By
allen on June 27th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
I hear (and read) people saying article marketing is free all the time. I’ve said it myself. But it really isn’t true. There is an expense.
Even if you write and submit all of your own articles, there is a cost. It might take you 10 minutes to write an article and 10 minutes to submit it to a handful of directories, but that 20 minutes of your time is an expense. How much is one hour of your time worth? Have you narrowed it down? You should. And if your time is worth $60 per hour then you’ve spent $20 on article marketing.
When it becomes more costly to spend your time on article marketing than it is to pay a ghostwriter and article submitter to do it for you, that’s when you should consider outsourcing. $20 a day for article marketing is $600 a month. Are you spending that much of your time on article marketing? If so then it might be time to consider outsourcing that work to a professional who knows how to get results.
Judging the cost is more than just crunching numbers and converting your time to dollars. There is also the opportunity expense of effectiveness. Are you getting results from your articles?
By results, I am not talking about sales. That isn’t the purpose of article marketing. Your purpose is to drive traffic so that your website closes sales. Are you doing that? Are publishers picking up your articles? If not, you should find out why not. An article that sits in the article directory for five years and is never published by anyone else isn’t doing its job. Maybe you need to figure out what you’re doing wrong.
Sometimes article marketing is most costly than not doing it because the business owner is doing it wrong. With the proper consulting you can turn your business around and get the article marketing you deserve. Why not take the right steps to do that today?
By
allen on June 24th, 2008
Posted in Article Submissions | No Comments »
Excellent article:
By Bob B. Hamilton
Once you have content and articles for your website and for your online marketing strategy you have to submit them to article submission sites and articles directory sites. These sites help to give your content the exposure that it needs in order to get the word out about your product, service, or interest. They also generate traffic towards your websites.
There are a couple of different ways that you can submit articles to these types of sites. One way is manually. It can take a long time to submit to all the article directories and submission sites that are available. Another way is through the use of software. There are both advantages and disadvantages to using software applications.
The advantage is that software speeds up the process. You can submit to a number of sites at the same time. You do not have to spend money on a separate individual to take care of this task for you. You can take care of it yourself.
The disadvantage is that using software can be time consuming because of the actual process of using it rather than the speed of the outcome. It can be confusing to use and some of the software applications are not designed to be user friendly. The second issue is the fact that articles can only be submitted to so many sites at a given time. This is because the search engines will notice a large amount of submissions coming in all at the same time. This usually causes the content to be flagged making it ineffective.
To overcome this disadvantages consider outsourcing to a person or company. They can not only generate the content but take care of submitting it to all the sites. All you have to do is approve the content. This can be a great help. The disadvantage is that it requires a fee for creating the content and then another one for submission or you have to purchase a package. While outsourcing offers a great number of advantages for your online marketing business. If you are looking to reduce overhead and can create the content or have it created and then submit it yourself you can save money.
One of the advantages of using software is that you can use it yourself. On the other hand it can be difficult to learn how to use. Using software saves money, but can take a great deal time. Using a company or person allows you to create content and then have it submitted all at the same time. They know how to submit and where it will be most effective. The down side is that it costs a fee to do this.
There are a number of advantages and disadvantages whether doing something yourself or outsourcing it to others. However it is usually a good idea to outsource. Even though there is a fee involved you usually have the opportunity to avail yourself to professional services without the additional issues of hiring, taxes and benefits. The choice is yours. Follow the path that works best for you. Both software and outsourcing are viable options for your online marketing business when it comes to article submission services.
To your article marketing success!
Interesting in learning more about this topic? Download my free ebook on internet marketing.
Bob Hamilton is an entrepreneur, author, writer, business consultant and trainer. http://www.OpeningADollarStore.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_B._Hamilton
Personally, I’m partial to outsourcing.
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
Bill Platt on June 2nd, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
People often argue that the only reason to write articles for the Internet is to gain that illustrious back-link for the purpose of influencing one’s Link Popularity with the search engines.
