Article Marketing is Over-Rated

[reapr]

What is my take. Ok yes article marketing is over rated and not worth the time.

No I don't get instant traffic.

Backlinks ... what are those.

My sites never took off once I started focusing on articles that got me valuable backlinks... oh yeah what are backlinks.


Now if I can get everyone to believe that I would eliminate about 75% of my competition.

All funnin' aside you know you have struck a vein of gold when you get a few hundred visitors a day from an article and it converts at 30-40%. It can take several dozen articles to find the vein but once you get a good article and dissect it to death you just get better at crafting and witting articles. Oh and after a while what took a few hours can be hacked out in 15-30 minutes.

[warner444]

Jennifer

You sort of answer why you don't get good enough for you result from articles when you said:

"d) I really HATE it when I give away lots of good information in an article at an articles directory and I satisfy the reader so much that they don't bother to click out to visit my site. I'm notorious for doing this. I'm just not very good at leaving the person hanging in the article so they will have to click to my site to find out more. So I'm just naturally suited to providing that same level of in depth content on MY site."

Nothing wrong with that but articles are kind of designed to tease a little so the person wants to visit your site.
So being that, by your own statement, you are not writing articles in a way to best use that medium it is no wonder you find them over-rated.

I think it is great you write a lot and it gets you traffic, and I assume good quality targeted traffic. Keep up the good work.

[Adrian Abel]

Here are some stats from my article marketing.

I got all 7 of my articles on the law of attraction approved on Ezine Articles on Friday. Now 3 days (72 hours) later...

- 878 article views
- 85 URL clicks
- 15 people signed up to my squeeze page

These 7 articles took me 30 mins each including submission to EA which is 3.5 hours in total.

I expect the stats to improve this week but so far, you can see that article marketing works. How much would it cost to get 878 clicks with an Adwords campaign?

If you're thinking about outsourcing, then have someone good to write your articles will cost around $70 in this case (if they charge $10 per article).

Based on these results, you can decide if Article Marketing is over rated or not.

[ExRat]

Hi Adrian,

How much would it cost to get 878 clicks with an Adwords campaign?

Your overall point is a good one, but it's not the equivalent of 878 adwords clicks. It's the equivalent of 878 (free) adwords impressions and 85 adwords clicks. Am I not right?

[Chiayee]

Originally Posted by Adrian Abel

I got all 7 of my articles on the law of attraction approved on Ezine Articles on Friday. Now 3 days (72 hours) later...

- 878 article views
- 85 URL clicks
- 15 people signed up to my squeeze page

The question is: how does the traffic convert for you?

P/S: You look like Andy Lau !

[Hamida Harland]

Article marketing isn't over rated in my opinion - as long as you don't rely on it completely. Unfortunately I'm not blessed with any PR5 blogs that get lots of SE love (yet anyway ) so I get alot of traffic from EZA instead.

Here's one of my own examples of how article marketing works for me.I have one blog that I started in June - I post to it now and again but don't get any SE traffic (it's on page 3 of Google). I submitted 3 articles on 1st Sept - they were accepted on 5th Sept they now have 802 views, I've had 329 uniques to my site, 258 hops, 26 sales and 3 refunds. So my net sales for the 1st half of this month are $398.34 from 3 articles, which will probably be doubled by the end of the month. That's just one site that I've submitted articles for...

So I wouldn't say it's over rated - although maybe you do that well from posting to your own sites seeing as you've got good pr. Mine are all pretty new so it'll be a while before they start getting decent SE traffic.

[cosmokid]

Hi guys -

That's great that some of you are getting good results with articles submitted to ezinearticles and elsewhere. The technique DOES work.

I would argue though that (especially if you're not a very good writer) blog comments and forum postings can be equally as powerful for getting immediate traffic to your new site, and sometimes this is a better strategy if your articles tend to be really lame.

I have to be honest - many of the articles I see in directories are pretty awful. They certainly don't inspire me to click on the sig line. Maybe it's because I'm the daughter of an English teacher, but to me a poorly written article can do much more damage in hurting the author's credibility than you might think. And I don't think I'm the only person on this planet who has that reaction when they see a really dull, poorly written article. The person may be laying out facts or ideas that have real juice to them, but if the text doesn't scan and it's a labor to read you immediately lose a potential visitor to your website.

(Incidentally, if people come across the same poorly written article on YOUR site at least you have a chance of turning them into a customer because they still might click out on your sales link just to get away from your awful writing! Again, the more you can learn to pull organic traffic directly to your site, the less hoops your visitors have to jump through to buy something from you. )

Some of my friends who can't write a compelling article to save their lives are huge money makers in this industry because they 1) learned to admit to themselves that their articles sucked and just weren't getting better no matter how hard they tried and 2) learned how to expend the same amount of time and energy on making short, compelling blog or forum posts. (Or they outsourced article writing, which is another way to go.)

It can be a lot easier making a two sentence blog comment or a brief forum post that leaves readers hanging and wanting more....while at the same time your writing won't be as harshly judged because people don't expect a well thought out article when they're reading a short and snappy blog comment or forum post.

