Affiliate Marketing E-Course
Course Content
Lesson 1 - Introduction
Lesson 2 - Campaign Outline
Lesson 3 - Product And Keyword Selection
Lesson 4 - Building a Squidoo Lens With Relevance
Lesson 5 - Promoting Your Squidoo Lens
Lesson 6 - Article Marketing
Lesson 7 - Cashing In With Cheap Traffic
Lesson 8 - Blogging for Dollars
Lesson 9 - Mailing List Windfall
Q&A Video/mp3 #1
Q&A Video/mp3 #2
Lesson 6 - Article Marketing
Welcome back!
In this lesson I'm going to show you how you can drive your campaign with virtually NO money through the use of articles. You'll see it's not required that you spend money on advertising to make it as an affiliate marketer. You don't need to shell out big bucks to the Google AdWords gods.
If you're new to internet marketing I strongly suggest you start with article marketing. Many of the components required in an article marketing campaign are also required in a PPC (Adwords) campaign. For instance, it doesn't matter if your traffic comes from an article or AdWords, your landing page still needs to convert them to buyers.
If you can't convert a visitor from an article then it will likely be more difficult to convert them if they came from an AdWords ad. Why? Because someone who has just spent 5 minutes reading your article and STILL wants to click through to your landing page is clearly showing a certain amount of interest in what you're saying. In fact you've already started building trust with your prospect or they wouldn't have clicked through. With AdWords, there's very little chance of building any trust before they arrive at your landing page.
In my mind it makes sense, financially, to learn the basics of internet marketing with free methods before risking your own money on paid advertising. In fact, I believe it makes more sense to spend money on your marketing education than paid advertising, at least in the early stages of your marketing career. Besides, once your free methods have made a few bucks you can turn that back into paid marketing methods, if you choose.
If you're in a cold sweat right about now then no worries, writing articles really isn't as difficult as you might think. The articles you'll be writing are not intended to win you a Pulitzer, only a sale. And once you've done a handful of articles you'll wonder why you were concerned about it.
Before I get into article marketing in detail I'd first like to talk a bit about article directories, the places where you'll be submitting your articles.
What Are Article Directories?
Article directories are basically large repositories of categorized articles. When submitting an article to one of these directories you're also giving republishing rights so your article may appear (syndicated) on other websites. This is a good thing since the rules generally require that your links and references remain intact. The best way to understand an article directory is to simply go look at Ezinearticles.com. Spend some time browsing and reading a few articles in your chosen category and you'll have an idea of what it's all about.
Although there are literally hundreds (probably thousands) of these directories on the web, here's a few of the more popular article directories
- EzineArticles.com - The best article directory as far as getting the most Google bang for your article. This site is indexed daily is a favorite of Google's. Articles submitted here are reviewed by an actual person for quality and adherence to the submission guidelines. Articles submitted by new authors generally will be approved in 3-5 days while authors with a track record of 10 or so articles will have approval times of about 1 day. I'll be talking about some of the do's and don'ts for ezinearticles.com shortly.
- GoArticles.com - another fairly well regarded article directory. Although it doesn't seem to have quite the same power for pushing your page up in the Google rankings, it does still do a fairly good job. More importantly, the submission guidelines are a little less strict and the turnaround time is almost always about 1 day, regardless of your track record.
- ArticleDashboard.com - this one has become popular recently. Though I have not used it so I have no further comment. If you do use it please share your experience with me. Thx.
Many people often group USFReeads.com and Squidoo.com into the article directory category, but for my purposes I do not. Although these two sites do contain categorized content submitted by users, the rules of use and therefore the way they are used in my campaigns are quite different.
One last very important thing about article directories. Before writing an article for a particular directory be sure to read the directory's author guidelines. These will be the rules you'll need to follow in order for your article to be accepted. Some are more strict than others, but once you know what their rules are it's not usually too difficult to stay within their guidelines.
So What Is Article Marketing?
Article marketing is simply writing articles to market a product or service as opposed to using paid advertising.
