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What is a good Article Syndication result?

by mekdroid
9 replies
Hi folks,

I am trying to come up with a sensible methodology before I go and spend all kinds of time and money (weakness of mine, I know) but that means I need to have some metrics that make sense, and one of the metrics I need is how to measure results when posting to article directories.

The best metric, of course, is money ... but when you start out the money is going to be very small, so I need some other metrics to evaluate what I do and to be able to correct mistakes and/or improve the results.

Looking at the Article Syndication area, assume that the following pre-conditions will hold:

1) Reasonably good article (i.e., well-written, correct syntax etc.)
2) Topic relevant to the intended niche
3) 1,200 to 1,500 words
4) Posted to top 1-3 Article Directories (EZA plus maybe 1-2 more niche-oriented directories)
5) All original content, no spinned garbage

Given these:

A) What would you consider to be a good response?

B) How would you measure the quality of the response?

C) What kind of metrics (other than money!) do you use when you evaluate your results?

Thanks!
#article #good #result #syndication
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by mekdroid View Post

    1) Reasonably good article (i.e., well-written, correct syntax etc.)
    "Reasonably" isn't nearly good enough for profitable syndication.

    The content has to "wow" people and make them feel that it's content they must share with their own readers/visitors/subscribers. Otherwise the best places won't publish it.

    It needs to be a "compelling" article, not a "reasonable" one. (It doesn't much matter why it's compelling, as long as it is compelling).

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post3188316

    Originally Posted by mekdroid View Post

    Given these:

    A) What would you consider to be a good response?
    Who's "responding"? :confused:

    What you describe isn't really article syndication. It's article publication followed by an attempt at passive syndication only. Submission to EZA (+ another, if you find a suitable one) can be helpful, but it's slow, unreliable and very variable. There might not be any "response" at all. Occasionally you'll get lucky and something will be syndicated somewhere good and you might get 1,000+ opt-ins from it. It's incredibly swingy and unreliable.

    "Article syndication" really refers to all the things you do with the article after publishing it on your own site and before you dump a copy in EZA (which I agree is worthwhile): http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794

    Originally Posted by mekdroid View Post

    B) How would you measure the quality of the response?
    Over a long period. You can measure income (best, but difficult) or numbers of visitors/opt-ins from syndicated copies. The longer you do it for, the more significant "averages" become, and the easier it becomes to measure, given large enough sample-sizes. In each niche in which I'm involved, I have a reasonably accurate perception of value based on overall visitor-numbers from specific articles - which is the easiest thing to monitor. But it took me a long time to get to that point, and it's not very important anyway, to be honest. All that really matters, in the long run, is to maintain stunning quality of the output (articles and autoresponder series), and continue adding people to your syndication-partner lists regularly. Get those right, and all the other aspects of article marketing take care of themselves, near enough.

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post6575732

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7475055
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    • Profile picture of the author mekdroid
      Thanks again, Alexa ... reading though your posts now
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    • Profile picture of the author mekdroid
      OK. So this is not just about syndication ... this is a whole process that combines syndication with list building, auto-responder and pre-syndication follow-up.

      A little summary:

      1) You post the article on your own site first.

      2) Wait for it to get indexed.

      3) If you have a list of places that have picked up your articles in the past you offer the article to them before dumping it to EZA.

      4) Post the article to EZA (and perhaps 1-2 high-quality niche directories, if these can be found. If not, just EZA).

      5) Monitor where your articles are published.

      6) Contact the webmasters, try to establish a relationship with them and offer them new articles (but only one at a time).

      7) Go back to step 1 and do this over and over and over again ...

      PS: The part about the writing be compelling will obviously depend on one's writing skills ...:confused:
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by mekdroid View Post

        2) Wait for it to get indexed.

        3) If you have a list of places that have picked up your articles in the past you offer the article to them before dumping it to EZA.
        We're still missing out the entire "actively finding syndication partners" stage in-between these two points (2) and (3) above. We have the shell here without the egg inside it.

        To build a business this way, anyone will also need actually to do the active syndication parts explained in the posts linked to below.