So anyway, if you hate writing articles or if you get a friend to read them and they give you an honest, negative opinion (saying, "Man, this was so boring it put me to sleep and your sentences make absolutely no sense the way you've strewn them together......") it can be more useful to comment on well trafficked blogs and forums. It requires less writing and can provide more "punch" and attract people with a high interest level in your subject.

So that's one thing I wanted to mention....part of the reason why I feel article writing is over-rated is that it leaves an entire group of people (non-writers or people whose English isn't that great) out of the equation, often leading them to believe they can never get any organic traffic and forcing them to use Adwords. Which isn't necessary if you can learn how to find and use the power of blog commenting and forum posting. Also Yahoo answers, social bookmarking, and a host of other techniques we've discussed so far in this thread work really well to bring instant, targeted traffic.

Hamida,

Those are impressive results from those three articles you submitted. That's great! I have to question though why you're not pulling in good organic traffic from that blog yet if you launched in June. Are you doing any link baiting posts? (Commenting on how your particular niche or products in your niche are being covered in the news/media?) Are you doing any product reviews on specific products - perhaps multiple times if it's a saturated, over-promoted product? This is how I grab organic traffic with new blogs. I dovetail on the way my niche or my affiliate products are being covered in the media and comment on what the media is saying; or I hit a product review or rant/rave about a specific product really hard, sometimes talking about a product within as many as three posts - and that brings customers right away. If I'm selling an eBook of my own I might make a post about how a more popular, competing product is being covered that week on Oprah or whatever and tell people why my product is better! That always gets me fast sales.

So there are ways to get organic traffic that don't rely upon already having a page five rank site to backlink from. I don't link to all my sites from my page five rank sites, and I use many of the techniques mentioned in this post to grab my first organic traffic - and keep it!

Jennifer

[Hamida Harland]

Hamida,

Those are impressive results from those three articles you submitted. That's great! I have to question though why you're not pulling in good organic traffic from that blog yet if you launched in June. Are you doing any link baiting posts? (Commenting on how your particular niche or products in your niche are being covered in the news/media?) Are you doing any product reviews on specific products - perhaps multiple times if it's a saturated, over-promoted product? This is how I grab organic traffic with new blogs. I dovetail on the way my niche or my affiliate products are being covered in the media and comment on what the media is saying; or I hit a product review or rant/rave about a specific product really hard, sometimes talking about a product within as many as three posts - and that brings customers right away. If I'm selling an eBook of my own I might make a post about how a more popular, competing product is being covered that week on Oprah or whatever and tell people why my product is better! That always gets me fast sales.

So there are ways to get organic traffic that don't rely upon already having a page five rank site to backlink from. I don't link to all my sites from my page five rank sites, and I use many of the techniques mentioned in this post to grab my first organic traffic - and keep it!

Jennifer

Hi Jennifer,
Thanks for your suggestions . Mine are very tightly focused niche blogs that never really get to more than 20-30 posts at most. No news or media stories either, although I have product reviews and that's what I get the sales from. Although my traffic is small my conversion rate makes up for it thankfully!

This blog that I've mentioned only has about 10 posts so far and it was one that I'd neglected but decided to pull a few sales from this month. Got to start getting some more backlinks and stuff now. I think I need to start working on a few broader niches though so that I can build authority sites as well. Must read over your WSO again, got it a few weeks ago but need to study it properly - it's good stuff!

Hamida

[Justin Jordan]

Originally Posted by cosmokid

I have to be honest - many of the articles I see in directories are pretty awful.

The (slight) upshot to this is that if you're at least half good, you'll stand out. So there's that, at least.

[Ernie Lonardo]

Thanks for sharing your results

However you didnt get 878 "clicks", you got 85 clicks so not fair to compare against PPC in that case. But personally I think Article marketing would be cheaper and better in the longrun than PPC.

You got 15 signups from 85 clicks. That's very low actually. You should strive for at least a 30% optin conversion rate. Might want to check your ad copy there, surely can be improved.

Originally Posted by Adrian Abel

Here are some stats from my article marketing.

I got all 7 of my articles on the law of attraction approved on Ezine Articles on Friday. Now 3 days (72 hours) later...

- 878 article views
- 85 URL clicks
- 15 people signed up to my squeeze page

How much would it cost to get 878 clicks with an Adwords campaign?

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by Wild Boom

Hey, that's not a good enough excuse for me to not speaking your mind. This is your niche Steven and I'm surprised you have nothing to say. Don't be a Wuss!

Hey, if you bothered reading my next post you'd see that I had plenty to
say.

Who are you calling a wuss?

[cosmokid]

Yeah, Steve's no wuss! He's given some amazing input here - as usual!

For me Steve represents the living embodiment of the very BEST that can be achieved with article marketing. So I'm so glad he's stopped by and contributed to this thread.

My main point, though, is that people like Steve are rare birds. Being that prolific and producing the high level of quality content in huge volume like he does is a rare feat. It's not going to be easily achievable for most people.

And I think sometimes people get all excited by the "success stories" when really any teaching about article marketing should be prefaced by "your mileage may vary." Because focusing so heavily on article marketing might not be viable, doable, practical, easy, or as profitable for the average Joe.

You can certainly get some good results with it....I'm not arguing with that.

