What's your investment in article marketing

by 36 replies
44
How much money do you spend in buying articles per month? What service / software (spinner or article distributor) do you use? How much money do you spend per month on that service / software?

I hope that's not much too ask
#main internet marketing discussion forum #article #investment #marketing
  • I never spend a penny for article marketing.I usually uses free article spinning software like spinnerchief and sometimes I manually spin my articles for article marketing.
    • [1] reply
    • Like Shuvo, I don't spend any money on article marketing. I do some manual spinning from time to time. However, I have considered posting articles on SEOLinkVine, which would cost me a few bucks a month.
      • [1] reply
  • Banned
    A fortune, in terms of time taken and "opportunity cost", which is my business's biggest "expense" by far - but none in terms of actual financial outlay because I do it myself - I wouldn't have been able to do it any other way, when I started.

    I write about 25/26 articles per month (give or take) and spend over 3 hours on each, on average. At about $100 per hour (which my time's certainly worth) that comes to about $8k per month of opportunity-cost (what I could be earning working for others instead of for myself). Fortunately, that work now produces much more income than that, though, and growing.

    Nothing. I wouldn't dream of spinning (I understand the difference between duplicate content and syndicated content) or mass-submitting (I'm an article marketer, not an article directory marketer).
    • [ 4 ] Thanks
    • [2] replies
    • Considering that a typical syndicated article of mine will generate $3,000-$7,000 per month in revenue (and often much more), the investment is comparatively negligible. This leaves a lot of wriggle room in getting the articles I want. Consequently, I have a staff of full time writers and researchers who are paid quite well. I am also a heavy article promoter - selling my articles to high authority outlets.
    • That ^^^ deserves a quote and a round of shots at the pub.

      For me, I had to stop writing when my site count passed 16, which was a few years back. I'm at 53 sites now and growing, 18 of which don't need regular content updates. If I was still writing at the rate I started - I'd be in a padded room already, bouncing off the walls and getting "special" pills.

      Still do around 20 articles a month, but that's mostly for new sites, launches, and soft-sell sequences in the autoresponder.

      The amount of money I spend is not worth mentioning, but to give a sense of scale it's in the thousands of dollars. Pretty much every article pays itself back within a day of being published or promoted and goes on to net me heaps more than I paid, so it's an expense I gladly pay. Articles cost me lowest 35.00, highest 120.00, and that's only because the writer and I have an awesome working relationship.

      Spinners are for a different kind of marketer than myself, I don't want to game the directories or expand the written word past it's original message. As Alexa said, I'm also an article marketer, not an article directory marketer.

      I'm of a mindset that says spinning does nothing but hurt your article's intrinsic value and ends up making you look foolish one way or another, at some point. The value of spun articles is negligible for my style of business. The content - as it applies to my niches - is extremely important to my success, so "cooking" the words is not an option. Don't get me wrong, spinning works for many, though I do believe the days of successful spinning are fast coming to an end.
      • [ 3 ] Thanks
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • Let's see...

      My first site went online just shy of 15 years ago. I've spent less than $1,000 total for things that I ended up using in my article marketing.

      Although many of the tools I've paid for were not intended for article marketing. That's just the use I put them to.

      For example, I use one of the projects in SEOElite to help me find potential authority sites which may be open to syndicating my stuff. Before that, I used the Zeus marketing robot, which was originally designed for finding link exchanges.

      I've also invested in some educational materials that have helped me step up my game as far as the actual writing goes. Books (the dead tree kind) on things like story-telling, script writing, public speaking, etc.

      Beyond that, my main investment has been what Alexa calls 'opportunity cost' and which I call 'sweat equity'...
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • bearing in mind not even 13,000 PR 1 links can get you a PR ranking of 5. What does this mean? 1 PR 5 link is worth more than 13,000 PR 1 links.

    Which would you rather do? Spam directory links, or have your articles syndicated on higher value pages.

    takes between 10-20 PR 5 links to get a PR of 5. I know that Google doesn't bother with PR anymore, but using PR is a good indication of how much weight a link carries.

    2-4 PR 6 links carry the same weight as 13,500-14,000 PR1 links. So how much weight do you think PR 0 links really carry? I would suspect needing links in the upper five-figures to six-figures for it to have much influence. Even if you can spam 10,000 links a month, only 1-3 k usually stick and so forth.

    Now who do you want some links from?
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • [3] replies
    • You're throwing out really exact figures there.. care to share where you based your research on?

      I use TheBestSpinner to spin my articles and send them via ArticleMarketingRobot. Pure automation. It may not be everyone's approach, but based on my results, it's still worth it despite Google's changes.
    • Banned
      On the contrary: he's giving only approximate figures, and isn't pretending to do otherwise.

      And he's right.


      I strongly agree with all of this.

      This matches (a) my own experience; (b) the reported experiences of others I trust (that's not many people ); and (c) the experience and beliefs of Peter Kent (the highly respected author of some well-researched, commercially published and bestselling books closely connected with the subject).

      For myself, I'd say (regarding the specific question asked half-way through the above quotation) that although it varies a bit from niche to niche and from keyword to keyword, of course, "six figures" would be a fairer overall approximation than "high five figures".

      I've said it before and I'll say it again - on one thing you can rely: when people switch - as I did myself - from the "quantity-based approach of non-context-relevant PR-0 backlinks" typified by spinning and mass-directory-submission to a "quality-based approach of context-relevant backlinks from better sites", they don't switch back.
      • [1] reply
    • So you are saying that we should write quality articles and hoping the article in syndicated to high PR sites? And if we use article distribution service, it means that we are distributing in lots of PR 0 site?


