Tiffany Dow’s 30-Day Warrior Article Marketing Challenge

[Allen Graves]

Tom...Dude! Don't stop now.

Get that other niche going and keep up the challenge. Tiff hasn't revealed how she's picking the winners yet...you still have as good a chance as anyone else!

AL

[Craig McPherson]

13 articles published.
Screenshot below with Title, Views and Clicks.



Of the 24 clicks, 17 have clicked thru to sales page with 2 purchases

[ezrock]

Don't give up now!!!

I'm still going even though EZA has been taking forever to review my last 3 articles (before I can request upgrade). I'll just post updates here every few days until that happens (not daily since nothing's really happening with new articles for now).

I have had a few small successes. I am getting clicks on my secondary-goal site. Earned 12 cents in adsense so far woot lol. but actually getting some daily clicks to that site now. haven't analyzed where most are coming from, but I imagine it's mostly EZA and likely some new google traffic (it's a brand new site). NO ebay earnings from it.

Also, I have really noticed some disparity for my EZ article stats within the #1 niche I'm writing for this contest. I have one article that has like 80 views and 5 clicks and another that has 70 views and 9 clicks! I will definitely be going back and analyzing them to see what the difference is. The goal with that is to find out what makes my better articles better, then to make more of my articles get higher CTR!

[Adriana Copaceanu]

Here is my update for today:

Articles Submitted -13
Articles Live - 8
Pending - 5
Article Views - 240
Ezine Publisher - 8
URL Clicks - 34

I am beginning to notice more traffic to my pages, and I have acquired first page results on msn (I also have a few top 3 results) for several of my main keywords.

I have made a sale today that I believe is a direct result of the articles, with the visitor coming from an msn search.

No ranking in google, but I am hoping that will come in time. My intention with this article marketing campaign is to build long term back links, and traffic, that in the end will push my rankings up.

[traceye]

Daily Results - Day 14

Clickbank Product: Strip That Fat
Articles Submitted – 20, Live – 17, Article Views – 1326, Hops – 224, Sales - 0

After 224 hops and no sales I’m dumping this product. I’ve sent more than enough traffic their way, if the page can’t convert then I’m finding something else. I’ll keep the stats up so you can see if anything happens further down the track.

So I’ve decided to promote one of my own products instead for the remainder of this challenge.

Product: Blog Cash
Keyphrases: Make Money Blogging
Articles Submitted – 1
Live – 0
Views – 0
Sales – 0

Tracey

[ezrock]

HI Tracey. Check your PM please

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by traceye

Daily Results - Day 14

Clickbank Product: Strip That Fat
Articles Submitted – 20, Live – 17, Article Views – 1326, Hops – 224, Sales - 0

After 224 hops and no sales I’m dumping this product. I’ve sent more than enough traffic their way, if the page can’t convert then I’m finding something else. I’ll keep the stats up so you can see if anything happens further down the track.

So I’ve decided to promote one of my own products instead for the remainder of this challenge.

Product: Blog Cash
Keyphrases: Make Money Blogging
Articles Submitted – 1
Live – 0
Views – 0
Sales – 0

Tracey

Tracey, question?

Are you sending prospects directly to the sales page via a redirect or
did you write a review of the product on your blog and then direct them
from there?

I ask because the product has a very high gravity, is in a very competitive
niche and almost all of their sales come from affiliates. So you can't just
do the bare minimum with a product like this (sending to sales page)

At least, review the product.

At most, offer a free report, build a list, follow up with a newsletter and
then pitch the product within the newsletter. Offer a bonus for purchasing
through you if you can.

Suddenly, you'll see the sales come in.

[traceye]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

Tracey, question?

Are you sending prospects directly to the sales page via a redirect or
did you write a review of the product on your blog and then direct them
from there?

I ask because the product has a very high gravity, is in a very competitive
niche and almost all of their sales come from affiliates. So you can't just
do the bare minimum with a product like this (sending to sales page)

At least, review the product.

At most, offer a free report, build a list, follow up with a newsletter and
then pitch the product within the newsletter. Offer a bonus for purchasing
through you if you can.

