Article Marketing - Newbie

Um, not sure where you heard the one article a month thing. Possibly if you submit that one article to 50 or so directories and it is a darn good article.

Most people I'm familiar with do multiple articles on a regular basis and not all are guaranteed to make you money.

I think it is near impossible to figure an average as each niche is so different and research needs to be done to find a sub niche with specific keywords that might be the honey to attract the flies.

On the flip side, if you like to write and can crank out 4-5 articles a day and do your keyword research along with perhaps creating a blog and submitting your stuff to some other places like squidoo and hub pages you could see results within a couple of weeks.

I think article marketing takes TIME to grow, but if you keep cranking on it you can do really well over time and it will continue to give you a steady income growth if you continue on it religiously.

Article marketing is deceptive when you just think about the basic elements. Write articles, post them around, get visitors, make money. If it was only that easy! You have to really work on every step of that seemingly simple process. The articles you write need to be based on words and phrases that people search for at Google, Yahoo, Bing. etc. And they need to entice the reader to click the link to your site at the end. Not as easy as it sounds!

And then, after you get good at those 2 things, the hardest part is still waiting for you.... converting visitors into buyers. This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. You might be good at getting visitors to your site, but if you can't make them get their wallets and purses out, big deal.

Of course, some people send visitors to an affiliate landing page where they hope the vendor they're affiliated with has a sales page good enough to make a decent conversion rate. And that's another thing that takes work. You have to test that out by trying several vendors and tracking results.

I guess the lesson here is that article marketing works, but it's not gonna be something to make you really quick money unless you get really lucky or already know how to accomplish each major step in short order.

I can't tell you how many people I've known over the years who were all 'gung ho' and wrote a ton of articles, then ended up bitter, burned out, and ready to get a job. There's so much more to it than being able to write a lot.

I highly recommend that you invest some time and maybe even a bit of money in a good education about doing article marketing effectively. It can make you good money, but you can also spin your wheels and burn out faster than just about any other form of online marketing, if you aren't careful.

John

A great deal of information on article marketing is posted here --> http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...eza-first.html <-- $1,000's worth of information all for free... Take the time to read the entire thread and read it a few times if needed..

James

The number that I have read that I think seems the most accurate is that you can expect one sale for every 100 referrals.

That will allow you to do your own math. If one article generates 250 views a month and a 20% click through rate. Then you should get a sale for every 8 articles in a month. However, if your articles generate a higher click through rate or more views then you would do better.

Try it and see how your articles convert.

Thanks for the info. It is appreciated.

Hi Probizzone and welcome to the forum!

I'm a newbie too and similarly interested in article marketing. I've been reading around the topic and posting articles to numerous directories clearly has a number of benefits. I've just returned from Ezine having just posted my first article which is a great feeling!

The time it takes to receive traffic from article posting, and percentage of sales is nearly impossible to guess at unless you know the keyword and market involved, the quality of the articles and especially the resource box at the bottom of the article that contains the link back to your site.

Articles posted to directories can kind of work on two levels. Firstly they can generate organic traffic to your site which is what I think you were mainly referring to. People will come across your articles either directly from search engines or organically from other sites. If they like what they read or are curious they may click through the links placed in the article to arrive at your site, where they may or may not click through again or buy into something you are trying to sell.

The other benefit of article posting, and the bit that I'm mostly interested in, is that articles add backlinks and authority to your site. If your site is targeting a particular keyword, then articles focused on this keyword and linking to your site will help your own site rank in the search engines. The success of this almost completely depends on the number of people searching for the keyword and the competition in terms of sites containing content associated with that keyword.

Therefore even if articles do not refer many customers directly to your site, they might be indirectly helping you by generating decent amounts of search engine traffic to your site.

Either way, once they arrive you have to decide what to do with them. Get them to opt in to a list, click on an affiliate link, advert, your own product or something else.

My main advice is to do your research on your chosen topic very thoroughly before you start.

Article Marketing does work, and you will find success in numbers.

One good method is to pick a product. Then do keyword research. Find 25 preferably long tail keywords with decent traffic volumes.

Write a natural article for each one of the keywords. Submit them to either your own blog, or Ezine articles. Concentrate on building backlinks to the articles. Interlinking when necessary.

The hardest part is getting listed on the front page of the search engines, put with a while optimized page, + some backlinks for a long tail keyword, you should have no problem after a few weeks.

You will begin to see traffic trickle into your articles from Search Engines. The key is to write helpful information to move internet screen browsers into buying customers.

John

Hi I know finding the right way to promote your stuff can be really confusing.
I found a guide that is just perfect for someone who is starting out. Its called Unstoppable Listbuilding by Justin Mitchie and its really good. In the third chapter it talks about article marketing and gives you some good places to put your articles out. Let me know if you want a copy

Don't get too disheartened by some of the comments here, article marketing definitely works.

In terms of your question about average time to make a sale, you need to understand that your role as an affiliate isn't to make sales, its to send targeted traffic to the vendors sales page. They do the selling, you just find people that might be interested in the product, and show them where it is.

There isn't any average, or normal timeframe to make a sale, but consider this.

If you're promoting a product about weight loss, and you write 10 articles about weight loss, and each of those articles sends 10 visits to the merchant's page, you will have sent 100 targeted visitors to a product that interests them.

If the sales page converts at 1%, and you send 100 visitors, it shouldn't take a great deal more than this number of visitors to make 1 sale. Similarly, if you send 1000 visitors you should be making around 10 sales.

As for getting people to click the link at the end of your article, the main thing you should be focusing on is arousing their curiosity. The article should be a teaser almost, providing value, but saying you can get even more value if you take a look at "insert affiliate link here".

good luck!

I write an average of an article a day. It really is a science, as John explained above. I always try to incorporate all the criteria he mentioned - keyword research, strong call to action, a salespage that converts. It takes time, multiple articles, and knowing how to make it work for you.

I keep learning every day and trying to improve on my strategies. My main focus is to give as much information and valuable content as I can.

So I would encourage you to keep writing articles, keeping in mind all the good advice you receive, and just keep learning as you go.

Make sure to distribute your articles to article directories, social bookmarkings and ezines. Get as much exposure as possible.

I use article marketing to drive traffic to my little niche sites. I submit as many articles as I can if I have them to submit. Article marketing and internet marketing are not get rich quick things, unless you have been at it a while and know how to do somethings, and do them right.
Personally my stuff takes a little while for the traffic to start coming to my sites so I usually see a sale by the end of the first month.

Lots of different ways to approach article marketing. From the make sure every article is magazine quality, mass article production, a combination of the two or everything in between. No matter what approach to use proper keyword research is a huge thing to be sure of. Because without it you won't maximize your results no matter what methods you use.