      • [1] reply
  • I heard that you cannot submit the same article to hundreds of directories because most directories will not accept any duplicate content.

    So my question is, if you want to submit to 50 top directories, do you have to submit 50 unique articles ? Can you really do it with any automated software or the best way to go is manual submission?
    • [1] reply
    • Banned
      I have good news for you: you were misinformed about that.

      First, it isn't true. "Buzzle" is the only article directory that requires previously unpublished content. Other article directores do accept "copies".

      Secondly, that isn't what "duplicate content" means, anyway, in this context: this would be "syndicated content", not "duplicate content". This thread explains the point clearly.

      No, you don't (with the exception of "Buzzle", but many successful, professional article marketers don't really count that one as a useful article directory at all, for this exact reason).

      The benefit in doing so, however, is small-ish. It would be a "backlinks only" benefit. And an article directory backlink, even from a "top directory" like EZA, is only a non-context-relevant, PR-0 backlink, and you'll need (at least) tens of thousands of them backlinking to your site to get anywhere worth talking about.

      "Article marketing" (to people who make a living from it) means a whole lot more than just "article directory marketing".
  • I would advise not to pay more that 5$ for a good article!
    Now 5 bucks for an article is common.
    For the quality which comes from Philipines or India - 3$
    Thank you!
    • [1] reply
    • 5 dollars for a well written well researched converting article is going to be a thing of the past, very quickly. Many warriors pay me 12-15 dollars per 500 word article and do so happily. They know when they purchase from me I will deliver words that are ready to post. there is no fluff, and i am sure they are converting as they would not continue to buy on a weekly basis. Yes you can get a 5 dollar article, but the good writers are the ones who will be in the greatest demand when marketers find out that their 5 dollar articles are being penalized now because of the Google overhaul. In fact several of my clients are requesting longer articles already because they are not seeing quite the same results they were with the standard 500 word ones. This is especially true for those who are affiliates of Amazon where the real players there are typically asking for 800-1000 word reviews as they are not nec. making for better SEO but the data is showing that a well written, in depth review are the ones that consistently lead to sales.

      Greg
  • As alexa says, they aren't exact figures. I've done several things to come to those conclutions. My own tests and have read others.

    Most notably of Courtney Tuttle who did a few case studies. I've also seen the corelation between several self-made charts by people who have tried to figure out the Google algo equation used to work page ranking out.

    The fact Google says you should not worry about PR is not 100% sound advice. Purely because, although Google does not rank a page based on its PR, or so they say..... They do rank a page based on the PR passed from others, and that way your PR builds up. This further clarifies the seriousness and popularity of your page as an authority. So I think PR still plays a huge part.

    So, to then further confirm this, I knew that achieving 10-20 PR 5 links would be very difficult for me (I did not accomplish this). However, I knew that achieving PR 0-2 was very possible for me, and if I followed the charts, provided they were correct, I should be able to rank for some terms.

    So going by charts, the start range for a PR 2 link was approximately 30. Now I've never been good with maths, so don't ask me the juice passed by a PR 0, but I know a PR 1 gives roughly somewhere between 0.34-0.40 PR. So for a PR0 I assumed between 0.10-0.15.

    Going by that, I figured I would need atleast 300 PR 0 links to outrank a page that I had found with a PR 2.

    Anyway, in the end I managed to send WAY more than 300 links. I never did outrank those pages with those PR 0 though.. But apparently the end range of a PR 2 is 164, which means my PR0 links might not have been enough anyway.

    So after a while, out of pure luck (I had given up on this project) I received a PR 3 link from someone who found my article relevant. I was writing about my experience with melanotan. a substance you inject into yourself to force melanin to act aggressively and appear more rapidly when exposed to sunlight (it did work at a minimum without direct sun contact), thus tanning you more than usual.

    Anyway my site did overtake this site eventually. What I then learnt is that, for every outbound link a page has its pagerank juice that it provides is divided. Meaning even though I was getting PR 0 links, for every other outbound link that page had, the page rank value that it passed divided.

    Now imagine getting links from Article Directories who provide several outbound links to a ton of its other partner sites. Not much value in their PR 0 pages now is there?

    Since then, I've pretty much reverse engineered my competitors backlinks and its outgoing links and usually have no problem outranking them.

    I still have a lot to learn, and since my maths isn't great, I can't confirm that those workings out are indeed correct, but they've done me well. And they've also done Courtney Tuttle well, and he's supposedly a good SEO.

    For example:

    Not to long ago, due to the discussions in the Google forum about the values of .infos, I was unsure of their ability to rank, something I asked alexa about. I do have a lot to learn, but everything I do learn, I apply logic to and come to my own conclusion.
    • [ 3 ] Thanks
  • Depending on the niche, I sometimes spend about $100 every couple months for 30 or so articles.

    Gives me some extra visitors / content on my websites.
  • Btw, anyone who knows a great resource for learning how to structure your sentences properly and allow them to flow please do tell me. Help with grammar wouldn't go a miss either, I keep cringing when I re-read anything I type lol.
  • or books even, I'm open to suggestions!

    *EDIT* I blame this on originating from SPAIN, obviously the first 10 years I spent living in spain are affecting my ability to write good English, clearly...
    • [2] replies
  • It all depends on how many articles do you submitted a day and how many article directories do you submit to?

    These are the key factors that determine the cost of article marketing.

    I look at this as investment rather cost of marketing.
  • I write all of my own articles, however, I am definitely no "pro" at it. Just getting started. My opinion would be that as long as your profit more than covers the cost of the article written for you, than it would be a win.
Join the discussion

Next Topics on Trending Feed