In the next couple of posts, I’m going to start on something that has become one of the most important things on the Internet today, article writing.
There is a reason why Ezine Articles, as of this writing, has an Alexa rank of 147.Ā I’d only be guessing at how many articles get submitted to them each day.
It must be more than they can handle because my articles are now supposed to be approved in 24 hours and I have some out there that are waiting for approval now for 3 days.
They must be swamped.
Yes, everybody and their grandmother is getting into article writing…
But for article marketing to be REALLY effective …
You NEED To KNOW How
To Write A GOOD Article!
Unfortunately, not everybody knows HOW to write an article that’s going to get people to their site.
This series will give you a few tips plus give you a list of sites where you can submit.
Article Writing Tip #1
The first thing you need to learn about writing articles is that you MUST write articles on topics that people will want to read.
How can you find out what topics people are interested in?
Very simple.
What you do is go to one of the online keyword tools.
Here’s the URL for the free Wordtracker (gives daily search results).
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
Here’s the URL for the Google Adwords tool (gives monthly search results).
http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
What you do is type in the topic you want to write on.
For example, “Affiliate Marketing”
If I do this in wordtracker, I come up with 352 daily searches for affiliate marketing.
This is good.
This shows me that people are looking for information on affiliate marketing.
If you do a search and find there are no results for that topic, there is no point in writing on it because nobody will be searching for your article and thus nobody will end up going to your site.
So this is the first place you have to start.
Confine your writing to things that people are interested in.
Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time.
Next time we’ll get into the actual writing of the article itself…
In the mean time, you should check out this other post that shows you some quick affiliate marketing tips that won’t cost you a penny.
To Your Success!
Richard Legg
Sorry Richard but, I think that you are wrong on this one. If you know your niche and you know your products then you should already have a list of important keywords for your marketing efforts. If you start using keyword tools on an area that you already have expertise, you are just taking the chance of leading yourself astray. Keep with the keywords that you already know are important for your business. When you built your website or blog, you concentrated on making it keyword rich. If these keywords are working for you why change horses in mid-stream.
Hi Stan,
Yes it’s true if you are already established in a niche that you should probably have a good set of keywords.
But there are people out there (myself included) who are active in multiple niches.
Personally I’ve found that the only way to find out what people are interested in is to do keyword research – this shows me the hot topics for that particular niche.
A lot of my readers are also beginners and affiliate marketing is how a lot of them are starting out – particularly as they don’t have their own products yet.
Article marketing is a great way to start making money as an affiliate, but (this is just my opinion) you’ve got to know which keywords to go after.
All the best,
Richard
Hi Richard, I have just submitted my first article and i’m looking forward to hearing more on writing them.
Thank you for sharing,
LeAnna
Hi Richard,
Looking forward to what else you have to say about article marketing, as the owner of a small general directory owner inundated with PLR rubbish and very poorly written submissions and attempting to maintain quality content for my publishers and authors.
Keywords are vital but far too many people lose sight of the reason that they are writing articles in the first place, focusing far too intently on SEO and back links. These should be viewed as a bonus to my way of thinking because the primary aim has to be producing good quality articles – and as you say – ones that people really want to read, and equally importantly ones that other publishers will be proud to syndicate on their own sites.
Badly written articles do far more harm than good to both the authors and the fabric of article marketing as a whole.
I’ve just released a new 52 page report on article marketing because there is obviously a need to educate people on the things not to do just as much as on how to get the maximum benefit from article marketing. (plug – you can get it at my blog).
I’ll be back to see the rest of your series
Hey Richard,
I think that is a great tip.
At the very least it will give is a hint.
The more information we can gather “before” spending
time creating articles, websites, blogs, whatever…
the better.
Bob R
Hey Richard,
Just put up a blog site, Buying Your First House Bulletin Board. If you have any advice for the first time home buyer, you could leave a comment.
Thanks,
Have A Great Day!
Norine Peardon
Richard and Stan…I think you’re both right. You should know your market well enough to have keywords to focus your content. But you also have to keep your ear to the ground so to speak by doing keyword research. This will allow you to stay ahead of the developing trends in your niche. As we all know, content is king and PLR is normally not very good. If you want to be recognized as an expert, you either need to be an expert and be able to write like an expert or you need to hire someone who is. There are many companies out there you can outsource your article development and submission to.
You can also outsource all the parts of your business that you don’t enjoy or aren’t very good at to others. Imagine having someone that loves doing the things you hate doing…what would that mean for your business in terms of time, focus, and money? Jeff Mills wrote a free 70 page eBook called Outsource Compendium to tell you exactly how to do this. I wrote a chapter by chapter review of it on Squidoo. If you’re interested, just click the link up above where my name would normally be.
Todd
Good, pretty good tips Richard.
Best,
E. Pizano
š
Hello, Richard.
I’m one of probably many “inactive” members of your list. I have gotten into a little bit of article marketing and have written and submitted several articles that seem to have been well received. At least, they’ve been requested by other website publishers well over 200 times.
My problem has been monetizing these results. I first tried directing traffic to my blog and posting other content and Adsense ads, as well as using contextual advertising with affiliate links. I was able to generate some organic traffic, but no sales. (My blog is currently inactive due to a computer crash).
