Article Marketing – One of the fastest and easiest ways to get started in Internet Marketing


Article marketing is by far the easiest way to get started and see action quickly. The process is simple:

  1. You write (or buy) articles on a specific topic
  2. You post your articles up to article directories
  3. People read your articles and visit your website

The way it works is that in your article you can place a link back to your site. This actually has two beneficial effects:

  • First, because people visit these sites looking for quality information, if you provide that they will click on your link and visit your site. So you can get nearly instant traffic from posting up articles to article directories. This is a pretty obvious and immediate benefit.
  • The second benefit is not so obvious. Because article directories generally have a high “page rank” links from your articles back to your website will lend a bit of this page rank to you. It looks like an inbound link to your site from a higher ranking site to the search engines. So this boosts your page rank. The result is that you get natural search engine traffic because your site now ranks higher in the search engines. The more of this “backlinks” you can get, the higher your page rank and therefore the more search engine traffic.

Pretty simple and straight forward so far, right?

Now, the tricky side of this is two-fold. First, there are hundreds are article directories and to submit to them manually you would have to visit each site, fill in a form, paste your article and repeat hundreds of times. So you will definitely want to use an article submission service. This brings up the second sticky subject – “duplicate content.”

You can not simply post the same article to hundreds of different site, because A) it will just be ignored by the search engines as duplicate content and will not increase your ranking, and B) people visit multiple article sites and if they’ve seen your article on another site (even if they didn’t read it) they will most likely skip it again. So, what you want to do is submit a unique article to each directory.

You can also use a service to do this for you. Basically, you take one article, which you’ve written or paid someone to write (ghost writers will write a quality articles for $25 on any subject you want). Then you write 4 variations of it using different words and phrases to say the same thing. Then upload them all to the software and it creates hundreds of unique articles by pulling paragraphs from each of the variations and creating new articles from them AND submits one unique article to each directory. I recommend Unique Article Wizard for this.

Article Writing Tips:

General tips:

  1. Your article does not need to be a novel – or even a short story. 300 – 500 words will do. 700 words is probably the longest you’d want to make it.
  2. Don’t be afraid if you don’t think you know enough about the topic you want to write on. You don’t have to know all there is to know. Just do a little research and digest some information that’s already out there. Then look for something that’s lacking in the available information or a new way to say it – a new twist that will help someone else understand it better. Again, you can also hire a ghost writer on Elance to write the original article for $25 or less. Then you write the variations.
  3. You don’t have to spend very long on it. You should be able to easily do the research and write the article in 30 minutes to an hour max.
  4. Just start – and just write. Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, style, etc. Forget everything you were taught in 10th grade English and just start writing. When you’re done you can go back and edit it for spelling, grammar, etc. But even then, the important part is the content. Just make sure you’re giving some valuable information to your reader.
  5. Write one article a day. Once you get the process down, you should be able to pump them out in 30 minutes. So spend 30 minutes at the beginning or end of your day writing 1 article and in a month you’ll have 30 articles written. And if you use Unique Article Wizard you’ll have thousands of backlinks and thousands of pages drawing readers to your site.

Specific Tips:

  1. Start by stating a problem.
  2. Explain why this problem is important to your reader to address.
  3. Expand upon the problem – make it painful.
  4. Tell them how to fix the problem.
  5. Offer a solution that fixes it for them.

Example:

  1. Problem – For example, if you’re focusing on affiliate marketing the problem could be how to select products to promote
  2. Why – Because, if they don’t select products that convert well all their efforts will be wasted.
  3. Pain – With so many products in the market it’s very difficult to figure out which ones to promote and which ones are a waste of time. But how do you determine this? What should you look for? etc.
  4. Fix – What they need to do is research the affiliate networks, compare various statistics, visit the product website, evaluate the sales letters, check out the support process, get conversion rates and compare them to commission rates, etc, etc
  5. Solution – To discover exactly how to make this process quick and painless, get my free 5-part email series at…

As you can see this is a very effective strategy and one that you can easily put into practice today. So get started right now!