Suddenly, you'll see the sales come in.

Oh Steven, I can be so stubborn sometimes.

I know this is true and I even tell other people to at least write a review but I was adamant that I could just direct link and it would be ok. After all I'm a great writer, I'll be able to do this and it'll be so easy, of course it'll work .. SLAM BANG - my ego comes crashing down.

I talked myself into direct linking because I wanted to see 'just' how my articles would work with no other influences - but I guess my little experiment failed.

It's not a huge loss, I own the domain it's forwarding from so it'll be easy enough to set up a review or build a list to catch people down the track, it's now deciding whether to do this straight away, or wait until the challenge is finished. Hmm

Tracey

[traceye]

Daily Results - Day 15

Clickbank Product: Strip That Fat
Articles Submitted – 20, Live – 17, Article Views – 1871, Hops –317, Sales - 0

Product: Blog Cash
Keyphrases: Make Money Blogging
Articles Submitted – 2, Live – 0, Views – 0, Clicks – 0, Sales – 0

Tracey

[WritingMadwoman]

Originally Posted by traceye

Oh Steven, I can be so stubborn sometimes.

I know this is true and I even tell other people to at least write a review but I was adamant that I could just direct link and it would be ok. After all I'm a great writer, I'll be able to do this and it'll be so easy, of course it'll work .. SLAM BANG - my ego comes crashing down.

I talked myself into direct linking because I wanted to see 'just' how my articles would work with no other influences - but I guess my little experiment failed.

It's not a huge loss, I own the domain it's forwarding from so it'll be easy enough to set up a review or build a list to catch people down the track, it's now deciding whether to do this straight away, or wait until the challenge is finished. Hmm

Tracey

Tracey, I personally would like to thank you for trying this experiment because I've always been undecided whether it was better to direct link to a sales page or to a blog/review/optin page. There is one product that has a fantastic sales page that I promote, and I did a similar thing as you, top level domain directing to the sales page. Result, out of several articles written (something like 10 or 20, I can't remember offhand), only 1 or 2 sales have come through that way.

But I also promote that same product using a different tracking ID in my affiliate link on some existing websites and through a newsletter - and the sales are definitely better that way.

But I still didn't know if it was just me, if my articles just weren't good enough or my resource box wasn't compelling enough, etc.!! So I'm glad you did this out here in the open for all of us to see because it has confirmed a few things in my mind about ROI as far as affiliate marketing goes! Maybe when there was less competition the direct link to the sales page was probably quite effective, but as more and more people use article marketing to promote affil. products, maybe not so much anymore.

Hmmm.

So anyway, don't let your ego take a fall, I've learned something valuable as I'm sure you have too! :-)

Wendy

[WritingMadwoman]

P.S. My update for the past few days: NADA! I've been busy with other things and just haven't had the drive to write articles. Bad me, but I will get back on track, probably tomorrow. *crossing fingers*

Wendy

[Justin Jordan]

Wowsers.

So, I've got two articles live.

One has gotten a spectacular 16 views since it went live last Monday.

The other, which went live late last week, has gotten 100 views a day since it went live.

They both had the same subject area, so I think the title was probably the difference.

Intriguingly, the URL clickthrough on both is an identical 22%.

I've got another eight articles waiting for approval, so we'll see how that goes.

[Hamida Harland]

Originally Posted by WritingMadwoman

P.S. My update for the past few days: NADA! I've been busy with other things and just haven't had the drive to write articles. Bad me, but I will get back on track, probably tomorrow. *crossing fingers*

Wendy

You're not alone! I haven't submitted any articles for the challenge in the past few days either . Will start again tomorrow too and will try to update my blog.

[TiffanyDow]

Hey Warriors!

Well I did what I should NOT have done and got sidetracked with other niches. SHAME on me! Instead of submitting my Squidoo on a regular basis, to promote the site I WANTED to promote during this challenge, I got into credit and blogging. Lol

But I HAVE submitted on a regular basis. Out of the ones I’ve submitted, the one called Make Money Blogging – Profit Potential has gotten both the most views (94) and most URL clicks (24) with 1 publisher picking it up and it just went live October 5th.