For years, I have been standing against this limited and short-term mindset, and I continue to argue against the Link Popularity crowd, not because I don’t want people to get their back-links, but because I realize that just aiming for a back-link is likely to leave real value and money on the table.
Here is the deal. Most people who aim “only for back-links” from their articles tend to not care about the quality or value of the article content. As a result, they tend to produce very low quality article content with no concern or consideration for the persons who will have to read the gibberish content they produce.
Here is how the low quality article marketer loses:
- Most publishers who want to use the article content, made available to them, personally review the articles sent to them and decide to publish articles on a case-by-case basis. Bad quality articles tend to be published far less often than good quality articles, even when the article is distributed through an article distribution service. Less frequent publication reduces the number of back-links that can and will be generated by an article.
- Article Distribution costs the same in time and money resources, despite the value or usefulness of the article distributed. If an article is published on only one website or fifty, the cost in time or money of distributing that article is the same. So, wouldn’t it make more sense to produce articles that are likely to be published more often, rather than less often?
- Articles are viewed by human readers as a testament to the company who produces it. Poor quality articles reflect badly on the companies who commissioned those articles. There is an old adage that says, “You only get one chance to make a good first impression.” If an article is the first exposure a potential client sees in reference to a company, and that article is poorly written, then the company who produced the article will have shot their first, best opportunity to attract a new customer to their website.
The difference in cost of creating a good quality article versus a poor quality article can usually be measured in an extra ten to twenty dollars, and it costs more for two reasons. One, it takes more time to produce a good quality article. And two, the person qualified to write that better quality article is usually a bit more skilled than the person who only writes gibberish.
Let me propose to you a scenario. Try this out for yourself. A lot of times, article marketers will spend $10-$15 to have an article written and they will spend another $5-$40 to distribute that article on the world wide web. For the average article marketer, the process costs in the range of $15-$55 to create and distribute one article. But the average low quality article will only generate 20-30 links. However, if one were to simply double their article writing budget, spending $20-$30 to have an article written plus the distribution cost of the article ($25-$70 to write and distribute an article), it is very likely and very realistic for an article to generate in excess of 50-60 back-links.
Yes, simply by doubling the cost of writing and paying the same amount of money for article distribution, the average article marketer can in fact generate at least twice the number of back-links to their websites. By paying double your current rate for having articles written, will only increase your overall costs of writing and distribution by a mere 27%, and yet the better quality article will generally produce double the number of links that the cheap article will produce.
Think on that.
Bill Platt - owner
The Phantom Writers Article Distribution Service
By
allen on April 21st, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | 1 Comment »
Article marketing is one of the most powerful methods of marketing. You can get great traffic long term for little cost. If you do it yourself then the cost is absolutely free. But what does it mean to do it yourself?
Do-it-yourself article marketing is when you write the article and submit it to directories yourself. It can be very time consuming to do this. Should you do it?
If you have a limited budget then you might find it difficult to pay someone to write and submit your articles for you. On the other hand, if you are busy building your business then you might find it hard to spend the time on this necessary activity. What should you do?
I recommend starting slow. Write one article per week and submit it to one or two directories. Do this for a couple of months and see what kind of results you get. Then step it up a bit. Try writing two articles per week, or submit one to five directories instead of two. After another couple of months you’ll want to step it up again. During this time you should be tracking your results. Are you getting traffic from your articles? Are your articles getting picked up by e-zine publishers and webmasters? If not, you need to find out why and make some changes to the way that you are writing the articles.
When your DIY article marketing starts paying off, take the income that you’ve gained from your efforts and put it toward outsourcing. Let’s say you sold one of your cool $99 widgets. Take the $99 and pay a writer to write some articles then you distribute them to your directories. As your income increases you can start writing more articles. You’ll also be busier fulfilling orders and taking care of business so you’ll have less time for the article writing and marketing. As your income goes up and you spend more time running the business, outsource more and more of the writing and submission process. Eventually you’ll be able to pay someone to write an article a day and submit that article to several directories. That is the ideal.
