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Ezine Articles Submission

August 5, 2009 By 2 Comments

Today I wanted to announce that I am challenging myself to write and submit at least 1 article per day to EzineArticles.com as well as the top 10 other article directories. I know that there are many people that write 10+ articles a day but I used to hate writing articles so this is a big step forward for me, it will probably also give me a kick in the pants to post here more often.

I will probably come closer to submitting around 3 articles a day because I will be submitting old blog posts as well as articles that I will purchase from some of the authors I have outsourced work to in the past. The goal of these articles are to boost the search engine rankings for Easy Online Money Making while driving direct traffic to my new mailing list the Fast Cash Blueprint.

I have done a little research on my most recent articles and I have found that I typically make $15 per article that I write in commissions from NeverBlue and ClickBank on average. This means that I will get an extra $15 a day if I continue to write these articles, all of which I will be investing into advertising when I finish working on my marketing book.

I have written a couple of test articles each of which gets a few hundred UV’s a month, and most of this is thanks to Google. I started basing my titles off the most searched terms in Google, for instance if you type in paid surveys it will display paid surveys online, so I will optimize my articles for that specific phrase.

In order to continuously pump out articles you simply need to get into a routine, for me I write my articles just before eating lunch. If you are writing about a subject that you find boring, then write about something that interests you instead. Don’t punish yourself just to make a couple extra dollars, and an interesting article will be better in the long run anyway.

Once you are finished writing your article proof read it twice, then submit it to EzineArticles and use your article submission software of choice to submit to other top directories. Rather than submitting to all the spam directories allow it to spread organically.

There are huge benefits in writing articles, read any marketing forum and you will find example after example of people taking in thousands of dollars in organically driven sales from articles. The traffic generated directly from articles is slightly higher in quality than PPC traffic while at the same time it provides a wealth of high quality links back to your website. Some of my articles have been republished over 2,000 times, this is exposure that would cost a fortune to buy. If you have a mailing list it is amazing for converting visitors as well, 60% of the people that come to my splash pages from articles end up subscribing.

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Ways to Promote Your Blog

May 30, 2009 By 8 Comments

I just spent 10 hours straight doing the design for Easyonlinemoneymaking.com (still waiting for the dns to update for my Host Gator switch, I’ll post when the results are live).  I figured that since I spent such an extended period of time actually being productive I would make a post about some of the “time fillers” that you can do to promote your blog when you don’t feel like pumping out posts or articles.

When I have spare time I usually do some or all of the following, mixing them up every 5 minutes or so to keep myself interested.  I love internet marketing, but I don’t always have the attention span to keep churning out the content so it is fun to do moderately effective traffic driving techniques rather than the high power but highly boring techniques such as article creation/submission.

Here’s where my spare time goes:

  • Adding followers on Twitter and starting conversations with some of my followers when they have interesting status updates.  My twitter: James Spinosa
  • Adding contacts on MyBlogLog and joining communities.
  • Adding friends on BlogCatalog and joining groups, discussions, blogs, etc.
  • Posting on various forums that allow me to have a blog feed, this is mainly to build up name reputation but it doesn’t hurt to get some traffic.  Don’t just spam them, post useful content.
  • Commenting on a bunch of related niche blog posts.
  • Tinkering with my advertisements to find better converting programs so I can make some more money.
  • Creating link bait lists, such as “Top 100 dofollow blogs” so that I can get some free links from other bloggers.
  • Staring at the ClickBank marketplace trying to reverse engineer the success for some of the products that I have no idea why people buy them.

While these may seem like a waste of time I actually enjoy them, and they do yield results.  Most of these are designed to get a one time visitor, but about 10% of people that come to this site sign up to receive my blog posts, yielding long term traffic.

In terms of things like blog commenting and forum posting, this will yield permanent one way dofollow links, which will make me show up for more search results.  The other methods like adding twitter followers, friends, contacts, etc. make it so that I have another set of people that get updates each time I post.

