Article Syndication for a Niche

In your emails.

Unless you're an Amazon affiliate (because they don't allow that).

I've never used either, and wouldn't want to. I do vary my anchor-text, though. ("Here is the full report" would be dreadful, I think, for article marketing traffic/subscribers!).

I've sometimes put one affiliate-link in the free report. In those cases, it's been a smallish, low-key one, fairly near the end, so that nobody can ever possibly imagine that my main purpose in circulating the "free report" was for people to click on that. Sometimes I do it; sometimes I don't. I could write a book about the pluses and minuses, advantages and disadvantages, complications and benefits, and so on, but the bottom line is that I just don't know whether or not it's a good thing to do, and it's very difficult indeed to work out.

I strongly advise against putting affiliate links in blog posts on the site, because with the traffic demographics you're aiming to attract via article marketing, the last thing you want to look like is "just another marketer".

I also have affiliate-links on my sites, but not always in places where readers/visitors/subscribers are likely to find them until they've started reading my emails.

I do sell some products to people who click on affiliate-links on my sites (but not really "in posts"). People do click those links. But the people who click those links and buy are the people who got to those links by following something in an email.

(Again, the answer's necessarily different with Amazon links, because of the prohibition against including them in emails).

If you do enough of anything, there's likely to be some value in it, isn't there?

I think the question is whether the time and effort you'd spend doing that would produce returns worth talking about in income terms (not "in traffic terms", of course!).

For myself, that's time and effort I can spend in much more profitable activities.

It's one of those questions to which many people like to say "both" and "all", but for me, that's sometimes the wrong answer, because of the opportunity-cost.

I get floods of search-engine traffic (and so will you, probably, if you achieve any significant success with article marketing, because high rankings for a variety of keywords - planned or not - is a more-or-less inescapable result of successful syndication to relevant sites), but I don't make enough income from that traffic to make it worth talking about: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post8659398

It is for me. (Top left is also good.)

Every single time I've split-tested over a 6-month period (which I must admit I've done in only four of my niches, but the traffic demographics are the same in all my others, too, so I think the conclusions are still fully valid and applicable), squeeze pages have built me bigger lists that produce less income. Explained here: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7939758

I don't know of any, and I think it's pretty unlikely. (It's not at all easy to imagine that a successful article syndicator would be wanting to sell a WSO?!).

Good luck!

I could go through your questions one by one, but I would mostly be repeating what's already here.

Instead, I'm going to address your last question. Skip the WSOs for now and head over to Amazon and order a copy of Jeff Walker's Launch book. Study the chapter on the "sideways sales letter" and then think about how you could apply that to affiliate offers in your emails.

I don't have any first hand data - yet - but experience tells me that it should work like gangbusters.

Social media can be very rewarding. I answered a post a few days ago with my take on it. Since the guy asking about social media had already made up his mind it was a waste of time he didn't acknowledge my post. I've edited it slightly but it's something you might want to consider.

...take Warrior Forum as an example. If you're selling anything related to MMO this is a thriving little self contained ecosystem just swarming with prospects. All you need to do is figure out what they want and give it to them.

Same thing goes for eBay.

Same thing goes for Amazon Kindle.

Same thing with Twitter and Facebook.

What do all of these venues have in common? People that are devoted to hanging out and shopping there. Millions and millions of them.

So what does this have to do with Social Media? Everything. Facebook keeps extensive records on users. So one way to use social media is by figuring out your demographics and putting ads in front of them.

But that's not all you can do. You can do it manually or you can get software to search the entire site for people and groups devoted to what you're doing. And then you go to the hottest sites and schmooze. What I mean is you become part of the community and share content with some of the heavy hitters and build relationships that way. Then they share content with you.

One thing I never forget is that it's always going to come back to providing great value with your content. But you don't necessarily have to do that exclusively through your site. You can go to the various little ecosystems out there and actually rub elbows with people interested in your stuff, just like certain smart marketers do here.

So many people think all there is to Facebook is gathering up a bunch of silly Likes. That's only a small part of the game.

Facebook is a huge site but you can isolate your prospects and identify your own ecosystem for your target market and sell them stuff there or point them back to your own site. And yes, this will take time away from your site but it's time well spent.

This isn't rocket science. I've gotta laugh at the people who are so hell bent on SEO, where they're out there trying to rank with billions and billions of other pages. Why not do the smart thing and identify your market within a larger market and then give them what they want?

Thanks, all, for the kind of brilliant responses I expected.

I read up on the Sideways Sales Letter and it really looks like the author has the presell concept down to a science. It's really about spreading good, valuable content over three emails before moving into any kind of sales process. I put the rest of the Launch book on my to-do list.

I am a decent writer, but I need to step up my game a little bit. I have been told told my writing is a bit dry in the past. I probably need to sprinkle a bit more humor and opinion throughout my reports and articles to establish more rapport.

Great post on social media. A lot for me to learn here. I think social media is Phase 2 for me once I get rolling.

This is all very fun and exciting. Hopefully none of you experts are in the niche I'm targeting. Any thoughts on scoping out the most successful competition that anyone wants to share? There's quite a few other blogs/sites in my niche but it's hard to see who's making the money.

Any thoughts on the use of links to videos in the email sequence? I guess it probably depends on the niche and target market. Videos seem time intensive to create.

Great advise offered. Just remember to tweak everything you do.