you 100% It's easier and more efficient to get someone to opt in to a list for more info or something free then to make a single sale and lose that person forever. . .
Article marketing is never ever helpful if the only thing you know is writing articles. 1) Simple plain articles that hardly offer any help will never yield any responses. 2) A spelling typo can destroy your campaign or damage it. 3) If you are not writing articles with targeted keywords that have high searches and low competition your articles wont rank high. 4) Publishing an article is not the end. You have to promote it also. One can outsource articles if he fells bored and it is always worthy. I get articles outsourced from freelancer for my clickbank products. 5) 1 article - 90 views 2 articles- 180 views 3 articles- 300 views 10 articles- not 900 views but more than 1000 views. The views increase exponentially as you publish more articles and get more experience. 6) The most important thing is your RESOURCE BOX. For a relationship product if your Resource box says learn how to get your ex back, it won't get many clicks and one must know that this is the most important thing as Resource box decided the number of views on your landing pages. It will get less than 10% CTR for the above example. A good title like "DEDICATE YOUR 5 MIN TO READ THIS REPORT THAT WILL MAKE YOUR EX CRAWL BACK TO YOU IN DAYS" will get more than 30% CTR Bottomline is ARTICLE MARKETING is not just articles but much more Hope that helps Thanks
Do you direct link to your affiliate landing pages or do you send them to a squeeze page. Also what article directory are you using? Some of my articles get wayyyy less than 90 clicks, some articles have been up for a month with like 15 clicks (but I haven't done any backlinking)...
If you watch the video, you'll get an idea of how to promote the articles. That system that I laid out is used only to send traffic to my squeeze pages. I used to direct link, but you can see the results are less than heartening. The Clickbank account that I posted the screenshot of has over 200 articles direct linked to different affiliate pages. I have optimized the articles with good keywords and even done SEO on a lot of them. Building a list is the best way to go. Once I started building a list, I immediately saw a revenue increase and as my list gets bigger, I make more money.
I think i missed something and that is that you have 200 live articles. You are doing something very wrong becayse with my 100 articles i have more than 900$ sales. I reccomend you go for list building as article marketing is not in favour of you.
It is allowed if you buy a domain and use a redirect, which is what I did. You can buy a cheap .info domain and then redirect it to your Clickbank affiliate link, and Ezine Articles has no problem with that. However, I wouldn't recommend it. You should always link to a squeeze page and build your list.
Hi Cjmo75 this is what Im doing now direct linking seeing no results.. I have made a few sales.. but it seems like MMO and weight loss are the niches to build lists in.. but i keep on hearing that mmo is too saturated and weight loss is too competetive ect.. I've thought about what my interests are but then i thought will I provide enough good content for them? Are there enough products to promote?. So then I revert back to MMO but yet saturation. This is what is keeping me from building a list in any niche.. any thoughts/suggestions? thanks..
I've had $900 months, too. However, I learned a long time ago that building a list is the smart thing to do. Writng articles and linking to landing pages or redirceting to affiliate pages is waste of time. Making $900 per month from your articles is great, but I can make that from 2 email broadcasts. Once you get yourself 1000 or so subscribers, you can then take your earning and start outsourcing the article writing to a freelancer. I usually buy at least 25 articles per week and submit them using my Article Marketing On Steroids formula, which is one of the greatest article marketing formulas ever created. You see, I don't have to put my CB hop links in my forum signature and then beg people to click on them, because I make tons of money with my list. If I were you, though, I wouldn't bother building a list, because it will probably be unfavorable for you.
What you are experiencing with direct linking is common. Fact is, it just doesn't work anymore. Too many people have jumped on the Bum Marketing bandwagon and now it's almost impossible to make any substantial money doing it. Article marketing should be used for building your list, and that's all. Anyone that disagrees with me is wrong, end of story. As for the best niche to build your list in, it's Internet Marketing/MMO, hands down. Why? Because tons of people are out to make money as internet marketers, and there is always a wealth of new products to promote. Don't worry about saturation. Don't let that scare you away. There is always room for more in that niche. You won't see tremendous results from your articles, because in internet marketing it's all about relationship building, and that's where list building comes in. It's a proven fact that 75% of people won't buy the first time they hit a sales page. It usually takes at least 7 or 8 contacts before they are comfortable enough to buy from you. That's why you must build a list. People WANT to buy from someone they know and trust. Once you start building a list, you'll need at least 500 subscribers before you start to see any substantial sales. Also, it's not about quantitiy, but quality. Talk to your subscribers like they are old friends, and they will learn to trust you, and take your product recommendations seriously.
