What Convert Better - Articles Or Reviews

[JeffersonB]

What are your thoughts?

I think articles are good and i continue to write them however i am looking to crossing over into the reviewing market.

What are your views

[askloz]

That depends on what Article sites you go to and how well they are written, some make money at article marketing, some dont.

as for review sites, if I'm promoting a product, I'll list some others and do the leg work in finding which one is the best, listing the results and sorta making their mind up which one to buy.
This tends to create more commissions than Article Marketing, for me personally at least.

[askloz]

...edit, deleting content, for some reason this came out as a duplicate post and I never even pressed the button twice... Allen, it asked me to wait 30 seconds before I posted again, I think there is a bug in your forum script when it does this, it posts the post twice.

[Sirius Lin]

Here's one way of looking at it: people who search for articles are usually still in the information-gathering phase, whereas people who search for reviews are already in buying mode and just want some confirmation that they're making the right choice. This means that the latter will be easier to convert into a paying customer (or at least, take less time to do so).

I'm saying this from personal experience, because this is how I view articles vs. reviews

~ Sirius

[Tuzic]

hi,

well i think articles are better than reviews as i always thought article marketing is great for driving traffic and then leading to sales, so is this not true then?

[JeffersonB]

Originally Posted by Sirius Lin

Here's one way of looking at it: people who search for articles are usually still in the information-gathering phase, whereas people who search for reviews are already in buying mode and just want some confirmation that they're making the right choice. This means that the latter will be easier to convert into a paying customer (or at least, take less time to do so).

I'm saying this from personal experience, because this is how I view articles vs. reviews

~ Sirius

Very true about them being in Buying mode.

[Zeus66]

Sirius makes an excellent point worth considering, but remember that articles (if written correctly) take people from the investigation mindset to a pre-sold mindset. By the time they click the link to your site at the end of the article, they're more likely to be invested, view you as an authority, and at least be on the cusp of the "buying" mode Sirius is talking about.

Combine that with some good sales copy on your landing page or squeeze page, and article traffic can be some of the highest converting you'll ever get. I have nothing against review sites and I know several people doing well with them. But you still have to get traffic to your review site, and if they're coming through a link from a search engine, you're just another site to them. With articles, the visitor has already invested a few minutes reading your article and being convinced enough by your words to click the link at the end.

Give me that kind of visitor every time, please.

John

[marxwarfor]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

Sirius makes an excellent point worth considering, but remember that articles (if written correctly) take people from the investigation mindset to a pre-sold mindset. By the time they click the link to your site at the end of the article, they're more likely to be invested, view you as an authority, and at least be on the cusp of the "buying" mode Sirius is talking about.

Combine that with some good sales copy on your landing page or squeeze page, and article traffic can be some of the highest converting you'll ever get. I have nothing against review sites and I know several people doing well with them. But you still have to get traffic to your review site, and if they're coming through a link from a search engine, you're just another site to them. With articles, the visitor has already invested a few minutes reading your article and being convinced enough by your words to click the link at the end.

Give me that kind of visitor every time, please.

John

Well said, both Sirius and John ..

There was another post during the last few days, where the OP said that review sites were (in so many words...), nothing but hogwash, because a review site was just going to give the viewer a bunch of good reviews with little substance and credibility, just in order to make a sale (again stated, in so many words...)...

Well go tell that to Rosiland Gardner!

[Marhelper]

Do both by joining them together. Very, very profitable!

[Sandor Verebi]

Hi Everyone,

While I had a little time I checked the question out on my own area. I experienced that both converts, if it is necessary to say a percentage, then the result is:

- review 45%

- article 55%

Sandor
________________
Do not arouse the sleeping signature.

[theredcell]

Both Sirius and John are right on... In your case, as someone has posted before me, you may want to do both in reference to performing your split test. As long as you track where your traffic is coming from, you can then decide where it more wise to spend your efforts. Remember though, the more articles, the more backlinks...

Jose

[John Piteo]

For affiliate marketing I use articles to warm them up. Then I drive them to a review page to get them further invested as John (Zues66) stated. Then I send them to the sales page to close the deal.

So why not use both?

John P

[askloz]

55% articles? you sure? I hardly convert using article promotions, review sites are as one person here already mentioned, are buyers, these convert like crazy, I spend over 20k a month alone on review site / portal affiliate sites.

[Takuya Hikichi]

I do both. They work especially great if you get better at it.

I've written an extensive report on this topic before if anyone care to read it.
http://asktak.com/reports/ArticleMar...ieWarriors.zip (unzip and read with PDF reader)

There are a lot of ways to approach this. But once you begin having well written helpful reviews, it will be easy for you to approach a product owner and ask..

"Hi, these are my reviews and I'd like to write one up for yours if you're interested", so you have sort of like "portfolio" of reviews or articles and you can be the first one to obtain the product in advance (you just have to make sure you REALLY take time and write one otherwise you don't build relationship).

Also, I don't always give testimonials. I review a product and send the review article to the owner and say "here is what I thought about your product, if there is anything you'd like to use as your testimonial, let me know". Then we'll pick a sentence or two to use from the article and ask the person to run it by me before publishing. I do this because I don't believe in people feeling obligated to write a testimonial when someone gives the product to you or expect someone else to write one for me just because I gave mine -- people are busy today just to read a report.

They'll be surprised (it's a good surprise) that you went out of your way to write something bit more lengthy than "one sentence" testimonial, they'll treat you like professional.

[jhongren]

It really depends. Some articles are for review purpose.

Every heading, subheading, your points (in terms of products' strengths and weakness) and how you end off plays a big part.

In a nutshell, there is copywriting to take note of.

The fastest way is to model articles (not copy)...Check out ezinearticles.com and research on those which did well in driving readers from EZA to their sites.

John

[JohnHuizinga]

Originally Posted by jhongren

The fastest way is to model articles (not copy)...Check out ezinearticles.com and research on those which did well in driving readers from EZA to their sites.

John

John,

I would really love it if you would expand on this. How can you tell which articles (written by somebody else) are producing clickthroughs?