I was inspired to start this thread because as I mentioned I've been getting emails from people who have been trained to believe that article marketing is really the only way to grab organic traffic with a new site.

And it's neither the only way nor the best way, in my opinion!

And if writing is difficult for you, or if your articles aren't very interesting or scannable, or (as I think is true in my case) you tend to give too much info away in your articles and are bad at leaving readers wanting more, you might get better results from your time and energy posting on your OWN site and doing other types of backlinking.....plus making very brief but concise blog comments and/or forum posts where people are excited about your niche. These techniques can provide equally as exciting results as article marketing can do - and often eclipse them if for whatever reason your articles don't tend to pull traffic for you.

So anyway, I'm not in a fight with Steven - if anything, I'd love to offer him a cup of tea and a big round of thanks for his contributions here!

Jennifer

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by cosmokid

My main point, though, is that people like Steve are rare birds. Being that prolific and producing the high level of quality content in huge volume like he does is a rare feat. It's not going to be easily achievable for most people.

And I think sometimes people get all excited by the "success stories" when really any teaching about article marketing should be prefaced by "your mileage may vary." Because focusing so heavily on article marketing might not be viable, doable, practical, easy, or as profitable for the average Joe.

I can't agree more. Just like I always say that running a business itself
isn't for everybody. You need a lot of discipline and determination to run
a successful business. Not everybody has that.

And as for my business model, yeah, not for the articulately challenged.

[braja]

Wow.. I wish I could write.

I seem to 2 sentences and then just cant seem to focus my attention.. and sit there blankly at the screen.

[Rob Ferrall]

Originally Posted by braja

Wow.. I wish I could write.

I seem to 2 sentences and then just cant seem to focus my attention.. and sit there blankly at the screen.

This happens to people that write for a living sometimes... it's not unique to self-professed non-writers.

[Dean Shainin]

There are so many people who really should to be taking advantage of article marketing using Ezinearticles to drive targeted quality free traffic to their sites but struggle and simply don’t know how to do it properly and give up after a few articles.

Here is just one of my many Ezinearticles accounts that I use under a Pen name (omitted for privacy) showing the stats from only 17 articles. They will continue to generate traffic and sales for years.


Page Views 101,167

Published: 368

URL Clicks: 12,195

Emailed: 24

Comments: 3

Votes: 37

Live Articles: 17


I figured how much Google AdWords PPC would have cost in the particular niche these articles are in and it would have cost about $2,900 as opposed to about 8 hours of my time writing and submitting the articles.

When an article gets a top 10 listing in Google for its keyword, especially if it does get searched for quite a bit, you will see a big spike in free traffic.

There are plenty of ways to drive free traffic and article marketing is simply only one aspect of many.

Over rated? I don't know... Maybe so... if you don't know how to do article marketing the right way it can be a waste of time for some people.

Cheers,
Dean

[cosmokid]

Dean,

Those are amazing click through rates - see, I classify you as another one of the article writing Jedi masters.

Most of us are down here on Luke Skywalker level, right around the time he was still learning how to use a light sabre. It takes a certain amount of copywriting talent to get those kinds of results.

Even though I'm a writer, I still need to develop my own gifts more in this area if I hope to ever have as much luck with article marketing.

And call me lazy, but since other things work better for me, and I get VERY grumpy about doing a lot of quality writing for free, I'll stick to focusing on other techniques a bit more.

But thanks for sharing those incredible stats! You rock!

Jennifer

[Instructor]

Personally I look forward to experimenting with article marketing as a PIECE of my overall marketing strategy. I'm already a huge advocate of PPC.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by cosmokid

Dean,

Those are amazing click through rates - see, I classify you as another one of the article writing Jedi masters.

Most of us are down here on Luke Skywalker level, right around the time he was still learning how to use a light sabre. It takes a certain amount of copywriting talent to get those kinds of results.

Even though I'm a writer, I still need to develop my own gifts more in this area if I hope to ever have as much luck with article marketing.

And call me lazy, but since other things work better for me, and I get VERY grumpy about doing a lot of quality writing for free, I'll stick to focusing on other techniques a bit more.

But thanks for sharing those incredible stats! You rock!

Jennifer

Jennifer, my CTR is not as good as Dean's.

I make up for it in volume.

[enrich]

Arggggggggggggggh no no no!!!!!!!! Submitting articles to directories long term is stupid, really stupid!

Here's why:

Theres nothing wrong with submitting a handful of articles to get high quality backlinks but why oh why do so many people submit 100s even 1000s of articles to directories?

It's madness!!

If you have a website with 1000 articles on it you will get some serious traffic. Not only that, your site is worth a hell of a lot of money should you wish to sell it. If you submit every one of your articles to directories the ARTICLE DIRECTORIES OWN YOUR ARTICLES. You own nothing, all you have is traffic. Traffic you can be getting to your own website.

So lets say from your article marketing you earn $3000 per month by submitting them to directories. If you have articles on YOUR OWN SITE instead of being on directories you own something worth over $30,000!! (going on 10x monthly income)

By giving your content away you are giving away a lot of money.

[Dean Shainin]

Originally Posted by cosmokid

Dean,

Those are amazing click through rates - see, I classify you as another one of the article writing Jedi masters.