This may be a good topic for me to target.

But NO, Must….Keep…Writing….About…Squidoo!

NO sales from the EZAs other than that one confirmed $249 lens but I have had sales of my eBook that I’m not sure if they came from EZA or not.

Tiff

[talfighel]

I am in it too.

Tal

[WritingMadwoman]

Originally Posted by Hamida Pall

You're not alone! I haven't submitted any articles for the challenge in the past few days either . Will start again tomorrow too and will try to update my blog.

Okay good, it's not just me. LOL Even the Squidoo Queen herself got a little off-track, at least the track she intended at the start. We all do it, just gotta keep plugging away - some progress is better than none at all! :-)

Wendy

[Peggy Baron]

Hi y'all, it's Day 15 for me. I just wrote my 2 for the weekend and have today's yet to do.

I am writing for 2 niches, but I'm getting tired of them. I can see why you strayed, Tiff.

Articles Submitted -14
Articles Live - 10
Article Views - 115
Ezine Publisher - 10
URL Clicks - 10

Do any of you ever check your author rankings?
It's pretty interesting, but I'm not sure what to do with what I see.

How do you analyze your author rankings?

Peggy

[Paul Clutterbuck]

Is anyone using this challenge to build a list?

[Adriana Copaceanu]

LOL, it looks like many of us are getting a little weary. I didn't post an article yesterday, but did an extra one on Saturday night, right after I posted here, so it was really Sunday AM.

At the same time (early Sunday AM), I decided to do some shuffling in my EZA account. I have over 100 articles, in several niches, and they are all under my name. Now I have a couple pen names, and many articles in transit.

For that reason, I can't really update on my article stats at this time, but will do it as soon as my modified articles are re-approved.

In any case, I made 3 more sales yesterday in the niche I am promoting with this article challenge (2 of them came from my PPC efforts, but 1 of the sales came form free traffic, which id increased from the challenge).

[Adriana Copaceanu]

Oh, my goodness: I know where my increased traffic is coming from: msn!

I OWN the top spot in msn for 95% of my keywords for the site I am submitting articles for. And if I am not number 1, I am somewhere on the first page.

This is definitely a result of this challenge. I know msn is not Google, but hopefully that will follow.

[WritingMadwoman]

Originally Posted by Paul Clutterbuck

Is anyone using this challenge to build a list?

I am, Paul! :-) I'm directing all traffic to an optin page that offers a free report. I've had a handful of sign ups so far, nothing too impressive but some is better than none.

Wendy

[Shannon Herod]

E-zine articles finally approved my 10th article, so now I have upgraded and am waiting for the approval.

I have still been writing articles and have articles ready to be submitted once I am approved for the upgrade.

I've also outsourced 10 articles for another niche sites I am planning on building.

Shannon

[TiffanyDow]

SHAME on me again - no, wasn't building a list.

Running and hiding.

Setting one up shortly.

[ezrock]

Does anyone know what the bars mean (in the approval process) if they're a colour other than red? My last two articles (of my initial 10) are now at 3 and are an orange colour. Hoping that's not a bad thing.

I have a few articles picked up by like 8 sites. Most of them aren't providing PR leak to my site. I found one site that actually takes the effort of putting a "no folllow" tag into each link (though he does keep them active). That really bothers me!

[Shannon Herod]

Originally Posted by Paul Clutterbuck

Is anyone using this challenge to build a list?

Hey Paul,

That is exactly what I am using this challenge for.

Today I have received 37 optin's from my 10 articles that published so far. That is awesome. if I continue writing at this pace and continue getting the type of conversions I am getting, I will be super mad that I did not start article marketing before.

Shannon

[Justin Jordan]

Originally Posted by ezrock

Does anyone know what the bars mean (in the approval process) if they're a colour other than red? My last two articles (of my initial 10) are now at 3 and are an orange colour. Hoping that's not a bad thing.