I’ll post up some advanced article marketing techniques next week. For now, I don’t want you distracted from the task at hand . . . writing your articles.

Action Steps:

  1. First determine the topic your article will be about. For example, if you’re trying to get people to your squeeze page for affiliate marketing then select a topic that relates to affiliate marketing (like selecting affiliate products to promote).
  2. Next decide if you are going to write the article yourself or hire a ghost writer.
  3. Get the article written. It should take you no more than an hour to write it yourself or 1 day to post the project and have a ghost writer do it.
  4. Link to your website or Squeeze Page from inside your article.
  5. Create variations of your article by changing the words and phrasing but keeping the same meaning.
  6. Upload the original article and the variations to Unique Article Wizard and let the software submit hundreds of unique articles to all the article directories for you.

That’s it. Please get started right now! :-) And, if you follow these action steps, in 30 days time you’ll be amazed at how much free traffic you have coming to your site…

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 8:26 am and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

25 Responses to “Article Marketing – One of the fastest and easiest ways to get started in Internet Marketing”

  1. Paul on February 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 pm

    Hi Dustin,

    Great article – I’ll look forward to reading your blog!

    You know the thing that bothers me about using software that pulls your article to pieces and puts them back together again as “unique”? I think this is maybe fine if you have a throwaway website that you don’t care too much about, and all you want are the backlinks etc., but if it’s your main site do you really want dozens of different variations of your articles floating around the Internet, some of which might not make sense?

    Everything you write online represents you and your website and I prefer to have full editorial control over what’s published. I’m not so sure these article “splicers” would do a good enough job of it for me. They might be unique articles, but I can’t see how they would be as good as your original to anyone reading them.

    Any views, anyone?

    ~ Paul

  2. Rufus on February 23rd, 2008 at 11:14 am

    Hello Dustin,

    I think the idea of article marketing is excellent. Where should I send the traffic?

    I really love your idea and once I get working
    for me I know it’s going to be great.

    Would it be better to have a web site just
    for ASB ONLY?

    Thank you!

  3. Dustin on February 23rd, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Hey Paul,

    I would not recommend a service that would create nonsensical articles! I shortened the explanation, because that’s not the point of my post…

    The way it works is this: You write one articles with 7 paragraphs. Then you make 4 versions of it – each also with 7 paragraphs. Each new version makes perfect sense because you wrote it using different words and phrases meaning the same things.

    Then the software selects the first paragraph from one of the 4 versions for the first paragraph of the unique articles. Then selects of the second paragraphs from one of the 4 versions for the second paragraph in the unique article. Then selects the third from one of the 4, and so on.

    So there are 4 possibilities for the 1st paragraph, 4 for the 2nd, 4 for the 3rd, and so on. Each of the 4 it’s selecting from are equivalent in meaning, so the totality of the unique article created makes perfect sense and is equivalent in meaning to the original article.

    The possible number of unique articles this creates is: 4 X 4 X 4 X 4 X 4 X 4 X 4 = 16,384 combinations. So the odds of it creating any duplicates across a few hundred submissions are very small. For example, if it submitted to 300 directories, the chances of any of them being duplicate would be less than 2%.

    I hope this clears it up. And for future reference, I would never recommend something that wasn’t top quality and good for your big picture, long-term business.

  4. Dustin on February 23rd, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    Hi Rufus,

    You can use the concept to send traffic to any web page you want. In the case of the Affiliate Silver Bullet System, you would link to the “Google Landing Pages” or the “Squeeze Pages” we provide you. You can link your articles directly to either of these “Hosted by us” links inside your account.

    The difference between the “Squeeze Pages” and the “Google Landing Pages” is that the latter has content on them. These are what you will want to use when promoting via PPC (which we’ll talk about in a future article). You also will not get any ranking for pages without content, so as part of a long-term strategy you might want to link to the Google Landing Pages to gain page rank for those pages. However, if you’re concerned about people getting distracted by the content you can promote the Squeeze Pages directly.

    But my initial plan was that the Squeeze Pages would be promoted via email and other direct response advertising. And the Google Landing Pages would be used where content was needed (basically all other forms of advertising).

