My 4 day old newbie IM business model, please modify! :)

15 replies
Hi Matt here again,

Thanks to all that replied to my previous thread "Fast track to 1500/mo", my goal is still $1500 a month and i've been studying hard to achieve that goal ... i'ts only been 4 days since I started and I feel i'm a bit slow because so far my understanding of the 'article marketing' business model works as follows:

1. sign up with clickbank
2. find an affiliate you think will sell well
3. create a landing page: use squidoo!
4. create an article on the squidoo page with a link to your affiliate site

thats step one, now you need traffic, google will send you traffic if you have enough quality backlinks, right now you have 0 backlinks! start building backlinks with articles that point to your landing page,

5. so create 5 ezinearticles that link to your squidoo landing page
6. google will now 'see' the backlinks and improve your ranking
7. FINALLY google searchers will search for your niche, find it on google and read your article, hopefully click on your link


This is how I understand it ...
a) I understand that my landing page needs prospects to visit my affiliate links.
b) Google will send me prospects for my keywords if I have enough backlinks to my landing page (squidoo)
c) Ezinearticles will create backlinks (but not really traffic/prospects)
d) backlinks will improve my ranking for my keyword

YES THATS RIGHT, that's about all I learned in 5 days of 'study' please please KNOCK some sense into me

The goal is $1500/mo from affiliate marketing. I would LOVE to achieve this in less than 90 days.
#business #day #model #modify #newbie
  • Profile picture of the author John Piteo
    Hey Matt,

    I'm glad you set a realistic goal of $1500 per month in 90 days. So many newbies are led to believe it's easy to make $10,000 in 30 days by some of these wild sales letters that they aren't willing to work for a reasonable starting income. This holds them back from making any money at all. It's what held me back for years before I started making any money online.

    If you have done your keyword research properly and based your articles on long tail keywords you should get lots of page views (traffic). If your article is interesting, but leaves the reader wanting more and you have a compelling bio box you should get a good click through rate.

    If you have created a good pre-sell or review page as a landing page you should get a good amount of visitors clicking through to the merchant's site. If the sales letter on the merchant's site converts the visitors into buyers well then you should start making money. At that point there are many things you can do to start ramping up your sales, but you need to try and not become overwhelmed by learning too much too fast.

    I'm sorry everything is so "iffy", but there are a lot of variables involved. You are on the right track and the more you do it the better your skills become. So hang in there and don't try to learn too much all at once. Just practice what you already know so far. I think you'll reach your 90 day goal and maybe more.

    John P
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  • Profile picture of the author Mattkau
    Thanks John, that made a lot of sense :-)
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    • Profile picture of the author CDawson
      Banned
      Hey mat,

      Gotta say that I wish I was as determined as you (I should be). For increasing traffic i would switch over to using a free blog such as a blogger or wordpress blog. As far as traffic goes you have the write article marketing idea but let me ask you something: why only 5 articles? I would find 30 long keywords with low competition and write 30 articles with the keywords being article titles. Another good thing to do is social bookmarking all your posts (with squidoo you can only do this 1ce because you dont have seperate post urls). Another tips would be to social bookmark your articles to get a better ranking on google. Best place I have seen yet would be www.socialmarker.com i think thats it.

      Anyways good luck to you and keep us updated!

      Edit: stuble upon would be a good idea to but I wouldnt expect any sales. Social bookmarking is just a fast way for backlinks when you get board of writing articles (just dont stop completely )
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  • Profile picture of the author toonarme
    Hiya Matt
    In EzineArticles you can have more than one link in your bio box, so have one link pointing to your Lens and one to your landing page but your landing page will have to be your site homepage otherwise EA will flag it. This way you get Google juice from your lens and directly from the articles.

    Hope this helps..

    Edit : Don't forget to make your links relevant anchor text.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Williams
    You mention keyword research, but I didn't see it as one of the steps in your business mode. It's probably the most important step. Get keyword research right and it's easy breezy. So if you don't know already, learn how to find the words with low competition that make money.
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  • Profile picture of the author sideserver
    Hey Matt,

    Your plan is pretty much spot for article marketing. I think it'll make for an excellent first project and you'll get loads of experience (for moving onto larger, more profitable ventures) doing this.

    Just 2 thoughts you might want to consider:

    1. Look into outsourcing social bookmarking and article writing. You can find virtual assistants at sites like Elance - Find and hire programmers, designers, writers and other independent professionals and Guru.com ? Find freelancers at the world?s largest online service marketplace. (among other places) that will do the tideous work for you. Ditto with article writing. With this this, you can multiply your efficiency manyfold. Instead of submitting 1 article a day, you might be able to submit 10. Instead of bookmarking with just 2 or 3 social bookmarking sites, you might able to do 30.

    2. Search for blogs in similar niches as your (preferably high traffic, high PR) using google blog search, and make comments on them with links back to your site. This is a free, quick and easy way to get some traffic. Not to mention backlinks.

    Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mattkau
    hey matt here,

    thanks for the replies, I have made notes on each response (very thorough replies thank you)


    John Piteo
    thanks for replying so quickly, your post isn't iffy - it helped a lot thank you!
    - base your articles on long tail keywords
    i need to do research on what that means exactly, i guess my keyword research skills SUCK
    - make your article interesting that makes the reader want more
    my first squidoo lens sucked and now I know why I just wrote a crap article, next article will be more informative and entertaining but will make the reader want more and CLICK
    - landing page or review page
    okay i read this as 'make your landing page not just a duplicate of your article it is literally semi sales copy, disguised as a review or anything that will presell the prospect' - thanks learned a lot from this

    Toonarme
    - In EzineArticles you can have more than one link in your bio box, so have one link pointing to your Lens and one to your landing page but your landing page will have to be your site homepage otherwise EA will flag it. This way you get Google juice from your lens and directly from the articles.
    sorry toonarme, i didn't quite understand you, did you mean: in your EZA article make one of the bio box links point to your lens (landing page) and the other one to your landing page (same page). then you said 'but your landing page will have to be your site homepage otherwise EA will flag it' .... okay sorry i dont understand exactly what you mean. Best understanding I can come up with is ... make one of the two links point to your root home page eg. www.cat-feeding-secrets.com and the other to squidoo.com/cat-feeding-secrets
    - I guess you are making the most of the being able to have 2 links in the bio box????


    Cdawson
    Hi Cdawson, thanks for replying, you replied with a recommendation to use wordpress or blogger, but you didnt say why? I guess you are suggesting it as an alternative over EZA which takes a LONG TIME APPROVE and you have less control?

    I have always wondered why IMers use EZA over say blogger or wordpress - i guess its because EZA has more 'grunt' or 'pull' because of a higher 'reputation' by google somehow?

    - Your second recommendation was to find 30 long tail keywords with low competition, finding 'low competition long tail keywords' has been suggested by everyone and this is definately on my TODO list up top because i have no idea what this means or how to do it
    - I will definately write 30 articles per niche if this is what you suggest but my next question is
    - why 5, 30 or 100? does google put the page-with-the-most-backlinks on the first page? is it a race to put more backlinks? does that mean if i write 30 and someone writes 40 i will "lose" that "race"?
    "Another good thing to do is social bookmarking all your posts (with squidoo you can only do this 1ce because you dont have seperate post urls). Another tips would be to social bookmark your articles to get a better ranking on google."
    - thanks for the social bookmarking recommendation, i will look into it. but i dont know what you mean by 'you dont have seperate post urls' lol :-) i will come back to this later :-)

    Mike Williams
    "You mention keyword research, but I didn't see it as one of the steps in your business mode. It's probably the most important step. Get keyword research right and it's easy breezy. So if you don't know already, learn how to find the words with low competition that make money."
    Thanks Mike, by the time I read your post im pretty convinced of 'low competition long tail keywords' but im still loooking into how to do this research, if you have any links/advice please let me know

    Sideserver
    Thank you, I read your post carefully as i'm a bit of an efficiency nut myself :-) I will have to come back to this one later because I am still learning the ropes.
    Sideserver, this is another reason why I like the 40000ft view because when i read posts like yours I wonder, "why social bookmarking or writing articles, or this or that" surely one has a better ROI than others, which is why i always come back to the question "WHAT IS THE GOAL HERE? MORE BACKLINKS THAN THE COMPETITION?????"




    BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE!!!


    PS. I AM LOOKING FOR A MENTOR - If you think $1500/mo is an achieable goal, I will PAYPAL my third months profits to my mentor ...(profits between NOV 24 2008 -> DEC 24 2008 to your Paypal acct :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author John Piteo
    Good work Matt,

    Long tail keywords are 3, 4 and even 5 word keyword phrases. They are much more specific and targeted than general one or two word keyword phrases and they target potential buyers later in the buying cycle. When people start their online search they usually start with a general term such as "weight loss".

    As they narrow down their results and come closer to making a buying decision their searches get more specific such as "lose ten pounds fast". This is considered a long tail keyword.

    Now here is the sweet part. Long tail keywords are much easier to get higher rankings for in the search engines. They don't get near as much traffic as the general keywords, but the prospects are much more targeted and more likely to buy something. Getting traffic from the ezine directories is good, but if your article ranks well in the search engines you will get much, much more traffic.

    Here is another example: Bob wants to buy a digital camera so he types "digital camera" into Google. Up comes info on three billion digital cameras. Now Bob types in "10 megapixel digital camera". He is a little further along in the buying cycle and sees that Nikon has a real nice digital camera and the model is D200. Now Bob wants to find out a little more about that camera. He is deep into the buying cycle and just needs a little nudge.

