Does Article Marketing Work? I Just Increased My Income by 66.69% With Three Articles
Guest post by Britt Malka
Often, it’s not easy to measure how much impact article marketing really has.
You’ve probably seen an increase in your traffic, but did it affect the bottom line of your bank account at the end of the month?
Last year, I decided to participate in the Hundred Articles in Hundred Days event that started January 1st, and I’m only a little behind schedule. Out of the articles I’ve written so far, three of them pointed to a specific page in the resource box.
Allow me to go more into details here, so you really will be able to see, just how powerful article marketing is.
A while ago, I purchased the Mini-Site Formula, and I decided to test it. So I followed the instructions, and build a page which I chose to put only eBay ads on.
What really intrigued me about this product was that there were no hype about it. If you could make about $3 per day, you’ve reached your goal. Then you could make a new site that made $3 per day, and after a while, you would make real good money.
A few videos points to the site, but I haven’t really been advertising for it in any way. Even so, this site made me money each month. Not a lot, but some, and for being a site, I almost never write on, I’m pretty satisfied. Last month I received 28 euro ($39), and it’s been around those numbers every month.
The site is made up as a blog, where I have written 19 short posts.
When I submitted three of my articles to Ezine Articles, I pointed to one specific blog post in three of them, and not only did I see a spike in the traffic. I could also measure an increase in the gains, I’ve made so far (the month’s not finished yet).
I went from 28,01 euro last month to 46,69 this month, and since eBay not shows you gain for the last two days, I can make much more than that, before the end of January.
That’s a huge increase of 66.69%.
Or more than $9 per article, if you like.
Would you think it’s worth your time to write articles, if you knew that each of them would bring in at least $9 already the first month?
One of the advantages with articles is that they stay online. The $9 I gained more per article was just this month’s result. I expect that to be much higher next month.
So, I’m pretty happy that I decided to join the Hundred Articles in Hundred Days challenge, because that was the motivation I needed to get started writing a serious amount of articles. After all – one article a day? How hard can that be?
You’ll see, it’s fun, especially when the money starts pouring in.
Britt Malka is from Denmark, she knows how to write, in a very good and attractive way. She is big in Denmark, really a writing-expert. So take notes, folks.
read moreHow to Increase Your Blog Readership 10-fold
This is the text version of the live show the 13th of January 2010. I hope you can use it and thanks for everybody who showed up. Much appreciated.
Introduction
So there are two key things you need to do to gain readers from Google and the word of mouth method.
- Write consistently
- Build credibility
If you write consistently, you will get better search ranking in Google, because Google likes frequently updated blogs, in general Google just like content.
You need to stay up-to-date with your topic, if you aren’t doing that you will simply fall out, you need to give away fresh content, to able to compete with others. So what you read about your niche, is something you really need to educate your readers in, but of course you need to be unique.
Post about the new but add your angle to it, so it gets unique!
Guest posting for Newbies (read it even if you aren’t a newbie)
Guest posting isn’t something I’m doing enough, to be honest. I once did one at Teenius.com (sorry Simon, but I didn’t), which didn’t gave me any traffic at all and when I get no traffic = no readers.
Remember you are writing guest posts to get readers, not traffic. To get known. To get your brand out.
Analysis of The Blog
When you are writing guest posts on other blogs, then you need to study 10 different posts and see which of these posts are the most successful and see why they are so successful as they are.
So analyze the blog you want to write for, because then you will be able to see what kind of content you should write to get success on that blog. I’m not saying that you should copy the topic. Not the writing style, well at least not that much. But just see how he have done it.
Is it a list post, what is it? How did it become that successful?
Networking is Important
When you want to get a guest post on a blog you don’t know or at least you do not know the blog owner, I think it’s important that you build a stable relationship with the blog owner first. Because then he’ll be more likely to approve your blog post.
You can do it by tweet him and say that he has an awesome blog and you would like to have is instant messenger username. Then he will probably give you that, if he want to network with others.
Then write a bit with him everyday, for 3 days or so, if possible not less. Then ask him on the fourth day, if it is okay to give him a guest post and if there’s any chance for him to approve the post.
