Tiffany Dow’s 30-Day Warrior Article Marketing Challenge

[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

[successh]

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

[giftsolution]

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?

[Ben Roy]

Day 17 Results

I'm going to summarize today instead of the usual style of results. I have one article left waiting on approval before I can request an upgrade on my account. On my one new niche that I'm partnering with a friend on the first article went live today - and get this:

I made a sale! Yay, finally! In about 5 hours I have over 90 views, 20-some click throughs, and one sale. It's so encouraging to actually make a little money. I can't wait for the rest of the articles in this niche to go live (hopefully tomorrow, his account is platinum).

I didn't write any articles today because I was out with my wife and had a few drinks. I could write now, but I'm thinking it might not be the greatest idea.

Tomorrow I'll be applying for an account upgrade and hopefully cranking out at least 4 articles to keep up with my 2 articles per day. I also hope to have more sales to report.

[NewbiesDiary]

I wonder if I'm supposed to be getting some kind of universal message - or is this just bad luck??

I decided to join this challenge, wrote my first article, wrote about it on my blog, went away for the weekend & made the big mistake of leaving Master 15 at home!!

I came back, turned on the computer (the fact that it was turned off should have given me a clue something was wrong!) & found a blue screen with some message about a "beep" something or other.
Turned it off & on, then rang my computer expert. He came out - nope, couldnt fix it. Needs to take it away for a couple of days, brought it back a full week later - "it's all better Stef - that's $150 please" (lucky Master 15 works full time!). I turned it on & it did a couple of funny things so I turned it off & back on - & there's that damn blue screen again _ ARGGHH! Needs a new hard-drive. It's soooo lucky I have an external HD with all my stuff on it - so I didnt lose that - but the time!!!!

The short of it is that I have been without a computer for nearly 2 weeks & the emails - WELL there's another story!!

So let me get the 'puter back to where it was, create my 50 gazillion email accounts in outlook again, find all my discs & try to remember all those passwords - then I can get back into my article submitting.

I'm setting the deadline that I have to be fully operational by Monday next week! Now I just have to get Bloke out of the house.

So I'll post then - as soon as I've put up my article.

[successh]

For those of you who have made sales, can you advise if you are sending the traffic right off from EZA directly to the merchant site? Or is it your own opt-in page?

Please advise.

Thanks.


Stephen

[Hamida Harland]

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

Thanks Kelvin. I haven't forgotten your pm by the way - I'll get back to you soon .

For those of you who have made sales, can you advise if you are sending the traffic right off from EZA directly to the merchant site? Or is it your own opt-in page?
Please advise.

Never send your traffic from EZA directly to the merchant site - you want to build your own business rather than the merchants. Plus you'll have much higher conversions if you send your traffic to a landing page.

Depending on your goal there are different types of landing pages you could use. Some people use an optin, some use a one page landing page - I send mine to my niche sites (with a landing page on the site).

[writeabooknow]

Hi all,

Just a quick thought I found very helpful when I stumbled upon it several years ago...

There is an unlimited number of articles you can write about any subject. Quite literally, unlimited.

So any time you're thinking that it's all been said, it really hasn't. In fact, we haven't even scratched the surface. Just knowing that can be a real help.

How do you get started? As Tiff has already pointed out in another thread (that I can't find) just create the title, and take it from there. Go to websites that have articles, copy down five titles (don't read the articles) and write the very articles these titles suggest to you.

Want to be a little different? Okay, if the original title list '3 secrets to...' Your article is 'four secrets to...' or 'the biggest secret to...'

And if you're really strapped, how to get the benefit '... for Democrats' or '...for Republicans' or '... for Conservatives' or '...for Liberals'

You see? It never ends and your list of possible articles is unlimited.

Cheers,

Steve Manning

[kevin campbelle]

Originally Posted by Hamida Pall

Thanks Kelvin. I haven't forgotten your pm by the way - I'll get back to you soon .



Never send your traffic from EZA directly to the merchant site - you want to build your own business rather than the merchants. Plus you'll have much higher conversions if you send your traffic to a landing page.

