Entries Tagged 'Article Marketing' ↓

I just read some really good article marketing questions from Ashique. I posted my summarized answers on Facebook but I thought I would expand on them a bit here:

Q1. What is your Number 1 strategy in generating more Page Views to each of your articles?

A1. I don’t have a #1 strategy to generate more article pageviews cuz I’m a total badass. Occasionally I’ll link to them from a blog post on one of my related blogs or I’ll mention it in a newsletter to my subscribers, but at the moment, that’s it. Let it be known that I suck at that!

Q2. How do you write the Title of your article to get more traffic?

A2. I have a file on my computer of all the article titles that I thought were great. If I can’t think of a compelling headline on my own, I’ll take a look through this swipe file of mine for inspiration. I don’t typically do keyword research when deciding on a title. Another badass move, but oh well. I write for humans. Not robots. Robotic beings don’t rule the world…yet.

Q3. How do you write the body (main content) of the article effectively so that it gets picked up by the publishers?

A3. My first rule of writing content is NOT to write for search engines. I write to ONE person. I define the problem they have, and I write about the solution that I have to offer. I write as myself. I write how I speak. I write in a conversational tone and I inject some humour in there if I can.

Q4. What is your Number 1 strategy behind writing an effective Author Resource Box to get more clickthroughs to the link that you provide?

A4. I write a custom resource box for each article. I continue writing about the topic and offer a link for more info. For example: “To learn more about [good anchor text link], visit my blog at http://myblog.com where author [yours truly] shares her tips and experience.”

I include the anchor text for SEO purposes and my main URL for tracking purposes. (I have a google alert set up for my URLs so I know when an article has been published or someone mentions my site – this is also a good way to catch those sumbitches who don’t make the URLs clickable. Jerks.)

Q5. Got any tips for the newbie article marketers? Please share.

A5. My #1 tip is to focus on really great content. Don’t rehash all the other articles that have already been published. Come up with a really unique idea and cash in on it. It’s hard and a bit time consuming, and you may not end up with as many articles, but it’s worth it because people actually read and publish those types of articles. They also get a lot of clicks. Most importantly, they establish you as an expert which solidifies your brand and garners trust in your readers.

How about you? Do you have any article tips of your own to share?

Need Money Right Now?

Can you wait 5 days?

Sure, some quick cash would be nice, but wouldn’t a steadily increasing paycheck be even better?

How about writing a small report, and setting up a short ecourse to promote it?

This post will tell you how so listen up! (This post is also full of free goodies, FYI.)

This method is easy. Yeah, I said easy. It requires work and some of your time, but it doesn’t require a degree to get it right.

This method will also generate as much income as you want it to. The more you promote it, test it and tweak it, the more money it will make. The more you repeat this method, the more your income will grow.

So let’s begin.

Summary:

1. Write a short report
2. Promote that short report with an ecourse (If you think ecourses are old school and overdone, think again!)
3. Build your list

So three steps.

Let’s dive into step 1 – Writing a short report.

If you already have a website in a certain niche, then chances are you already have an idea or two for a short report topic. If not, it’s brainstorming time! Here are a few ways you can drum up some ideas:

• Dig through your website statistics and find out what people are searching for to reach your site. Any “how to” key phrases should provide some ideas. Pay attention to this information because it tells you EXACTLY what your readers are looking for.
• Poll or survey your readers. You can set up a form on your website or send out a request to your email list. Preferably both. If you don’t already have a list, get one!
• Hang around in related forums and find out what people are talking about. This works every time.

Now that you have an idea, you need to make sure it’s a profitable one. The “how to” and “tips” reports are usually winners. People are always wanting to know how to do stuff. They want tips to help them become more successful at whatever they’re doing.

For example:

“How To Create a Profitable Ecourse in 3 Hours”

or

“Copywriting Tips That Will Double Your Sales”

or

“7 Things You Must Do to Save Hundreds On Your Next Vehicle Purchase”

Just make sure that the title of your short report isn’t so far fetched that it’s unbelievable. It has to be compelling, but not ridiculously over the top.

Now write the report!

You can write it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. If you can’t hire someone and you can’t write worth a shit, trade services with someone who can.

Writing a short report doesn’t have to be a huge deal. I can sometimes sit down with my ancient laptop and whip one up in an hour. If what I’m writing about requires a lot of research, it can take days. There are also a crapload of short reports sitting on my hard drive that were started but never finished.

