Just keep going with articles?

26 replies
I have 269 articles with 20% click through rate overall, this has generated 5$ / day in the last
year (clickbank) some google traffic but mostly from traffic.

Should I keep going with articles or should I try something else? I have put in a lot of work and sweat and alos building backlinks to these,research keywords, I find articles is a hit and miss, the traffic from these varies alot.

Should I continue outsource and submit to ezine, if I want to double my income It seam I need to write 2421 more articles, lol?

Any advice?

Sincerely
Karl
#articles
  • Profile picture of the author Wide
    That seems like a lot of articles.
    How much traffic do you get from your current 269 articles?
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  • Profile picture of the author Challe77
    I don´t know exactly but I get about 20-30 hops / day
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  • Profile picture of the author Wide
    20% clickrate.
    That means your articles get 100-150 views per day.

    Less than 1 view average per article.
    That's low
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  • Profile picture of the author Challe77
    yes, but I have done everything to hire good article writers that can write good resource boxes, do you have any links to other good article writers you hire yourself?
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  • Profile picture of the author suhsia329
    Hi Challe77,

    Maybe you can try this technique: content distribution ...
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Hi Karl,

    Does this little post help you at all? http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5210243

    And/or if not, then maybe posts #2 and #6 of this little thread (I suggest it because at the moment you're trying to use an article directory for a purpose for which it was never designed at all, and at which it's actually terribly ill-equipped to serve you) ... http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ries-work.html

    Absolutely no criticism implied at all, but I do think it would be far more helpful for you to try to identify what's going wrong, than to try to scale up something which isn't really working in the first place ...

    Your 20% CTR means you're losing the other 80% of your traffic.

    That's happening because you're effectively sending your traffic from a search engine to an article directory, rather than to your own site. If you sent it to your site instead, you'd have 5 times as much of it, even without changing your articles at all. The collection of links in this thread, if you can plough through them all (plenty of reading there!), explain how to send it to your own site instead, if that helps. ("Your own site", in this context, can even be a one-page blog - it can be something you can set up in an hour.)
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    • Profile picture of the author AnniePot
      ^ ^ ^ Alexa's reply to you.

      As she has so rightly suggested, look at your figures from the other side of the fence: okay, you are getting a 20% click-through rate, but the remaining 80% are gone - lost for ever.

      You should rethink your strategies completely. Publish all your work on your own blog/website; get it indexed by Google, and only then (maybe) publish it on Ezine Articles.

      Put all your efforts into driving viewers to the articles on your own website, not those you've published on Ezine Articles, where, as you've already discovered, 80% disappear into a big, black hole.

      You should also use your own website to begin building a list. Offer an enticing free give-away in exchange for their email addresses, and then soft sell to them in your follow-up emails.

      Never make your articles a hard sell. You should use these to pre-sell and establish yourself as a knowledgeable source of good information worth returning to. Your content should educate, entertain and empower - always.
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  • Profile picture of the author Challe77
    Alexa - what do you mean sending to an article directory, this is how article marketing works, or not?, or do you suggest I do seo instead?, Isn´t it alot harder to rank your own site instead of using a well know site such as an article directory? (I will look at the post too)
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      Alexa - what do you mean sending to an article directory, this is how article marketing works, or not?
      No. It isn't at all.

      I think you're confusing "article marketing" and "article directory marketing". Article directory marketing doesn't work at all, for most people, most of the time. They nearly all have the exact problems you describe. They're expecting article directories to do something they were never set up to do and are barely able to do at all.

      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      Isn´t it alot harder to rank your own site instead of using a well know site such as an article directory?
      No, not at all, Karl. That's what many people think, but it isn't true. And of course, you keep far more of the traffic if you do it that way, as simple arithmetic will show you.

      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      (I will look at the post too)
      I think this will help you! You'll find all these questions answered, that way ...
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  • Profile picture of the author Challe77
    ok, thanks for clearing things out, so article marketing mean articles/blog posts on your site.

    But In my experience I have had zero luck in making my articles rank high on my site in order to bring in traffic (regular sites and wordpress blogs), I´ve had more luck with ezine, if you can call me lucky, I do build a list too

    What I would want the most is a personal coach who can help me get an overview and tell me what to do, but I appreciate all the advice here too
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    • Profile picture of the author AnniePot
      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      .....What I would want the most is a personal coach who can help me get an overview and tell me what to do, but I appreciate all the advice here too
      You don't need a personal coach. Just perform a search here on Alexa Smith and read everything she has contributed. Nothing else is necessary.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      In my experience I have had zero luck in making my articles rank high on my site
      Karl, article marketing is not primarily about SEO. It's about getting your work in front of targeted traffic.

