Chris Sorrell

Quite simply I am advising anyone who hasn't got 'writing riches' by Ray Edwards to order it asap.

If you haven't heard of him he's one of the world's top copywriters and has been involved in multiple seven figure product launches for quite some time now. I actually learned about him through a well known marketer sending out an email about how good this book was. I was a bit dubious at first but can honestly say it's the most useful thing I've ever read on selling.

Not only that but it's completely geared towards online sales copy so for anyone who's working out how to write a compelling review for a clickbank product, a sales letter or email then you are seriously missing out by not having read this book. I'm already putting some of the tips into action now and I've only had it a few days and read about 80 pages. I've been tweaking one of my sites to follow his blueprint and it looks and reads soooo much better.

Get over to amazon and get it cos this $12 book could make a huge difference to your marketing for a long time to come.

PS - If you couple this with another highly praised book in the marketing community (especially on the WF) called 'the millionaire fastlane' then you will never ever need to buy another crappy clickbank marketing product for the rest of your life. All of the info and strategy you'll ever need to make money is in these two books.

Jermaine Tabor

Ray Edwards is a pretty good guy from what i've seen/heard. Will have a look! Thanks

garben2011

Yeah, I agree with that. It's definitely not the way I'd prefer to approach it because I much prefer quality over quantity but alas it appears for marketing that is not the best way based on real-world results.

Several months back, I took the time to write 40 high-quality 600- to 800-word articles to promote one of my niche websites. Many are rated 5 stars and people left positive comments on them at ezinearticles.

Yet, those 40 articles generate an average of 60 unique visitors to my website per month. Ha ha! Looking at that... 20 high-quality articles will generate about 1 unique visitor per day (but hey I'll get high star ratings and nice thankful comments so that is something I suppose).

And that is hardly worth the time and effort.

So, I have since changed my approach. Bare minimum article length and just thrown out as fast as I can do a "brain dump". Because at 20 articles per 1 unique daily visitor I cannot spend time writing "masterpieces". Heck even at 5 articles per unique daily visitor from throwing out quick & dirty writing that is still a lot of articles to build any real traffic.

Anyway, thanks for actually posting this. Everyone seems to pitch how quality wins over quantity and I agree with you... it is a superb ideal, and one that I wish actually worked, but it is not what people should be doing if they want to actually see decent results. Just write the damn things and get them out there as quickly as possible. =)

Doug Wakefield

There are two ways to achieve success, and neither camp is wrong.

Some marketers do nothing but longer masterpieces, simply because their business models revolve more around getting syndicated on other websites in their niche instead of relying on the article directories. Alexa Smith, Bill Platt, and a few others swear by this method of thinking and make a killing doing so.

There are others that work on a results by volume approach. They write lower word counts, but in doing so they tend to rely heavily on the search engines and the volume for that traffic. These people also make a killing.

Both methods work in their own ways.

The first method is likely to take longer to set up, but the return will be higher converting traffic in the end.

The second method is better for short term results. Oftentimes you can see your numbers in days.

There is really no right way, you have to choose what works for you.

I do want to add in that you may want to pick up Bill Platt's writing WSO to complement Jason's strategy. Putting the two together is simply awesome when you must crank out articles fast.

MerlynSanchez

I'm going to check this out. I over think article writing and spend way too much time on it.

Thanks for the suggestion!

tpw

Doug: Thank you for the recommendation. I am out of Thanks buttons, or I would fix you up.

Sparhawke

I am going to subscribe to this topic, I think it will get very valuable in time

MerlynSanchez

[I do want to add in that you may want to pick up Bill Platt's writing WSO to complement Jason's strategy. Putting the two together is simply awesome when you must crank out articles fast.[/QUOTE]

I second that recommendation. I picked up Bill's WSO a few weeks back and it has streamlined the research and organization of my article.

Alas, I still write too slowly...

Rose Anderson

I just went to amazon and ordered. Thanks for the suggestion.

CatherineC

Effective writing, in which you position the reader to do what you want them to (i.e., "sell the click") is critical to any article marketer, yet it's one of the least covered aspects of the business.

All too often those without a strong command of the English language simply resort to brute force...which can be effective, but not nearly as much as the power of having your QUALITY article published across multiple niche-specific blogs, forums, ezines, and other syndication targets for free.

