By
allen on June 17th, 2008
Posted in Article Writing | No Comments »
Where do you get your ideas for articles from? If you carry a notebook of some sort with you and jot down ideas as they come to you then you’d be able to come up with more ideas for articles. It really isn’t hard. You can come up with article ideas based on every day occurrences that happen in your world.
You can surely come up with an article idea related to your business just talking to people - friends, family, customers. Witness an accident? How can you turn that into an article? See something interesting in your neighborhood that you’ve never seen before? Write it down and come up with a way to tie it to your niche in an article.
If your articles are interesting to read and you are able to creatively communicate how every day events or unusual occurrences and conversations relate to your niche then you will build your credibility and traffic with each article you write.
By
allen on June 16th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Writing | 1 Comment »
There are more benefits to article marketing than you can shake a long stick at. But are you aware of these five most important benefits to article marketing:
- It’s free - Doing article marketing yourself costs nothing. Even if you hire a ghostwriter, you can submit your articles to article directories at no charge.
- Builds permanent links to your website - Aticle marketing is one of the best ways to build permanent links to your website. Those links stay there forever.
- Turns you into a credible expert in your niche - Every time you write an article you show yourself to be the expert that you are. Your customers and potential customers will rely on your expertise more because they have read your articles.
- Articles rank in search engines - It’s all about content and articles are great content. Put them on your website or distribute them across the web. Either way, you’ll get them ranked in the search engines and that helps you market your website.
- Articles drive traffic - When someone reads an article you wrote in their favorite e-zine or on another website then they will visit your website. Aticles drive traffic and without traffic you will not make money online.
Given these five benefits of articles marketing, it makes no sense not to be using this method of online marketing. It’s inexpensive, effective, and makes you money.
Learn more about article marketing today.
By
allen on June 13th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | 2 Comments »
There’s a new catch-phrase online call bum marketing. What is it?
Bum marketing is really nothing new. The name is new. It’s really article marketing and people have given it a new name. The principles are essentially the same:
- Write a bunch of articles and distribute them online
- Do this every day
- Research your keywords and write keyword-rich articles
- Research the articles using your keywords as your springboard
New bum marketers have added a blog and hubs, or Squidoo pages, to the mix. You can do that. Those are just additional inbound links to your website. Not bad to have. But stick to the essence of the marketing plan.
Effective article (bum) marketing relies on two things:
- Consistency
- Repetition
You have to stick with it and you have to keep doing the same thing over and over again. If you find something that works, keep doing it.
By
allen on June 12th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
We live in a fast food society. You can drive through McDonald’s and within a few minutes have a burger, fries, and a drink and be on your way to that all important business meeting. E-mail is at your fingertips and you can shoot a message to an associate on the other side of the country that will result in a billion dollar sale within minutes. Wow! Isn’t that amazing?
Yes, it is amazing, but article marketing is not McDonald’s and it isn’t Outlook Express. It does take time. How much time? Well, it depends.
If you write five articles a day for 30 days you’ll do a lot better than if you write one article per day for 150. Same number of articles, but a shorter time period. On the other hand, if you write one high quality article, it will go a lot further than five mediocre articles. So quality is important too.
The most optimized article marketing strategy relies on a combination of quality and quantity. You want your articles to be high quality articles. But you want to write enough of them that they get you some attention as a credible expert within your niche. How many articles is that exactly? I can’t say. But what I can say is when you do it you will know it.
What you need to know about article marketing is there are no short cuts. There is no fast food window that you can drive up to and order instant success. You have to be willing to spend the time to write quality articles, and quality is more important than quantity by the way, and spend the time to write a lot of them. If you are patient and you work hard, or hire someone who is patient and works hard, and has the ability to write quality articles, then your article marketing efforts will go a long way.
By
allen on June 11th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Writing | No Comments »
There are three generally recognized ways of getting articles for marketing your website:
- Private Label Rights
- Write them yourself
- Hire a ghostwriter
I would not recommend private label rights (PLR). These are articles that are prewritten that you buy and can use as they are. The problem is, they’ve been used before. You really don’t want articles that have been used before. You’ll have to rewrite them for them to be of any real value to you. And if you’re going to rewrite them then you might as well as just write articles from scratch.