I partially agree with you... First I will mention that I completely agree with advice on list building! In fact, there is really never an excuse for failing to build a list. When you can build a list, you should build a list. That being said, here is where we disagree. It seems that you are only talking about 1 facet of article marting : the built-for-traffic article, when in fact there is more than one way to use article marketing. In my mind there are 4 basic types of articles 1) backlink fodder - articles that are written quickly for SEO purposes and not necessarily targeted towards a human audience 2) on site content - articles written in ways that article directories usually will not accept (a bit more promotional, typically short, stronger call to action) 3) direct traffic articles - what you have been talking about here. articles written to attract a higher CTR and drive clicks to your site 4) authority articles - the real "meat and potatoes" behind long term article marketing Don't get me wrong, I also utilize articles for clicks. They are very useful because it can generate an initial burst of traffic, it does it quickly, and the traffic it generates is very targeted. However the problem with this strategy is that once the article falls off the first page of EZA (and the most recent list) the traffic stream will die. Therefore, in order to keep traffic flowing in with this strategy you must continue to constantly pump out new articles. Now, you can get more traffic with these articles by getting them ranked in the SEs, but this is only wise sometimes. See, if you can write an article, post it to EZA and get it ranked with little or no backlinks, that is cool. It is especially cool if it is a well written article that generates lots of good clicks. On the other hand if your article does not rank on its own, you cannot get it to rank without promoting it (ie., building backlinks to it), which is something that I am strongly against. I will NOT spend time and effort trying to drive extra traffic to someone else's site. If every time I wanted to rank an article in the SEs, I instead redirect that effort back to my own site, then my site -- my asset -- will gradually get more authority, traffic and rankings, which is something that I control and own. Why would I want to give that to someone else? For the short game? For immediate traffic? We already established that you are in it for the long haul (list building) Then there is YET another problem with direct traffic article marketing, well specifically with using EZA for direct traffic articles. That is EZA its self and the things that they have done in the last 6-12 months to make it difficult for article marketers. I will not get in to all the details, but I will mention one really big issue. That is the HUGE blocks adsense that are on every article page. Of course, there has always been adsense on EZA, but not like this. There is more words of advertising on a 400 article than there is in the article its self. Not only that, but more importantly, one of the blocks is in between the article and the "Most lists". This is a huge problem for direct traffic. You see in actuality, most of your direct EZA traffic does not (at least in the past) come from the articles link on the EZA home page, but more from people finding an article in your niche in the SEs, reading it, not liking it, and then scrolling down right below and clicking the most eye-grabbing title in the "Other Most Recent In:" list. Now, with their new adense block, the CTR to these links have plummeted. so my point is that direct traffic article marketing has gone downhill a lot in the recent months and is why I would never depend on it as a business plan so on to my real point. Article marketing is still very powerful and is a huge part of my strategy. I just take a different approach. I rely mostly on the 4th type of article more than anything else. I still use the direct traffic type of article from time to time, but usually more for testing a new niche or landing page or something to see how it converts. For a long term plan I rely more on strong authoritive articles. I never submit hundreds of articles a month, and suggesting that it is a requirement is simply not true. I will usually submit 1 article (per niche) every 1 or two days, thats all. The difference is the type of article that I write. The kind of articles I am talking about are not promotional at all. I repeat, not promotion at all. They usually do not have a call to action. Instead I take time and write well researched articles that people would actually want to read. The idea is that when a webmaster read its they will think to themselves, "this is nice, i would like to have this on my website." Most of these articles are around the 1000 word mark. Sometimes a little less or little more, but around 1000 works really well for me. Over the course of a month, I will publish around 15-20 article in a niche, and I garuntee I pull in more traffic this way than I every could by bombing the article dirs day after day with tons of articles. You will end up with articles published on high-end authority sites which will drive a good amount of very targeted traffic, build your name as an authority in your niche, and provide you with the best off-page SEO (the kind you cannot buy). Everyone knows that links from high PR websites that do not allow self-published content hold tons of weight in the SE. Another point with these types of articles is that you get laser targeted traffic. Now, you see your average reader will not make it to the end of a 1000 word article. Actually, many studies show that they will get lost around 400-600 words, which is why shorter articles are the best for high-CTR optimization. Though, when someone is already on an authority website in the niche, and then actually takes the time to read your entire 1000 article, and then takes the effort to click the link in your resource box, it is pretty safe to say that this person is very interested in not only the topic at hand, but what you have to say about it as an expert on the subject. My research has proven to me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this type of traffic is AWESOME and usually more than willing to opt-in because they have already decided that I am the bomb. IMO, this is much better than the guy that clicks your resource box because you left him on a cliffhanger. It is true that your CTR on these articles, and direct EZA traffic on these articles will be lower. What you will get in return are customers that are loyal buyers and a website that becomes very strong. By far, the best part of all is that all of the link juice, traffic, and authority all funnel down to your site, not EZAs. This point should speak for its self for anyone that is serious about their IM business. And that is, as you so eloquently put it, "The REAL DEAL About Article Marketing"
Even 900$ a month with 200 articles mean 1 sale from 18 articles. I reccomend you go for other techniques and meanwhile learn article marketing.
I agree with both points. Article marketing is still good if done consistently. I think it is a better method for driving traffic to your main site rather than trying to direct link to your affiliate products to make a sale. List building will always be a good way to go because you will be able to make repeat sales with that method. So, both are good in my opinion.
I responded to this post before but for some reason it's gone. Hopefully, this forum isn't banning free speech like the Warrior Forum now. I've made $900 in sales before, too. Point is, it's not worth the amount of work you have to do when I can make $200 or $300 from one simple email broadcast that takes 15 minutes. List building is the only way to use article marketing. Everything else is foolish. You shouldn't try building a list because it probably won't favor you.
I agree with a lot of your ppoints. I didn't mean to say that article marketing was just good for traffic to your squeeze page. It's great when you your article gets syndicated. In fact, that's why I made the video in this thread (see post#4). Using that method, my articles get maximum exposure. I have several articles that have gottebn thousands of backlinks using this method. Here's a typical example: