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A Rinse-and-Repeat Formula for Article Marketing Success

Online marketers are always looking for Rinse-and-Repeat Formulas to drive their online promotions. Article Marketers are no different.

But most people who attempt article marketing are unable to Rinse-and-Repeat, primarily because they do not understand article marketing well enough in the first place.

Article marketing is an advertising model that is NOT advertising. Rather, it is a form of advertising – using Information Marketing at its core.

Information marketing in its purest sense is creating information that people want to buy, then marketing the information as a product available for sale to the public.

Article marketing is a slight variation of the Information marketing model… Instead of creating information to sell, writers create information to serve as an anchor for an advertisement that is similar to a classified advertisement.

The Advertisement Is Anchored By The Article Content

Following the article is what is called the Author’s Resource Box, also known as the About The Author information. I prefer the term Author’s Resource Box, because its purpose goes beyond telling the reader About The Author…

I develop my Author’s Resource Boxes (Classified Advertisement) to serve five very clear goals:

1. One short biographical sentence.
2. A strong call-to-action to deliver the reader to my website… (as an advertisement for my website)
3. An opportunity to apply hyperlinks to keywords important to my website… (for example: article marketing services)
4. Brand my website name in the mind of the reader.
5. And protect my advertisement value, from people who “do not know how to” or “choose not to” publish my Resource Box with the anchor text links… (I provide the actual URL of my website in plain text format, to accomplish the last two goals.)

The Author’s Resource Box / Classified Advertisement that follows the article is the author’s payment for creating the content and making it available to online publishers – for free.

The information in the article is the anchor that is provided to get people to read the advertisement that follows the article – in the Author’s Resource Box.

People, Who Write Articles, Charge According To The Value They Create For Customers

To hear a lot of wannabe online marketers talk, the value of article marketing is in creating a volume of articles to deliver a volume of links to one’s website…

I do call many self-professed gurus “wannabe online marketers”, because they have a tendency to advise people on things they have never done for themselves…

I have seen professional gurus tell people that they can get articles written for them for $5, yet those people offering this advice typically pay $40 to $500 an article to have THEIR articles written for them…

Yes, it is possible to find people to write articles for $5 each, but it is not possible to hire skilled or talented writers at that rate…

Real writers know the value of their work, and they do not write for peanuts… People who are willing to write an article for $5 often lack the talent and creativity to write well; they also realize the value of the work they produce and charge accordingly…

The professional online marketing gurus, who tell you that you can hire writers for five dollars an article are stating a truth, but they are not telling you the secret of THEIR success… The professional online marketing gurus did not get rich hiring people willing to write articles for $5 an article… Nope, they hired really talented writers to write their articles, and they paid what they needed to pay to get the articles written by talented writers.

Successful Publishers Choose Content Based On Its Value To Its Audience

There are thousands of online publishers, who struggle to make ten dollars a month… Other online publishers make tens of thousands of dollars a week…

The difference between the people who make $10 a month and those that make tens of thousands of dollars a week is a willingness to give their audience what its audience wants…

Publishers who are willing to publish anything on their websites fall into one of two groups…

1. Those who will be out of business in one or two years; and
2. Those whose websites are underwritten by other profitable ventures.

Publishers who are really successful online understand their audience, and they strive to give their audience the content that their audience wants to read…

Successful publishers are those who define their audience, by carefully selecting the content they publish…

Unsuccessful publishers are those who try to be everything to everyone…

People are creatures of habit… They find websites they enjoy visiting, and they continue to visit those websites, until those websites no longer answer a need for them…

The general public is no different than you… You have certain websites where you like to go on a regular basis, and you will continue going to that website, so long as the website continues to give you the content you want to read… You also have certain newsletters you like to read, and you will continue to read the same newsletters, until which time those newsletters stop giving you the content you want to read…

To understand your website’s audience, you must look into the mirror to understand yourself… You must understand what you do and why you do it, and when you have come to realize the truth of why YOU do things, you will be on the road to understanding why OTHERS do the things that they do…

If you want to understand how to be successful online, study those who are already successful, and gain an understanding of what they do and why they do what they do… Then mirror their actions…

Successful publishers follow one of two business models:

1. They charge readers to get the content they want…
2. They let readers get the content for free, and they get advertisers to pay for access to the publishers’ audience.

Most online publishers follow the second model…

To increase the websites’ or newsletters’ revenue, the publisher understands that he or she must increase the number of eyeballs reading his or her content regularly…

The more successful a publisher becomes, the more important it becomes to be very choosy about what content is published…

Quality Breeds Success…

As explained in the previous section, successful publishers require high-quality content to keep the attention of their readers and to increase the number of people wanting to read the publication…

Granted, there are thousands of websites that will publish anything, and I do mean ANYTHING…

But publishers who have no editorial guidelines tend to be publishers, who will soon be out of business…

If you rely upon crappy content for your article marketing endeavors, then you are relying on using article marketing to build links that will not have any long-term staying power…

Unsuccessful publishers often go out of business when the website owner must pay for another year of web hosting or domain registration…

Crappy links on crappy websites often have a really short lifespan, so the work that you do today will have little value beyond today…

However, if you get high-quality articles published on high-quality websites, you can acquire links that could survive online for many, many years. I have articles that I wrote in 2000 that reside on websites that still send me traffic a decade later…

The moral to this story is that a $5 article will get you some links for SEO on websites that have a limited lifespan, but high-quality content will get you links on websites that will survive the test of time…

If you spend $40 to have an article written and it delivers traffic and link popularity to your website for ten years, then you have already go more value than you got from the $5 article that gave you a few links for a year.

Rinse-and-Repeat Article Marketing

There are five essential elements of a successful article:

1. Title - There are people who suggest that you should put your top keywords at the front of your article title, but I don’t subscribe to that methodology. I do include my target keywords in the title, when I can, but an article that is well-optimized for the search engines is worthless if it does not get published… The #1 goal of your articles’ title is to get the article opened!! You must present a title that is going to get the attention of publishers and readers; you must present a title that is going to compel a person to at least open your article to see if they will want to read it…
2. Opening Paragraph - The title got your article opened, but now you need your reader to read the article… Tell your reader why they should keep reading your article and read it to its conclusion… Any reader who does not reach your website from your article is a “missed opportunity” to sell your stuff… Show people why it will be in their best interest to finish reading your article…
3. The Article Body – The article body must meet the promise of the Article Title and the opening paragraph… The article body must retain the interest of the reader to the last word… The article body must tell a story people want to read, and leave them wanting more… The article body must successfully carry the reader to your Author’s Resource Box… When finished reading, the reader must be happy to have read the article…
4. The Authors’ Resource Box – Jeff Herring wrote a great article about how to construct an effective Resource Box here… The Authors’ Resource Box needs to transition the reader from your article to your website, by offering a compelling call-to-action to get the reader to go to your website… Tell who you are, but don’t go overboard… People do not care who you are – they only care about what else you can do for them…
5. Your Landing Page - You should never try to sell your products or services in your Authors’ Resource Box. Instead, you should try to get the reader to your website, where you have an unlimited number of words, videos, pictures and testimonials to tell the real story of your products or services. Few vendors have the ability to sell a product or service in 500 characters, so you should use your Authors’ Resource Box to get the reader to your website, where you will do the real selling…

Tell A Story People Want To Read

Often, the difference between someone who will try to write an article for $5 and the professional writer who understands the value of his or her work can be defined simply…

The person writing an article for $5 will “beat around the bush” for five hundred words, without ever actually saying anything of any real value to anyone… The person who works for $5 an article is just putting words on a page so that he or she can be paid…

The person who demands $40 to $500 to write an article is a master of story-telling… He or she will tell a story that people will want to read, and therefore a story that publishers will want to publish…

The authors who tell a story that “people are happy to have read” will find their articles on more high-quality websites, and they will find more people visiting their websites, as a result of having read the article…

Words on a page only please search engines, but a story on a page will also attract readers…

Interestingly, most online marketing gurus who advise hiring people to write $5 articles also fail to tell another truth – they fail to point out that articles that pass real link popularity to a website must have link popularity to pass on to your website…

People don’t link to articles that are nothing more than “words on a page”, but people will link to a story that needs telling… Just like with Jeff Herring’s article linked above; his story is worth sharing with you, and as a result, it has gained its own links from people who do not know Jeff personally… (I have never met Jeff Herring or talked to him by phone or email. It was an honest recommendation for a great article written by him.)

Jeff’s article has gained its own link popularity, by merit of it being a good story… As a result, Jeff’s article will pass real link popularity back to his website, because it has real value for readers and real link popularity to share…

Article Marketing Does Not End When An Article Is Distributed

Ty Cobb was the greatest hitter in the history of baseball… His batting average was .367… In other words, he only got one hit for every three at-bats…

If the greatest baseball player in history cannot bat 100, then I would be a fool to believe that every article I write will be a winner…

Fortunately, enough of my articles produce profits that article marketing is a profitable endeavor for me…

I start the article marketing process with great content… (you be the judge of that – have you enjoyed this article so far?)

Then I distribute the article using my article distribution service.

This is where I diverge from most article marketers…

Most article marketers write and distribute an article, then forget about it and move to the next article… I don’t…

For me, article marketing begins after distribution…

I find out who thought my article was good enough to be shared with their audience… Then I start to market my article on those websites…

Once an article is published on a website, I start setting up Social Media links, Social Bookmarking links, and even more back-links to my article on someone else’s website…

Then I start writing my next article…

While working on my next article, I keep an eye to the statistics on previous articles… I want to know which articles produce traffic and sales for my website…

When I find an article that produces sales for me, I step up the promotion of that article…

I step up the marketing for that article, to help that article produce even more sales for me…

I build even more links to that article, by linking to it in forums, blogs and other articles… I advertise the article where it is placed on my website or someone else’s website… I do SEO linking for the article that is generating sales for me…

I continue to produce links to articles that generate sales for me… I send as much traffic as I can to the article that is producing sales for me… I squeeze that article for every penny I can squeeze from it…

The article marketing process starts with writing and article distribution, but it never ends there… I market all articles at a basic level to see if the article will produce sales for me… And when I find an article producing sales for me, I market that article for years…

Article marketing requires for me to create content that I hope will find publication on lots of websites, then providing it to publishers for consideration through one or more article distribution services… Yes, occasionally I use more than one article distribution service, because while I can get an article to tens of thousands of online publishers, the other guys might be able to reach people that I am unable to reach…

But for me, article marketing never ends after distribution… Once the article has found publication on a website with an audience, I consider it vital to market that article to the best of my ability…

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If you enjoyed this information, you will find that it just scratches the surface of what I have included in my ebook, “How To Use Article Marketing To Positively Impact Your SEO Efforts“, available for sale on my website, http://thePhantomWriters.com/

My name is Bill Platt, and I have been involved in Article Marketing since early 2000.

Explore SEO Friendly Software.

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How Article Marketing Can Help Your Business

How Can Article Marketing Help Your Online Business?

By Carol Aston

If you have an online business no doubt you have been told over and over again that you must write articles if you are going to succeed on the Internet. So how can article marketing help your business and where do you start?

Article Marketing is a great free advertising resource and will help drive loads of traffic to your website when done correctly and when you use the right article directories. There are absolutely loads of article directories on the Internet today but you will find the best results with those that have a page rank of 7, do not bother with those that have a ranking any lower than 5.

The first thing you need to remember when writing an article is that you cannot advertise in the actual article itself. what you need to do is give good information that is relevant to your business. For instance if you are running a restaurant you could write an article about dining out, as long as the information itself is related to your business, you’re well on your way.

Once you have written your article you have a resource box to fill in, this is where you can advertise, make sure you use your keywords in the anchor text for the the link to your website or even your blog. If you’re not sure how to do this or what to write have a browse through the article directory you are planning to post to and check out their expert authors and top posters, you will soon get the idea.