      No article marketer wants their potential customers to put into a search engine a keyword from an article and find an article directory copy, instead of the copy originally indexed on your own site. And the problem you're describing here is the reason nobody wants that.

      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      I do build a list too
      Ok ... well, this is good, anyway.

      But it seems that you're building it from the opt-ins derived from the 20% of your traffic that ever gets as far as your opt-in page, rather than from the opt-ins derived from 100% of your potential traffic?

      Does this one-post overview of "article marketing" help? http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    I think that you should keep going and strive for 1000 articles. Then when you reach that goal, make your next goal 2000 etc.

    I would not recommend that you promote clickbank offers. You should find one good MLM opportunity program and build a downline because on CB, you are making the vendor rich. They get duplication with their product from all of their customers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Rose Anderson
    You could put some of the articles together and re-write them to form an ebook. Then use the ebook as a give-away to build your list.

    Rose
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  • Profile picture of the author mlord10
    I used to write a lot of articles on ezinarticles.com (over 800 & that doesn't include all the articles under pen names) and I can tell you that if I had it to do all over again, this is definitely not how I would leverage my content...

    In the past, ezinearticles.com provided an easy way for you to rank your articles on the first page of Google for some decent keywords and get steady traffic...and I made good money doing this.

    However, Alexa & others are right... it is not the smartest strategy, & you are much better off building sites around specific products/niches/keywords and driving traffic to these sites that you OWN.

    EA has gone downhill substantially, and as a result they simply do not provide the benefit they used to provide to help you rank content. I'll be the first to admit that at one time I was on the other side of the fence on this issue...because it worked for me. You can still submit content to ezinearticles and get traffic, but it should not be considered a primary traffic source in my opinion.

    However, things change online and you must be able to adapt to what is currently working, and putting high-quality content on your own site will not only help you make more money, but you are also created a tangible asset that you could one day sell for a nice sum of money.
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  • Profile picture of the author dougiescot06
    Thanks guys. Newbie to the forum, Im a freelance journalist, studying HND Practical Journalism at Cardonald College, Glasgow and i am looking for ways to promote my work and receive cash for writing articles. You have given me great insight. Cheers
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  • Profile picture of the author Challe77
    Alexa- I am not sure I understand you, getting my work in front of targeted traffic means I have to get backlinks to my articles on my site so they rank better in my search engines when people search, right? (hopefully the articles show up for the keyword they are searching for but I have very hard to achieve it)

    I don´t want to sound negative but when you have tried to follow every advice and you just don´t get any response from your efforts you just naturally gets burned out if you keep trying. This I why I will try to outsource most of what is possible if I just know what to do.

    Do you suggest I hire someone at freelancer to seo, backlinks, etc so my articles ranks higher, I also think I need help with finding good keywords, must of what I try fails so I feel I want to keep my hands away from most of the work, I sometimes feels like I can´t succeed in IM even if my life depended on it, lol
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      getting my work in front of targeted traffic means I have to get backlinks to my articles on my site so they rank better in my search engines when people search, right?
      No; not necessarily.

      Search engines aren't the only source of traffic.

      Here's a one-post summary of how I get my work in front of targeted traffic: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794

      When you get to the last paragraph of that post, you'll see that I do get some search-engine traffic as well. It's only about 20% of my traffic, but even that 20% of my total traffic is still overwhelmingly more traffic than I ever got when I was trying to use Ezine Articles as you're trying to use it now.

      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      I don´t want to sound negative but when you have tried to follow every advice and you just don´t get any response from your efforts you just naturally gets burned out if you keep trying.
      I hear you, Karl.

      I think the problem here is that you're trying to use articles as a method of SEO.

      As you can see from all the hundreds of threads here with titles like "Article Marketing Is Dead", it isn't only you for whom that doesn't work. It's everyone else, too. It's just a terrible musiness model.

      Where they're all mistaken, of course, is that what they describe as "article marketing" actually isn't article marketing at all: it's only "article directory marketing": they're trying (just as you have been) to use article directories for their own traffic. And they imagine that what they're doing is "article marketing". (It isn't).

      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      This I why I will try to outsource most of what is possible if I just know what to do.
      Respectfully, I don't understand how outsourcing it is going to solve that problem for you, Karl.