Most of us are down here on Luke Skywalker level, right around the time he was still learning how to use a light sabre. It takes a certain amount of copywriting talent to get those kinds of results.

Even though I'm a writer, I still need to develop my own gifts more in this area if I hope to ever have as much luck with article marketing.

And call me lazy, but since other things work better for me, and I get VERY grumpy about doing a lot of quality writing for free, I'll stick to focusing on other techniques a bit more.

But thanks for sharing those incredible stats! You rock!

Jennifer

I'm with you Jennifer,

Writing for free sucks and used to get me real grumpy when I had to do it in school with book reports and stuff I was forced to do.

Finding ones passion within Internet marketing is vital for long term success.

It's very wise to find what works best for you and your own interests for sure. It took me well over 12 months to figure this out and at times was really wondering what in the world I was even doing online.

Thanks for your valuable insights...

Cheers,
Dean

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by enrich

Arggggggggggggggh no no no!!!!!!!! Submitting articles to directories long term is stupid, really stupid!

Here's why:

Theres nothing wrong with submitting a handful of articles to get high quality backlinks but why oh why do so many people submit 100s even 1000s of articles to directories?

It's madness!!

If you have a website with 1000 articles on it you will get some serious traffic. Not only that, your site is worth a hell of a lot of money should you wish to sell it. If you submit every one of your articles to directories the ARTICLE DIRECTORIES OWN YOUR ARTICLES. You own nothing, all you have is traffic. Traffic you can be getting to your own website.

So lets say from your article marketing you earn $3000 per month by submitting them to directories. If you have articles on YOUR OWN SITE instead of being on directories you own something worth over $30,000!! (going on 10x monthly income)

By giving your content away you are giving away a lot of money.

You're so dead wrong it isn't even funny.

I have one site with over 100 articles on it.

It makes me NOTHING.

I have another site with over 100 articles on it.

It makes me close to nothing.

I've submitted just 72 articles (1 per day) for a highly competitive niche
to EZA and they've already earned me hundreds of dollars.

If your site is in a very competitive niche, it doesn't matter how many
articles you have on it...NOBODY is going to find it unless you promote the
hell out of it.

Just putting articles on your site (unless you have little competition)
doesn't mean squat.

[enrich]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

You're so dead wrong it isn't even funny.

I have one site with over 100 articles on it.

It makes me NOTHING.

I have another site with over 100 articles on it.

It makes me close to nothing.

I've submitted just 72 articles (1 per day) for a highly competitive niche
to EZA and they've already earned me hundreds of dollars.

If your site is in a very competitive niche, it doesn't matter how many
articles you have on it...NOBODY is going to find it unless you promote the
hell out of it.

Just putting articles on your site (unless you have little competition)
doesn't mean squat.

It depends on your keywords, competition isnt important if you choose your keywords wisely.

If you're currently earning $10,000 from article marketing you are throwing away over at least $100,000 by not having all your articles on YOUR site, something YOU own.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by enrich

It depends on your keywords, competition isnt important if you choose your keywords wisely.

If you're currently earning $10,000 from article marketing you are throwing away over at least $100,000 by not having all your articles on YOUR site, something YOU own.

This is YOUR opinion. Perhaps you'd care to back this up with some facts
as I have done.

Anybody can say anything.

Doesn't mean crap.

[Yogini]

This is a great thread and I'm glad you started it Jennifer.

I was curious about how you'd respond to what Steve said:

"I have one site with over 100 articles on it.

It makes me NOTHING.

I have another site with over 100 articles on it.

It makes me close to nothing.

I've submitted just 72 articles (1 per day) for a highly competitive niche
to EZA and they've already earned me hundreds of dollars.

If your site is in a very competitive niche, it doesn't matter how many
articles you have on it...NOBODY is going to find it unless you promote the
hell out of it.

Just putting articles on your site (unless you have little competition)
doesn't mean squat."

I think you'd say that even a new site should get some long tail keyword traffic if there are one hundred articles on it just based on various ways people type in searches in the engines. Or would you say without backlinks the site will get little or no organic traffic?

Debbie

[cosmokid]

Hi again guys and gals -

Debbie, responding to some of what Steve just posted, let's see....

In my new WSO the case study I include is about going into a highly competitive niche (internet marketing) and making my first sale in five days.

I also talk about a fat loss site I do similar things with although I don't give an extensive case study about it.

I used to think the "old way" - that going after highly competitive niches was impossible and would take me forever to get any sales.

I've discovered that this simply isn't true. And these days I'm building more of these sites targeting large niches - but of course having pages within that site that target keywords like specific product names, or news related stuff related to my niche or the products I'm promoting. In fact I'm only going after big niches with my newest sites.

But I don't do a lot of backlinking. I have a simple backlink strategy that doesn't involve submitting to articles directories.

I do have a feed for all my sites, though - even simple html sites. That's proven critical so you can ping it and do other cool things that a feed allows you to do. In fact, that might be the most critical reason why my sites work. I dunno.

At this point I have a portfolio of sites where I've done everything from targeting one product only for the entire site (Niche Marketing on Crack technique - which works just fine)...to playing around with a few new conduit style sites (courtesy of Chris Rempel's excellent strategy and report, which also work just fine)...to doing my new hybrid strategy which is different from both. And in these hybrid sites I only go after huge niches.