What I am doing now is taking all of those articles, adding some new information, and combining and re-organizing the information into an E-book. My first draft has been completed and numbers some 30 pages of content. A little editing and polishing and it should be ready to go, after I set up some affiliate text links and a “Recommended Resources” page.
My question now is, “Now what?”. I was going to offer it for sale on Ebay, but they aren’t allowing these types of items any longer. I’ve read that I will need to create a website in order to handle the requests, capture email addresses, offer OTO’s and backend, and as a place to park my download page. I have NO CLUE on how to do all this. I’d also like to be able to offer this as a pdf, but I can’t afford that software and have heard negative comments about the so-called “converters” available for free on the net.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Larry Black
P.S. I am currently in the midst of a divorce, so available cash for investment in software is practically non-existent.
Hi Larry,
First of all congratulations on being pro-active. Just getting up and doing something is the hardest thing for many people.
Here’s what I would recommend you do…
1) Go to http://pdf995.com/ and use that free PDF converter – I used it before I got Adobe and it worked perfectly for me. The one problem I had was that if you want to insert a URL in the document, you have to write the full URL i.e. it wont convert anchor text URLs from a word document.
2) Grab a copy of the $7 secrets script – it’s $7 from this address: http://7dollarsecrets.com/
That will allow you to easily set up a website to sell your PDF.
I’d recommend selling it for anywhere from $7-$17 and then the script has a built in one time offer so then I’d offer the resale rights for $37-$47.
That way you can easily make sales, build your list and make backend sales too.
If you put some affiliate links in the report then anyone who buys the rights can send you some free traffic through those
Hope this helps
Richard
Thanks for the help, Richard. Just a couple more (I promise).
What would you recommend as the best way to promote my product when it is finished? And, how should I go about handling the purchases? Do I need to get a merchant account to accept credit cards orders or can I simply sign up with a service like PayPal and put their button on the order page? What’s your thought on listing it on Clickbank and using their army of affiliates to market it for me?
Thanks again,
Larry
I’d say the easiest way to get up and running is with the $7 script using paypal.
If you have a list you could email them about the affiliate opportunity (a lot of people set it up to give 100% commissions on the front end) so telling them about it could get people motivated to promote.
Other ways are to use articles to drive traffic, ezine solo ads, or even ad swaps with other list owners.
For Clickbank, I’d leave that until you get a slightly higher value product. Their fees are pretty steep so for a $7 product it’s not going to be very profitable – CB affiliates like high commissions (both $ value and % value).
But it’s definitely something to consider for a future product.
Hope this helps,
Richard
thanks alot for your advice. i hope to write some great articles in the near future to make some commissions
Hi Richard
So I get it clear, when submitting articles to one of the article w/sites, how do you get traffic and sales ? Ihaven’t got a w/site yet and have very little $$$
Carol
Hi Carol,
You do need to have a website to drive the traffic to.
When someone reads your article, you get to include a “resource box” at the end where you can tell people they can get more info at your website … this then drives traffic to your site.
You can do this with affiliate links for some article directories, but I know for EzineArticles.com you need to have your own domain.
Richard
Thank you for your help!
Hello. Great job. I did not expect this on a Wednesday. This is a great story. Thanks!
Good post and focus Richard. That’s important, if your going to write a article, it has to be what people are already looking for, I see that done backwards, don’t write what you think they’ll be looking for, research and find out, that’s how your articles produce the most traffic and subscribers š
Hi Richard,
This is the first time i have read your blog and wont be the last as have found it very helpful and interesting especially the question and answer part. You have got yourself another follower…just thought i would let you know…
Cheers Ria
Hi Richard,
I could’nt agree more about article marketing
As a relative newbie,i set about putting out
300 articles and within 3 weeks my ranking were no1 and n2 on google.
I found getting a blog easier to rank than a
website
can you you see the smile on my face
Hey Rick
Nice intro for a series of posts.I hope you remember to mail us when the next ones come out.This one is pretty basic.
I never use ezine articles because it is so slow and picky.
A good place to find article directories is to go to articlefriendly.info/forum ( hope you allow this )there is a thread there with all the directories using that script and some of them have PR5 plus there are a lot of PR4
You still have to wait for moderation but it doesn’t take 3 or 4 days
Hey Richard,
Love your content. Short and to the point without the fluff :).
Another place i go to for the keyword research is http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions
It’s a great way to check out questions asked on particular niches and provides a lot of ideas for potential topic titles for articles š
Cheers,
Jamal (aka SEO Padawan)
Reply from Richard: Hey Jamal,
That is an awesome resource! I wasn’t even aware of that.
Questions based around what people are asking always make for good article titles.
Thanks for listing that here!
Richard
Hi Richard,
A excellent post as usual and great tips for newbies such as myself. When I first started following you and your advice I must admit the thought of all that writing reminded me of school,(many, many years ago).
The greatest tool which once again you recommended and I took up the full service was Jetspinner which saves so much time and effort. I have found my articles rank quickly and easily with the free keyword tools you put me onto through your mail and blog.I know this is not a fluke as I am working in three completely different niches and I have seen good results and sales in all three. The only real problem I have is creating that sudden rush of traffic to the sites.
I use all the methods you have mentioned ie. web 2.0, article marketing, Trafficswarm, blogging and I can see the traffic increasing everyweek but how do I create large volumes of traffic without PPC.
Many Thanks,
Mark
Hello Richard,
How are you doing and your family?
it is great to read your Article