Problems with article/bum marketing, and questions about niches

by Obmotomom

Posted: 15 years ago 15 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Okay, I started article marketing three weeks ago, and I have a few questions about it.

Actually, I posted only one article to see if I could really do it. After three weeks, the article has 112 views, but only 27 URL clicks. Out of those clicks, I haven't gotten a single sale. I don't think I chose a bad niche, because the page selling the product is still there and my competition seems to have a good landing page up, so they're probably making sales. I think the CTR for my article is good enough, but I don't really understand why I'm not making any sales. Would you say it's the landing page? My landing page is on Squidoo, and to be honest, I have two reviews for the product and at least two or three hoplinks spread around each post, depending on the length. I don't know if it's bad to post a lot of links, but I don't really know what would be effective for a landing page. I guess it might look like blatant advertising, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I'm lost here. I want to start writing a huge amount of articles per day, but the motivation isn't there because I'm not seeing any results. I'm not gonna drop out of this, because I want to see if I can eventually make this into my main income, but I just don't know what to do about my lack of sales.

Anyway, about niches: I'm not sure what I should do about choosing my niche. I've chosen something in the general catergory of online games, but should I stick with that single squidoo lens or should I make a bunch of lenses about various games with a specific niche in mind (such as the World of Warcraft Jewlcrafting Guide demonstrated in one of the tutorial vids on the site for Micro Niche Finder)? Every time I see a post about niches, someone says "choose your niche" without mentioning whether it should be videogames or a very specific micro niche like the one about WoW mentioned above.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I'm kinda new to this, but I'm happy that my first article has gotten this many views already. I'm not sure if it's good to get 100+ views in 3-4 weeks, but I'm happy that I got some kind of result. I just need to know how to make a few sales.

#article or bum #marketing #niches #problems #questions

Obmotomom 15 years ago

What do you mean by bookmark? Social bookmarking or literally bookmarking it in my browser?

And yeah, I wrote a single article to test the waters, basically. I wrote three more the day before yesterday after a strange bout of motivation that doesn't usually come over me, but now I suddenly have a bunch of ideas and I might be able to get a lot more articles out today.

I guess it's good to rewrite the articles for the blog, but how do I know where to put my hoplink? I don't think I should make it look too much like blatant advertising. Should it just be at the end of each post, or could I put it in the middle too?

The only problem is that I'm slow at writing the articles. A lot of people said that they can write an article in ten minutes, but I always have to do some research as I write the article. I guess I'll get better at it as I write more and more.
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- SullyUI 15 years ago
  
  It simply takes time; article marketing and internet marketing is not something learned overnight or even in a few weeks. With that said, you're on the right track by simply doing it, and keeping your eyes open on what works and what doesn't.
  
  I should add, I highly recommend that you do not rely solely on internet marketing as your sole source of income as a complete beginner. It puts too much pressure on you, and you won't be able to step back from the emotional nature of needing money just to survive for the next day.
  
  The best thing is to have a full-time job, no matter what it is, and do this on the side until you're comfortable and experienced making money online. Or, find a job as a ghostwriter, just anything that provides steady consistent income so that you're not worrying about making a sale just to survive the month.
  
  As the above poster said, just one article isn't sufficient, you should be thinking in the several hundred if you really want to see results. Also, I would not use Squidoo as a landing page for your article (I wrote a very popular guide on Squidoo so I'm not just making this up).
  
  Make a blog on blogger or wordpress with several pages of good content. They're free and you can keep all your articles on one site rather than just a lens.
  
  Also, you'll need at least 100 click throughs to your affiliate page before you can start taking data. That means that although they are clicking the link to your lens, you might not have any clicks to your affiliate site.
  
  Basically you need several hundred click throughs to your lens, and then at least a few hundred clicks from your lens to your affiliate site. In the mean time just tweak your sales copy on your lens or blog until you get more clicks to your affiliate site and keep churning out articles.
  
  This is just my opinion, take it as you will. Best of luck -
  
  Sully
  
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Obmotomom

15 years ago

When it comes to IM being my main source of income, I'm just a kid living with my parents, so I can learn this over the summer breaks and while I'm in school. I probably should get a full time job when I'm done with college, but maybe by then I won't have to. I'm not really counting on it, but who knows?

So, you think I should just scrap the Squidoo lens and make a biggish wordpress blog? What's the difference? Also, I'd like to know more when it comes to the question on niches and where I should put my hoplinks.

I'm just glad that my first article already has 100+ views, so I'll be pumping out a lot more today and in the future, then. Hopefully I can move on from article marketing someday.

Thanks
2 replies

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Marty S 15 years ago

Well you didn't have to tell me you were a kid, because your attitude wreaks of a can-somebody-do-this-for-me teen. On the other hand, you ACTUALLY wrote an article which is more than I can say for 99.9% of teens - so at least you are thinking.

Also let's clarify your situation: you haven't really started article marketing at all. One article is NOT committing to anything but a few minutes of writing and submission time on your part. To me, that is only one part of article marketing as you also need to know and understand opportunities in your selected niche, have some targeted key words in your titles and articles, have a decent blog/capture/sales page that displays at least some competence, and ease of use for viewers that land there.

If you want success you need to start thinking about how to saturate your niche and have an effective capture and sales process set up so as turn your viewers into buyers.