I pull organic traffic (in low numbers) right away in that first month and make my first sales. Then with a minimalist buildout I get that new site earning anywhere from $200 to $800 or so on average (per month) for the first two months; after that sales increase pretty much on their own with a minimal backlink build and content build.

I'm not doing anything extraordinary or sweat-inducing. But as I mentioned I'm focused on building smaller sites and I'm perfectly happy for them to earn me $500+ per month because I "stack" sites on top of that and I'm in this for the long haul. Most of them move to the $1000 monthly mark within six months if I give them a little love. I have the occasional bummer site that never gets over $100 a month but that doesn't happen too often - knock wood! Even so, such a site is $1200 a year that I'm not going to sneeze at, since everything after the $9 domain name registration is pure profit and it's still a lot more than I've ever been able to earn with Adsense....I'm not an Adsense person.

So I dunno....I'm still an advocate of going after large niches....and putting the majority of your content on your OWN site to grab organic traffic.

I will say, though, that going after heavily promoted Clickbank products can be a mistake because you'll get killed by the competition.

I go after lower gravity Clickbank products or I sell physical goods.

Jennifer

[Yogini]

Jennifer,

Thanks for such a detailed reply. Would you say that Steven's site with 100 articles isn't getting much traffic because there aren't enough backlinks that boost it for the longtail phrases to come up high in google? I think his point is that ezinea already has authority and the articles he puts up there get him traffic. I would think that a 100 page site of articles even with low or no pr would get people coming for some 4-5 keyword phrases that would be found throughout the site.

When you speak of "stacking" sites do you mean linking from one of your high pr sites or something else?

Debbie

[cosmokid]

Hi Debbie,

(Sorry I didn't respond sooner - I only just found where this thread had been buried!

In my experience there is no way that having 100 articles on your own site shouldn't bring you money unless a) you're in a niche that's extremely hard to monetize (i.e. "ferret manicures" or something! b) you're for some reason only targeting extremely competitive keyword phrases and that's ALL your using on your site; or c) you're not doing simple SEO techniques like adding a feed to your site and pinging each time after you update, social bookmarking a few places to your new page, and gradually building backlinks overall to your new site.

(Obviously ezinearticles can be one source of backlinks, but I still think it is overused and overemphasized.)

I have to agree with enrich who posted:

.."It depends on your keywords, competition isnt important if you choose your keywords wisely.

.."If you're currently earning $10,000 from article marketing you are throwing away over at least $100,000 by not having all your articles on YOUR site, something YOU own."

I can't back up his exact figures having never had an individual site earn me $100,000 at a pop...but I agree with his (or her) general concept.

You ARE throwing away money if you're putting the majority of your content on article sites.

Let's say you're in the weight loss niche. I recently started a fat loss site. The domain name has the phrase fat loss in it. I launched with about ten pages of content. Now it has about twenty pages on it.

I mix general interest pieces, news items, rants about stuff within the world of weight loss, and product review or product overview pages. The product pages are monetized with specific affiliate products. The sidebar has a few other affiliate products on it. I don't have many backlinks to this site yet - maybe about 50 or 60. I get a small amount of traffic, yet it converts well. I made my first sale three days after I launched. I'm promoting mostly physical products (avoiding all those overly promoted pieces of junk in the weight loss niche at Clickbank - yuck. )

This site earned me about $750 the first month. Now in the second month it's earned me about $650 for the first HALF of this month, so I can reasonably project that this site will pull in about $1300 if all goes well for the month of September.

I am targeting a hugely popular niche and I don't think my site is particularly remarkable, either. I do have a free report I'm offering on the site and I am very slowly buildling a subscriber base (it's going to take a while because as I said traffic numbers are low, but sales conversions are good for that traffic.) Some people have bought things that I promote via links within the report, which is part of the earnings I mention above.

I've submitted zero articles to directories.

I'm getting organic traffic from the search engines on longtail variations of my main fat loss keyphrase (so these are phrases with anywhere from three to six words in them, like "tell me about fat loss" or whatever.) And I'm also getting traffic on the names of the products I'm promoting and other things that I'm writing about related to those products.

It's all organic traffic, folks!

I noticed just this week that people are starting to complain here about the new $97 premium fee that ezinearticles is charging for premium membership if you want to get your articles approved faster - people are questioning if the fee is even worth it. And they're complaining about how ezinearticles is frequently approving people's articles in bulk (all on the same day,) which can really mess up your traffic building strategy because there's no way Google is going to put ALL your articles on page one of its index with a mass submit like that (vs. having your articles come in in a trickle.)

There are going to be more and more problems with the directories, folks. I encourage everyone to get more aggressive with their SEO tactics on their site and find other ways to build organic traffic. It CAN be done, guys and gals! It's not hard.

Jennifer

PS I forgot to respond to your question about "stacking," Debbie. By stacking I just mean I'm building out multiple sites over time to maintain a virtual portfolio of sites. That's all! And I don't always link to my new sites from my older page rank 5 sites, either. So doing that isn't required to grab nice organic traffic from the search engines for a new site.

