Article marketing has always been a favorite marketing method amongst frugal entrepreneurs. Offering ultra-targeted traffic at a price that no one can argue with (hint: it is free), article marketing has been used as a promotional platform for everything from expensive watches to online informational products. A mainstay of offline and online marketing, the rulebook for article marketing is hundreds of pages thick and as complex as they come.

The thing is, to succeed with article marketing, you do not have to follow every rule that is out there. Sometimes, all it takes is a little knowledge of the major rules, and you are almost all the way there. Before you embark on an article marketing campaign, memorize these five major rules and use them to guide your marketing efforts. Read the rest of this entry »

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Well I wrote an article a bit of a ways back, actually back in January, about what I learned from my 100,000 Ezine Articles views.

Well now I am at 200,000 views on Ezine Articles and thought I would update on what I think are important points on getting seen and what the traffic is worth.

Here are the top level stats on my 200,000 article views 2,404 published by other webmasters and 5749 clickthroughs to my sites, this works out to 5.7% which I think is good but has a lot more room to improve.

I have to be happy with all of that “free” traffic that is for sure. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, one of the great ways in which we start on the path to building an internet business is by researching and learning on sites like Digital Point, Warrior Forum and Wicked Fire among others.

The trouble is that reading and ususally even posting to these forums is not in fact building a business and I want to show you why.

Don’t get me wrong I love reading in the forums and I always learn stuff but the trouble is that I never sell stuff in Internet Marketing forums so I try to limit my time there (except maybe the WSO section of Warrior Forum). Sure this blog is an internet marketing blog so you would think that I would be able to drag visitors from my signature at the forums but really this does not happen much from the Internet Marketing folks. The trouble with internet marketing forums is that there is too much noise. You see the same things over and over again and get used to seeing a pitch a mile away. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I received this lovely mousepad in the mail, and I mean our mailbox here not email, from Ezine Articles. I write a lot of articles and post them on ezinearticles.com and a couple of weeks ago I got an email from them asking for my home mailing address. I sent it to them and they sent me this.

I haven’t used a mousepad in a long time but I guess I will start using this starting today. It is a great motivator to remind me what is important and that is to get my products and sites names out there on a regular basis.

A month or so ago I was getting burned out from work and work at home and we decided to go on vacation. I took things pretty easy for the week before I left and committed myself to rejoining the Wealthy affiliate site ($30/month) as soon a I got back. This was one of those things that I like to do, make a plan for out in the future and then let time catch up to me and act.

While I was away my affiliate sales started to pick up, I got back and joined the Wealthy Affiliate site the next day and dove into reading the great forums and got involved answering questions. I seem to learn more from answering questions then I do from asking questions.

Wealthy Affiliate by the way if the all in one place pay site that I have joined and quit twice so far an now joined for a third time, more on why I don’t stick for too long below…

I really get caught up deciding on rejoining the Wealthy Affiliate site because reading is not doing.

I always get scared that I will get caught up in not creating and be the deer in the headlights not acting when I should be. Often I read posts and say to myself, “I agree, I already knew that”. But to move forward you have to have a plan and decide what is important to move your business forward.

I am now rejoined and am committing to a month of reading and learning but of course if my content creation drops too far at all I will stop the forums completely. It seems that I have much more control of this for myself now then I did a few years ago when it took me three years to put up my first site.

Check out Wealth Affiliate and see if it works for you. But, remember don’t bother if you are scared that it will take you away from the work that you need to do, instead the site should be a jump start for your business.

What I have learned from my 100,000 article views at Ezinearticles

A little while ago I hit 100,000 views of my articles on ezinearticles.com with a total of 138 articles posted over the last year and a half or so. The number is huge to me but of course ezinearticles gets lots of traffic so I should not be surprised. If only I got a dollar for every view…but maybe soon if I follow what I have learned. Here are some observations from my stats.

Headlines count for almost everything – I have found that writing an article is only good if the title is very specific to keywords. I wrote about six pack abs, Jenny Craig Diet and How to reload Windows XP and got thousands of page views but on the articles where I just described what I would write about it seemed I got very little traffic from the articles.

Most articles are only good for a week but some have real staying power – In all but a handful of articles I would get a lot of traffic for a week or so and then drop out of the serps completely. I wish I could see stats for all articles on a week by week basis but alas there is no tracking like that at EzineArticles. On the articles as above where I actually use good keywords in the title I would get lots of traffic and still do get lots of traffic for those articles.

Clickthroughs have everything to do with the bio box – In the early days I would just say “Bill is passionate about fitness, to learn more visit his fitness blog at XXXXX” I got about a 1% bio box clickthrough on that but now the last paragraph of my article is acutally in the bio box with a distinct call to action and the clickthroughs are around 15-20%. What a massive difference eh?

I have had bad conversions to sales as I still have been pointing at specific reviews on my blog but the “leak” from those pages seems to be terrible. I hope that over my next 100,000 article views that I will only point to actual review pages as Kyle and Carson have put on this site (I have only found them under downloads in the sitemap) and see if my conversion is better.

Many people, myself included use article marketing as a method to get backlinks to our sites and to drive traffic as well. Because of the popularity of sites like ezinearticles and goarticles there is a new type of article site that is closer to being a webpage then a simple artilce. I have written about Squidoo being this kind of site and now another, hubpages has caught my eye.

The idea with hubpages is that you create a page with an article and then there are adsense ads on that page with some revenue going to you and some revenue going to the owners of the site itself, very similar to Squidoo.  Some of the ways that hubpages rocks is that it allows porn article pages (porn pays big for affiliate sales although I have not used it yet), hubpages also allows you to do direct links to affiliate programs (no landing page needed), and hubpages is not as crowded as other sites.