Another important thing that new authors sometimes forget is filling in their public profile. This can make a big difference and it will help you even more if you upload a photograph of yourself. If you use article marketing to promote your online business and do it regularly and consistently you will soon start to see a difference in the visitors to your website.

Carol Aston runs her own own home business at http://www.affiliatesthatserve.com

You too can have your own Work from Home Business and find out more about Article Marketing and other ways of promoting your business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carol_Aston

Article marketing can be used for almost any type of business online. Consult an article marketing consultant today.

Do Your Articles Build Rapport?

Article marketing is one of the most effective online marketing tools available. But to do it effectively you’ve got to build rapport with your readers. Are you doing that?

Article marketers have been preaching the message of rapport building for years. But how do you do it? I recommend doing these three things to effectively build rapport with your target audience through articles:

• Write conversationally – Don’t be stuffy. Too many people think that if you use fancy words enough and write “with authority” then people will respect you more. You’ll do better with article marketing if you speak to people just like you were at a back yard barbecue. Be conversational, not stuffy.
• Be authoritative – It may sound like I’m contradicting myself, but you can be authoritative without trying to sound authoritative. Don’t put on airs. Just be yourself and write as if you really understand your topic. If you do then your audience will know that it is genuine and you’ll gain more respect.
• Be empathetic – Let your readers know that you care about and relate to their problems. They will trust you more if they feel like you’ve been there with them. Write as if you understand their problems and offer a practical solution based on experience. That’s what they really want.

These are the three most important rapport-building principles I can offer you. Take these and run with them. Let me know how it turns out.

Joint Ventures Are A Great Way To Expand A Business Enterprise

Did you know you can use articles to market and promote a joint venture? You can also joint venture with your articles by co-writing them and sharing the marketing burden. A recent article at EzineArticles.com shares three ways you can joint venture your way to profit:

1. Coregistration
2. Ezine Publishing
3. Product Creation

All three of these are great ways to joint venture with someone in your niche, but these aren’t the only three ways to joint venture. You can also joint venture with your niche partner in building a third website that you will use to market each of your primary sites. You can sell advertising on that third website and split the revenue, then use articles to promote that website. I’m sure you can put your head together and think of other ways to joint venture. It’s not hard and the rewards are tremendous.

Articles vs. Press Releases: What’s The Difference?

Some people come to us asking for an article about their business when what they really want is a press release. There is a big difference between an article and a press release and how we write them depends a lot on your goals, both for your business and for the article or press release.

A press release is generally used to create short-term buzz for a particular event or promote a certain aspect of a business for a specific purpose. Articles are simply information pieces that you use to market your business through distribution to various article marketing directories. Those directories are not your real goal, though. Too many marketers think submitting to article directories is enough. But what you really want to happen is for other publishers to find your article and publish it on their website or in their e-zine.

You might write a press release for your company if any of the following has occurred within your company:

• Your company has won an important industry award
• A key employee has been promoted
• Your business is moving in a radically different direction than before
• A scientific finding has affected your industry in ways that will change how you do business
• New government regulations will change your business

These are not the only reasons why you might want a press release, but these are some are some good ones. You can also write articles about some of these topics. I would not write an article about your company getting an award. That’s better left for the press release.

Another key difference between articles and press releases is that press releases are usually a one shot deal. Something happens and you write a press release. While you can write an article about a particular event that is important to your industry, one article over a period of time is not going to do much good for your business. Article marketing is a strategy. To be effective, you want to write articles on a consistent basis and publish them over a period of time. That will get your name out there so that people interested in your type of service will recognize it when they see it.

There is one thing, though, that article marketing and press release distribution have in common: Neither are sales letters. It may seem funny saying that, but if you’ve seen the number of times that a person writes their own press release or article and wrote it like a sales pitch then you’d know why it needs to be said. While both tools can be used to drive traffic to your website in order to close sales, they are not in and of themselves sales tools. But it doesn’t mean they can’t make you money.