I saw the same thing - I think it was just a glitch, as mine are back to normal colors now.

[ezrock]

Here's an update on my active articles:

Niche 1 (betta fish) --> 4 articles
354 views ; 40 clicks ; 4 publisher clicks (this is actually way more)

Niche 2 (blogging) --> 2 articles
40 views ; 10 clicks ; 1 publisher click (plus one 5star vote)

12 cents in adsense clicks on my site!

[Ben Roy]

Ok, I'm getting back on the horse. I experienced a minor streak of depression when the thread was removed - I was really pumped about the challenge and the great feeling of actually posting articles every single day. The last day that I posted articles (the day before the thread was removed) put me at my submision cap with EZA, so I couldn't submit any new ones anyway. But, I also didn't write any.

Even after the thread came back I was still having trouble getting into the swing of things. Yesterday a friend that I'm helping with IM came over and we started up on a new product. We found a product, grabbed a domain, and started writing articles. I wrote 5, all of which are pending on his account now, and he wrote a few.

Today I'm hopefully going to get a few written, and over the course of this week get caught up on where I should be if I'd been following along the whole time. I'm going to share my results so far though:

Day 15? Results
Niche 1: Niche with existing site (pre challenge)
Articles Submitted: 10
Articles Approved: 9
Views: 329
Clicks: 116
Sales: 0
Opt-ins: 26

To be honest, in this niche I'm not selling nearly as hard as I should be - users are getting high quality content and practically no advertising. I'm ok with that since I know that they will appreciate the high signal-to-noise ratio and I can always hit them a little harder later.

Niche 2: Brand new for challenge
Articles Submitted: 10
Articles Approved: 8
Views: 673
Clicks: 134
Sales: 0

So just over 1k views so far at about 25% click through. I'm not unhappy, although I sure would love to see some sales out of this effort. Hopefully I'll have some more articles submissions to report soon.

[Stephen Chua]

Got quite behind the challange but managed to submit 5 to EZA already. 2 got approved today. Here's the stat.

Articles Submitted - 5
Articles Live - 2
Article Views - 146
Ezine Publisher - 2
URL Clicks - 4
Sales: 0
Opt-ins: 2


Stephen

[traceye]

Daily Results - Day 16

Clickbank Product: Strip That Fat
Articles Submitted – 20, Live – 18, Article Views – 2330, Hops –356, Sales – 0
(NOTE: I’ve added a review page instead of a direct link – I’ll see if this changes anything)

My Product: Blog Cash
Articles Submitted – 3, Live – 0, Views – 0, Clicks – 0, Sales – 0

Tracey

[Allen Graves]

Then why even bother posting in this thread. This thread is about an article marketing challenge, not "a much better idea." Sheesh.

AL

[Hamida Harland]

Originally Posted by Shannon Herod

Hey Paul,

That is exactly what I am using this challenge for.

Today I have received 37 optin's from my 10 articles that published so far. That is awesome. if I continue writing at this pace and continue getting the type of conversions I am getting, I will be super mad that I did not start article marketing before.

Shannon

I've never really used article marketing for list building as I've heard it's one of the slower ways to build a list, but your results are really good Shannon. Are you sending visitors from your resource box straight to a squeeze page? What percentage of your squeeze page visitors opt in?

[Adriana Copaceanu]

Here is my latest update:

Articles Submitted -16
Articles Live - 11
Pending - 5
Article Views - 347
Ezine Publisher - 8
URL Clicks - 55

All the articles I shuffled to a new pen name are now approved, and live.

And I am beginning to see traffic from Google. I checked today, and I am hovering around page 3 for most of my main key phrases (some are on page 2 and some on page 4, but most are on page 3). I wasn't there before the challenge. I am so excited to see this progress!

I am also seeing a trickle of sales (so far, this month I had at 3 days with one sale a day, one day with 3 sales, and one day with 2 sales).

[ezrock]

I now have my 10 BASIC level articles approved. Besides my very first submission (from probably a year ago), all the other 9 were recent and all high quality. One had a slight oversight with putting an extra link in it. I just applied for platinum status.