  5. Karen on February 24th, 2008 at 9:16 am

    Hey Dustin,

    Thanks so much for this blog! I’m terribly lacking in this kind of education, but trying to remedy that.

    Thanks,
    Karen

  6. robert on February 24th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    Is it best to put a link from the articles from the squeeze page or google landing page, so you can gain page rank, its seems you would the landing page because it has content, which would help to get free traffic from search engines.

  7. Ken on February 24th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

    Hi Dustin,

    Thanks for a well written training article! Thanks also for the informative replies to the other posters. Their questions along with your replies cleared up my questions.

    I look forward to learning other strategies you may be willing to share.

    Kindest regards,
    Ken

  8. Ken on February 24th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    Hello again Dustin,

    Perhaps you can expand upon my question, and hopefully answer a lot of other folk’s questions at the same time.

    My question is quite basic.

    I have no web presence, but I have registered http://www.commandoprofits.com, as a catch-all, overall website where I can list each of the Silver Bullets as either a page on that site, or maybe load them as a subdomain on that site.

    If there is any way you could provide a template for an index (home) page for folks like me, then that would be a huge step forward. I’m quite helpless with webpage design. I couldn’t set up a squeeze page if my life depended on it (which is why I like Affiliate Silver Bullet so much).

    OR, perhaps you could point me in the right direction. Yes I’m familiar with elance and ecoder etc…

    Just wondering if there was any way you could make this portion as easy as you have made the Silver Bullets.

    Mayhaps provide a homepage template?? It would be most appreciated!

    Thanks!
    Ken

  9. Paul on February 24th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    I’m with you Dustin. Sorry for the confusion – I’ve seen some really BAD products like this, but what you say makes perfect sense.

  10. Dustin on February 24th, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    Hey Ken,

    The best strategy would be to promote your individual Squeeze Pages directly.

    It’s very unlikely that visitors landing on a main page with lots of links to multiple Squeeze Pages will click those links and then opt in afterwards. What you want is to send them directly to the Squeeze Page when they’re hot for information and let the video sell them on opting in. With an additional step in the middle, they will get distracted by the new options and maybe watch several videos, but most likely will click back to the main page until they get bored instead of opting in.

  11. Dustin on February 24th, 2008 at 5:56 pm

    Hey Robert,

    I updated my earlier response to answer your question about Google Landing Pages vs. Squeeze Pages.

  12. Ulla on February 26th, 2008 at 12:30 pm

    Hey,

    Does anyone of you use those 250 adsense articles included in the Affiliate Silver Bullet program?? Those must be great to drive traffic to each site.

  13. Ken on February 27th, 2008 at 10:47 am

    Hi Dustin,

    Ulla’s comment above got me to thinking. That and your suggestions about article marketing lead me to ask you this….

    Would it be OK if I took the free articles you have included in my subscription and sent them to a ghost writer (at elance for example), and had them re-write the articles?

    I could then take the re-written articles and do as you suggest as far as re-wording each paragraph for submission to uniquearticlewizard.com

    I’ve noticed that most of the provided articles seem to be (on average) 4 paragraphs and around 500 words long.

    Currently I have 250 articles from ASB, & I’m thinking I could get those re-written and somewhat condensed into longer articles. Let’s say (for example and I’m just using 100 as a round figure–of course this number could vary) I wind up with 100 each eight hundred word articles at 7 paragraphs per article out of the 250 you have provided so far.

    My research shows that it could be far cheaper to have articles re-written as opposed to having someone write one from scratch.

    Good idea? Bad idea? Feasible idea that need to be tested???

    Thanks,
    Ken

  14. Gordon on March 1st, 2008 at 2:41 am

    Hi Dustin

    Great article and easy to follow – and it works, as you say, you just got to START.

    On Ulla’s question – the Affiliate Silver Bullet articles usage – what I have done is uploaded them to my web server and began to add them to OnlyWire.com. This is social bookmarking the pages to several sites at once – this usually brings the search engine in fairly quickly and the hopefully some real traffic and perhaps a higher search engine listing.