[Eswar]

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for very useful tips. You have mentioned 50 to 60 back links to your website.

How do you build these back links?

Do you use only social bookmarking & blog comments?

Is there any other way to build links without submitting articles?

I am very curious learn & follow your steps.

BTW EZA was down yesterday for more than 2 hours. I was thinking about you and your post. Really i lost decent number of traffic at that time. due to EZA 500 internal server error.

[cosmokid]

Hi Eswar,

I can be somewhat eclectic about backlinking and I don't do the same thing every time, but some of my favorite and easiest backlink building steps are:

1) Social bookmarking each time I post - I bookmark maybe five places, tops.

2) For links to my main site url I like to make blog comments on relevant blogs. I also make comments on totally unrelated blogs or news sites like gossip and humor and hobby sites.

3) Sometimes I will join a forum in my niche and post my url in my sig file beneath my posts.

4) I'll also use yahooanswers and comment on relevant subjects related to my site

5) I'll also submit to some directories -both regular website directories and rss feed directories (if you create a feed for an html site you can submit your feed to directories; and WordPress blogs have a built in feed so you can submit your WP address to rss feed directories without having to create a feed for your site.)

6) I'll also type my main keywords into Google and look at the first three pages that come up for my keywords and see if I can get a comment, a link, or reference back to my site on some of those top placing websites. Sometimes you have to be creative to get a link on some of these sites but there is usually a way to get on at least some of them. (This is where submitting an article to ezinearticles can help you - but I prefer to do just one or two ezinearticles if I do them at all.)

7) One technique I mentioned earlier is really powerful - and that is offering to write a unique, high quality, relatively short (500-600 words max) article for webmasters who are in your niche or a complimentary niche and see if they will share it with their newsletter subscribers in exchange for a link back to your site at the bottom of your article. This can bring you traffic even before your site has much placement in the search engines. I like to approach smaller sites with modest newsletter lists. The big guys will usually ignore you! So you should also search for websites related to yours which have newsletters. Subscribe to the newsletter to get a flavor for its content and style. Then approach the webmaster about blasting an article you've created out to their list.

Those are my biggies. I rarely build more than 100 backlinks a month because then you can be seen as spamming the search engines and your site can go into the sandbox and you lose organic traffic for three months while you're sandboxed. I find a gradual build out is best.

Jennifer

[Chiayee]

Jennifer.. thanks for all the information you share.

I just wonder do all your sites make you money? no lame duck at all?

omg.. I must be jealous

[cosmokid]

Chiayee,

I definitely have had some lame ducks! My very first site (one of my page rank 5 sites) always got huge traffic and very little earnings - but that was because I was clueless about monetization for ages, plus I was in a challenging niche with that site. Since then I've been able to monetize it but it still only earns me about $500 per month.

With new sites I do have some that don't earn me a lot in the first three months, but usually if I keep doing a little back link building and keep building a little content it will bump over that "lame duck" level of $100 per month and at least get up to $300 a month even with the low performers.

Out of dozens of sites I only have about four big performers, but the others all make me money each month, just not as much. They're more in that $500-$900 range.

So if you have a loser site, definitely wait and see if sales spike up after the three month mark when you finally get some page rank. But if after four months it's still dead in the water you might want to let it sit for a while.

I have a health supplement site that earned me hundreds per month for a few months, then it dribbled down to nothing and I didn't touch it for another six months. Then traffic and sales came out of nowhere after the sixth month and have remained steady since - and I haven't done much with the site at all. The traffic is low but the conversions are good, so I'm still going to keep it in my portfolio.

Sometimes you never know how one will perform - but the more product specific, or guru specific (i.e. talking about the person who created the product, especially if they're famous) pages you can add to your site the higher chance that those pages will pull some sales for you.

Jennifer

[affirm758]

Jennifer
great post. i agree with you.

one of the problems with article marketing on ezines is this.

it's getting so competitive that you're fighting over the same keywords and Google's algo will most likely only show one of them... in an effort to get rid of dupe content. so yeah you may get to page one, but then others will be submitting articles and linking to get their article and higher PR so it will show up.

better bet is if you have a lot of content is to have your own blog. if not than article marketing.... with a blog their are a lot of easier ways to build links than article marketing... but's also good to have this in the mix

[Alice Seba]

Originally Posted by Wild Boom

Most people dont know how to build high pr sites, and that's why they stick with the more secure ways, all they got to do is repeat the same task 1000 times and they will see results with articles.

Instead with high pr you need to do a little of everything and stay focused.

I dont think anyone should relay on articles alone.

If you have your high pr 5+ site then you are much better off than
doing articles. The leverage is huge then, specially if you can get people involved and get links to your other sub directories.

Being the owner of EzineArticles is being the top of the pyramid.

All you have to do is figure out how to get there, and I think you can make buckloads of money, too.

That's my amazing input here - as usual LOL

Here's an easy way. Build a site with lots of content and keep adding content (same thing people do for EA, except the "build a site" part). With MINIMAL link building and a bit of patience (i.e. time) you have your own hgh ranking site. Seems silly that "article marketers" would rather do that same work for ezinearticles.com, instead of building their own long term, valuable asset.