My question: anyone know how long they usually take to review an account and consider upgrade? Thanks!

[ezrock]

Nevermind! I applied tonight and already (within an hour or so) got upgraded to basic plus!

I'll restart submitting articles tomorrow!

[Kelvin Nikkel]

Hey Tiffany!

How is this for a longtail keyword??? LOL

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,650,000 for how do you get your sound back when you have to restore your computer.

And I was number 3 on page 1! LOL

[TiffanyDow]

Originally Posted by Kelvin Nikkel

Hey Tiffany!

How is this for a longtail keyword??? LOL

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,650,000 for how do you get your sound back when you have to restore your computer.

And I was number 3 on page 1! LOL

You GO Kelvin!

I'm getting discouraged with article marketing. Then again, I stalled on BML and started promoting credit/debt (got carried away with the news) and marketing to a broke market may not be too savvy.

[Ben Roy]

Hey hey, looks like I'm going to beat Tracey today.

I have 2 articles left to be approved, both of which are at 3/5 bars. They should go tomorrow and then I can apply to get more articles submissions. I have 7 articles waiting that I wrote between last night and tonight in an entirely new niche. I think that hopping between a couple niches is going to help keep me interested. I also have the 5 articles I wrote on Sunday for a 4th niche. Yes, it's a little more scattered than I originally planned, but you've got to roll with the punches, right? Right.

Day 16 Results
Niche 1: Pre-existing site (before challenge)
Articles Submitted: 10
Articles Approved: 9
Views: 355
Clicks: 129 (> 33%)
Sales: 0
Opt-ins: 43

Niche 2: New for challenge
Articles Submitted: 10
Articles Approved: 8
Views: 740
Clicks: 149 (20%)
Sales: 0

Niche 3: New for challenge, teaching a friend about article marketing
Articles Submitted: 5
Articles Approved: 0
n/a

Niche 4: New for challenge
Articles Written: 7
Articles Submitted: 0 (waiting on account upgrade)
n/a


Incidentally, that puts me at 32 articles total, which is 2 a day. That means I caught up to my commitment, YAY.

[traceye]

Originally Posted by Ben Roy

Hey hey, looks like I'm going to beat Tracey today.

Dammit! Must have been because I stopped to have that jam donut .. It was sooo worth it. Hmm maybe I should start reading some of my own articles on cutting out junk food .. nah!

Daily Results - Day 17

Clickbank Product: Strip That Fat
Articles Submitted – 20, Live – 18, Article Views – 2570, Hops –378, Sales – 0

My Product: Blog Cash
Articles Submitted – 4, Live – 0, Views – 0, Clicks – 0, Sales – 0

Tracey

[Shannon Tani]

I, too, was getting bored and stopped writing.

But I got my first sale today!!!! *happy dance*

I've got 35 articles live, 2734 view, 410 URL clicks, 150 hops, 1 sale.

I started a new niche today too. Decided it's better to write articles for a couple of different niches instead of the same one. We'll see how that goes. My new ones are a bit less competitive, I think.

Love,
Shannon

[Stephen Chua]

Writing articles can be real hard work. So far no sales.

Here is my result:

Articles Submitted: 10
Articles Approved: 2
Views: 198
Ezinepublisher: 2
Clicks: 12
Sales: 0
Opt-ins: 0


Stephen

[Peggy Baron]

Day 17 Results

Articles Submitted -16 (haven't done today's yet)
Articles Live - 12
Article Views - 165
Ezine Publisher - 12
URL Clicks - 14

I'm still plugging away.
It appears I'm going to have to do something more with my bio box, although I actually change it up a bit (to suit the article) with each submission.

My traffic is up though, on both sites and I'm getting opt-ins. All the non-IM articles have been published on other sites too.

Peggy

[Ben Roy]

Originally Posted by Peggy Baron

Day 17 Results

Articles Submitted -16 (haven't done today's yet)
Articles Live - 12
Article Views - 165
Ezine Publisher - 12
URL Clicks - 14


Peggy

Peggy, your views seem really low for this number of articles. Are you ranking well for your keywords? It looks like you either aren't getting high enough (too competitive) or else you're just on really, really long tails that don't have much traffic.