        There's no point in trying to build your syndication just from maintaining contact with people who syndicate your articles from EZA (or elsewhere). This is only a small afterthought. It's a good afterthought, and it's worth doing, but it isn't exactly "how article marketing works".

        The method you've outlined above doesn't contain anything you shouldn't be doing, but it has many important/significant parts missing. As "pairs of shoes" go, it's missing both the left one and the right one, and giving you just the ankle-straps and the box.

        Apologies if I'm "going on about it", but I'm thinking of other people potentially reading the thread, and trying to avoid situations in which people do exactly what you've outlined above, for a few months, get nothing from it (distinctly possible, of course!) and then start off threads saying "article syndication doesn't work!"

        It comes more naturally to some people to allege that, than to say "I tried to do what I thought was article syndication but screwed up by never actually taking any real, active steps to get my articles syndicated."

        http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post6575732

        http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7475055

        Originally Posted by Enfusia View Post

        My best syndication has always seemed to come when I got them laughing so hard they needed tissue.
        Mine also. I suspect that to the extent that there's "one secret" about it, this might be it.
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        • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
          Originally Posted by Jgowen77 View Post

          I agree reasonable won't get it. I have no clue how good the things I write are, except for the unsolicited comments I get. Of course my kids will say "Yeah dad, that's great." Nice but a bit slanted. When people volunteer compliments, and I've had a few (plus a couple of very negative comments) I take that as a good sign.
          Even the very negative comments are a good sign. It means you provoked a reaction strong enough to make someone send you the negative comment.

          Look at the personalities who have their own shows on political "news" networks like Fox or MSNBC. The ones whose shows stick polarize people. Either they love them, or they love to hate them. Rush Limbaugh rides the same gravy train.

          Enfusia and Alexa, this might interest you given the comments about making people laugh.

          I was reading a piece by a best-selling author, and she said something to the effect that the secret to commercially viable writing (in other words, making a living) was in the three E's - Education, Entertainment and Escape. If you can provide two out of three, you can build a loyal audience.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jgowen77
    I agree reasonable won't get it. I have no clue how good the things I write are, except for the unsolicited comments I get. Of course my kids will say "Yeah dad, that's great." Nice but a bit slanted. When people volunteer compliments, and I've had a few (plus a couple of very negative comments) I take that as a good sign.
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    • Profile picture of the author Enfusia
      @Alexa "Reasonably" isn't nearly good enough for profitable syndication.

      The content has to "wow" people and make them feel that it's content they must share with their own readers/visitors/subscribers. Otherwise the best places won't publish it.

      It needs to be a "compelling" article, not a "reasonable" one.


      I agree 100%. My best syndication has always seemed to come when I got them laughing so hard they needed tissue.

      Patrick
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  • Profile picture of the author WeavingThoughts
    Getting quality backlinks and indirect traffic,
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    • Profile picture of the author myob
      IMO, there is no better substitute for evaluating article syndication results than bottom line ROI. However, establishing metrics for measuring effectiveness should be applied to every stage of your marketing efforts, not limited to just article response. For example, continually track the sales process such as traffic source, funnel system, filters (lead qualification), follow-up, product mix, repeat sales rate, etc.

      Because of the extensive resources used in producing and distributing each article, accurate tracking for me is essential. This particular method may not be helpful to you except perhaps for illustration, but what I do to track articles is use a short source code appended to the link in the resource box.

      Every publisher in my syndication network is assigned a four-symbol alphanumeric code, and every article also has a unique identifier such as a modified Julian date. For example: mysite.com/?ABCD4091801 indicates the originating source and which article (first article written on 1/10/2012) resulted in the call to action click.

      While not exact, the revenue from sales extracted from each publisher source is amortized over the number of articles submitted, giving a general average ROI of the articles. The more successful articles are then submitted to other outlets such as relevant websites, blogs, and offline publications.

      Although there are additional sales made from opt-in subscribers and other integrated marketing channels as a direct result of these articles, this is considered ancillary marketing, which results are all tracked separately. The importance of knowing how much profit (or loss) is in your marketing processes and business activities cannot be over emphasized.
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