Gauging Success With Article Marketing

[Max Ramocsai]

Hello Warriors,

I guess you could say that I am seeking both inspiration and personal experience when it comes to article marketing. You see, I currently have 25 articles pending review at EzineArticles which I've created over the past few days. The wait is killing me because I feel these articles have a lot of potential and to make matters worse I'll have to wait until every last one of these articles is approved before I can earn Platinum status.

So I guess what I am looking for is some input as to what I can generally expect from 25 articles in terms of clicks and ultimately sales. Any personal experiences with article marketing success (or failure) is very much appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post!

[Max Ramocsai]

Anybody willing to give some input?

[seree]

Hi,

What is your definition of 'success' and 'failure'?

Based on sales, leads, clicks or anything?

Cheers!

[MoonLoh]

Awesome! 25 articles for EzineArticles. Please be patient, they will review within one week and I'm sure you will get your Platinum status. The most important is continue to submit your articles after gain the status because articles marketing is really a consistent work to drive traffic to website. =)

[TimG]

Without knowing the niche (some are seasonal) and how popular it currently is and the article titles you are using it's a bit difficult to provide a true answer. However, generally speaking submitted articles once approved will start to generate traffic and hopefully income in approximately 24 - 36 hours once approved.

2 years ago 25 articles would yield you a gold mine, last year it was a great way to start generating lots of traffic/income. This year 25 articles is a step in the right direction up the article marketing ladder. Ideally, you will want to have upwards of 100 - 200 submitted and approved articles before you truly start to enjoy the dominating effect (traffic and income) that was easier to obtain 2 years ago.

Whatever you do, don't stop writing and submitting. The more articles you have submitted and approved the more traffic and income you will generate.

Tim

[martinp]

As Tim said, it's impossible to predict how well your 25 articles will do. I've seen people submit hundreds with very little success at all, whereas I've seen others with one article that will generate income in the thousands. I have one article that has generated over $10,000 in the past year, and I have others that haven't made me a cent (for many reasons e.g. wrong niche, wrong product etc.). I find that it takes most people at least 25 articles or more to start working out a strategy that works for them (my first 25, although well written produced very little actual income). Testing and trying different things is very important in any aspect of internet marketing, and the same goes for article marketing.

Just be warned, you may not receive as many clicks and sales as you're expecting, so don't be disheartened but chalk it up to experience and learn where you can improve. On the other hand you might hit the jackpot so good luck!

[modikai]

How many niche are you doing? Are all the 25 articles in one niche? I you hate waiting for it to be approve, why not focus on another niche and open up another ezine account and start submitting there.

Don't worry, you'll make money. I've made money on the first week of doing bum marketing, and English is not even my first language...

Just keep writing, and don't forget to submit everyday (once you reached platinum).

Good Luck

[Thomas Dean]

Originally Posted by modikai

How many niche are you doing? Are all the 25 articles in one niche? I you hate waiting for it to be approve, why not focus on another niche and open up another ezine account and start submitting there.

Don't worry, you'll make money. I've made money on the first week of doing bum marketing, and English is not even my first language...

Just keep writing, and don't forget to submit everyday (once you reached platinum).

Good Luck

It's against EZA's TOS to have more than one account.

You can create a pen name on the existing account though.

[modikai]

No it's not.

You can have multiple accounts as long as you deliver quality content...

[strauss]

Submitting all your articles in ezinearticles is not a good option. You can submit the other articles in article directories. Article submission gives quality back links. There are many free article submission sites. If you are updating your site or have a new product launched, then you can go for press release. It requires articles and is an effective method to promote your sites.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Okay, reality check time.

It takes hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of articles to have REAL success with
article marketing.

I am speaking from experience because that's what I've got out there and it
took me about 2 years to really generate a substantial income from article
marketing.

So get busy...You have a very long road ahead of you.

[Max Ramocsai]

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the input. And I will be submitting tons of articles once my Platinum status is approved.

As far as submitting to other directories, I haven't had nearly as much exposure as I've had with EZA. Even so I will still continue to do this as it will provide some quality backlinks.

[Thomas Dean]

Originally Posted by modikai

No it's not.

You can have multiple accounts as long as you deliver quality content...

It's here in the Editorial Guidelines: Editorial Guidelines For Submitting Quality Articles To EzineArticles.com

"We only allow one author membership account per human but you are allowed to have alternate author names under your account (such as a pen-name or if you are an author's assistant or manage articles for multiple different author's)."

[Jeremy Kelsall]

HiddenCrimson,

There are a couple of ways to gauge success with Article Marketing, but one way that I do not gauge success is the amount of money that an article makes me...

Sounds stupid right?

If you think about it, we write articles to drive traffic. Ultimately, unless it is our own product we can not control the conversions once they get to the sales page. So, for me, as long as I drive traffic then it is a success.

As far as what you can expect...

It does not take years and thousands of articles to start seeing a nice return on your efforts.
Here are a couple of tips I can give you on being successful sooner than later:

1. Pick a niche that is hungry and in demand - Try to pick something that people want to buy right now, try to find something that people are not only looking for information on, but when they are actually searching because they want to make a purchase.