Depending on your goal there are different types of landing pages you could use. Some people use an optin, some use a one page landing page - I send mine to my niche sites (with a landing page on the site).

Hi Hamida,

The landing page that you direct the visitor from EA to your site:

1. Is it a review of the product conduit style (like more of a reporting style)?
2. A review of the product describing it's benefits etc, (like pulling out the main benefits from the salespage or from your actual use of the product) and just simple text links at the top and/or bottom of the review.
3. A page with the top product graphic on the top fold of your page.
4. A page with like the top 3 products in the niche at the top fold and the review or article at the bottom of the page?

I'm trying to get at how much clicks the customer goes through till they reach the merchant site.

Thanks,
Kevin.

[Oracle_320th]

Am I too late to join?

Well, I'm starting to active again at article marketing from 1st October. Have 6 of my articles accepted and generated 1 sales.

http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Carmiel

I'm planning to do at least 2 articles writing per day out of my article writing service. Let's see the result in the end of this month

[Kelvin Nikkel]

YAHOO! I was hoping for this but didn't expect it so soon. Just applied today!

Hi Kelvin,

Congratulations, you have been upgraded to Platinum Status! You may
now submit an unlimited number of quality articles.

Thank you,
Jacob
Member Support


Now I can go to town!

[Munch Mama]

HI all
Been quiet from my corner cuz i am still waiting to get past my 10 article limit :|
But the stats on the ones that are live are as follows:
5 live articles
1 pending
271 views
23 click thrus
4 opt-ins
0 sales

[giftsolution]

I submitted 2 articles today. I started a new site for Christmas, so I am going to ramp up my efforts, and will try and do 2 articles a day for the remainder of the challenge: one in my original niche, and one in the holiday/Christmas niche.

Articles Submitted - 19
Articles Live - 16
Pending - 3
Article Views - 490
Ezine Publisher - 10
URL Clicks - 91

[traceye]

Daily Results - Day 19

Clickbank Product: Strip That Fat
Articles Live – 20, Article Views – 2713, Hops –402, Sales – 0

My Product: Blog Cash
Articles Submitted – 6, Live – 4, Views – 31, Clicks – 8, Sales – 0

Tracey

[successh]

I hit the half-way point now. Submitted 15 articles so far although still lagging behind.

Articles Submitted - 15
Articles Live - 6
Pending - 9
Article Views - 283
Ezine Publisher - 4
URL Clicks - 26
Opt-in - 0
Sales - 0

stephen

[Hamida Harland]

Originally Posted by kevin campbelle

Hi Hamida,

The landing page that you direct the visitor from EA to your site:

1. Is it a review of the product conduit style (like more of a reporting style)?
2. A review of the product describing it's benefits etc, (like pulling out the main benefits from the salespage or from your actual use of the product) and just simple text links at the top and/or bottom of the review.
3. A page with the top product graphic on the top fold of your page.
4. A page with like the top 3 products in the niche at the top fold and the review or article at the bottom of the page?

I'm trying to get at how much clicks the customer goes through till they reach the merchant site.

Thanks,
Kevin.

I create a full niche site (based around niches that I've tested before or just very hot niches that I know will convert). I set up a wordpress blog with about 3-5 posts to start off with and then I keep adding to it over the following weeks & months.

I create a landing page on each niche site to send my article traffic to. Sometimes this will be a one product review called "Product Name Review", for other niches I create a 3 product review page. I've found that different styles work for different niches.

I use Chris Rempel's conduit WP theme for a few sites as well. For some niches the 'report' style review works better, but other niches require a more personalized review for good conversions.

[Kelvin Nikkel]

Originally Posted by Hamida Pall

I create a full niche site (based around niches that I've tested before or just very hot niches that I know will convert). I set up a wordpress blog with about 3-5 posts to start off with and then I keep adding to it over the following weeks & months.

I create a landing page on each niche site to send my article traffic to. Sometimes this will be a one product review called "Product Name Review", for other niches I create a 3 product review page. I've found that different styles work for different niches.

I use Chris Rempel's conduit WP theme for a few sites as well. For some niches the 'report' style review works better, but other niches require a more personalized review for good conversions.