If he answers yes, then give him the post on the sixth day, not instantly. Two days after, he shouldn’t think this relationship is all about getting some traffic from his blog.
Keep chatting with him, for 14 days and if you like keep holding the contact to him (but do not write every single day, just once in a while). It will be best to keep the relationship on going as you will be a good friend of his and then you can eventually after that, do some business together.
If you do not want to do this, just send away a sample to him and then hope for the best. Worst case is that it wouldn’t get approved. Best case is the opposite.
Using Twitter to Get Readers
It is far from easy to get readers from Twitter, it is easy to get visitors come straight to your blog, but chances are that you’ll never see them again. P(getting a reader from twitter of all the visits you get from twitter) = 1%.
For the non mathematicians that just means that the chance (p is for probability) for getting a reader from Twitter who already got to your blog from Twitter is 1%.
The easiest way to get Twitter visitors to stay loyal readers is to build a relationship at first. When you want to turn visitors into readers then you probably should start laying out a foundation to a relationship.
Start by tweeting to some of your followers and so on, just interact. The formula to get Twitter relationships is:
Twitter + Interaction + Friendly Tones + Being Funny + Being Helpful = Twitter relationship
It’s quite simple, just be simple and helpful.
Make Visitors Feel Welcome
It’s critical that you make your visitors feel home, so they eventually is going to subscribe to your RSS feed. You can do that by using the WordPress plugin called “WP-Greet Plugin”
When you for an example have written a guest post on DaneBlogger.com, you can set this plugin to show a message, to every people who gets to the site from DaneBlogger.com to say “Hello DaneBlogger.com Reader, I hope that you enjoyed my blog post. If you did, subscribe to my RSS feed”
How BlogEngage is Going to Help You
When we are talking about gaining blog readers, why don’t we talk about BlogEngage.com?
Blog Engage is a community driven by the awesome man called Brian. He is f*cking helpful, really. This guy is having a so, so awesome heart. He is just amazing.
Blog Engage is so much more powerful than Digg, which I have mentioned before (Why Blog Engage is More Powerful than Digg and how to use it)
Digg is more for tech blogs where Blog Engage is more for bloggers who blogs about blogging.
To be honest, I haven’t been able to reach the Digg front page, have you? If so, then keep doing what you are doing. But it is much easier to reach the front page of Blog Engage. Of course it isn’t that much traffic you get from that. But still, it’s really hard to get to the Digg front page.
That was, all the topics we got around in the 13th January live show. I hope you enjoy it! The next live show is the 27th of January 3 P.m.
read moreBest of 2009 on DaneBlogger
1. 10 Major Blogging Mistakes is the best, most retweeted post from this year. Perhaps also the best article – It is from my report, which should show some of the qualities from my report.
“How would you like to get into a room, with old pizzas (oh god, I’d love to have a pizza now!) and mess everywhere, and then you would have to sleep there?”
2. How to Increase Your Productivity in 6 Easy Steps, I really like this blog post. Because your really can learn from it and from within the comments. My readers definitely have shared some good tips there.
“I enjoy reading other blogs about blogging, Internet marketing and so on. I bet you do so to, with your niche, because that’s probably your passion.”
3. How to Use White Papers to Build Your List, is the post where I describe the term “White paper” lots of people doesn’t know this term at all.. Something they should, definitely. White papers are very useful, for you and your readers.
“Brand yourself on every single page, you should not place an enormous logo or link on each page. You need to have a location at every page in the white paper, where people can identify you as the source for the knowledge.”
4. Examples of Social Proof in this post I’m giving some examples on how you can use social proof to your advantage.
“If you on Twitter have around 250 followers you will instantly think that 2,000 is many followers and even if you’re listed on 50 lists – you really start to see, that this guy is tweeting with value.”
5. What is The Real Difference Between Ebooks and Reports, is a post where I am giving my opinion on the difference between ebooks and reports. Then you can tell your readers what you’re giving away for free or selling.
“To be clear the reports give you the basic knowledge of the topic. The e-books teaches you how to use the basic knowledge.”
6. Increase Affiliate Sales by Implementing Two More Things in Your Selling, this is a “tutorial” on how you can increase affiliate sales. I like the methods, really. I haven’t seen them in use.