In the internet marketing community, article marketing is often thought of as writing articles specifically for submission to article directories such as EzineArticles.com. This is the focus of this lesson.
While blogging and eBook writing does employ some of the same writing strategies, the way blogs and eBooks are used in a campaign are quite different from the use of article directories and will be treated elsewhere in this course. Also, blogs and eBooks are usually completely under your control while article directories often have submission guidelines that must be followed before they will accept your article.
What are the benefits of article marketing?
- It's free
- Generates traffic
- Provides great backlinks to your landing page
- Allows you to "prepare" or "prime" the reader by putting them in the right frame of mind to make a purchase before they even get to your landing page
The general idea is to write an article that tells the reader about the product and why they should consider it. It should NOT sound like a sales pitch. It should simply pique their interest in such a way that the reader is strongly compelled to click the link to your landing page for more information.
Your landing page (in our case the Squidoo lens) will usually be more marketing oriented and will provide them the additional information they need in order to make a purchase. Fortunately for them, and you, your landing page just happens to contain your affiliate links to the product which means you'll get a commission if they click and buy.
It's always nice to have all of your web content rank well in Google, but don't expect your articles to rank well unless there are a lot of backlinks pointing to them. Generating backlinks to your article isn't however your primary goal here. The primary goal here is to use the article to provide a backlink to your landing page.
Because certain article directories have great Google Page Rank, having a article hosted at the directory allows your article to use the Page Rank from that directory and in turn pass some of that valuable Google Juice on to your landing page. This is the primary goal. This will help your landing page rank in Google.
Keywords And Keyword Density
In order for the backlink in our article to do its job of raising our landing page positioning in Google (that Google Juice again) the article must be relevant to the landing page. You'll recall in lesson 4, about building a squidoo lens with relevance, we needed to ensure our specifically chosen keyword was placed in the right locations throughout the squidoo lens. Well this principle actually applies to ALL web content, including our articles.
So we want to sprinkle our keywords throughout the article with a certain density such that Google will do the right thing and give us the backlink credit we're looking for.
The density, or number of times we use our keyword based on the size of the article, is important. If we place the keyword to few times Google will not see the article as being "about" that keyword. It will not believe the article is relevant to the keyword and it will not give much credit to the link pointing to our landing page.
However, if we place the keyword to many times, in other words if the density is too high, then it will look like spam and Google will likely penalize the page and it may in fact be doing you more harm than good.
The general rule of thumb is to have a keyword density of 3-7%. So for every 100 words in your article you should have 3-7 occurrences of the keyword.
Now that you know about keyword density you need to know where to place your keywords. This will be covered shortly when I talk about the article components themselves.
What To Put In Your Article?
First off don't worry about perfect grammar, a basic level of English yes, but perfect grammar is not required. People reading your article will respond better to someone they feel they can relate to. Writing in a casual, friendly, conversational manor will put your readers at easy subconsciously and will in turn make them more receptive to your message.
Simply write like you talk, unless no one understands you when you talk. In that case make sure you get a second opinion to ensure your article is understood the way you intend it to be. Think of the way you write an email to coworker.
OK, so one of the biggest questions I hear is "what do I put in my article?".
Well I can't obviously tell you what to say because that depends on your niche, keywords and writing style, but I can tell you about the components of an article and give you some pointers to get you started.
The components that make up the general structure of your article will look something like this
- Title
- Introduction - tell them what the article is going to be about
- Body - now actually tell them what you want to tell them
- Conclusion - summarizing what you just told them
- Bio Box - this is where you place links back to your landing page
The Title
At first I was going to tell you this was the most important part of any article because if it doesn't grab the reader's attention the rest of the article is irrelevant. But on second thought, there is no most important part since ALL parts must work correctly if you want the reader to click through to your landing page.
Having said that, the title is still the first part that needs to do its job and if it fails then so does the whole article.
The title of your article MUST contain the keyword your are focusing on.
The second thing it must do is grab them and pull them in to reading the article. How do we write a title like this? Here are some common techniques
- Say something controversial. People are almost compelled to look deeper, to see what you mean. They want to know why
- Car Auctions, What A Waste!