Ray Edwards is a pro at moving the reader through to a CTA they can't avoid, as are other heavyweights like Clayton Makepeace just to pull one from the top of my head, and any effort you make to edjucate yourself on how to use their methods will be rewarded 100x over the "article spam" guy throwing outsourced garbage at the wall.

tpw

Merlyn: Thank you also.

garben2011

I used to believe this! Well, okay I kind of believe it still. I mean I am not gonna throw out complete junk. But having done a few tests now (like the batch of 40 articles mentioned above) I honestly see no difference in the number of articles being published regardless of whether they were extremely well-written or one I would consider barely acceptable. And I see no difference in the CTR between these different quality of articles other than it actually seems that shorter articles tend to have a slightly higher CTR... sometimes. As do articles using many bullet points. But again, it is not always the case.

At the end of the day, I just want to get the greatest results with the least amount of time and energy. So, targeting 300-word articles works well for that. As you may have noticed from my posts here on the forum.... I actually have no problem writing. Churning out 600-word or 800-word articles is not an issue in itself. It's just that I don't see the point in doing it if I will get more 2 to 3 times as many visitors by writing two 300- or 400-word articles. My preference would be the longer and better written articles but it seems those are not what people want. Or maybe they simply learn most of what they wanted to learn from the articles themselves so see no need in clicking to get more information. Hmm... that might be it.

CatherineC

And if Google changes or tweaks their "content farm" algorithm just a litttttttttttle bit to only valuing articles with over 600 words?

Everyone's definition of quality differs. The results may differ also, you have to go with your strengths. I think most would agree that the original "250 words are all you need" concept from Travis' original Bum Marketing blueprint are long over. You're not ranking for that low.

How long until it's 500 words?

Then 700?

Future-proofing the hard hard HARD work you've done to SEO rank your articles by not throwing fast slop at the wall that's under 400 words is one of the best ways to guarantee you won't be slapped, hard, later.

Also your sample size is far too low to make the conclusions you're making. Talk to me when you have the data from a thousand artciles in 40 different niches covering multiple demographics and we can compare more notes.

That's not being smug, I assure you, it's simply trying to illustrate that "twice as many views" in a month for 25 articles verus the tens of thousands of views a longer, more thorough, higher quality article will get through both SEO rank and syndication by others isn't comparable.

garben2011

I agree the sample is very small but hey you know I can only go by what I have at hand. I based this on a couple hundred articles. But since it seems consistent at this point it seems likely things will not change much when I one day reach a few thousand articles.

Seriously? I cannot talk to you anymore until I have written a thousand different articles across 40 different niches (or is it one thousand articles in each of 40 different niches = 40,000 articles)?!

Sigh. Well... it was nice briefly talking to you. It will be quite some time before I reach 1,000 articles. lol

Doug Wakefield

The length of the article will vary by the need.

There are plenty of people from both camps doing too well to discount either side.

I can use Alexa as an example for one camp. She mentions that she takes 3-4 hours to write an article. Her main purpose is to get her articles syndicated so she doesn't have to write as many over time.

Ill use Bryan Zimmerman as my champion from camp 2. He churns out lots of articles each day. I haven't talked to him in a while to know what he is capable of now, but I would put my money on the 5+ an hour mark. He would swear by his method simply because he could write a lot more articles in the same 4 hours.

The business model for both of them work. They both do well for themselves doing things how they do them.

There really isn't a wrong method here. Just do what works for you.

garben2011

Amen. And that is basically what I'm getting at in a, perhaps, very inefficient way.

You can't just assume that writing the highest possible quality article will automagically be better than writing multiple lower quality articles.

For one thing, there are just many factors involved. Perhaps one of the shorter articles will click with a different segment of the audience than the one pro quality article will. Perhaps it will simply cover some keyword variation that picks up some extra traffic. Probably a combination of both approaches is what I will end up doing over time.

You summed it up very well when you said There really isn't a wrong method here. Just do what works for you.

hitesh93

I'm not sure where you're getting this info from. Google doesn't care about the 'amount' of content on a page. It cares about the 'relevance' of the content. I mean this without any malice -- what you just said is one of the most ignorant things I've read in a long time. In part because content farm algorithm targets sites with low quality and high quantity -- which is the exact opposite of what's being discussed - high quality and low quantity.

Steven Miranda

I will have to check this out.