By
allen on March 31st, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions | No Comments »
Jim DeSantis has some excellent tips for article marketers. His four mistakes not to make is a must read:
- Mistake 1. Writing with the wrong motives.
- Mistake 2. Failing to take advantage of article marketing as a promotional tool.
- Mistake 3. Publishing content that is mediocre or that attempts to redirect your reader to a sales page.
- Mistake 4. Submitting illiterate articles.
There’s not much I can add to that, but I’ll try.
On mistake No. 1, your motive for writing, as Jim says, should be to provide useful information. If you don’t have useful and valuable information to provide then you shouldn’t engage in article marketing.
Article marketing does have advantages for publishers, however. You aren’t just giving information away for free. You are using information to sell more information. Your links in the author resource box allow you to drive traffic to your website to sell the information or sign people up for an e-mail list. Take advantage of the tool for all it worth.
Mediocre content doesn’t sell. Outstanding content sells. Provide your target audience with the best information you can, in your articles, on your website, in your e-books, and everywhere you publish.
Finally, if you are going to engage in article marketing, do it intelligently. There is no excuse for bad grammar and oodles of misspelled words. It’s your image. Protect it and it will serve you well.
Learn More About Article Marketing
By
allen on January 23rd, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | 1 Comment »
When it comes to writing articles, too long can be as big a killer as too short. There is an optimal length to articles, but it largely depends on what the purpose of your article is.
If you want to publish your articles your article directories for mass distribution then I wouldn’t go less than 400 words. Probably 400-600 words is best, though you can get away with up to 700 words. I wouldn’t go beyond that. The reason is because you are targeting those articles toward e-zine and newsletter publishers. Those publishers are generally looking for well-written articles that are short and optimized around a specific keyword. Anything less than 400 words is probably too short to provide any real SEO value. Anything longer than 600-700 words is too long to maintain reader interest and will likely be rejected by the publishers who can help you the most due to space considerations.
If you are targeting website publishers - third-party news sources, content publishers, and other such sources where your articles will likely be converted into HTML and enhanced by graphics then you might get away with a bit longer. But the 400-600 word length is still a good rule of thumb unless a specific publisher has their own guidelines. If you are targeting your articles toward specific publishers then you should follow their guidelines if they are different than the norm. If all else fails, contact the publisher directly and ask them what they prefer. You should always tailor your article content to the publisher you are seeking to publish your content if you can.
By
Chris McElroy aka NameCritic on January 9th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions | 2 Comments »
Bill Platt and I are competitors. We both write articles and do article marketing consultations for clients. But we are also good friends and we discuss ideas and help each other learn more about how to provide better quality for our clients.
In one of his articles he does a very good job of displaying the history of article marketing. it’s a very good read so I wanted to share it here once again.
Article Directory Owners Vs. Automated Article Submission Services
By Bill Platt
Article marketing has been considered a useful method of promotion on the Internet, since the very early days of the Internet. By writing an informative article, writers have been able to get their sales message read by millions of online consumers, through their resource box that follows their articles. Until 2005, the whole point of article marketing was for the purpose of attracting huge numbers of readers as a result of the articles being published in ezines that had a large reader base.
Read here how article marketing has changed over the last few years
By
Chris McElroy aka NameCritic on January 6th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions, Article Writing | No Comments »
A lot of people do article marketing, but few do it on a consistant basis. If you want to build your brand, build your image, and build natural links to your website, then you need to do article marketing on a regular schedule.
Not everyone has the time to write their own articles consistantly. They write one when they are inspired or just whenever they have some time on their hands. This inconsistant method of article marketing will not get you consistant results.
At Article Content Provider we help our clients create a consistant article marketing plan that will fit almost anyone’s budget. Our article writers will write a specific number of articles each week or each month and we will even submit them to article directories for you.
Once you set up a consistant article marketing plan, you will get consistant results. Make sense? Click here to order articles or click here to contact us for a consultation.