    What we have to be carefull of here is that if everyone does the same with every article every month, then Google could slap us for duplicate content!!

    Any comments?

    BTW Dustin, I got an email from ASB saying I got a $18.50 commission – I haven’t yet promoted the service specifically, but I have started to promote the bullets – so – thanks for the passive income with little or no effort on my part. Looking forward to my Clickbank statement :)

    That’s one hellova system you’ve built there.

    Best wishes,

    Gordon

  15. Dustin on March 1st, 2008 at 9:03 pm

    Hey Ken,

    Having a ghost writer re-work the articles from your Affiliate Silver Bullet membership would be a great idea! That should save you time and money. ;-)

  16. Dustin on March 1st, 2008 at 9:04 pm

    Hey Gordon,

    As long as you’re not using AdWords to drive traffic to these pages then it shouldn’t matter. But if you want to get page ranking or send AdWords traffic to them, you should do what Ken is doing and have them re-written, combined, edited, etc. You could also do this yourself…

  17. Duane on March 5th, 2008 at 5:47 am

    Hi Dustin,

    Great articles. I appreciate the resources you included. I just want to comment about the Affiliate Silver Bullet System. I wasn’t too comfortable about loading them into my website at first. I promoted the links you provided for a short time. I’m sorry, but I didn’t see much action. But then I “bit the BULLET” and put them on my website. Google must love it, because in just a matter of a few days my website, which was languishing at a 4 ranking, suddenly jumped to a 5. My main gig is selling ad space on my website. I’ve been trying to increase traffic to my site and it looks like the Affiliate Silver Bullet System will only help in that regard. I just want to encourage you to keep up the good work.

  18. Chimezirim Odimba on March 5th, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    You suggested that folks submit articles and link to the URL’s provided in the “Hosted by us” section. However, from my experience, Ezinearticles will NOT approve articles with such links as it does not allow affiliate links.

    What are your thoughts on this?

  19. Dustin on March 6th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

    Hi Chimezirim,

    That’s correct. You cannot use an affiliate link in sites like that. So you will need to be linking to your own website from your articles. So you’ll have to us the “Hosted by you” option when using this technique for Affiliate Silver Bullet. The other option is to link to a blog, which you can create online for free (and I’ll cover this in a future article).

  20. Nate on March 6th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    Hey Dustin!

    I just uploaded my first two Bullets and wanted to tell you how easy it was. I haven’t yet started promoting them, but will very soon.

    I’m also going to start rewriting the articles and using them on my blog. The blog is already pretty well established so it should be easier to get traffic.

    My goal here is to sell enough “Bullets” to finance my wife and my 10th year anniversary to Vegas!

    Thank you!

    Nate

  21. Mark on March 7th, 2008 at 9:13 am

    All great stuff. I am pretty new to the ASB and am looking forward to making the system work for me. I have the links posted on my site also and am implimenting the other suggestions you have made in the article. I am finding that because I have a very small circle that I don’t have a list to email to so any other thoughts on the subject of people that have to bulid a list would be appreciated.

  22. Dustin on March 7th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    Hey Nate,

    I think that’s a great goal and I look forward to helping you achieve it! :-)

  23. Dustin on March 7th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Thanks, Mark.

    The key to building a list is to provide *value* to your subscribers. This means great content, free tools and resources, or even just tips on where to find free tools and resources. But the bottom line is that you have to provide value. I’ll dedicate a future article to talking about exactly how to do this…

  24. Ken on March 15th, 2008 at 12:49 pm

    My First Clickbank check ever….

    It was ……….$750.93

    Blew my mind!!!

    Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have lots of affiliate products to promote. I started off with uploading & promoting only one.

    I saw an envelope in my mail today. The “FROM” section said “Clickbank.com”

    For sure I knew it was a check. I figured it would be less than $200.

    Nope. $750.93

    For a guy who has never had a clickbank check before, well, I call that progress.

    I just need to multiply that effort 15 times over, then I’ll be on autopilot.

    Thanks Dustin,
    Ken

  25. Dustin on March 15th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    That’s awesome, Ken!

    Congratulations and thanks for sharing you success.

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