Speaking of writing your own, be prepared to spend some time researching and writing. If you’re a good writer and you have the time to conduct research then this might be an option for you. But if you find that your time is limited then you may need to hire a ghostwriter.
A ghostwriter is a good compromise between the inexpensive fluff you get through PLR and the time-intensive process of writing your own articles. You can hire someone to write your articles for you and create original article content that actually benefits you. But why pay more than you have to?
By
allen on June 9th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing | 1 Comment »
Lately there have been new article directories popping up, wanting you to submit your articles and promising you certain money-making benefits. There are some that offer to place your AdSense on a certain percentage of your articles. There are article directories that allow you to place ads on their website in exchange for your articles. Some allow you to join an affiliate program after you’ve had so many articles published. And there are other variations of the income-producing model that are being developed along these lines. Are any of them necessary?
First, I’d like to say that article marketing has never been about getting your article published in a directory. Article marketing is about getting your articles picked up by publishers within your niche. That’s the end goal and when that happens it is much more valuable reward then any of the promised benefits mentioned above or, for that matter, and future promised benefits to try to get your publish your articles. Quite frankly, I find these offers to be a bit off-putting and they tend to take your mind off of the real goal of article marketing.
Think about it: The goal of article marketing is to have your articles published on niche sites with a link back to your site. You preferably want those links to be on authority sites with relevant content. Those are the best links. In fact, if that happens with your articles often then you are getting real benefit from your article marketing efforts. Other benefits pale in comparison.
Honestly, would you rather have $10 monthly income from your articles on an article directory or permanent links from hundreds of websites within your niche that drive traffic to your landing pages every day? If you said the former then you might as well just forget about article marketing and build a website with content on it and slap your own AdSense ads on that site because you’ll make more money that way in the long run. But if you are trying to sell a product or service and you are looking for business, stick with traditional article marketing. Don’t take the bribes.
By
Bill Platt on June 8th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
I am constantly surprised by the number of people who rant and rave about how article marketing does not work. Of course, they expect that you and I should simply take their word for it, because they said so.
They ask us to ignore the God’s honest truth that there are thousands of writers who have made tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, as a result of their use of article marketing as a promotion technique. I can attest personally to the ability of an individual to earn hundreds of thousands in sales as the result of using articles to promote their businesses - I can attest to it, because I have done it for myself.
Of course, the people who swear that article marketing does not work should be honest with the people who are reading their words… They should instead say, “article marketing did not work for me.” The most amazing part of the story is that when pressed for details, these people who claim that article marketing does not work will admit that they have only used articles once or twice! No wonder it did not work for them… They did not invest the effort required to make it work for them.
Of course, few writers will achieve substantial results from one or two articles. One must put themselves in the shoes of publishers. With only one or two articles in the marketplace, a writer is simply one of thousands of wannabe writers trying to get in on the article marketing bandwagon. But those with persistence and dedication to the methodology will stick around to write more articles (or have articles ghost-written). As more articles are published in an author’s name, the chances of real exposure for that author are increased, and name recognition brings the rewards of more articles published, which in turn will bring the rewards of more traffic and more sales to one’s website.
Article marketing is not a method that should be undertaken in half-measures and one-out attempts to see results. If you are not going to make a commitment to the long-term, publishers will not make a commitment to you. Article marketing works when publishers start paying attention to what you write, but no one will ever pay attention if you just tease the method and quit before you have given the method the chance to produce results for you.
Bill Platt
http://www.thephantomwriters.com
p.s. To learn how to get the best effort from your ghost writer or how to write better articles yourself, please consider my Article Marketing Secrets ebook.
p.p.s. To learn more about the intricacies of using article marketing to build links to one’s website, check out the article, “Whitehat vs. Blackhat Article Marketing Tips“.
By
allen on June 6th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
(Source) The more articles you have working for you, the more chance you have of making a sale.
