Article writing for your blog -- still a money winner?

use web 2.0 website such as squidoo,blogger, and hubpages, linking back to your main site. Building backlinks and focusing your keywords is the best way to market. You want that targets traffic from search engines.

Shouldn't you already know how to drive traffic... I mean, you've helped "thousands of others". :rolleyes:

Skepticism aside, I believe you should review your opt-in box and the copy within it. Laughing at "expensive language programs like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur with my free tips and techniques" isn't a strong benefit to the reader. Understand and locate their pains and problems, then craft a benefit.

For example, off the top of my head you could survey existing customers and find out that they want to learn a language because they:
- Are going on a holiday in 6 weeks to 'x'
- Want to impress that good looking Swedish chick.
- Would like to communicate with relatives.

You would take these reasons and translate them into benefits. Whether it'd be:
- Saving time
- Saving money
- Finding love
etc.

Remember, the key is to list the most critical and captivating benefits. Stay away from listing features (unless coupled with a strong benefit).

Adding to that, your opt-in box blends in with your webpage. This ISN'T what you want. The one aspect of your page that you want to 'pop' (immediately stand out to your visitors) is your opt-in box.

Moving onto your initial question - Yes, article marketing (for the proper way it was meant to be used) is alive and well, and generates targeted traffic. It'll all come down to what you write, how you write it and where you publish it; along with setting expectations (Thanks to Alexa for getting this stuck in my head) and other things.

There's enough information in this forum alone to have many books compiled on the subject. I would advise you to use the search button and look up: Article Syndication. Read the threads carefully and you should be able to differentiate fairly quickly between the people who make a living from this (and give out excellent information), and those who don't understand the process. The latter are those who like to give their opinions (whilst conveniently having an offer to a product in their signature).

Financial incentive drives people to do crazy things.

Best of luck.

EDIT: I forgot to ask - how were you initially driving traffic (how did you get those thousands of sales) and why don't you continue doing that?

Have you ever thought of content locking your book? Might be a decent way for you to generate more revenue. You can offer your book for free and still generate a commission. Let me know if you need more info.

Article writing works, but you have to write too many articles to get noticed and start seeing results. You have to write about all topics related to learning a language to get different visitors, and see which ones really care about your book.

Squidoo lenses are also a great free traffic generating method, but you have to create many lenses.

You need quantity and quality. Your work must be professional.

Skepticism aside, I believe you should review your opt-in box and the copy within it. Laughing at "expensive language programs like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur with my free tips and techniques" isn't a strong benefit to the reader. Understand and locate their pains and problems, then craft a benefit.

I agree that it’s not a good idea to attack your competitors.

Your niche does not seem to be as competitive as the work at home niche so I think that if you just persist in writing one article per day, you will get a good amount of results and visitors on a daily basis.

Thinking as someone who wants to learn language they will first search for google of bing, you can add some special keywords for your niche. for example, learn english in 1 year, learn english in 6 month, learn english with native, learn advance english for college student, etc. I am sure by specifying your niche, you will get a specific visitor who will gladly read your lead article.

Article marketing create strong branding.
For your niche, you need to establish yourself
as expert in learning foreign language.

Beside writing to your blog, you Might also submit
your articles to ezine directories for exposure.

You need to share more interesting content.
This topic mean be quite dry over time.

All the best!

It is okay, but it needs to be done in combination with other methods, like commenting on blogs and forums, guest posting, etc. If you put all your eggs in one basket, then G steals the basket then you could lose all your rankings again (or update the algorithm ) It is also good to show that you're adding value to your site too, so writing posts on your site is also very important, especially after said algorithm updates. If you get some good social proof from these posts, then your posts will naturally rank well over time.

That's a good idea in my opinion, since you are writing the articles yourself. That should contribute to higher your Alexa rank and bring traffic to your site. However I suggest you also do some SEO.

It's an absolutely brilliant way to get traffic if you get the articles widely published enough in front of their intended market.

There's not much point in just putting them on your own site and then waiting for people to find them there.

Article marketing is booming. Large and increasing numbers of us are successfully making our livings from it. But article marketing is all about taking your articles to where the targeted traffic you want to attract is already looking.

Here's a one-post overview of how article marketing works: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794

And this post includes a lot of links to various other threads which explain the underlying basis of article marketing in a little more detail: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872

Thank you everyone for your reponse-I had a few questions to follow up though and some answers of mine.

This leads me to assume, I should post on Web 2.0's like squidoo/blogger but should I link to my main page, my sales landing page, or an article posted on my website for that same keyword? Should I expect this to help my website get ranked, or is it to simply drive a little traffic from that web 2.0?

Someone also suggested to me to put an e-mail opt in form on my web 2.0, thoughts?

I had 'thousands of others' from sales from ebay, however ebay soon outlawed my tactics (selling an ebook using a competitors name in the title).

Thanks again