If you have spare time, you might as well use it for something constructive.  There is always some way you can be promoting your blog even if it isn’t through the traditional methods.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , ,

Finding link partners and link exchanges

November 7, 2008 By 6 Comments

Link exchanges are one of the most popular ways to gain links today, but the thing I do not understand is why people waste their time creating useless exchanges.  If you are going to do a link exchange, then do yourself a favor and don’t make it obvious to Google by creating a “links” page and sticking your partners on there.  The value to your partner from this will be abysmal at best, and will also draw the gaze of Google.  People doing these types of exchanges are also more likely to back out of a link exchange without mentioning it, so make sure to check up on them to see that your links are still present.

So that’s the way most people do it, but what are better ways to create link exchanges?  Well first start off by finding reputable sources in the same niche as you that work as complements rather than competitors.  If you find them by searching for the keyword you are aiming for, then it would be stupid to expect an anchor text that will help you rank for that term.   Do a search of semi-relevant terms, such as when I want links for my “online money making” website, I would look for people in the “paid surveys” niche as the content keywords will match very closely and I get great conversions on my survey products.

One alternative to a direct link exchange is a 3-way link exchange, which are somewhat better received by Google.  These involve you linking to one site, they will link to another site, and that site will link back to you.  For my time, these aren’t worth it simply due to the additional effort in coordinating two other people not to mention finding three websites in the same niche, with similar traffic and backlinks, that will work with you.

Googles headquarters (Wikipedia)

Google's headquarters (Wikipedia)

For bloggers, the link exchange world opens up even more.  Links are the currency of the web, and as a result if you find a blog you like, then you can put them on your blogroll then post a few comments on their blog and see if they notice themselves.  This is the informal form of a link exchange, because many times they will give you a link back, as a result you each have sitewide links bouncing between each other as well as related traffic.  While I do occasionally get requests via email for link exchanges, I would prefer these informal gestures, and they are also what I do on my other blogs.  By actually becoming friends with other bloggers in your niche you will find that blogging becomes more enjoyable, and based on game theory it will also be more profitable for each of you to work together.

Moral of the story: play fair with others and it will help your reputation, and if you do nice things online, then people will often be kind in return.

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Using Social Networks for Links and Traffic

October 6, 2008 By 3 Comments

Social networks are a great thing for internet marketers, especially as they can be used effectively for any level of experience as an internet marketer.  One of my first reactions when I made my first website was to send out a message to all my friends via FaceBook and used that as a source of traffic for the first couple days.  I quickly realized that since it was simply people curious what my site looked like, that it wouldn’t actually generate revenue nor would it create lasting subscribers.  This is a lesson that I still carry with me as I continue to use social networks to my advantage.

For initial traffic to this blog I utilized the sources that internet marketers and bloggers go to in order to get information, forums and marketing networks.  I have x,xxx posts on DigitalPoint and quite a few also on v7n and webmaster talk, all of which are great sources of targeted traffic as long as you use them correctly.  As for social networks, I mostly used MyBlogLog, MySpace, FriendFeed, Twitter, and BlogCatalog to get traffic and RSS subscribers, which has worked out quite well as I have noticed that quite a few of you are also submitting my articles to social bookmarking networks, which I appreciate.

When using these resources, simply realize that if you want to get the maximum use of your time you should research the audience that you wish to develop for your own niche.  In my case, it is quite easy as I am trying to help out all internet marketers and most bloggers would also consider themselves to be marketers to some extent, as everybody would like to make a few bucks off their efforts.  Obviously you won’t know thousands of people online, which is why you should search for people that have similar interests as you in public profiles, etc. and these are the people you should seek various relationships with.  The purpose of these networks in their essence, is to meet people with similar interests and discuss common issues, tap into this and you will have an interested target audience developing.

The key to balancing this relationship of network friend and your personal business interests is quite simple, don’t spam them with overbearing messages, etc. because that will scare people off, and offer good content that people want to read.  If you offer good content your business will expand by itself, it shouldn’t need too much of a push but social networks and social media are great ways to get some eyes on your content so that you can get a few people to stick and then let it spread from there.