[NiallR]

Hi folks,

I'm just thinking. Articles I've submitted in the past can take time to "warm up" and start driving traffic to a page.

Sometimes the traffic can be instant and sometimes it can take more than 30 days for the results to show.

If I'm building a content site and I'm using articles for SEO and direct traffic then I don't expect any noticeable traffic/income for 60 days.

I think some of the people in the challenge are going to see sales from articles they submitted now but not until November/December - so it won't be wasted effort :-)

Search engines are just plain odd at times lol

Niall

[wordwizard]

After my late start, I too have gotten a bit side-tracked, but will recover ;-)

I have a question though:

About changing pen names on existing articles...

What if the article has been picked up by publishers under the old name? That would mean it exists under two different names out there in cyberspace if I were to change my name to a pen name or vice versa. Wouldn't that cause problems with plagiarism accusations, even though of course it's not really plagiarism, but it won't be provable without outing yourself and your pen name...

I got into enough trouble once when someone published my ezinearticle somewhere without the resource box and without giving me credit, and iSnare, where I was trying to publish an expanded version of that article said that I had ripped off my content from that article... I was able to sort it out because the original version was published at EZA with my byline, but it sure made me think.

Any thoughts... (other than to keep my pen names straight)

Elisabeth

[Peggy Baron]

Originally Posted by Ben Roy

Peggy, your views seem really low for this number of articles. Are you ranking well for your keywords? It looks like you either aren't getting high enough (too competitive) or else you're just on really, really long tails that don't have much traffic.

Well, since you asked, Ben, here is the lowdown...

With the first 6 articles I submitted I was really lazy about keyword research and was concentrating more on getting an article a day in for the contest. Bad Peggy.

Non-IM Niche: Several 1st page on Google, some longtail and some actually pretty competitive. I find this niche to be one that gains in momentum after starting slow.

IM Niche: Very competitive and had to resort to really longtail keywords, so the number of people searching for those keywords is going to be fewer, even when I'm on the 1st page.

Non-IM Niche: 123 views for 4 articles.

IM Niche: 45 views for 8 articles.

So I'm going to stop the IM Niche for now, even though it's my own product, and go with another one of my non-IM niches I have had much better success with!

Thanks,
Peggy

[Hamida Harland]

After lacking in motivation for the past few days I finally submitted 2 articles today. I'm getting consistent traffic though from my previous articles, and I just checked my Clickbank stats and found that I have 5 sales already today. 4 of those were for just one product - 7 hops per sale.

[Kelvin Nikkel]

Originally Posted by Hamida Pall

After lacking in motivation for the past few days I finally submitted 2 articles today. I'm getting consistent traffic though from my previous articles, and I just checked my Clickbank stats and found that I have 5 sales already today. 4 of those were for just one product - 7 hops per sale.

WOW Congrat's on your success Hamida! Wish I knew how to do that. lol

My stats to date:


Live Articles: 7
Pending Articles: 3
Article(s) Views: 127
Profile Views: 33
Articles Published: 8
URL Clicks: 4

Still waiting for my 3 pending articles to clear so I can ask for an upgrade.

If anyone here that knows what they are doing want to coach me, I will not turn them down. LOL

Once again Tiffany, I want to thank you for this challenge. It at least got me writing. lol

Kelvin

[Adriana Copaceanu]

I just submitted my article for today. My eyes are too tired to look up after stats, so I'll do that tomorrow.

Today I didn't feel like submitting an article, but I decided that wasn't an option, and here I am: more detailed update tomorrow.

[traceye]

Daily Results - Day 18

Clickbank Product: Strip That Fat
Articles Submitted – 20, Live – 20, Article Views – 2634, Hops –397, Sales – 0

My Product: Blog Cash
Articles Submitted – 5, Live – 1, Views – 5, Clicks – 0, Sales – 0

Tracey

12 days to go - can I get a sale before the challenge is up?