Is Article Marketing still worth the investment?

It depends on how you define article marketing. If you define it as using article sites for backlinks, that method is dead in the water after Penguin and Panda. If you define it as syndication, it depends on where you post your articles.

Yes, that's true. You'll have a reliable enough indication, though, in a lot less time than that. But you're right that it's not "immediate" (like, for example, PPC advertising).

That's one thing you don't have to worry about: article marketing doesn't depend on Google. It's a traffic generation method in its own right, which transcends SEO. This post explains why/how: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794

You mean getting axed by Google? Well, again that affects only SEO traffic, not article marketing traffic. I've been an article marketer for 4 years, and if Google completely de-indexed all my sites tomorrow morning, I think it would take away only just over 5% of my income. (Possibly even less, actually, because not all SEO traffic is Google traffic anyway).

It's like everything else: it is for some people.

One thing's for sure: if you're not writing the articles yourself, then you need a writer who understands how article marketing works, not someone who's used to writing "SEO articles". The idea of trying to use article directories for the "benefit" of their own backlinks and/or even their own traffic is stone dead, for sure. (Though to be fair, neither was ever their intended purpose anyway: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872 ).

Alexa, that was a very great reply and informative, as I'm looking ways to get away from ooogly googly strict policy stuff on seo and adwords

Well be sure to include article marketing in my mix

Always enlightening Alexa.

I'm trying to think of an effective way to use a bulk order of 1,000 "SEO articles" at the $5 to $10 level of quality, but I just can't.

There are already literal-billions of pointless, poorly written articles/pages online right now... What impact are you going to make with 1,000 more? Not much. Google has explicitly said again and again that it has no interest in this kind of content. And neither do readers.

No matter how you define article marketing, for it to be profitable in any sense of the word you're going to need (A) really good content that people actually enjoy reading, (B) a relevant place to publish that content with a pre-existing audience, and (C) a seductive offer to convert that content into leads.

Chances are that if you have those three things in place, then you're already pretty well equipped to analyze the effect of your article syndication/marketing/publishing efforts. Just my two cents.

I've really soured on article marketing...I just can't make it work anymore. The problem is, you get your articles out there and ranking etc, then Google changes their algorithm and axes your articles...then you're looking at thousands of dollars and hours down the drain virtually over night.

It's just not worth it to me anymore...

I would think if you're going to pay a ton of money for articles, you would know exactly what to do with them and you would know exactly how to maximize the profit of each article due to already having done it.

Otherwise, not sure why you would even consider buying 1000 articles all at once.

Buy one by one as you need, if it's working for you as you go along.

If you're going to invest money like that I would suggest doing short Youtube videos instead.

Video is a much hotter medium right now.

Better hire a freelancer than buying and wasting a big amount of money like that. Plus, your articles will be unique.

I personally would never buying $10,000 worth of articles. Just rnemmeber your not playing the lottery and just becasue you have so many articles doesn't mean much.

You'd be better off in my opinion find a few places to do some guest blogging instead of hammering the internet with a bunch of articles. I would also consider your monetization strategy, do you know how well your offers convert. Do you know your EPC or are you just throwing a hail-mary and hoping fro the best?

Depends on how high in demand your keywords or markets you're writing on are. If the information are in high demand you will benefit from visitors the articles will be bringing to your site. Seo will just be a bonus not the intention as focus in seo can cause a lot of lost if google decides.

Hammering out articles like a monkey chained to a typewriter used to be a way to make money, but those were the glory days of cheap ways to make money like a hack. It's no longer kosher on Google, which is both bad and good. It forces us to become real writers and content providers.

Article marketing will always be worth the investment as long as it's done correctly. Article Directory marketing is pretty much dead!

You can't really predict the R.O.I so I suggest you don't invest all that money into it!

I don't agree with the "you should know with 100 articles"! I think it comes from Ezine and what you need is to get your articles in front of the right audience! There is also syndication playing a big part and with article marketing there are so many variables that I have stopped making "prognosis" as I call it! Lol!