- Only Crazy People Buy XYZ Product
- Ask a thought provoking question. If it's though provoking it's hard not to read a little more to see the answer
- Why does Blue Ray Have That HD DVD Doesn't?
- Does Opinion Fetcher Really Pay You For Your Opinion?
- Will Guitar Hero III Help You Be A Better Guitar Player?
- Why Does the Super Crunch System Work Better Than the Others?
- Or simply give an opinion that others can resonate with
- The Best Free Affiliate E-Course Online is The Long Tail Treasure
- Making Money Online Is Easy Once You Learn How
The point is to pique their interest enough to get them to read the next line. In fact, Joe Vitale, in his book "Hypnotic Writing" states that the purpose of every line in your article is simply the get them to read the next line.
If you want to get better at writing titles, and other parts of the article, start thinking about what you're reading yourself. Next time you read an article online ask yourself why you clicked through the title to read the article?
The Introduction
The introduction is the first paragraph in the article and needs to grab the reader's attention much like your title did.
Keep in mind that for many directories, Google search results and other places where there might eventually be references to your article (Digg, Stumble etc ...) the first couple lines of your article are also often included beneath the title of your listing. People will first see the title and then the first few lines even before they open the full article. This is your one chance to get them to open and read your article.
The intro should also "confirm" that they're on the right track and that the article is relevant to the title that first caught their eye. If it's not relevant you'll have lost some trust and they will not keep reading. You do this by telling them what they can expect from the rest of the article.
The intro should almost always contain your keyword. This usually isn't a problem since your intro is confirming your title, which also contains the keyword.
Lastly, when writing your intro be sure not to giveaway the whole package. Tell then "about" what the article will be about, not the actual meat. If they learn everything they need to know from the intro they won't need to read any further.
Here are a few possible title/intro combos. See if they match up with what I've been blabbing on about
- Does Opinion Fetcher Really Pay You For Your Opinion?
After Signing up for Opinion Fetcher I soon had money coming in, but it wasn't quite what I expected. There were certainly some surprises along the way that everyone needs to know about before they get started. - The Best Free Affiliate E-Course Online is The Long Tail Treasure
If you're looking for the best free affiliate e-course online then without reservation recommend The Long Tail treasure. By free in no way do I mean to imply "free ride". As you'll soon see there's a lot to learn, but if you're not lazy and are willing to do the work you will make a boatload of money in the long run.
Notice the primary keyword was carried through from the title to the intro. Can you tell what the primary keyword was in the above examples? So can Google!
Hopefully if I've done my job well the reader's trigger finger is itching and ready to click through to the full article.
The Body
This is obviously the bulk of the article and should go into detail about what you've already hinted at in your title and intro. This is the meat they came for so don't disappoint them!
And of course you need a sprinkling of your keywords throughout.
One of the primary reasons people go online is to find information, often solutions to their problems, whatever they may be. This is your opportunity to help them! Rather than just tossing words on the page to satisfy your keyword density requirements ask yourself "how can I help them?", "what is it they're looking for?".
The answer to this should have already been clear when you came up with the title and intro. In the title and intro you told them what they could expect to learn from the article, now simply tell them. Give them the info you promised. If you do that you'll have won some trust which is required if you want them to click through to your landing page.
Does Opinion Fetcher Really Pay You For Your Opinion?
After Signing up for Opinion Fetcher I soon had money coming in, but it wasn't quite what I expected. There were some surprises along the way that everyone needs to know about before they get started.
Although there were a few usability issues with the Opinion Fetcher website, the signup process was pretty straight forward and only took about 10 minutes. Once signed up I gained access to the members only section of the site where things really got interesting.
When I signed up for Opinion Fetcher I was a bit skeptical that someone actually wanted to pay me for my opinion, especially since they didn't know anything about me. Well it turns out that you do in fact get paid, but all is not equal in the land of paid opinions.
Once signed up you get access to the members section of the website where it becomes clear different people get paid different amounts of money depending on their credentials. One authors profile didn't have much in the way of verified credentials and was only getting paid $10 per opinion. Meanwhile one other author who had verified he was in fact a doctor was getting paid $40 to write his opinion about various medical conditions.