Sure, if you lack patience in building something with long term beneifts and want near instant traffic, EA will get you there faster, but once you get your site rolling, it is your own site that is the near instant source of traffic. I prefer the latter.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by davebo

I was just talking with a girl that sold her 2 year old random content site for 55k. That was 3.5x earnings. All she did was continually add content to the site over the last couple years and eventually traffic built. Imagine if she built a 10 post blog, 5 page site with a squeeze page and she promoted through ezinearticles.com for traffic on a weekly basis. Think her stie would be worth much?

Sorry, no offense to steve wagenheim, but the idea of churning out articles day in and day out to keep traffic levels high is not appealing to me, nor most potential buyers. I'd rather place that article on my site and get some equity.

Writing articles for EZA is just putting yourself on a treadmill.

Here's one article I submitted and the views for it for just 3 months.



So much for the treadmill.

What I hate more than anything is when people talk and they don't know
what they're talking about.

[martinp]

Just to back Steven up on this one - here's one of mine. It's saved me a heck of alot on PPC and has been going strong for nearly a year now.



That one article nets me $800+ every month, and I have many others like it. It's not like a treadmill, but only if you do it right.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by martinp

Just to back Steven up on this one - here's one of mine. It's saved me a heck of alot on PPC and has been going strong for nearly a year now.

Attachment 538

That one article nets me $800+ every month, and I have many others like it. It's not like a treadmill, but only if you do it right.

Hey Martin, that's not bad. I've got quite a few like that.

Truth is, if I stopped writing right now, with the thousands of articles I have
out there, I'd still make a nice living.

I keep writing and submitting because it now takes me all of 1 hour out of
my day.

I mean how much video gaming can one person do?

[Alice Seba]

To those that keep showing EA stats, you do realize it's possible to get those same results from your own sites...if you work at them. The point is you're working to build your own assets, instead of EAs.

you can do both, but doing only EA seems like such a los of potential.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by Alice Seba

To those that keep showing EA stats, you do realize it's possible to get those same results from your own sites...if you work at them. The point is you're working to build your own assets, instead of EAs.

you can do both, but doing only EA seems like such a los of potential.

Alice, I look at it as leverage.

If I start out with a brand new PR0 site, do you know how long it's going
to take to build up a decent amount of traffic to it? A very long time. I know
because I went that route. I've done both. I'll never go back to putting up
tons of articles on my own sites UNLESS they are in niches where I'm not
banging heads with 50 million other sites.

With EZA, it doesn't matter. I can pick the most competitive niches, which
I have done, and get thousands of views to my articles each month.

With my own sites (tested this for years) I was getting hundreds of views
per month.

It's not even close in the incredibly competitive niches.

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by Alice Seba

To those that keep showing EA stats, you do realize it's possible to get those same results from your own sites...if you work at them. The point is you're working to build your own assets, instead of EAs.

you can do both, but doing only EA seems like such a los of potential.

I post a better, more complete version of my EA article on my website. Why do you assume that people are posting content to EA and not to their sites. I wrote 3 copies of an article for an acne related product. When I last checked Google, my articles dominate the first 2 1/2 pages in Google with the manufacturer in fourth place. My website was nowhere to be seen. Without the article directories and the social links, I would be getting no traffic at all. Eventually, the articles will sink and the social links will age and my site will be at the top of the heap. This process can take anywhere from 6 months to a year. How do I know? Because I've done it several times already.

TomG.

[martinp]

you do realize it's possible to get those same results from your own sites...if you work at them. The point is you're working to build your own assets, instead of EAs.

Well the thing is (just looking at my above example) I wrote an article (a different one) for my own site targetting the same key phrase and it ranked on page 3 of Google. That particular article on Ezinearticles has been no.1 on page 1 of Google for almost a year. It took me all of ten minutes to write the article for EZA - no more work required and I earn $800+ every month. The article I submitted to my site earns me ALOT less. I probably could've got it ranked on page 1 of Google, but how many hours and days of work would I have needed to do that?

I always work to build my own assets and I probably don't utilize EZA half as much as I could do, but for the sake of 10 minutes to write and submit an article, I don't know why people think it's over rated.

[Mark-Dickenson]

Originally Posted by Hamida Pall

Hi Jennifer,
Thanks for your suggestions . Mine are very tightly focused niche blogs that never really get to more than 20-30 posts at most. No news or media stories either, although I have product reviews and that's what I get the sales from. Although my traffic is small my conversion rate makes up for it thankfully!

This blog that I've mentioned only has about 10 posts so far and it was one that I'd neglected but decided to pull a few sales from this month. Got to start getting some more backlinks and stuff now. I think I need to start working on a few broader niches though so that I can build authority sites as well. Must read over your WSO again, got it a few weeks ago but need to study it properly - it's good stuff!

Hamida

Wow! Those are so serious sales!

Have you ever thought about writing a report on article marketing? I think it would sell like hot cakes with those kind of results

I never had anything close to that number with article marketing

Great job!

-Mark

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by martinp

It took me all of ten minutes to write the article for EZA - no more work required and I earn $800+ every month.

Martin, would love to see an article that did $800/month. PM me the link because I need an extra $800/month Thanks in advance for your assistance!

TomG.