Here’s a few of the sites I used:

The other thing to take into consideration with any type of social media/networking/bookmarking traffic is that it won’t be overly profitable.  Don’t expect large traffic numbers to equate to conversions of any sort, as traffic typically won’t click advertisements or buy affiliate products.

One interesting thing I have been watching as a result of this web2.0 traffic is how easily I gain and lose RSS subscribers, on days that I post I average 22 new subscribers, while on days I don’t post I average 17 lost subscribers.  On that note, feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed.

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How to Use Article Marketing for Traffic and Links

September 28, 2008 By 8 Comments

One thing that many people pass over because they don’t wish to spend the time is article marketing.  In my opinion skipping this tactic is quite ridiculous, especially for bloggers.  As a blogger, I typically write in article format as it is, making it quite easy to convert them into an article format for distribution.  I am not alone, almost all blog posts can be used as an article to be submitted to article directories so bloggers are missing out on an additional set of eyes and links when they do not submit their content.

If you plan to simply copy and paste articles from your blog into article directories, I would take into consideration the “duplicate content” filter that Google uses to penalize sites for copying content (supposedly), by making sure that a site:http://www.yourdomain.com actually shows the blog posts before you submit them to major directories, because once they go to something like EzineArticles they will quickly get scooped up by Google’s crawler.  I would also highly suggest that if you write a lot of link bait like I do, that you spend a few minutes dressing it up so that it looks nice in the article.  When I write, I typically write posts such as “23 link building tactics”, which would not look right without the <li> tags.

Why should you integrate article marketing into your overall marketing techniques?

  • Highly targeted traffic, equivalent quality to that of a PPC campaign
  • Increase name recognition; always a good thing to be recognized as an expert in your field
  • Great way to increase the number of incoming links, a properly distributed article should be on 700-800 websites each with a link back to your site.
  • It can actually be fun, don’t make it into a chore and it won’t be.  If you don’t enjoy what you are doing now though you are in the wrong business anyway.
  • Great source of opt-in subscribers to your mailing list so that you can later monetize that traffic.
  • Good way to push affiliate sales if you do it right, since affiliate links are typically not allowed.

So now you want to know how you actually get these waves of traffic, backlinks, fame, and fortune all for free!.  That is understandable, so I will give it to you straight.  I typically follow a multiple step process to get my article to the masses.

Step one should be pretty obvious, pick a topic, research it, and then write the article.

Step two is to submit it to major article directories (EzineArticles, iSnare, GoArticles, Article Dashboard) either manually or with some help from automation.  Typically, I will submit them using a program called Instant Article Submitter to about 70 article directories (although it has a capacity near 600), and then I will use iSnare’s distribution service ($2/article) to get the word out to thousands of webmasters.  Using this method, I typically get around 800 backlinks from a single article.

Step 3 is the most important aspect in my opinion that people often miss.  Obviously the most important part is getting it out to enough directories and writing a high quality article that people want to link to, which is why I didn’t mention that part.  The less obvious par,t is that you should also do a little work to increase the traffic to the various article directories that you submit to.  I will go through and do some social bookmarking on each of the articles for a few of the directories that I submit to, typically I make sure to at least do it for iSnare and EzineArticles as these give me the best quality traffic/opt-ins.

Step 4 is the most fun, do a google search encompassing a unique sentence from your article, such as “and then the 20083 tigers in Alaska went extinct due to hypothermia”, by putting it all in quotes Google will only search for that exact term.  As a result, the number of sites that show as indexed represents the overall reach of your article (in terms of Google anyway).  The more sites indexed, the more backlinks to your website and the better off you are.

And that’s really all there is to know, just make sure that you properly distribute your articles and have an overall marketing strategy before embarking on an article writing binge.  I typically either try aim for RSS subscribers, opt-in subscribers, or affiliate commissions as the traffic coming from articles is typically very high quality.  On that note, feel free to add this blog to your RSS feed :)

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