Is Article Marketing Effective?

by paddyboy

Posted: 13 years ago 16 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Hi Warriors,
I just received this newsletter from ezine with the folowing link:
Expert Author Case Study: Sam Manfer

Here's a guy who has impressive credentials and a resume that runs around the block.

He has written 116 articles over the past 3 years that have generated 25,321 views.

Am I missing something or is that just outright small traffic in relation to the effort?

I published an article to ezine that generated 95 views....over the course of a year!!!

Let's say he is averaging 218 views per article and of course that's free traffic. Does he know his click-through rate? Those 218 views cost him 30 minutes of writing, an hour perhaps? Does he capture any of those leads?

I think you have to compare views to leads. What would it cost to generate 218 views(clicks) with an adwords campaign and a squeeze page? Or what would it cost to capture 218 actual leads.

I would guess that even my worst adwords campaigns can provide a better cost to effort ratio. Now I realize that ezine is free, I realize there are a ton of other article sites and articles spinners and auto-article-posters, etc, etc....however I have yet to see anything that would motivate me to spend (waste?) time writing articles, when there exists other methods of getting traffic that are more efficient. (especially in terms of captured leads and not just views)

Am I crazy?....just thought I would throw this out for discussion....

#article #effective #marketing

mad.hat

13 years ago

I think you are underestimating high-end article writers. When I first started internet marketing I went into article marketing. After a couple weeks of struggling I was able to turnaround 50 400 word hours in a two hour period. This was unique content, way before I found out about article spinners.

Also, that is just one of names used by a user. They could have dozens of variations or pseudonyms that they go by. Either way, article marketing is not a waste and although the quality of leads may not be great the long-term payout really is.

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Supernatural_fan

13 years ago

Originally Posted by mad.hat

My gosh, I was watching this discussion, yet I can't help myself but wonder how in the name of ... have you succeeded writing 50 articles in a two hour period? I mean, come on, to write unique content you first have to think about it. Not to mention the fact, that typing takes a while as well, especially if you don't have someone dictating that to you. So, how did you manage that?

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Zeus66

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Supernatural_fan

It's obviously a ridiculous claim. There are 120 minutes in 2 hours. That means you'd have 2.4 minutes per article if you wrote 50 in that time (120/50 = 2.4). If you took no breaks and didn't stop typing even for a few seconds at any point in those 2 hours, you'd need to type about 167 words per minute to accomplish it (20,000 words [50 articles at 400 words each] divided by 120 minutes).

It'd be nice though, wouldn't it? Imagine how much money you could make if you could crank out 50 articles at 400 words each that were unique and made sense. Hell, do it for other people at even $5 a pop and you'd make nearly six figures a year working just 2 hours a day. SWEET!

Thanks
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Jesus Perez 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Zeus66

It's obviously a ridiculous claim.

Not at all! All you need is a scanner with OCR and a really old book from the library.

That's illegal, btw. Meant as a joke.
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Zeus66 13 years ago

The ridiculous claim of writing fifty 400-word articles in 2 hours made above me notwithstanding (that's the funniest thing I've read in a long time here), here's the thing about article marketing results...

There isn't just one reason to do it. A lot of people use articles as vehicles to get backlinks to their pages out there so they rank higher in the search engines. Then there's syndication. I'm not a particularly great writer, but I've had several of my better creations get picked up and posted on some pretty important sites. Just one instance of that can boost you for weeks.

And don't forget making a name for yourself. That's pretty important in a lot of niches. If you endeavor to write nothing but the highest quality stuff (that you put your own name on, at least), you can brand yourself as an authority using article marketing.

Views are not the end-all, be-all, in other words.

John
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- Tina Golden 13 years ago
  
  His views on EZA are probably just the tip of the iceberg. What of his views and exposure on the multitude of websites that have probably republished his articles? That's where the majority of the value comes in.
  
  Tina
  
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JonAlfredsson 13 years ago

that claim may have its issues. writing 50 articles within that span of time is difficult. unless he will use a reliable spinner software and just edit them for faster results.

i agree, there's more than just views when ti comes to article marketing and traffic. It can be a great form of earning trust from other people being an expert on your field.
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imkevintan 13 years ago

Article Marketing in general is a very good and a very cost effective marketing strategy. It all depends on how you do it though. I prefer putting up an article on one selected web 2.0 property and then getting it to rank for some organic traffic. Always works!
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yoyo 13 years ago

you have be unique and target good keywords, there is no point in writing 100 articles with over sacturated keywords that will get you some 10 views a year but there is a major boost to your campaigns if you can even get 1 good article out there with a low competition keyword that will generate you 100 views a day.
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- Brandon Tanner 13 years ago
  
  Article marketing is definitely effective, but I think a lot of people focus so much on just cranking out as many articles as they can, that they forget how important it is to get good backlinks pointing to those articles (with your keywords in the anchor text, of course). Big mistake.
  
  All other things being equal, I would much rather have 50 articles with good backlinks to each one, than 500 articles with no backlinks.
  
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ShaunAllen 13 years ago

Wait, I thought I already heard that article marketing is dead.
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bertuseng 13 years ago

Article marketing is far from dead. It still is one of the easiest ways to get traffic consistantly. The trick is to either backlink your article a bit so that you can get it ranked well for lots of google views or you have to submit it to as many different places as you can including web 2.0 sites. 5he best would be to do both and to also use your articles in other ways such as video etc.
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- Steven Wagenheim 13 years ago
  
  You're right...article marketing is DEAD!
  
  I wouldn't waste my time with it.
  
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  (Sneaks off to write another article)
  
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Chri5123 13 years ago

Yes, as others have said here it is all down to how you use Article Marketing.

If you are using it as a vehicle to build backlinks to your existing websites and making sure that you post a unique article to your website first.

If you make sure you have a good niche and do keyword research properly.

If you put the work in - it can do very well.

I started out with Article Marketing and I swear by it - excellent to test a market and all of the traffic is free.

And of course when you get good at it you will be able to write 50 unique content engaging articles that will satisfy the reader in just 2 hours! LOL

Chris
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Zeus66 13 years ago

The best way to use articles, in my humble opinion...

Article > >> squeeze page offering free report related to the article >>> OTO (One-Time Offer) >>> Upsell something closely related to the freebie and OTO on the backend.

A well written article at the beginning of that process will send your squeeze page probably the best "warm" traffic you could hope for, short of a big guru recommending your stuff in glowing terms to his/her monster list.

John
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