    He types in "Nikon D200 digital camera". On the first page of the search results is YOUR article at the EzineArticles.com directory. The job of your article is to give him some additional information, but in your bio box leave him with a question in his mind.

    For example: Although the Nikon D200 can produce vivid true-to-life colors and crystal sharp images, is it the absolute best choice in it's price range? Find out here DigitalCameraReviews.com (example only- not my site) On your landing page you would provide a review that answers that question and send Bob to the merchant.

    One more thing, back links are very important and there are many linking strategies, but I'll have to save that for another time or maybe someone else will chime in.

    John P
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  • Profile picture of the author Nathan Denton
    Hi Mattkau,

    I think you should pat yourself on the back for setting an achievable income target and setting down a realistic plan of attack to achieve it. You are miles ahead of a ot of newbies in this regard.

    Look forward to hearing about your success!

    Nathan D
    Signature
    Online marketing, offline marketing and various other things.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mattkau
    John thank you! I you have managed to describe perfectly the power of long tail keywords in a few paragraphs. I was going to summarise what you said to myself but I think that is just about perfect.

    Basically at the 'research' stage the searcher will enter generic keywords, and might be a few hours or even days from purchasing, you used 'weight loss' as an example, lets say we use 'plasma tvs' after a few minutes or hours of searching the user might begin to see that samsungs are good models and she is looking for 42 inch plasma tvs' so they will 'reset' their research back to "okay now i know i want a samsung plasma that is 42 inches because i think that is good value"

    so they will search for "42 inch samsung".

    i've gone the extra step for people that are following, according to google keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

    "plasma tv" = 673,000 searches a month
    "42 inch samsung plasma" = 2,900 searches a month

    by the time the user knows they want a samsung 42 inch plasma they could very well be ready to buy! if you can get nice and high in google at this stage you will appear to be a solid seller because you come up on the first page (more likely than searches for "plasma tv").

    The issue is now ...

    1) how do i say to search engines 'im your guy' when it comes to 42 inch plasma tv, and 'im not your guy' when it comes to 'plasma tv' or "nevermind the guys searching for plasma tvs, give me the people that know what they want" ..
    a) do you use "42 inch samsung plasma tv" in the <title> tag?
    b) create backlinks that look like want a tv ? <a href="42-inch-plasmas.com">samsung 42 inch plasma?</a>
    c) combination of a and b

    2) when you say compeition are we talking solid organic competition? it seems that we DO want PPC advertisers ('money to be made here') but DONT want organic solid competition

    42 inch plasma samsung - Google Search
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  • Profile picture of the author Mattkau
    Mookinman, youtube? youtube allows links in the bio, and has a PR of 9, and a lot of traffic. I always wondered 'why not'
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  • Profile picture of the author Mattkau
    Awesome screencast on keyword research for those following:
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  • Profile picture of the author Mattkau
    IM EXHAUSTED

    hi guys,

    i've been looking at video tutorials for article marketing, and reading books on SEO, and trying to absorb as much as I can about IM. I didn't even know what PR or SERPs stood for a week ago, and now i'm exhausted.

    My goal after a week of 'studying' IM is still $1500/m ... however I want to ask a few questions to see how i'm going

    1) I've been studying a WSO to use EZA as an article publishing tool, so far none of my articles (2) have been published (its not being authorized, its still pending).

    2) I used goarticles to create two articles for the keyword 'beach muscles' - a keyword that i chose as a starting point (about 1300/month)

    3) I created a squidoo page as a landing page, to link to my affiliate page. I have 10 visits total. I don't know how to market the Squidoo page, and I have no one coming from my GoArticles

    4) I'm sort of wondering where all this is going, a member here has told me that the articles are actually to funnel traffic to the squidoo page, not just to improve the PR of the landing page via creating backlinks.

    5) Is there a target of how many articles you should write per niche ???

    6) Not really sure what i'm aiming for here .. is the goal to get 200 visits a day to your landing page and convert 1% to a sale, then move on to another niche???

    Trying really hard here .... but not really 'getting it'

    My current 'belief system' of affiliate marketing:

    Article marketing is about creating little 'vending machines' with squidoo pages as landing pages and articles that
    1) funnel traffic to the landing page
    2) increase the PR of the landing page and therefore increase the PR and therefore traffic to the landing page

    So for every landing page (assuming a conversion of 0.5%) you will get $25 ($50 product) commission for every 200 visits


    Once you set-up this 'network' of articles and single landing page, you can move on to another niche.

    ... and .. the reason why you need to move on is because you set up the 'machine' to go for long tail keywords (by using that long tail keyword in the title tag, and throughout the article, and within anchor tags) ... and those keywords only get 'so much' traffic...


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  • Profile picture of the author naonline
    I can't believe you've learn't all this in such a short space of time. Where are you getting all the info from. Have you bought any IM products?

    How are are you getting on?

    Nick
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