Hamida, if you are sending readers to your optin page, how do you get around that? Do you make your first page static?

Kelvin

[Hamida Harland]

Originally Posted by Kelvin Nikkel

Hamida, if you are sending readers to your optin page, how do you get around that? Do you make your first page static?

Kelvin

I do often use a static page as my landing page - I haven't tested using an optin yet though so I can't comment on that. I've done a bit of list building but not using article marketing (it's on my 'to do' list ).

[kevin campbelle]

Originally Posted by Hamida Pall

I set up a wordpress blog with about 3-5 posts to start off with and then I keep adding to it over the following weeks & months.

Thanks for the answer. I understand the article to site part.
One last question as I don't want to hijack of the thread. In the post pages that are initially set up and the ones that are added over time, how do you direct the visitors to the merchant product? Is it a link to the review page on your site or directly to the merchant.

Kevin.

[Oracle_320th]

Hamida, I read about this somewhere in this forum, you made $10,000 from one article you wrote, wow what a cool girl [thumb]

Anyway, go to my progress

19 articles live
1 sales
2 pay per lead

[Peggy Baron]

Wow, EZA already approved 2 articles today before lunch that I submitted yesterday!

Also, I hit my goal of 10,000 total article views today. I guess I'll go celebrate and write another article...

Peggy

[Cali16]

I just read this thread for the first time....wish I had noticed it when the challenge started. But I am wondering....everyone always talks about how powerful article marketing / EZA is in driving traffic and getting sales (for affiliate marketing and your own products), but I'm seeing very few people reporting any sales from their results.

Am I missing something? I am just about to start some article marketing, but reading this thread is a bit discouraging... Again, maybe I am missing something here...I hope so!

[Peggy Baron]

Well, Cali, some people are aiming for other results than Clickbank affiliate sales. Some people are trying to drive more traffic to their sites, maybe for AdSense revenue, or backlinks to get a better page rank. Some are building their lists to sell to later on.

Others are experimenting in this challenge with something different. Maybe they're trying to see how well it goes to link to a sales page rather than a blog review site, or vice versa.

Additionally, some people are totally new at this and are just learning. There's also a trial period where they test a niche to see if it's profitable or not.

I think just about everyone here has learned something, except maybe Hamida because she's the bomb!

I say, if it interests you, why not give it a try?

Peggy

[traceye]

Originally Posted by Cali16

I just read this thread for the first time....wish I had noticed it when the challenge started. But I am wondering....everyone always talks about how powerful article marketing / EZA is in driving traffic and getting sales (for affiliate marketing and your own products), but I'm seeing very few people reporting any sales from their results.

Am I missing something? I am just about to start some article marketing, but reading this thread is a bit discouraging... Again, maybe I am missing something here...I hope so!

I know for me that article marketing works but usually not straight away. For example I am now seeing quite a few sales for articles that I submitted last month (haven't written any more for that niche since then). And I'm guessing that will also be the case with the articles I'm doing for this challenge - that I'll start seeing sales in the next few weeks/months.

I also think that I've had a bit of bad luck this month by posting my results for everyone to see - what's that saying? Oh yes
A watched pot doesn't boil!

Tracey

[Jeremy123]

All this work writing and submitting articles to EZA,
is it worth it, I don't see a lot of sales or opt-ins recorded.

People seem so excited about doing the challenge, but I hope
your making money.

[traceye]

Daily Results - Day 20

Clickbank Product: Strip That Fat
Articles Submitted – 22, Live – 20, Article Views – 2768, Hops –410, Sales – 0

My Product: Blog Cash
Articles Submitted – 6, Live – 6, Views – 31, Clicks – 15, Sales – 0

Tracey

[Mike Murphy]

Ok, so I see I'm WAAAY late for this, but I'll crash your party :-)

I to a stab at article marketing just a few weeks ago and I put up 15 articles that pointed to a Squidoo lens.

I got zero sales out of it.

Earlier this week I got slow at work so I picked a new niche and in one partial day I wrote 15 articles but now I'm sitting on them.

I need to know a few things and I apologize if this isn't the place to ask, but here goes....