Also Google likes Hubpages just like it likes Squidoo. Lots of love and high rankings with long tail keyword articles.

Who loves money is a new ebook set to launch on May 1st. I know that there are a lot of products that come out on what seems like a weekly basis but this product should be chockful of great infothat you can use. And the great thing is that most of these ideaare not being used at all so you can be at the head of the curve in your internet marketing business.

I am posting this information today so that you can have a chance to sign up for a presale set of emails at the Who Loves Money website that will give you ideas and tips to make money right away, now, even if you are not really interested in buying the ebook when it come out

“The Techniques in Who Loves Money can be implemented with ZERO Risk and without investing a dime of your own money.”

The creators of this book are Kyle and Carson for the Wealthy Affiliate site. When they showed the book to Travis, the creator of Bum Marketing, he wanted to buy the book right there and then. I expect that on May 1st we will see a lot of hype and a great product, Who Loves Money come out.

We’ll give you a little preview of just a couple topics in the book:

• How we earned $60 / Minute With A single Niche Market
• How to determine which keywords sell
• Niche Hunting Exposed – How we do it
• An In-depth look at Clickbank
• Penny Pincher Traffic techniques
• Kyle & Carson’s Slow Roller Technique (Yet to be exposed)

The importance of articles in today’s websites and internet based companies are immeasurable. They dictate a lot in the success and the drive of traffic into one’s site. It has become a key element in making a site work and earns a profit. A website operator and owner must have the good sense to include articles in his or her site that will work for them and earn them the many benefits articles can give to their site.

Articles have been known to be the driving force in driving traffic to a website. Articles are a factor in giving site high rankings in search result pages. The higher a site ranks the bigger slice of the traffic flow pie he gets. With a huge number in traffic flow, there are more profits and more potential for other income generating schemes as well.

But, it is not just about stuffing your site with articles; they have certain requirements as well. These requirements must be met to obtain the maximum benefits an article will provide for your site. A well written article will catch the eyes and interest of your customers and keep them coming back for more. They would also be able to recommend your site to others.

Here are some tips to help you and assist you in making your articles. Below you will read about four things all articles must have to make it successful and helpful in making your site a profit earning and traffic overflowing site.

Keywords and Keyword Phrases
An article must always be centered on the keywords and keyword phrases. As each website visitor goes to a site, there are those who are just merely browsing but actually looking for a specific something. When this happens, a searcher usually goes to a search engine and types in the keywords they are looking for (e.g. Toyota Camry, Meningitis, Tax Lawyer and Etcetera). It could be anything they want.

The Important thing is that you have an article that has the keywords that are related to your site. For example, if you maintain an auto parts site, you must be able t have articles about cars and their parts. There are many tools in the internet that provides service in helping a webmaster out in determining what keywords and keyword phrases are mostly sought out. You can use this tool to determine what keywords to use and write about.

Keyword Density
Know that you have your keywords and keyword phrases, you must use them fully. An article must have good keyword density for a search engine to “feel” its presence. Articles should at least have ten to fifteen percent of keyword density in their content for search engines to rank a site high in their search results. Getting a high rank is what articles do best for a site.

Keyword density is the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is used on an article. The number varies depending on the number of words used in an article. An effective article must have a keyword density that is not too high or too low. With a very high density, the essence of the article is lost and may turn off a reader as well as the search engines. It comes off as overeager. A low number may be ignored by the search engines.

Good Article Content
Like what is stated above, you cannot just riddle an article with keywords. They must also be regarded as good reading materials. Articles must be able to entertain people as well as provide good information and help for their needs. Articles should be written well with correct spelling and good grammar. If you want people to trust you, make your work good and well thought out.

People respond well to figures, facts and statistics. Try to get great information and as many facts as you can. A good and well written article will boost your reputation as an expert in your chosen field or topic. As more people believe in you. They will be able to trust you and your products.

Linking Articles
And another important thing to remember. If you are going to submit articles to ezines and/or contribute your articles to newsletters and other sites, DON’T ever forget to include a link to your site. A little resource box with a brief description of your site and you should always be placed right after your articles that you have submitted. If people like your articles, they will most likely click on the link directing them to your site.

I am now about to break an apparently unspoken rule of internet marketing. In looking at my stats just now I realized that today, saturday, the quietest day of the week for my sites, I have just broken $100 dollars in income in one day for the first time.

When I started this internet marketing blog I was not starting it because I was so successful but instead because I feel that I have a lot of knowledge that I have picked up over the years and wanted to do two things, first to give back my knowledge and secondly to get a little more motivated to make the most of my knowledge and skills to start applying them more and more often.

Here are the keys to making the bigger sales days happen.

1. Write everyday. Make sure that you blog or add webpages out on the internet everyday. Consistency is key.

2. Write reviews of products that you like. More important than looking at commision levels is to make sure that you believe in the products that you review. Always make sure that the content in those articles is really addding to the product that you are promoting and not just a sales pitch. A sales pitch is usually useless and anyway this is the job of the person actually offering the product.

3. Find way to get traffic to your product reviews. Articles, press releases or even Adwords always pointing to your review page. If you are cheap like me of course you can just focuse on article marketing to get traffic to your reviews.

Just as a frame of reference, I track page views relentlessly and on a daily basis I will get about 100-120 page views for my review posts on my different blogs altogether.

Get out and write