I work hard, try and if it doesn't work , I ask myself why and adapt accordingly!

Article marketing is still and will remain a great way of driving traffic to a site but just like with everything else, you need to change and adapt and yes it takes longer than PPC or other paid methods. However, a good article can go a long way! There is a element of luck as well, I believe!

My 2 cents!

Yoan

And, I don't agree with people saying that it's best to invest in Youtube videos! Honestly, most of them are boring, the music sucks, the background noise is annoying, the voices, the content- if content there is- is rehashed! And, I am being kind! A survey I read said that people go to Youtube for videos about how to set up wordpress etc but can you imagine a video on fibroids or progesterone cream???? Honestly? Videos can be good when you post them on your own blog and interact with your subscribers/community but otherwise...no, no, no!!

Yoan

Hi,

Personally I wouldn't invest in articles because you simply don't know what you're getting in return, maybe a load of old nonsense that is very poor quality.

Instead, write the 400+ word articles yourself, throw in your personality, maybe a little humour and interesting information that provides solutions to your readers problems.

Forget all about Panda, Penguin and the Google updates rubbish! If your content reads great and is purely written for the human eye and not for the search engines, Google will love your content. But also keywords do play a part in helping to get your content ranked too

The Bottom Line Is: Create Good Quality Content that reads well and you won't have to fear Google. Simples

Neil

Don't even waste your money doing that.

You are not only going to lose out but you will
be sorry you did because it might not even convert
one sale.

The $5 article is most likely to be what we see everyday with little value.

The article directory sites have been badly hit by Panda.

My 2 cents worth is this: concentrate on relatively fewer but TOP QUALITY articles. Forget Google for a nanosecond: your visitors prefer things that way. Reason enough.

I don't think you'll like the articles you receive for those prices.

If you want to outsource your writing, plan out topics/series and hire experts. I write most of my content, but I do outsource for some of my local marketing by hiring post-graduate students who are studying to become professionals within the industry I market. One article costs $15 to $40 (sometimes more), but they are excellent, sourced, detailed and highly informative. In fact, I receive requests from industry sites to republish some of these articles.

The key when spending money like this is to have a plan with respect to how you'll use the articles, get eyeballs reading those articles, converting readers with some offer(s), and of course planning the articles themselves.

When I place an order, I cover a topic as deeply as possible. It's like planning a book. I start from the general and branch out into sub-topics and perhaps sub-topics on the sub-topics. I outline all the topics so it's like a table of contents. Often keyword tools can be helpful here by giving me ideas on sub topics that people want to read about.

Then I give the titles/topics to the writers (post-grad students) and they go to town.

Finding grad students is easy. Contact any university career department and they'll be delighted to send out a part time writing assignment in their field. I've done this many times with a couple universities in my province. Within 1 week I have experts who can produce excellent content. Just don't expect to pay $5 to $10 per article.

Do you still google for some problems you face?

If yes then article marketing still works..there are still plenty of people out there looking for solutions.

It all depends on how you display it and where you display it...Its not easy but it sure works.

It's human nature to want to do things in a rapid fashion. So many have come online trying to utilize short cuts and cheat the system to some degree. The power(s) that be (Google) is a little smarter an wiser than the average article marketer and knows when their tactics are a little fishy and thus implements an algorithm change. If one would just understand that yes, articles are great and people still read them to this date, and they choose to write for the "reader" and not the search engines, they're good to go.

When I cam online, I was probably one of the ones who made this mistake. I wanted to have all of my articles optimized to the highest degree, installed SEO pressor on my blog so that I would have the right mix, tags, H1, H2, etc. in place and everything. At the end of the day, what does it really matter if a real human can't relate to what you're saying. I don't blame Google and the likes for cleaning up the net and making it the way it suppose to be. So to answer your question whether or not it's dead? I'd say No, it's not, but was just resurrected for the real writers.