[jensrsa]

I'm a bit confused.

I have always regarded what Jennifer is doing (publishing articles on one's own sites) and what Steve's doing (publishing on EA, etc) both as article marketing.

The possible difference being that on external articles one promotes one's links and resource box where, very often, we don't add them to articles on our own sites and depend on people to "find" the product.

Jens

[Hamida Harland]

Originally Posted by Mark-Dickenson

Wow! Those are so serious sales!

Have you ever thought about writing a report on article marketing? I think it would sell like hot cakes with those kind of results

I never had anything close to that number with article marketing

Great job!

-Mark

Thanks Mark, I appreciate the compliment . I've considered it, but to be honest there wouldn't be anything new in it if I did. I've read alot of article marketing ebooks that detail exactly what I do (give or take a few details).

The best way to learn really is to put into practice what you've read from other successful article marketers, and just keep on testing different methods, landing pages and niches until you find what works for you.

Not all my niches produce results like my example either, although I'd be disappointed with anything less than a 4% conversion rate with Clickbank products and article marketing.

[martinp]

Originally Posted by tommygadget

Martin, would love to see an article that did $800/month. PM me the link because I need an extra $800/month Thanks in advance for your assistance!

TomG.

Chancer!

[chucknnita]

I really think the most profitable thing to do is,,,both. You need to add regular content to your site. While sites like Ezinearticles will become less relevant as time goes by, they are certainly important now. By the time these directories start to slip, the articles will still have been picked up and used in other places, on other sites (unfortunately, sometimes without your links preserved).

[Alice Seba]

Originally Posted by tommygadget

I post a better, more complete version of my EA article on my website. Why do you assume that people are posting content to EA and not to their sites.

I don't assume. I see people all over this forum and in this thread say they don't bother trying to build up their own sites because Ezine Articles is easier. I'm addressing those people and encouraging them that taking the time and being patient enough to build your own virtual property is a valuable, long-term asset.

Originally Posted by Steve Wagenheim

If I start out with a brand new PR0 site, do you know how long it's going
to take to build up a decent amount of traffic to it? A very long time. I know
because I went that route. I've done both. I'll never go back to putting up
tons of articles on my own sites UNLESS they are in niches where I'm not
banging heads with 50 million other sites.

Of course I know. I've been in that boat many times. ;-) I agree it takes time and in my first post in this thread, I said that. But honestly, it is worth the effort and the wait. Imagine if you hadn't given up and gave some of those sites a little TLC and time to age...you'd be sitting on another goldmine in addition to the one you've built and are in which you are splitting profits with Ezine Articles.

Alice

[pmore]

I also agree that most of the content you write should be published on your own website.

I usually submit one article to ezine articles and one article to goarticles for each website. Any future content is kept for my own website's benefits.

[cosmokid]

Wow, I go out to dinner and come back to more incredible discussion here!

Thanks to everyone for their insights and points of view.

Yes, I believe that Alice Seba and I are looking at this issue the same way....my original premise is that article marketing is over-rated, meaning it is overly emphasized as the fastest, best way to get traffic and sales....and unfortunately many beginners look at that type of advice and never understand that at the very least they should be adding the SAME amount of content to their own sites to allow them to become more valuable over time. And many people just hear the words "article marketing" and find that it's easy to get short-term traffic from ezinearticles for a new site and they don't ALSO focus on building up their own site's value.

I'm not saying that Steven and others here who make great money from their articles aren't also building their own sites because I'm sure they are!

I'm just saying that in the hype about article marketing and with the bum marketing craze many folks have gotten swept up in a very short-term way of looking at things.....their ezinearticles place well for their keywords for a few weeks, but then they drop off, and they're getting caught up in writing articles all the time instead of building content on their own sites.

Not everybody is doing this, of course! But it is a common thing I'm finding in people who are emailing me for guidance about getting their Net businesses going. A lot of them are brainwashed about ezinearticles right now and I think this is a dangerous and short-sighted way of trying to build an online business.

I also want to point out that a high page rank site makes it easy to do lots of things. For instance, one of my sites after it achieved a page rank of 5 began attracting some interesting requests for profit sharing in other businesses...so I'm an affiliate for one company now but also profit share. This means that even if I don't sell anything through my affiliate link in a given month I still earn a percentage of that company's monthly profit. Talk about passive income!

I also sell ad space on some of my sites. That's fun, too. It's like being a landlord who has invested in buying a piece of real estate, and your tenants pay you monthly rent. More passive income!

Many folks aren't building up their own sites strongly enough and they give up too soon to understand the benefits of getting a page rank of 5 and up. It's extremely powerful. With Google's latest algorithm changes it will take you longer to get a page rank of 5 now. Probably a year to a year and a half.

But I see the same people who are giving up on building a page rank of 5 believing that it's perfectly fine to submit ten, twenty articles a week to ezinearticles. If you submitted that much to your own site consistently for a year you WOULD have an extremely valuable piece of virtual real estate at year's end - or in a year and half.

Anyway, don't give all your good stuff away to ezinearticles - that's all I'm sayin'!

Jennifer

PS I'm using "article marketing" in the popular sense of the phrase - referring to submitting articles to articles directories. That's what most people are talking about with this phrase.