Don’t be like me.

Finish what you start!

Create an outline then fill in the blank spots. And read this book. It’s free and it’s good. If your head isn’t spewing out awesome ideas by the time you’re done it, I will eat my own shorts.

When your report is finished, you need to figure out a price. Each market is different, and you may be surprised at what price point works best, so this is definitely something to test. If it’s fairly short – 5 to 10 pages – start out with $7 and test from there.

Ok, on to step 2 – Writing an ecourse.

Typically, ecourses – or email mini-courses – are about 7 days long. Or 7 issues. They don’t HAVE to be though. They can be as long or short as you want. There is no “right” answer, but you have to take your readers into consideration.

If you send out an ecourse about gardening, your readers may want some longer, more detailed messages. If you’re targeting internet marketers who are already inundated with emails, you may want to keep them short and sweet, and no more than 7 in a row.

Decide on your topic for each email, then write about it! It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and it doesn’t have to be an award-winning masterpiece. But you do need to make it really good. Make it informative, useful, interesting, entertaining. Make it worth the time it took for your readers to sign up and read it.

If you already have a lot of content for your topic, consider re-purposing it for your ecourse. Break up some articles into smaller lessons for each email, or rewrite them and add a few more exclusive tips or info. You can even add some interviews, worksheets, resource lists, videos, audio, etc. to add to the value of your ecourse.

(I wrote up a more detailed report about creating profitable ecourses for my subscribers. Signup with the form to the right at the top and you’ll have instant access after you confirm your subscription.)

Throw your newly created ecourse into an autoresponder and send the test emails to yourself to read over. Better yet, send them to someone who will proofread them for you. When everything is looking good, it’s on to….

Step 3 – Building your list.

Now this is a gigantic topic and I could write about it for days, but instead, I’m going to point you to some awesome resources that talk about building lists much better than I could.

List Marketing Tips – This is a free 20 page report that is chock full of tips that will not only help you promote your list, but profit from it as you build it.

Triple Opt-In Requests – Another free 20 page report with tips that will help you increase your optins without increasing traffic. (One thing that I did to increase my own optins was to add an arrow with the optin form. Something bright and eye-catching will do the trick.)

Basically, create a really great ecourse that people will want to sign up for, then promote the frick outta that there link!

• twitter it
• put it on every page of your site
• put it in forum signatures
• blog about it frequently
• include it in your email signature
• submit articles to article directories with the link in your author bio
• create a free report to entice people and make it viral
• contact other site owners and offer them a large cut of your profits if they help you promote it
• etc.

If it takes you 2 days to write the report itself, another 2 days to create the ecourse, and 1 day to set it all up (autoresponder, optin page, etc.) then you can start profiting from it in 5 days from now.

Rinse and repeat once a month (or whenever you have the energy for it) and you’ll be creating a profitable little empire for yourself.

And don’t just sit there thinking about doing it, just friggin’ DO IT! I know you can!

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Writing and submitting articles to article directories is a great way to increase exposure to you and your site. If done properly, article marketing can help establish you as an expert in your field, generate tons of links to your website, and attract targeted traffic that can turn into subscribers and sales.

Before I sit down to write an article to submit to article directories, I do a search for my topic at EzineArticles.com to see what has already been submitted.

This may not be the case with every category, but 9 times out of 10, the articles that are already submitted in my niche are badly written pieces of crap.

Here are the main problems I see when reading other articles:

Horrible spelling, grammar and punctuation – I’m not perfect and I certainly make my share of mistakes, but making the same errors over and over again is unacceptable in my opinion. There is no reason why a person can’t do a simple spellcheck or proofread their articles before submitting them.

Rehashed information – Coming up with a completely unique idea is extremely difficult, but you can make an article unique by injecting your own personality or humour into it, or by adding your own comments, opinions and experiences. Don’t sound like a broken record by repeating what everyone else is already saying. Find a way to make it original, make it your own.

Boring as hell – If you can’t compel the reader to read past the headline, you’ve got problems. You have to draw people in with interesting content and keep them reading right to the end of your resource box. Be passionate. Be exciting. Don’t be repetitive and monotonous or your article will be a boring flop.

Inaccurate information – The main purpose of articles is to inform the reader. If you’re giving them bad information, your credibility will quickly go down the proverbial drain. If you’re not sure of something, do the research until you are sure. If you’re not willing to do the research, don’t write about it.

