Fifty Days With an Article Syndication Service

First a little background.  Fewer than fifty days ago, I made the wise choice of becoming a member of an article marketing service.  While I don’t actually know the guy that designed this remarkable tool for online marketers, I honestly feel as if I do, because I have heard his voice on so many training videos about how to use the many products and services I have purchased from him.  I think I am responsible for paying off his last car.

Because of my past experiences with this guy, I was confident that the service would accomplish for me what it promised: An innovative way of distributing my articles.  Like any Internet marketer, I could always use more traffic, and who among us is not constantly looking for fresh one-way external links.  In order to achieve both these objectives–traffic and improved SEO–I rely heavily upon article marketing.

In the past, most of my subtly promotional articles have gone to article directories, but this new network offers some important advantages over article directory submissions.  For example, I can now put my links directly into the body of the article rather than assigning them to a resource box.  That’s something that isn’t allowed in most article directories, but contextual linking offers greater benefits in terms of search engine optimization and traffic maximization.  Also, rather than being filtered through an article directory, my articles in this system can go directly to a website that is specifically related to my niche.  Once again, great for traffic and SEO.  Third, since some of my business involves affiliate marketing, with this service I can put an affiliate link directly in the article, if I want–another thing that the article directories don’t allow.  Fourth, the distribution system has a built in article spinner, so that the version of the article that each website publishes can be unique.

After almost fifty days, I thought that I would check to see what I had accomplished so far.  Here are just a few of the highlights of my experience with My Article Network.

Now the articles trickle out to the sites, so those I’ve put into the system so far are all at different points in their publication schedule.  I have written not quite sixty articles for the system, so far–all very well spun.  Over 1900 web pages now consist of my unique versions of those articles.  I am allowed to insert up to three links in each article, but I vary the number of links, so my conservative best guess is that my sites singled out for promotion through this system have received somewhere in excess of four thousand links.  Obviously, it will require additional time for some of those links to be noticed by the various search engine.  Some of my links are actually pointed at other of my articles published on article directories and some of the sites in the system to give them a little more “link juice.”

I started a new site in a very competitive niche about three months ago, and I have directed the links from more than half of my articles toward that site’s promotion.  Alexa couldn’t even find that site when I first joined this system, and now it has climbed in the Alexa rankings more than two million positions.  I’m a bit embarassed to admit it, but the new site gets more traffic already than some of my old sites that I have been working on for years.  For example, I have done nothing to my oldest site (no pages added, no new SEO, only 9 articles in this system pointing at it), and it has jumped 120,000 positions.  I can’t attribute that traffic growth to anything other than those nine articles–and the system that distributed them.

Okay, if you like those numbers, take a look at this.  Only six days ago, I decided I should just keep records of the results, so I set up a spread sheet.  In that one week (little less) the eight sites that I have directly promoted through the service have increased a cumulative total of over 5 million positions in Alexa.  I realize that Alexa is not the finest measure of progress, but I still think that’s a very strong indication of getting my money’s worth and then some.

I actually became so excited by the whole process that I have subsequently created four new blogs to join the over 10,000 websites that are eager publishers for the content that we writer-marketers provide.

I strongly suggest that you become a member of My Article Network.  Yes, you affiliate marketers out there, you can become an affiliate–after you join the article distribution service.

Finding Information for Web Enterprise Development

Whether you are beginning a new online business, creating a web presence for your offline business or already have a fully developed business with multiple websites, you should view the Internet as more than just a venue for marketing.  It is also a seemingly endless resource for business information.

For those in the first tenuous stages of establishing a business, you can find a variety of online courses to hasten your learning curve.  Some of those are free; others can be rather costly.  In addition there are article directories, websites and blogs with valuable information for a new online business.  Take the necessary time to learn before you plan and to plan before you act.

The existing businesses who are about to create their first business website, will locate vast reserves of useful material ranging from site architecture to website design and web page objectives.  Managers of any type of business must be familiar with all of these topics before negotiating with any consultants or contracting with professional website building services.

No matter how much progress you have made in implementing your business roadmap, you need to know the different traffic maximization strategies for you site and continue optimizing it in a way to improve your rankings on the relevant search engine results.  You can find superb recommendations for specific topics such as the best web directories to which to submit your website, how to properly employ article marketing and where social media might fit into your overall marketing mix.

Even though you may be outsourcing most of the tasks mentioned here, it is very important to become familiar with the concepts and terminology so that you can be more certain that you have handled the best specialists and that you can clearly communicate your needs and expectations to those professionals that you have hired.  Some of your competitors will rush to act, and misallocate a lot of financial resources because they didn’t take time to learn first.  Make sure that you do not make that same mistake!

A Great Traffic System for Affiliate Marketers

There are plenty of good sources that can tell you a great deal about how to establish an affiliate marketing business.  Unfortunately, it is much harder to find someone to do the actual difficult work for you.  Well, I may not have found a long hidden source of free labor, but I have discovered what I think is the next best thing.

I sell my own digital and physical products, but a sizeable chunk of my income still comes from affiliate marketing, where I began.  I use websites and blogs for all of my online business activities.  I am a firm supporter–make that “enthusiast”–of SEO for traffic generation, but that is a long term process; good search results take time to build.  For some of my affiliate marketing, I have tried PPC, but rarely have I had success over the long haul. 

So, for me, as for all Internet marketers, traffic is a very challenging part of my business.  It is particularly difficult for those times when I discover a new affiliate product but for which none of my sites are well optimized.  How do I send my traffic to the vendor’s site?

My approach to directing traffic to the vendor’s site is just like many other affiliate marketers, I take them first to my own site, where I ply my skills of subtle persuasion.  Then I just hope that I have been sufficiently convincing to get them to click the link that directs them to the vendor’s site so that I have some small chance of earning my commission.  I would like to make that process a bit less involved and take the prospects to the vendors a little more efficiently.

I use content syndication for all of my sites.  While I get some traffic directly from the articles, my primary reason for article marketing is its SEO value, which is considerable.  There are two major problems with the traditional approach to article marketing, especially for the affiliate marketer.  First, the major article directories don’t allow contextual links within the body of the articles.  Instead the links stand alone in a section that they call the author’s resource box, but which screams, “Commercial!” to our readers.  Second, the major article directories do not allow affiliate links or even links to redirected pages or domains.

Finally, there is an article distribution service that solves those two problems and allows direct linking using our affiliate links which can be placed contextually within the article.  It’s called My Article Network–and, yes, once you are a member, you can join its affiliate program.

My Article Network is like a consortium for article marketers and content publishers.  (That link will let you know what I have to say about it on one of my sites.) 

Since I am writing to and for the benefit of affiliate marketers, I’ll cut short the presell message and let sales page of My Article Network persuade you on its own.  I have been a member of the system for less than seven weeks, and I am definitely ready to proselytize!  In fact, I even set up four new niche blogs to make use of the free content that my colleagues provide.  (Go ahead.  Click the link, you know you want to.)(Do it!  You know you want to click the link.  Come on…don’t you think I deserve it?

Next Page »