Has Anyone Else Noticed This Problem Writing Articles for EzineAritcles?

[ShaunAllen]

Hey,


I am in one of the most if not the most competitive niches (outside of IM) you can be in. This also makes it one of the most competitive niches on EzineArticles. When I get subscribers to my list from EzineArticles I notice they behave a lot differently than those subs I get from Adwords.

My article unsubscribe rate is more than double the one from paid traffic. My open rates are really high on the first e-mail and drastically drop after the first e-mail with article traffic. Whereas with adwords they are pretty consistent open rate percentages.

I also notice a lot of the unsubscribes happen a few minutes after people opt-in with my article subscribers.

Last but definitely not least, my adwords list makes me a lot more money than my article marketing list.

So I've come to a conlusion. I think that a fair amount of my subscribers from the articles are actually competitors. Probably even a lot of people on the warrior forum writing articles. I think they are subscribing for a few reasons...

1. I think they want to check out my squeeze page.
2. See what type of report or info I give away when they opt-in.
3. Check out what my sales page looks like.
4. See how I structure my e-mails.
etc...

Now I've done this before myself to see what my competition is doing on EA. It's just my "OPINION" that a fair amount of the article views, article clicks, and opt-ins you receive within the first 24 hours of submitting an article are actually from competitors not prospects.

I also think this is why it's important to focus on keywords for articles. Someone coming from google that searched for your keyword probably isn't a competitor but a prospect.

I am sure if I was writing articles on "how to cure your snoring problem" I might not have this problem. But being in a competitive niche, I think I have a lot of friendly IM'ers checking out what I am doing as they should be.

If I didn't have the data to compare with Adwords I probably never would've thought much about this.

Just a little food for thought.

What do you think? Have you noticed this? Am I exaggerating what I perceive to be a problem?

Thanks in advance.

[zerofill]

Definitely with the list building you are trying to do from articles your unsub rate after opt-in is going to be much greater for the reasons you state above. Competition is watching you and trying to figure out what you are doing that they can use to their advantage as well.

I think that is pretty much a given that your unsub will be higher then with paid traffic because of this.

[ShaunAllen]

I am going to give it a little more time, but if things don't change I'll had back to just going with Adwords.

[Chris Kent]

I agree. The real quality traffic comes from Google a few days after submitting.

Probably marketers are some of the only people who ever actually go through the categories!

I mean, do you know anyone who actually surfs article directories every day to get good information? There is so much crap there that they would never find the gold nuggets that a few of us write.

Good observation.

[Daniel Scott]

Hi David,

Interesting observations. Thanks for sharing.

Personally, I have found that article marketing traffic converts far better than Adwords traffic.

I have also found my unsub rate to be about the same... although a much higher CR for subscribers with articles.

Just my observations.

-Dan