The BIG SECRET to Article Marketing vs PPC

[Harry Behrens]

I've been seeing a lot of 'Articles vs PPC' type of stuff... Each side calling for the newbies to abandon the other and make camp with them... But from where I see it there's no need for the two sides to square off against each other like that.

It's true that ultimately PPC and list building is where it's at. But, if you're a newbie - you're just starting out - you don't want to risk your money with PPC - or you have no spare money - that is your prerogative. By all means start doing articles + landing pages. Do articles and landing pages until you build up a little trickle of extra money. Say $15-$30 a day. Not hard.

Once you've built up that trickle... take that $15-$30 a day and open up a squeeze page, Aweber account and PPC campaign with it. It's extra money - pretend you never even got it and just funnel it into your PPC and experiment with it. It won't hurt if you lose it because you wouldn't have had it in the first place.

Continue this for a while. In the mornings do the minimum to maintain your trickle from articles and in the afternoons experiment with PPC and squeeze copy. During the weekends read and learn new stuff. During the week, put what you learned into practice. If you keep this up, one day sooner or later, something will 'click' inside your head. You will get it. You'll make a profit.

That's the point you need to get to. And you will get to it if you work methodically towards it. From that point on, the increases are exponential.

The big secret to articles vs PPC is that one leads into the other. Start out where you feel comfortable taking daily action, but make sure not to get too comfortable in that safe and cozy realm, and have a concrete plan laid out to make the jump when you can.

Just my two cents on the matter

[jjbalagosa]

It's like you read my mind, word for word, and put them in a post!

[~Davor Debrecin~]

Great post Harry, I totally agree with you. I thanked you because this can really help people who are just starting out.

Take care,

~Davor

[monitorit]

excellent thanks, thats me down to the t. I have no money but soon as i do im ppc`in

[cashcow]

I agree! If you are sending the traffic from your articles to your offer or squeeze page in the first place, then you will already know the value of each visitor and, therefore, how much you can spend on PPC.

Lee

[Paid Surveys]

What you suggest makes sound business sense. I'm not a convert of the PPC campaigns for newbies. I started my sites by doing it the hard way and then reinvested the profits i made back into the business by making use of some PPC campaigns. Now I get a good stream of regular revenue through a mixture of do follow blogging, article submission, forums posting and PPC, but my advice is not to rely on just one method. It's always best to spread the risk.

[Mike Hersh]

Cool post!

From day one I invested my profits back into my business, it's the A-B-C for building your business. I made a lot of sales from a clickbank product and while I was waiting for the check, I opened up my wallet to bring more leads and sales.

Personal funnel.

Mike G

[currypuff]

A bit to add to this debate.

Article Marketing increases your site's SEO so higher rankings on the right . This helps your PPC too, with lower CPC and higher conversions.

They need to exist together.

May

[traian29]

Thanks for the post!

I totally agree with you Mike, reinvesting is the backbone of any business.

[Brad Spencer]

Knowing visitor value is extremely important. This is the true key to PPC success of all the people I know that have done it.

Earnings Per Click- Cost Per Click

It is totally that simple. If you know how many sales you're making in your autoresponder sequence then you can bid more per click...

By bidding more per click you'll rank higher...

By ranking higher you'll get more traffic...

More traffic means you can improve your landing pages more quickly...

Higher converting landing pages mean you get more people in the funnel...

More people in the funnel means more sales...

Repeat the process

Cheers,

Brad Spencer

[Harry Behrens]

Cool thoughts everybody.

Lee, currypuff, Brad - that's a great way of looking at it - like a snowball that grabs snow from both sides while it's rolling... starts out small but once it's rolling there's no stopping it... and that applies to both your business/finances and your own knowledge/mentality.

[jgrink]

Harry, I've started an IM Marketing folder and your post just got copied and pasted. Thanks for the great info.

[Mark Brian]

This is what every newbie who's starting from zero should do.

[boris s]

Thanks for this post. Puts some order in my head because as a relative newbie to IM, you tend to feel overwhelmed with all the trafic generating options...

[Alessandro Zamboni]

Thanks Harry, I really agree with your post.
I use Article Marketing and also PPC.
They can bring a huge income if used properly !

Goodbye by Alessandro Zamboni

[Marian Berghes]

i agree with you, but who said you can't start out with PPC IF you got the money?

Get a mentor or a solid PPC course and start with it right of the bat.

The only difference I see is the growth factor...IF you can learn PPC fast enough and start making some money, you will grow 10x faster then the guy doing article marketing and then PPC.

But like you said, start out with makes you comfortable at first.