      If it helps you at all, I strongly recommend this e-book, which describes what "article marketing" is and how to do it: Turn Words Into Traffic (that's not an affiliate link, of course).

      And I think that reading slowly through this post and the various threads linked to inside it will also give you a pretty good perspective on the subject.

      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      Do you suggest I hire someone at freelancer to seo, backlinks, etc so my articles ranks higher
      No, I don't.

      I suggest that you syndicate your articles to targeted traffic and stop depending on search-engine traffic. I also don't want to sound negative, but the reality is that businesses which depend on Google for their primary traffic can only ever be one algorithm-change away from an accident. :p
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  • Profile picture of the author revstan
    Just spend the 5 a day on hiring a content writer. This way your content grows and makes more money a day, wich you can keep or hire more writers, without doing a thing.


    Simple Stan
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    • Profile picture of the author Jnelson
      Since you have abundant content, it would be good to add a blog to your site and get all those articles posted back to your site. Adding fresh content regularly will also help in raising the SERP and chances of driving good amount of organic traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author erob
    This is something that I found to be true about content on the web. I started a blog and submitted Info everyday then pinged the blog. I currently have about 33 post, but the thing is I have started to see traffic from yahoo,bing, and google. Also I submitted my site link to these three search engine to be included in search results. I used googles own blogger so try taking your articles and starting a blog on a certain niche. The more post the better its like a keyword dragnet over the web the more post the more chance of catching visitors. Also you can use adsense on blogger because it is a google product.
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  • Profile picture of the author Challe77
    Alexa- ok I appreciate all your advice and I try not get information overload, but what is wrong with outsourcing articles?, english is not my first language and therefore I feel someone more qualified should do the job.

    How does syndication work exactly (is that in the ebook too?), I read in your post that you sent one to your network, but I don´t have any network (but I do have a wordpress blog which receives auto content from other people)
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      Alexa- ok I appreciate all your advice and I try not get information overload, but what is wrong with outsourcing articles?
      Nothing at all, Karl - apologies for the confusion. I wasn't trying to suggest that there's anything wrong with outsourcing the articles.

      It just isn't a solution to the problem you describe, which arises from the fact that you're trying to use the article directory for its own traffic, and as a result of this you're losing 80% of your traffic, as Annie and I were explaining above. Having a different person write the articles won't alter that, I think (or won't alter it very much).

      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      english is not my first language and therefore I feel someone more qualified should do the job.
      We probably all lost sight of that, because your English is so good ... but fair enough.

      Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

      How does syndication work exactly (is that in the ebook too?), I read in your post that you sent one to your network, but I don´t have any network
      It is in that e-book, but also in the post you saw. Syndication is also what article directories exist for, though.

      Sorry if I seem to be "going on about it", but they're not there for the purpose for which you're trying, at the moment, to use them - and that impacts on whether or not they can do the job you want them to do (i.e. "produce enough traffic").
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  • Profile picture of the author protectyoursales
    Originally Posted by Challe77 View Post

    Alexa- ok I appreciate all your advice and I try not get information overload, but what is wrong with outsourcing articles?, english is not my first language and therefore I feel someone more qualified should do the job.

    How does syndication work exactly (is that in the ebook too?), I read in your post that you sent one to your network, but I don´t have any network (but I do have a wordpress blog which receives auto content from other people)
    Here's exactly how the life of an article should go, ideally:

    1. You write the article

    2. You publish the article on your site; with the Caffeine update there is very little of the 'waiting for indexation' that you used to have to do

    3. You take that article you just published on your site, add on a resource box that points to whatever page(s) on your website you want to promote, and then submit it to EZA (recommended) and a couple others if you want (optional)

    4. Webmasters who don't like writing keep a constant eye on EZA (or any other article directory) for articles that they can use on their own websites and in their own e-zines (This is the REAL reason why article directories exist...To give webmasters a way to get content without writing it)

    5. Your article is republished on some other peoples' blogs or in their e-zines, resource box still intact, and you get interested, niche relevant traffic sent to your website!

    6. Rinse and repeat!

    It's a pretty easy process. Write it, publish it, submit it. There's other stuff you CAN do on top of that, but that WILL get you better results than what you're doing now.
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  • Profile picture of the author Challe77
    I´ve actually think I´ve done all those steps, submitted to my site first, then to ezine.

    But I don´t think any of my articles have been redistributed, and It´s hard to troubleshoot when I don´t know the reason, could be uninteresting headline or content, too short content, wrong niche, who knows...
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