No structure – A structured article will help guide the reader from beginning to end. Generally, the reader will expect a title, introduction, body and conclusion, followed by the resource box. If your article is all over the place, chances are most people won’t read to the end.

Here’s a tip though. The main goal of submitting articles is to get people to click on your links in the resource box. If you end your article with a great conclusion, they may not think to continue reading your resource box because they got what they came there for.

However, if you leave them hanging a bit (by leaving your conclusion a little bit incomplete) then your reader will want to continue reading and clicking for more information.

Here’s a quick example:

Conclusion #1 – “Now that you’ve learned the 5 best tips for writing articles, it’s time for you to sit down and start writing.”

Followed by your resource box – “For more great tips on increasing the quality and effectiveness of your articles, visit Joe Blow’s website at blah-blah-blah.com”

And there you have it. Quality over quantity my friends.

I repeat, Quality (with a capital “Q”) over quantity.

You can write 100 crappy articles and get a few links and a trickle of traffic, or you can write 50 quality articles that will keep the links and traffic pouring in for years to come.

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I’m mad and I may be overreacting but I don’t care.

Some asswipe who’s name I won’t mention here stole my article almost word for word, including my lame joke, at EzineArticles. Mine is over a year older than his. I remember writing that particular article. I did a few minutes of research and then sat down and wrote it all out from my head, so I know it isn’t an issue of me copying from someone else, and then him copying from me. Or him copying from the same source that I got my information from.

Anyway, I clicked on the “report this article” link on his article page and am looking forward to a reply from EzineArticles. Until then, I’ll try not to be any more immature about it and keep quiet. I just had to rant a bit first.

But just so you know, you can’t steal other people’s content just because it’s on a free article directory. It’s still their content and there are restrictions as to how you can use it. Also, don’t forget that each article directory has their own policies and TOS. Blatantly ripping off someone’s content almost word for word and then submitting it as your own is obviously against any article directory’s policies.

Don’t do it, or you’ll pay for it later. Theft is theft.

For many internet marketers, article marketing is a huge part of their traffic generation and search engine optimization. Submitting articles to ezines and article directories are great for three major reasons:

1) Traffic – You’re sending the readers of your articles to your website.

2) SEO – You’re generating links to your website when other publishers pick up your articles for their own website.

3) Expert Status – You’re establishing yourself as an expert by writing quality articles and providing people with the information they’re seeking. This gains you trust and credibility.

Of course, you’ll only get these three things if you’re writing great articles rather than putting a few sloppy paragraphs together.

My favorite directory to submit to is EzineArticles.com. A huge percentage of my traffic comes from them, and although some of their policies seem a bit strict, in the end it helps ensure that their site remains a quality directory.

However, as I was skimming through the Ezine Article Expert Authors the other day, I noticed that the majority of these people had only submitted one article.

If you want to get anywhere with article marketing, you’re gonna have to do better than that!

Article marketing, if done properly, is a guaranteed way to generate traffic to your site. It only makes sense that the more articles you submit, the more traffic you’ll receive.

One of the problems I first had with article marketing was trying to decide which content to submit to directories, and which content to include on my own site. Since then, I’ve realized that there are other ways to use your article directory content without the fear of duplicate content. One of my favorite ways is compiling a bunch of related articles and creating a PDF to give away or sell to readers. Another option is to use submitted articles as autoresponder content for newsletters.

Another problem I had with article marketing was trying to find inspiration for topics to write about. Now, the first thing I do when looking for an idea is skim through my website stats and see what people are searching for. Another good way to get inspired is to read related forums or see what other authors are writing about in the article directories.

The ultimate problem though was the fact that I was generating next to nothing in website traffic. I’ve since learned that this was because I was only submitting one article at a time, and my submissions were few and far between. The best way to start the traffic flowing and keep it flowing is to submit many articles at once, and regularly.

That may seem like a lot of writing, but the more you do it, the faster you’ll be at it. Also, articles don’t have to be three pages long. EzineArticles.com requires articles to be at the minimum of 250 words. That really isn’t a lot. With some practice, you should be able to whip up a few good quality paragraphs in less than 10 minutes.

There’s an inspiring thread about article marketing over at the Digital Point forums. If article marketing is something you’ve been using or something you’d like to start doing, I encourage you to read it. It’s long, but it’s a good read.

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=457865