It’s a numbers game. The more articles you write and the more articles you distribute online to article directories then the more likely you are to drive traffic to your web pages and close sales. Of course, you have to have landing pages that close sales. But you also have to drive traffic to those pages and articles drive traffic. But one of the biggest mistakes that beginning article marketers make is they just write a few articles hoping to catch a wave of traffic. It doesn’t work that way.
Patience is the name of the game. Write articles. Lots of them. Kick them out in droves. Then distribute them wherever you can. Get them out there in as many places as you can as fast as you can. You won’t get a wave of traffic overnight. It takes time. Those articles sit in article directories forever. Imagine an article you wrote five years ago still sending traffic to your website. As more and more webmasters, bloggers, and newsletter publishers pick up your articles to publish them, the more likely you are to get new traffic. As that happens, your income possibilities go up.
Remember, two things: Patience, lots of articles. Time, lots of articles. Lots of articles over time, be patient.
By
allen on June 5th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Author Resource Box | No Comments »
Article marketing is a powerful way to market your products or services. But even if you don’t have a website you can make money through article marketing. There are countless ways to make it work for you. Here are three ways that you can make money through article marketing:
- Sell a digital product - All you really have to do to make money through article marketing is offer something for sale. An e-book, a podcast, a video, computer software, anything that people can download online. Write articles and distribute them to article directories and drive traffic to your product’s sales page. If your sales page converts, article marketing can get the traffic to your page and you’ll be earning income as a result. Be patient and write a lot of articles.
- Affiliate marketing - Even if you don’t have a product of your own to sell, you can make money selling someone else’s product. It’s called affiliate marketing. Find a product that you think you can promote and write articles about that topic. Don’t write articles that promote the product directly. Write helpful informational products about the niche or subject specialty and in your author resource box have a link that points to a landing page. Make your landing page about your affiliate product and drive traffic to your affiliate’s sales page. Any sales you make will earn you a commission.
- Sell advertising - Write articles on a particular topic and put them on a website. All of your articles should be related to a particular niche. Use articles to drive traffic to this website and sell advertising to companies in this niche. These companies will pay you for putting an ad on your website if you can show them that you have traffic to your web pages.
There is more than just one way to make money online. Think about your business plan and find a way to include article marketing in the plan. It pays to have a plan and follow through.
Learn More About Article Marketing Today
By
allen on June 4th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Author Resource Box | No Comments »
Every now and then I run across someone who says, “I tried article marketing and it didn’t make me any sales. It’s just a waste of time.”
But is it?
Like anything else, if you don’t do it right, article marketing can be a waste of time. You spend time writing an article. You spend time distributing the article. Few people respond. You make no sales. It’s a waste of time, right?
Seemingly. But if you do ti right, article marketing can be a big boon to your business. So that begs the question, “What is the right way to do article marketing?”
Well, there is no one right way. There are a lot of ways that work and a lot of ways that don’t. But there are principles that you can adhere to that will make your article marketing more effective in the long run. Here are some principles that I’ve found work best:
- Write a lot of articles - Don’t just write one article and stop there. One article here and there isn’t going to do you any good. To make article marketing work for you it is important that you spend some time each week on some aspect of your article marketing plan. First, write at least two articles per week. One article per day is better if you can.
- Don’t make every article about yourself - Self-promotional articles don’t work. People don’t care about your achievements. They want to know what’s in it for them. Write articles that are heavy on information and provide value for the reader.
- Link to your website in the author resource box - This is very important. I can’t tell you how many people write articles and post them in article directories without links in the author resource box. If you don’t link back to your website then no one is going to visit your website. Article marketing will be a waste of time.
- Spell your URL out once - Not everyone who republishes articles will activate your links. They’re supposed to, but some people don’t. Spell out the URL you want to promote so that people can always see your website address even if the link isn’t activated.
- Include a call to action - Give a compelling reason for people to visit your website. Offer a free download or a huge discount. Make your offer compelling enough that people won’t be able to refuse, then ask for the action (click, subscription, etc.).
Article marketing isn’t hard. It can be time consuming. But if you do it right it’s not a waste of time. It can drive traffic to your website and help you close sales.
