I Hate Writing Articles – Isn’t There An Easier Way?
Owning and maintaining an internet business requires that you have fresh content articles on a regular basis — preferably daily. Articles quench the thirst for information and knowledge that lures your prospects to your site.
So what are your options if you simply hate to write?
Well, for starters if you hate writing articles and you can’t afford to hire someone reputable to write for you, you can get free articles. The first place to look is in the public domain. You won’t have problems with copyright infringement if your material is available in the public domain.
Public domain articles have expired copyrights. In other words, when a work is copyrighted, that copyright has an expiration date. Copyrights can be extended but when the author dies, sometimes they don’t get extended and actually expire. When that happens, they end up in the public domain. So, these are writings that were once published. And, in that light, the writing should be very good.
The downside to public domain articles is that anyone can use them and your competition may have done so already. You may have to edit them a bit to place your keywords and keyword phrases in the appropriate places. Also, make sure that if you use public domain articles they pertain to your niche topic.
Another way to get free articles is to allow other sites which have similar content to submit articles to your site. Most bloggers today do utility posting which is exactly this. They use content from other blogs and give the blog a trackback (link).
Now, some people might think WAIT A MINUTE – I don’t want to put links to other sites on my site! But, if that’s what you’re thinking, you’re a bit behind the times, I’m afraid. If you’ve ever heard the term Web 2.0 that’s really what it’s all about. Even Google knows this and is now serving up pages with the most popularity based on the number of links to and from a site and, of course, a lot of other things too. But social populariaty is REALLY important!!!
So, forget about keeping all the links to yourself and start sharing as much as you can.
Just one more thing I also want to point out as far as where to get good content for your articles. There are many sites online that offer what are called Private Label Articles that you can publish and take credit for yourself. You can even rewrite them if you like. In fact, that’s how this article came about. I have no problem writing, but by using a PLR article to start with, the ideas flow easier and I don’t have to come up with all original content.
8 Proven Tips to Increase Affiliate Marketing Traffic and Sales
Every affiliate marketer is looking for that key market that reaps the largest reward. You don’t need a magic formula when a simple plan can work wonders. Affiliate marketing isn’t rocket science, but you do need to have a strategy. It takes proven marketing principles, hard work and dedication.
As time goes on, things change and what may have worked yesterday is no longer effective today. The following 8 affiliate marketing tips, will help you to increase sales and become more successful online.
Tip #1 – It’s best to use unique web pages to promote each product you’re marketing. Don’t put all your products together on one page or website. Web hosting is not expensive and it’s best to have a site specifically focused on each product.
Tip #2 – Include product reviews on your site. This shows that you’ve actually used the product and how it compares to other similar products. A little research on competitive products can help you write a knowledgeable review.
Tip #3 – Testimonials are a must. I don’t know about you, but even though I know testimonials are a sales tool, when I read them, it does something to really compel me to buy the product. Your visitors are the same. Testimonials are just powerful juice for your web page. Ask your customers for testimonials. If they are happy with the product, they’re usually happy to comply. If you’re just starting out, you may be able to find testimonials on the product owner’s website.
Tip #4 – Offer a free report to your readers. The best place to advertise your free report is in the upper left corner of the page. Everyone looks there first and it’s proven to be the most effective spot. A “special” report will carry more weight than an autoresponder series. Make sure, however, that it is also unique and valuable to them or they won’t be back. And, of course, make sure they have to opt-in to your autoresponder before they can download the report.
Tip #5 — Create your list. There can be only one of two results when a potential customer visits your web page. You will either make a sale or the prospect will leave and probably never come back. By capturing their email address before giving them the free report in Tip #4, you can continue to remind them of your product which they may have wanted to purchase at a later date. Make sure that the emails they receive are directed toward specific reasons to buy the product and don’t make it sound like a sales pitch.
Tip #6 – Focus on benefits, not features. In other words, talk about how your product can save them time or help them make more money. Those are benefits. Include compelling subject lines without sounding like you are hyping the product.
Tip #7 — Targeted traffic is important. There’s a difference in types of web traffic. If you drive traffic to your site that isn’t interested in your product, it’s worthless regardless of the numbers. So, always focus on targeting the traffic to your product.
Writing articles for online ezines or other blogs is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your site. But, make sure you’re writing about the same subject as the product you’re trying to sell. Writing an article about RSS feeds if you’re trying to market real estate investing is a waste of time. I saw someone do this very thing today and had to just shake my head. What were they thinking! I actually published their article on my blog, which is related to affiliate marketing. It was a good article, but the traffic draw to their website will be minimal because the people reading my blog are not high profile prospects interested in real estate investing.
Tip #8 – Quality before quantity. Try to write as many “quality” articles per week as you can. I hear some people saying they write 10 articles per day. That’s absurd because you can’t possibly write 10 quality articles per day. You can probably draw the same numbers as they are with half as many “quality” articles. Each article should be about 300-600 words in length. By continuously writing and generating these articles you can create an ongoing flow of traffic to your site.
Remember that only about 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product. So, if you can generate 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, that means you should make about 10 sales on average. If you then consider that you will make about $25 on an low to average priced Clickbank product and then multiply your daily earnings by 30 days per month, that’s $7,500 per month. Not bad for a little bit of persistence and “quality” article writing.