Where can I find a tried and true way to do keyword research?

Is it more luck than skill?

Should I have my articles point to a review site, a blog, Squidoo lens, hubpage, all of the above or just directly to vendors page (mentioned above as a bad ideas).

Those that are making sales, please let me know your thoughts. If it's not too late, I'll jump in with these new articles. I'd only be a few days behind and could catch up but I'd like to know the process better.

Thanks
Mike

[Hamida Harland]

Originally Posted by kevin campbelle

In the post pages that are initially set up and the ones that are added over time, how do you direct the visitors to the merchant product? Is it a link to the review page on your site or directly to the merchant.

I send my article traffic directly to the post/page which contains the review, and then they click through (hopefully) to the merchants page.

[Hamida Harland]

Originally Posted by Jeremy123

All this work writing and submitting articles to EZA,
is it worth it, I don't see a lot of sales or opt-ins recorded.

People seem so excited about doing the challenge, but I hope
your making money.

If you go back a few posts you'll find that this very question was answered by Peggy - article marketing is NOT all about making sales. I probably didn't make a single sale out my first 20 articles because I didn't know what I was doing, BUT I analyzed where I went wrong, then tested and tracked each component of my articles until I started getting it right.

You learn best by doing, and those people not making sales yet are in the process of learning what works and what doesn't. I've been doing it for over a year and I still use article marketing to test new products/niches and not all of them make sales either. Article marketing isn't suitable for those who aren't willing to work - and very few people start making sales from their very first articles.

Bum marketing is supposed to be an easy way to make money, and it is, but only when you know how. It's NOT as simple as just submitting an article, redirecting to a merchant and getting a sale.

[Tom Borowski]

Well, I got sidetracked with another project and have stopped writing articles. Total views and CTR on the articles are still very low at 216 views and 18 clicks (CTR 8,3%).

But I actually made my first sale, so I must be doing something right Conversion from click to sale was 1 in 12 (8,3%), which is not bad, I guess. I'll write some more articles in this niche soon, so I at least reach my Basic PLUS cap of 35 articles and I can go begging for Platinum status...

[WritingMadwoman]

I got back on track yesterday, but I switched niches for now. The one I started this challenge with was doing so crappy I decided to set it aside until I have time to work out why. So yesterday I put up a new landing page for a product that has converted well for me in the past, and wrote and submitted one article, not approved yet. So we'll see how that goes once EZA approves it. :-)

Wendy

[Uncle Dimitry]

looks like article marketing sucks and not worth time and effort. Better write free ebook and have links all over

[Peggy Baron]

Originally Posted by Mike Murphy

Where can I find a tried and true way to do keyword research?

Thanks
Mike

Hi Mike,
Check out the link in Hamida's sig because she has an excellent post on her blog about keyword research and how she does it that should help you.

Peggy

[Jeremy123]

Thanks Hamid,

Found Peggy's post.

Hamid, what kind of articles are you submitting that convert
so well to your landing page then to a sale, product reviews,
question and answer, 7 tips for etc,

thanks

[Allen Graves]

This is a thread about an article marketing challenge and answering questions about article marketing.

Please refrain from posting your opinions or insults about AM.

That's not what this thread is for or about.

Allen Graves

[Mike Murphy]

Originally Posted by Allen Graves

This is a thread about an article marketing challenge and answering questions about article marketing.

Please refrain from posting your opinions or insults about AM.

That's not what this thread is for or about.

Allen Graves

...and it's a shade negative and rude! Take that energy and start a new post about a method YOU have for generating leads, traffic and money and give back like everyone here is man!

Thanks for pointing me to Hamida's blog...that's the stuff.

[Hamida Harland]

Originally Posted by Jeremy123

Thanks Hamida,

Found Peggy's post.

Hamida, what kind of articles are you submitting that convert
so well to your landing page then to a sale, product reviews,
question and answer, 7 tips for etc,

thanks

All of the above - I submit different types articles for different products. The articles are only to funnel traffic to my landing page - it's my landing page that converts visitors into sales, so I don't think it matters too much what type of article it is as long as it sends the traffic.