2. Know your niche - Sounds generic, right? Well, think about this, there are a ton of niches out there where people are just dying to find a link to click on and buy something. The exact opposite to me would be the make money online niche. I've found that people that search for that information online research it to death before they actually make a purchase, but if you look at something like an ebook about a cure for yeast infection, those people are itching as they search, they want to buy something to solve their problem.

3. Be consistent - Make a plan to do X amount of articles a day and stick to it.

The right niche and the right effort can yield you hundreds of visitors a day to either a landing page geared towards selling a product or even a squeeze page for list building.

[JonnyAndrews]

I'll have to ride with the kids who said it's impossible to predict for sure... however
the "hungry market" stuff is very true.

One great way I've found to increase your CTR/ROI/SEO is to linkbait the titles a bit with keyword focused yet horridly scathing headlines.

Be careful with this one! You need to be very, very clear in what you wish to accomplish with the article because if you just shed with no real meat (thinly veiled burrito reference) people will click the article but NOT your bio box "click for more info" thingy.

You want the CTR on that bad-boy to be up there.

Give people a "shocking" something or other and just bleed all over the page with a call to action in your bio box where they can get the real report or something like that.

Seriously, it works great, but be careful what you say. You better A: mean it and B: be able to back it up.

FYI: it does not always have to be negative... but it's best if the headline sounds that way.

[cashcow]

Like everyone else has said, there is no cut and dried formula that you can apply to article marketing. Just keep at it - some articles will do better than others but the more you have the more traffic you will drive.

Consider making some articles into squidoo lenses or hubpages that also link to your site.

Get some links to your articles and lenses.

Don't forget that using good keywords for your articles will be well worth the time that is spent to ferret those keywords out.

Lee

[Bishop81]

As everybody above has said, you can never tell. I heard of one guy who had hundreds of articles submitted, but hasn't earned a dime from them. Some other people on the forum here have submitted 5 - 10 articles and started earning money from day one. All I can say is that you really have to just watch what happends with each one and figure out why it happens, then work on duplicating the best parts from each article. This way you can really start to dominate.

I understand the frustration with waiting, too. I've submitted a few articles in the past, but this is my real go at using article marketing with my list-building website. After 7 days of waiting I just found out that 2 of my articles got kicked back because I had a link above the fold. I didn't even think it would be a problem, because it's not a self-service link at all, but oh well. Anyway, the wait is killing me, because I want to see how well they do.

[Max Ramocsai]

Yeah, the waiting game is the hardest part. 6 of my articles have been approved today and I have already gotten a decent amount of clicks. Hopefully I will see some sales soon lol. I will definitely give a report as to how well my 25 articles did once they have been approved.

[cylwac]

Wow 25 articles...that's awesome! I have just started writing articles and currently have 8 through Ezine, I'm waiting for my status to be upgraded. I love to write so I'm really looking forward to submitting my other articles.

1000's of articles sounds like a lot but I guess if you get all your information and sit and write for a couple of days or weeks depending on your writing style its achievable.
Thanks for all the inspiration.

Victoria

[Max Ramocsai]

Thanks! I also find writing rather enjoyable and it comes naturally to me which is why I think article marketing is the best choice for me. Having to wait for your articles to be approved can be a pain though, especially when it is keeping you from upgrading your account.

Good luck, cylwac! Keep on writing.

[Bishop81]

Originally Posted by HiddenCrimson

Thanks! I also find writing rather enjoyable and it comes naturally to me which is why I think article marketing is the best choice for me. Having to wait for your articles to be approved can be a pain though, especially when it is keeping you from upgrading your account.

Good luck, cylwac! Keep on writing.

That's the big benefit with most people, they really enjoy writing. I don't enjoy it much yet, but can spend hours upon hours writing code. Strange, yes...

I'm working on it, though, and I'm sure that once I start seeing $50+ days just from my writing efforts that I'll start to enjoy it much more.

[Zeus66]

The biggest keys are having an intriguing title so you get a lot of eyeballs on your words; and using the body of the article to build to a powerful call to action in your author box (or end of the article) to jack up the CTR. Some of the best advice I ever got in this regard is to put the climax that the article leads to on the page you link to... not in the article itself. The difference in CTR can be staggering.

That's pretty much all you can do with the articles themselves. The final piece to the sales puzzle is giving compelling reasons to buy on your landing page. When you get both right - articles that stoke readers up enough to click thru to your page + having a compelling, convincing story on the landing page - you'll know it because your sales will skyrocket. Now you've truly got a goldmine to exploit because you have a formula to follow with every single article. All of a sudden, writing a bunch of articles goes from boring (or at least not much fun) to the most exciting part of your day.

I make it sound easy, but it does take work. The biggest piece of advice I can give is to divorce your ego from all of this. I can't tell you how many times I've written what I thought was a masterpiece article - sure to bring me lots of $$$ - only to watch them go down in flames. The worst thing you can do is get emotionally attached. They're words on a screen. You brought them into existence in order to make money. That's all. Move on and keep writing. Sure enough, there'll be a few that you think will be duds and they hit the jackpot. Such is life as an article marketer. Follow the fomula, keep pumping them out, and shoot for the highest CTR + Sales Conversion Rate you can achieve.

John

[zuberr]

That will depend on a number of factors:

- the niche
- the conversion rate of the salespage
- your keyword research
- CTR of your articles

And most important, THE ARTICLES! Are they solving a problem? Do they have the psychological triggers that will make the sales?