So it seems Opinion Fetcher actually cares about quality opinions after all.
etc ...
Did I answer the readers expectations? I think so. I told them that they can indeed make money. I also told them a bit about the way it worked and some of the things that may not be obvious to non-members. I did this while also ensuring I weaving my keyword (Opinion Fetcher) into the text.
The Conclusion
The conclusion for your article should simply summarize what you've just told them. It's like a reminder and it too should contain the keyword if it's possible to do so without sounding out of place.
In my opinion it's OK to add a little new info if it supports what you've already told them and if it can be used to push them into clicking the link to your landing page which will be placed in your bio box (next section). I like to think of the conclusion as a kind of climax to the story and placing the climax as close to where the link to your landing page will be makes a lot of sense from a marketing psychology perspective.
So although people with actual credentials in the area they're offering opinions will get paid more for their opinion, Opinion Fetcher does seem to make good on their promise of paying you. In fact, even though I'm in grade 12 I do know about video games and my opinion seems to be worth $20 for each opinion I write! Yeah, no kidding, who would have thought! Anyway, in the past 3 months I've already pulled in $1,800. It seems Opinion Fetcher is the real deal.
In my conclusion I've told them about my success and confirmed that everyone has a valuable opinion on something and that Opinion Fetcher is the real deal. Hopefully the read is ready no to checkout this service and is looking for the link to take them to their new found wealth.
The Bio Box
The bio box, as it's called on EzineArticles.com, is your opportunity to place self serving links back to your landing page. In fact this is the ONLY place EzineArticles will allow self serving links. Other directories have different rules. For instance GoArticles.com allows self serving links in your body section as well.
The bio box is simply a separate section, like a signature for an email, which will be attached to the bottom of your article. It's often referred to as the "take" for your article. The main part of the article is the "give". Basically the article is what you are "giving" to the community and in return your are allowed to "take" something back which is the self serving links back to your page. You are taking traffic.
Now don't think of this as a typical signature like an email. The idea is the same, but the way you use it is a little different. Since you're trying to encourage people to click the link you need to give the reader some sort of "action" statement to move them along a bit. For instance you could put something like this
For more information on Opinion Fetcher be sure to checkout this website.
Todd Alan
www.LongTailTreasure.com
I wouldn't recommend it though. Why? Because it's boring! You're trying to encourage them to click so make it more interesting. Like your title and intro, you're trying to pique their interest. I think this one would be a bit better
Everyone has an opinion on something. Want to know what yours is really worth?
Todd Alan
www.LongTailTreasure.com
Final Thoughts On Article Writing
For some people article writing may seem daunting at first, but I promise you it will get easier the more you write. Furthermore, the skills you gain while writing articles can be applied to all of your marketing efforts. Whether it's an article or an ad, it is almost always the writing that makes the sale at the end of the day.
If you focus on the problems people are trying to solve you'll have no trouble coming up with ideas for your articles. Put yourself in their shoes and try to help them solve their problems and you'll have a reader that's ready to buy into your solution.
What's Next?
The next lesson on the horizon will be very short and will be an overview of using 2nd Tier pay per click (PPC) search engines to drive traffic to your articles and Squidoo lens. Why use 2nd tier traffic? It's very cheap (as low as 3 cents/click)and an effective way to drive up your "rankings" on certain types of sites. I'm going to show you which types of sites this is effective with and which ones it's not.
I'll show you how to turn a 3 cent click into something far more valuable!
Additional Resources
Wealthy Affiliate members - Be sure to check out the article marketing tutorial in the learning resource center for additional tips.
Hypnotic Writing
Long Tail Treasure Blog - The blog for this course is where you'll find some of the latest strategies and techniques I'm using. It's also where I'll be addressing common questions I receive from course members.
One of the best ways to keep up to date with what's going on at the Long Tail Treasure
is to subscribe to the RSS blog feed for this course
Cheers,
Todd Ariss