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How Would You Out-Source Your Article Marketing?

by coluden
9 replies
Hi IMer's

I have a question for anyone who feels qualified to answer, either from experience or from a base of sound IM knowledge:


"If you decide right now, to promote a website using only article marketing, and you have a budget of no more than $200/month to do this, how would you out-source this task?

Here are some loose parameters that I am thinking about:

** No fewer than 50 500-word articles a month, but as many as possible
** Would target the best article directories only (whatever that number may be)
** Obviously, I'd be looking for Direct traffic and SEO benefits from all articles
** Not fully sold on Spinning but not adverse to it either
** Would need to have quality articles created with tasteful and effective bio boxes

If you have a minute and would like to share your thoughts, I would be grateful.
Please, this is not a solicitation for a quotation. I am looking for ideas only
at this time, but would appreciate your honest opinion, especially if you've done
something like this in the recent past.


Thanks

coluden
#article #marketing #outsource
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by coluden View Post

    If you have a minute and would like to share your thoughts, I would be grateful.
    It seems from some of your comments above that you may possibly be a little confused about how "article marketing" works. This little thread might be helpful to you. It's only short, but it contains many links which might clarify a lot for you: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ries-work.html
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  • Profile picture of the author FitnessNut
    Or you could do it ninja style and write 1 article a day and use software and services around $200 a month and totally kick ass....

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    • Profile picture of the author celente
      Originally Posted by FitnessNut View Post

      Or you could do it ninja style and write 1 article a day and use software and services around $200 a month and totally kick ass....
      this is totally true.

      There are far too many people still trying to put out junk there. If you can concentrate on 1 high quality article a day, it is 1000 time better than just writing junk and spinning that junk which many newbies still seem to be doing.

      I have actually paid up to $80 for an article before. It might have cost me ever more...but that article still brings in subscribers and sales years later. So I think I got it for a bargain...its high quality and what people in that particular niche were after. It just hit the spot...and that is what you should be aiming for with your articles.
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        On a $200/month budget?

        If I was not capable of writing my own articles, I would take half and hire 10-15 good quality articles written, specifically as work for hire (meaning you own all rights).

        The remaining $100 would go to an assistant who would be trained to scour the web and build a syndication network - people to whom I could send those new articles every month with a high expectation of having a good number of them published. Said assistant would also handle much of the mechanical work - posting the articles to my sites, verifying that they have been indexed, contacting the network, etc. I would expect that to take a few hours a month. The remaining time would be spent building the network.

        As profits increased, the system would be scaled up. Particularly the part involving expanding the network.

        Such a plan would provide both direct traffic of good quality and better links than are typically found through posting to directories.
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  • Profile picture of the author kposs
    Well, you kind of need to make a decision here.

    1) Do you want to get direct traffic from the articles themselves or

    2) Do you want to distribute the articles in order to get backlinks to your site, raise your site's rankings and get traffic from the search results.

    They're not 100% mutually exclusive, but you need to clarify your goals from the get-go.

    If you're going after direct traffic, then you might want to concentrate on contacting blog owners in your niche for guest blogging. Article directories are only going to get you so far. And you're relying on them to get the page ranked. Before EzineArticles and similar was blown out of the water, that was probably a good strategy. I've always thought it made more sense to use SEO to get the article ranked on a blog I own rather than an article directory that someone else owns.

    If you're interested in backlinks to help your rankings, then your best bet is to distribute articles via private blog networks - UAW, Article Ranks, etc. Your goal in this case is the widest distribution on privately owned blogs. You'll get some article directories in there too. Here spinning is fine, and often expected.
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  • Profile picture of the author KimboJim
    There are plenty of free services to help you distribute your articles, so I am not going to say anything on that.

    However, what I know more about is getting those article written. Obviously the cheapest way is doing it yourself, but that can take days. However, if you go over to iWriter, you can get a 500 word article for $3. I have no idea how good they are, but you can get your 50 articles and have $50 left over for whatever else you need.
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  • Profile picture of the author NicoleBeckett
    Definitely take a look at the thread Alexa linked to, in order to make sure that you understand exactly how to go about "article marketing" instead of what she so accurately calls "article directory marketing". They are two very different things, and if you don't use the article directories as a tool in your arsenal (rather than as your entire arsenal), you may be very disappointed with your results.

    That being said, here's what I would suggest:

    - As long as you're ready, willing, and able to publish 50 awesome, kick-butt 500-word articles every month, go for it. If you think that 50 is just some kind of "magic" number you need to hit (even if the articles themselves are "just OK"), scale the number back and focus on higher-quality (even if it means publishing half that or 1/4 of that).

    - Be willing to try out several different article directories. Different article directories will give you different results. Don't just take other people's word for it as to which ones are the best. You may hate a directory that gives me great results, or vice versa. Try out a bunch of the top ones on this list, and see which ones you like. (And remember that the PR you see on that list is the PR of the directories' home pages, not the pages your articles will be published on. Each article goes on its own individual page that has PR0.)

    - Don't try to get your SEO benefits from the article directories themselves. Instead, get your SEO benefits from the syndication opportunities that you get through the article directories. That's where the real meat of your SEO boost is going to come from.

    - Become adverse to spinning. I mean it
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    • Profile picture of the author coluden
      Sounds like great advice Nicole, and you took some time to contemplate my question. I am grateful. I'll re-read and check out your resources.

      Gratefully,
      coluden
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  • Profile picture of the author coluden
    Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to respond so far. As marketing online continuously evolve, many tools and tactics that were effective last year have lost their competitive edge completely. It is good to hear from you the 'experts' who keep up with what works today.

    Gratefully,
    coluden
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