[Doug Olson]

Yeah ok when I first started out in ppc I spent a lot of money and only had 3 sales in 6 months so it was a bad experience for me but I guess if I had the money to do it and more knowledge I would do it.Now adwords just takes my money whether theres clicks or not .Can you call that the slap or what?

[misterwrecker]

I'm sure a lot of people would rather start with PPC but cannot afford it. If you have money to spend and want to learn PPC thats beautiful but what hmbehrens is trying to say is that most newbies do not have money to feed the big G so start off with article marketing build your bankroll and then invest in PPC. Other marketers would also like to build up some money on free ways of generating traffic and then spend the "house money" on PPC.

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by jsandlin

But, I do have a question. When you guys send someone to a squeeze page and offer a bonus or something free, where do you send them after they submit their name and email?

Send them to an OTO.

TomG.

[Zack Lim]

I personally feel that it will be dependent on the time and money that the person is willing to invest into his online business.

I feel that both the methods work and it will be down to the individual to choose the method that he is comfortable in.

Just my humble opinion

Zack

[beautyuno1]

Thank you for you advice.

[keivn2]

It is seem like a very good plan or strategy for a starter.

a slightly off-topic:

so, how many article directory should I submit to ? and how many article as well?

I just need a roughly number to motivate myself.

[russellprisco]

Originally Posted by Marian Berghes

i agree with you, but who said you can't start out with PPC IF you got the money?

Get a mentor or a solid PPC course and start with it right of the bat.

The only difference I see is the growth factor...IF you can learn PPC fast enough and start making some money, you will grow 10x faster then the guy doing article marketing and then PPC.

But like you said, start out with makes you comfortable at first.

Well that's the trade off. You either have enough money to buy courses form expereinced, successful, marketers that typically cost a bit more and get to buy and use better and more automated tools (or outsourcing) or you don't have much money and have to learn from blog posts and forums from expereinced successful marketers (and put the pieces together) and do the grunt work yourself (although there are some great free tools out there too!) until you can do as the OP said and reinvest your profits back into your business.

I know many newbies sometimes want to have the best of everything, or feel like they have to know everything before they can get started, which is the exact opposite of what should be done sometimes.

The thing to do is pick a pony, gather up all of the available data (not all of the data) and then fail forward fast. Of course if you do have the money, the higher quality courses and tools will certainly help you achieve your goals faster...

But it's nice to know it can be done either way for anyone on any budget...

=)

~Russell Prisco =)

Great Post!

~Russell Prisco =)

[Learnanew]

Is it still possible to send PPC traffic to a squeeze page with Google Adwords? It seems like I can never get clicks lower than my Cost Per Subscriber to break even.

[Harry Behrens]

Originally Posted by russellprisco

I know many newbies sometimes want to have the best of everything, or feel like they have to know everything before they can get started, which is the exact opposite of what should be done sometimes.

The thing to do is pick a pony, gather up all of the available data (not all of the data) and then fail forward fast. Of course if you do have the money, the higher quality courses and tools will certainly help you achieve your goals faster...

Couldn't agree more Russell. The more you can define yourself and focus your efforts into one good avenue and avoid the distractions of "doing it all, having it all", the better you can progress and make inroads.

- Pick a good plan
- Gather information and get into a position where you can do something
- As soon as you can do ANYTHING, immediately do it
- See what happens, what went wrong, what went right, adjust and tweak
- Do it again

Btw, "Fail forward faster", I like that, nice

Originally Posted by Learnanew

Is it still possible to send PPC traffic to a squeeze page with Google Adwords? It seems like I can never get clicks lower than my Cost Per Subscriber to break even.

It can be done, but it's harder than it was before and it only gets harder with time. I've had some good response with Facebook PPC, Adwords is always a much trickier beast. One needs to study study study study like forever, which is one of the reasons for my original post in this thread. I recommend you "Double Digit CTR" by James Schramko as one good place to learn.

[Learnanew]

Yeah, I think I'm just gonna screw up Google and use both MSN and Yahoo to make up the traffic for a while, I'll come back when I feel like the numerous headaches.

[iwisuccess]

I'll suggest the "pretend you never had the money" approach to some clients

[hmigroupllc]

Harry is pretty on the spot. Article marketing is a great basis for starting traffic. And over time, if you outsource articles and have them posted regularly, you will see continual benefits from them. And they are much cheaper then PPC.

There is no comparing PPC to Article Marketing because they are distinctly different, and used completely differently. Bottom line is, if you can afford to pay for PPC and you KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING (or have someone who does) then you should be using PPC at your first opportunity.

Wayne Sharer