Posts tagged Article Marketing
The Traffic – Content Conundrum by Jason Fladlien
Dec 28th
Today’s Guest Blogger is Jason Fladlien, creator of numerous products, such as : Double Your Productivity For Life 7 Minute Articles & $40 An Hour Ghostwriting System
Here’s where a lot of people struggle. In order to get good, continual traffic, you need good content.
But just creating good content on its own usually doesn’t bring you any traffic. So what do you do? That’s the rub. That’s why a lot of people have trouble making money online. They face this traffic/content conundrum.
Option 1..
The first thing you can do (and almost everyone DOES) is to try to bypass the good content creation phase… And go straight for the traffic. A push button software program perhaps could do the trick? You plop down some cash on one of these gizmos… And you might even try in earnest to make it work.
It usually doesn’t. That’s because what value are you providing to the marketplace? Usually none. You can spin an article 7 ways till Sunday – but if that article sucks, you’ve added not just one piece of junk to the Internet landfill… But a whole heap of it.
Nice try.
Option 2…
Go the affiliate route. Makes sense – you can tap into someone else’s high value content… And still just focus on traffic to get eyeballs to that person’s high value content.
For your reward you earn commissions on sales. Sounds swell. Maybe you can use some of the content they give you. Problem – every other affiliate is using that same content. Again, no value is being created in the marketplace. Just more noise. And if you’re going to use your own content… Then you need to be good at creating content anyway. Sigh.
Option 3…
Go long tail young man (or woman)! You can create some content… Based around keywords like “Weber Q 100 Portable Propane Gas Grill” and play the SEO game. Boy that sounds like a picnic, doesn’t it? It can be made to work – but what value are you really putting out there for the marketplace?
Option 4…
Become a “high value content creator”. This is hard. Laborious. Little payoff in the short run. Requires a lot of your time – especially at first. Something with few short cuts attached to it. The toughest road to travel. That’s why it’s the best. That’s why it’s the model that will work most often. But it’s also the least attractive. Plus it requires the delicate balancing act of practicing and fine tuning your skills to create content… And also getting SOME short term payoff.
Where’s The Money?
If you’re with me so far, you’ve reached the conclusion that the most predictable… Most scalable… Most long term valuable thing to do to build online wealth… Is creating high value content. The trick is getting paid to practice.
When coaching clients come to me and are just starting their online business… They ask me if they should create a blog. Often I say no. While a blog is a great place to practice creating high value content… It requires you to BRING people to your blog. That’s challenging.
On the flip side, what about an active forum? There are people already going there… You just need to get the attention of a few of them. So you create high quality content for an active forum. The main purpose is to get good at creating high value content – while getting some short term results.
Warning – You Won’t Get Rich!
Sadly you won’t make a lot of money doing this. But you can make some in the short term… And get paid to “practice”. And you stand an okay chance of making SOME money at first.
Let’s get specific. The first thing you do is observe. You have to spend a few days going to the active forum you’re targeting… And just take in the “culture”. Each forum has its own unique identity. There are things the forum as a whole is favorable to… And things it hates. Be aware so you can do the things it likes and NOT do the things it hates.
More importantly observe this forum with your “opportunity antennae” on. You’re looking specifically for this – a problem shared by a large number of visitors to the forum who are desperate for a solution to that problem. Once you’ve figured out this problem – it’s time to get your hands dirty and do some work.
I’m talking serious research. Serious effort to create the granddaddy forum post that will become the de facto “go here” thread in the future any time someone brings up the problem.
You might have to spend 2 hours researching the solution for the post you’ll create… And another hour crafting it. It will be worth it. People will love your for it. You might even get some cash out of it.
Example…
A huge problem people have in Internet marketing is setting up an affiliate program. I know. In fact I’m creating software for it that I’ll launch in 2011 because this is such a big problem. However, in the meantime you could – hypothetically – provide your own solution on a high traffic Internet marketing forum like the Warrior Forum (http://warriorforum.com).
What do you do? Here’s what I’d do if I was in your position.
I’d start with the outline. I’d aim to cover the 3 major, most popular affiliate program solutions. And I’d also try to cover 3 “obscure, little talked about” solutions. I’d have to dig around for these and hopefully test them out if they’re free or rather inexpensive.
Then I’d write that granddaddy forum post. For each of the 3 main ones, I’d write a step by step tutorial on how to set up an affiliate program with that program, including screenshots. I’d also research my butt off to uncover all the pros and cons I could think of related to each of those.
I’d do the same thing with the 3 obscure ones. Would I throw an affiliate links in at any point? No. Not only would it probably violate the rules of that particular forum… But even if it didn’t I’d still not get greedy.
Remember the focus is on GIVING… Creating high value content… The end all, be all solution for this problem. People will reject it if they think you are trying to be sly and take advantage of them. Don’t be foolish.
So How Will You Monetize It?
One of two ways. Either with a low key “forum signature” or with people literally seeking you out and private messaging you for further help, which often they would be happy to pay for. (That’s when you know you did it right!) A low key forum signature could be something like – “I help set up affiliate programs for people. Email me at email@example.com if you’d like to discuss hiring me.”
Simple, right? Yes.
What can this mean for you? Well I’m looking at a thread right now on the Warrior Forum that has 21,260 views. Guess what it’s about? How to get the most out of an ezine article! Not rocket science. It’s not even that good content.
This post is 2 years and 2 months old. So don’t expect to get 21,000+ views immediately. But do the math – that averages out to about 26 views a DAY over the span of two years and two months.
Sounds good to me.
Now what if you created a post like this once a week? In a year you’d have a lot of things going for you…
- Tons of high value content out there.
- Stuff to repurpose into free (and paid!) products.
- Experience which sharpens your skills.
- Enlightenment based on results. (Can’t get that in an ebook.)
- Some money in your pocket.
Hopefully along the way you aim at getting a little (just a little!) better with each piece of high value content you create. If you do this – in a year you will laugh when you look at a blank screen – because it will be so easy for you to create high value content… Since you’ve done it so often.
Plus, you’ll be more finely tuned in to how people react to certain things that you do… Meaning you are consciously able to create FAVORABLE reactions consistently.
You will be a high value creation machine. Which you can leverage so many different ways to get traffic. Which in turn you can then pick among the many proven models to make money online. It’s not glamorous. It’s a little slow. But it works. Don’t you wish you would’ve spent the last year with a plan like this instead of being distracted by fancy, pie in the sky solutions?
Jason
I would love to hear your comments – click here to comment
How a Few Minor Tweaks to Your Article Marketing Campaigns can Sky Rocket your Profits
Dec 17th
How a Few Minor Tweaks to Your Article Marketing Campaigns can Sky Rocket your Profits
By Paul McCarthy
This is all about making money with articles…Something that was easy back 10 years ago, but somewhat harder now that every man and his dog have cottoned onto the whole “bum marketing” method originally coined by the legendary Travis Sago.
For those of you who are new to internet marketing, “Bum Marketing” is all about writing articles for article directories such as http://www.ezinearticles.com with either a link to a landing page that presells a product, or a link straight to the product page itself through a Top Level Domain.
Of course, you are affiliated with said product and “make bank” when somebody reads your article, clicks to the sales page and makes a purchase.
The beauty of this system is its simplicity. Pretty much anyone can do it and can get started within the hour. It’s not difficult at all.
That said, many people fail horribly with this method….And, yes, I’m speaking from personal experience here. You’re reading an article from someone who managed to write his first 50 odd articles without return; something that I tend not to shout too loud about!
Yet now I can write an article and guarantee an excellent return. In fact, one well placed article can easily earn in excess of $100 per month.
So the question is, what separates those who are banking from those who are wasting their time? Or, to put it a different way, what do I do differently now that I didn’t do back when I was wet behind the ears?!
I’ve added below my war notes from being on the article marketing front line and failing many times over! If you’re new to article marketing, definitely pay attention to these points, because they’ll probably save you a lot of time and you’ll make a return where others are unfortunately failing:-
1. Commercial Intent is Everything
Snap up the low hanging fruit. Herein lies probably my biggest error.
By targeting key phrases such as “how to …….” or “ways to ……” I managed to attract a lot of traffic. But only a very small portion of those visitors had credit card in hand ready to make a purchase.
End result – A massive load of “hops” (otherwise known as sales page impressions on Clickbank) but hardly any sales with a very low EPC (Earnings per Click). They say a picture paints a thousand words:-
You can see why I was finding it hard to make any real money with article marketing at the start. Now I focus on key phrases that I know have a significant amount of commercial intent attached to them.
Sometimes you just know through intuition if a keyword has commercial intent attached to them. A typical example of this type of keywords is : “product x review” or “product x coupon”.
This is clearly a keyword that is searched by someone right at the end of the buying cycle who is looking for reassurance or the best deal for a product that they’re already thinking about buying.