Market penetration requires a focused strategy kid, and it can work with just "bum" articles if that's how you want to go. Like I said, you are lite years ahead of your peers if you are really serious and actually show some stick-to-it-ness. Right now, you are just not serious.

Keep in mind, a lot of people on this forum have worked months, even years, before they experienced any success, and there you go posting one article and then sit and wait for a flood of business. They are looking at your post and laughing because you are NO competition for them. You will be the guy buying GURU stuff and feeding the IM market - then you will just eventually disappear - UNLESS you can get over yourself and learn that what you thought was hard work was really only a very easy test to see if you are suited for this challenge.

It's up to you now kid - all the best.
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XRay

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Obmotomom

Hey Obmotomom,

Congrats on stepping up and taking some action. I wouldn't delete the Squidoo lens - that's online RE. You can always edit it, add new content to it and/or use it for backlinks to your articles or to a new money page.

As far as WordPress blogs are concerned, you can go with the free option (wordpress.com) or the self-hosted one (wordpress.org). I would go with the free option since you're just getting started. You can also set up a free blog on Blogger, Weebly or Tumblr to name a few.

As far as niches are concerned, you want to pick ones where people are desperate or passionate enough about it to spend their hard-earned money on a solution. There are a number of free tools you can use to help you identify profitable ones. Here are a few: SKTools, Amazon.com Bestsellers, eBay Pulse or Yahoo! Buzz. You will need to do a bit of digging to discover the ones that have the potential to make you money.

I hope this helps. All the best to you!

X

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I create quality online content at Squidoo, and Yahoo! Contributor Network to inform, to have fun and make some money at it along the way :)

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yaji 15 years ago

Keep trying at least 30 articles... Your goal is not just getting traffic from article directory, but to get traffic from SEs. The game plan is to let SEs give credits gradually to your web site by those articles. Generally speaking traffic from SEs are much better than from anywhere else. Got my point? - Traffics from articles are not your final goal.
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Thanks, Yaji

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bannor32 15 years ago

112 views and 27 clicks in 3 weeks isn't bad at all for a single article. With that average if you put up just 3 articles a day for a month you'd have 90 articles at the end of a month. At 9 URL clicks a week per article you'd be looking at well over 100 visitors per day to your site after just one month. If your landing page converts decently then you could be enjoying a healthy income inside of 30 days. Continue for a few more months and the sky is the limit...
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airbusbarkley 15 years ago

Take that one article that you have written and re-purpose it. Make it into a blog as mentioned above or post it as a guest blogger. Re-write the article into a step-by-step tutorial or checklist. Make it into a story. Re-write the article into a "what not to do". Take snippets of the article and post it in forums, Facebook and Twitter and make people want to come to your website for more information. Turn that article into a "You-Tube" video. Capitalize on the hard work and effort for each and every article you write. This is just the beginning.

Good Luck.
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Shawn
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JonesersRX7 15 years ago

All has pretty much been covered by above responses. Your 25% (approx) click through is very good for your first article. Keep them short and sweet and your author bio close for an even better ctr. I am going to ass-u-me that this is for a ClickBank product so out of a 100 people hitting your landing page expect 1-3 sales. This gets better as your CW skills improve.

You need to re-examine your dedication and desire for success (3 weeks and 1 article?)

Also if you can't afford a domain/hosting don't use WP.com (not a fan of commercial usage and aff links = commercial) use blogger instead.
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WareTime 15 years ago

Dude/dudette, you're made of sterner stuff than that! Get writing.
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blalock61

15 years ago

Where are you posting your articles?

Just for starters, your goal should be one article per day if possible or put yourself on one constant and steady routine. If that is an article every other day then do that, but the more SEO'd articles you can write on good keywords, the greater chance for success.

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Effort & Attitude!

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Obmotomom

15 years ago

Originally Posted by blalock61

They're on EzineArticles.

I can probably be pumping out a decently steady stream for a while until I run out of ideas for this niche. I'm definitely gonna experiment with blogs and keywords for a while. All this is actually pretty enjoyable, to my surprise.

Anyway, all of your replies were pretty encouraging. I'm gonna hop on this while trying to regulate my sleep schedule as well as some other things. I hope I have some luck.

Thanks everyone.

Thanks

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crazyfish22

15 years ago

Originally Posted by Obmotomom

Anyway, I'm lost here. I want to start writing a huge amount of articles per day, but the motivation isn't there because I'm not seeing any results. I'm not gonna drop out of this, because I want to see if I can eventually make this into my main income, but I just don't know what to do about my lack of sales.

Hi, Obmotomom.

It's good to know you aren't planning to drop out of this just yet. Like others have said, you're to be commended for taking action.

The absence of sales so far can be disheartening, but remember that you have only one article online now. I have no idea how many newbies make a sale after their first article; I for one certainly didn't! I made my first sale after having 18 or so articles on EZA; a friend had his first sale after five articles online; somebody else I read about made his first sale only after having more than 40 articles published on EZA (same niche for all three of us).

Your article seems to have good CTR, and that's encouraging. Write more high-quality, SE-optimized articles. I think if readers find your writing helpful and informative, it will resonate with them -- making them more likely to buy.

Best of luck.

Thanks

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gpsterra 15 years ago

Run out of ideas? You can't run out of ideas. Just rewrite the articles you already wrote.

Stick to one niche until it makes you the money you want, then move on.
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Problems with article/bum marketing, and questions about niches

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