The tips I’ve outlined here are not difficult to do. They just require time and an action plan. Take some time each day to focus on the tips above and in no time, you’ll be driving quality traffic to your site and growing your list each day.
And, over time, by using these tips for several affiliate marketing programs, you can create a nice source of income with a simple plan and a little persistence. Most affiliate marketers fail because they don’t have a plan. Just think of the huge paychecks you will be receiving!
The Uniquefier Plugin – Black Hat Trickery
Marketing tools are great but when they are used to fool the search engines, they generally don’t pay off in the long run. The Uniquefier plugin adds code to your blog posts that fool the search engines into believing that your scraped content is unique content. You need to understand how it works to understand how it can hurt you in the long run.
When we first started coding web sites (way back in the 90’s), it was necessary to use special codes called ASCII to display some of the less used characters on the keyboard such as apostrophes, quotes, etc. As browsers became more sophisticated, this coding became unnecessary. However, the new browsers are also able to continue reading this code in case you should encounter an older website that uses it. For a complete list of these codes you can go to:
http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm
Uniquefier works by adding ASCII codes to your blog posts that are unnecessary but that can be read by the browser and display the same text to the human eye. The coding only fools the search engine into believing that the post is unique.
If you use Copyscape to check your pages for uniqueness, you can easily see that Copyscape sees them as unique once the plugin is activated. So what’s the catch?
Uniquefier is on its third version as of this writing. The reason the developers keep releasing new versions is not to improve the plugin so much as to change the way it works because it becomes non-functional very quickly. That’s because it is a very simple search and replace function that you could perform manually in a program like Word if you wanted to. This causes it to leave a very traceable footprint.
In the Version 2 video on the sales page, you can see that they were using a code for a “soft hyphen” throughout the page. This code () was being embedded hundreds of times on each page. So, it was an easy one to spot and flag by Copyscape and the search engines.
In the new Version 3, they are searching and replacing bullets, quotes, apostrophes, ellipsis and other similar punctuation with the ASCII codes. These codes can be seen in the bottom box of the link above to the ASCII code web site.
As Copyscape and the search engines realize what is happening, they will de-index the sites using the plugin and could decide to ban them as well.
So, now that you understand this plugin, use it with extreme caution. You have to ask yourself if “cheating” the system is really worth it in the long run. Remember, it’s only a matter of time before it stops working and eventually, the developers will run out of codes to use.
I personally believe this plugin is not worth the risk. In fact, I think these guys are just out for a run for the money. A good programmer would have taken the time to create a program that would work much better than this.
The “Sig File” – A Powerful Marketing Tool – When Done Right!!
This is probably the most basic and overlooked tool you can use to market your website. And, when done well, it can be extremely powerful. A “Sig File” is simply the signature block you use at the end of the Email messages you send to others. If you don’t have one, you should!
Most Email programs today allow you to automatically add your sig file without having to retype it each time you send an Email. Some programs, like Eudora (which, by the way, we highly recommend), allow you to create multiple profiles (called Personalities) and have multiple sig files. This is especially useful to people with more than one domain.
After you’ve created your sig file, every time you send out an Email message, you’re also sending out a marketing message. How powerful that message is, depends upon your objective and creativity in developing your sig file. But, we’ll get to that in a minute.
One of the most overlooked elements of a sig file (and I find this hard to beleive, but I see it all too often), is leaving out the URL of your web page. Since most of the mail programs today will convert a URL to a standard hyperlink within the text of the message, this is very important. However, in order for the text to be converted to a link, you must include the “http://” at the beginning of the URL. Simply putting “mydomain.com” is not sufficient. Eudora will allow you to create a hyperlink with any text so you don’t have the http:// part showing in your email. See my example, above.
Okay, now lets decide what you want to achieve with your sig file. Well, we know you want people to visit your site, but how do you get them to do that? There are lots of ways and if you’re using some of the obvious ones, like holding a contest or giving things away free, you might want your sig file to reflect that.
A lot of people tend to create a sig file and then forget about it. Try to keep your sig file current and compelling. If you are good at “ASCII Art” you may want to create a small artful figure. You can find some free ASCII Art online by searching Google. This “art” is created using the standard keyboard keys.
Here are a few guidelines you should use when creating sig files:
Keep It Short – No more than 6 lines is what the Netiquette guidelines say. However, if you’re a good ASCII Artist and it’s cute and eye-catching, you may be able to get away with more but don’t go overboard here.
Include Your Contact Info – You may want to include an Email address and phone numbers. However, most mail systems will include your Email address automaticaly in your Email. If you do include your Email address, you can make it clickable by typing:
mailto:myaddress@mydomain.com
Quotes Are Cute – A lot of people add a notable quote at the end of their sig file. I find these interesting and they sometimes give me a welcome chuckle.
Subtle Sales Line – Remember, the object of marketing with a sig file is to get them to go to your site. This is where your marketing creativity comes in. Determine something unique about your web site, products, or service and come up a good one liner.
It may take you awhile to work out a great sig file, but, once you do, it’s one more marketing strategy working for you every time you send an Email.