The issue is that these keywords are very competitive because they are the lowest of the low hanging fruit. So, sometimes you have to move back up the buying cycle slightly to find keywords that are less competitive but still have a decent amount of Commercial Intent attached to them.
As everybody seems to love the acne niche, an example might be “Benzoyl Peroxide Products”. This is a keyword that is relatively uncompetitive and has a significant amount of commercial intent attached to it.
Of course, if I’m not sure, there are a few checks that I can do…
Firstly, I’ll go to the Adwords Keyword Tool, add the column that shows estimated cost per click and have a look at the prices. “Benzoyl Peroxide Products” currently shows the average CPC to be £2.55 – which is high.
Compare that to “how to clear acne naturally” which is currently £0.04 per click.
Here’s something important: Many brands will actually pay decent prices to have their names displayed for non-buying key phrases because brand exposure increases the likelihood of a purchase further down the line. This means that CPC is not a great metric to use on its own – it’s just one piece of the jigsaw.
Certainly if a keyword is 0.04p per click there’s no chance I’d ever write an article targeting that key phrase. It simply won’t pay (unless, of course, you’ve stumbled across an obscure buying keyword that not many people have recognised, which is pretty unlikely).
If the CPC is decent (certainly over $1.50 per click) then I’ll investigate further.
And that brings me onto the Microsoft Online Commercial Intent tool. Here is a tool that has been created to give us an idea of the commercial intent of a keyword. It’s not 100% reliable, but it can help give us an idea.
Anything over 0.75 on the scale is a good sign.
A keyword that gets over $1.50 per click and more than 0.75 on the OCI tool is likely to convert nicely.
2. Understanding what the Market is Really Hungry For
If you spend any time analysing the acne industry, you’ll notice that the vast majority of people searching for ways to cure their acne are looking for physical products and not an e-book from Clickbank.
They want some magical wipes or pills that will cure their acne – not information.
If you try and sell an e-book without targeting a group of people who are predisposed to purchasing information then you’ll have little success.
Analysing Google ads is a great way to figure out what everyone else thinks your market is looking for. Type “how to clear acne” into Google and you’ll see that every ad is for a physical product. You’ll also note that there aren’t many ads (warning sign = not a buyer keyword!).
Conversely, type “Benzoyl Peroxide Products” in and you’ll be loaded with ads. This is another good sign!
3. Don’t Sell. Presell
Selling and preselling are two very different things. If you’re going to have a landing page to send people to once they’ve read your article then you need to create a presell page that warms people up to the point of purchase.
This means providing valuable information. Not hyped up headlines.
Here’s something to note about consumers – they hate to feel like they’ve been influenced. And they always want to feel like they’ve made the decision to buy based on unbiased information.
The moment they feel like they’re being sold to during a product recommendation they’ll realise your hidden agenda and drop your site like a bad habit.
It’s the vendors job to sell. Your job is to make them feel like they’ve been genuinely recommended a decent product (which should be true, anyway!)
4. Get your Articles Ranked
…And yes, this involves backlinking.
This is going to get people all up in arms because you’re building backlinks articles that sit on other people’s sites. And some internet marketers really hate doing that because it’s not your asset.
They’re right – but simplicity is the name of the game here. And you’ll get your articles ranked faster on an article directory than starting a site from scratch – so that’s why I recommend it to beginners.
Simply put, your articles will only bring you targeted traffic if they get visitors from the search engines. And to get your articles listed highly in the search engines you need to build link popularity to them.
Backlink your articles and track their ranks. If your article is not in the top five results for your key phrase then you’re pretty much wasting your time.
5. Stick With Winning Niches
You’ll find that certain campaigns will perform better than others. For goodness sake don’t make my mistake and continually delve into new niches. If you find a winning niche – stick with it and scale it up to new heights by writing more articles and building a list!
Focus on what’s proven to work than guessing what might work in the future. It makes perfect sense, but, stupidly, I still didn’t made the mistake of starting from scratch all the time!
And there you have it…
These are the five ways that I guarantee a return on each article that I write.
I imagine that a few lightbulbs are coming on for some of you who are reading this. If so, then fantastic, because it took me months of failing to figure out where I was going wrong and I want you to bypass this struggle!
I’d love to hear about your experiences with article marketing, too. Drop your comments in the box below and I’ll be sure to respond…
Paul McCarthy eats, sleeps and breathes all things internet marketing and teaches others how to make money on the internet and fire their boss!
Your comments are always welcome, please leave your comment here