“If you offer your audience some bad stuff they will never ever gain trust to you and if they don’t trust you, you will not be able to sell them anything.”
7. Why You Comment on Other Blogs, is the only YouTube video that’s on this list. I think the principle in the video is the most important part of it all.. Really gold stuff I’m sharing here IMO.
“On one side you have promotion, on the other marketing”
8. How to Decide Your Blog Platform, this is my post where I simply say that I love WordPress and that I recommend other to use it, because it is so deadly simple etc.
“If you don’t want to code your web-design, yourself and neither want to outsource a web-designer to create your design and just want to pay for web hosting and domain name. I think you should go for WordPress with all the possible free WordPress designs.”
9. The Power of Social Proof in 4 Simple Steps, I give my audience a little “how-to” use social proof, in your advantage and well I explain it.
“He had a great sales page and everything was fine, but he had no testimonials, no text testimonials, no audio testimonials and finally no video testimonials. He have had some sales, but it really helped when he added some video testimonials. The videos were from people who liked his product, and talked about its niceness.”
10. 5 Ways to Get Easy Backlinks, in this post, I give you 5 ways to get backlinks and Google really appreciate backlinks!
“To guest post is really a good way to get backlinks and traffic, if you write great content people will click on the link back to your site.”
What’s Your Take?
Which blog post do you think is the best from DaneBlogger this year? Any of them listed, please let me know in the comments. Much appreciated!
read more4 Ways to Gain Credibility and To Network
Networking is one of the best parts about blogging; to share the traffic, have someone who really understands you, someone who has the same passions as you. Almost every popular blog got popular by another blog linking to it. It is like a chain;
Let’s say we have 5 popular blogs A, B, C, D, E and a 3 months old blog called -> F<- (your blog)
You mail blog ‘A’ and introduce yourself, say hello, tell them that you really enjoy their blog. Base the relationship first, before you are asking for any help.
Then blog ‘A’ watches your blog, and find an interesting article. Subsequently blog ‘A’ link to the blog article and blog B, C, D and E sees the article on blog A and then they go to your blog. Now they link to some other great articles of yours, which implies that another 5 blogs watches your blog, and in the end they link to the blog.
You see? It’s like a chain that’s why networking with others bloggers is so beautiful.
1. Introduce Yourself Before Anything Else
This is the way to contact another blogger, which may seem a bit awkward for you, but it is not. I thought that in the beginning, but almost everyone is doing it, so I can’t see why you should not. Now the mistake other bloggers tend to do, is that they ask a question in an email, and then two email after that they introduce themselves. You should introduce yourself at first, instead of writing a question to them at first.
Another mistake bloggers normally do when they are writing to introduce themselves, is that they go for the top blogers right away. Which unfortunately is a bad idea, they are keys to get success quickly, but they are aslo hard to get in touch with.
That’s why you should contact smaller bloggers, who are at your blogging level. Instead of interacting with the bloggers who have 1000+ readers every day; you should go for those around your own traffic level.
So once you have the same amount of traffic as other top bloggers, it’ll be easier for you to, get in touch with the other top bloggers in your niche. When you have that amoun of traffic your credibility is already established, which, of course, is why you are blogging.
2. Using Twitter to Gain Credibility
I use Twitter almost every day. I like Twitter. It is easy to network with other bloggers using Twitter; you can talk with other bloggers in just 140 characters
You can build credibility and relationships (even though I think it is easier to contact other bloggers through their mail) but they might be slow to answer emails. So Twitter is a great place for building relationships. However I think Twitter is a good place to build relationships with potential readers.
I really enjoy networking with other bloggers and share knowledge that way. I think you should try as often as possible to interact with other bloggers using Twitter; it’s a great communication tool.
As I said before Twitter is a great way to gain credibility, you can easily tell if a Twitter account is a spammer or if there is a real person behind the screen. That really is a plus.
The way you can tell if a Twitter account is a spam-account (it can be a real person) is if they only post link and follow around 800 and only 24 is following them back. But it’s obvious when you see a spam-account
3. A Way to Get Top Links
When you have published an amazing article, you can email top bloggers, and tell them about your article. I did that myself in the beginning of my Danish blogs, and I won a lot of readers that way – again with the chain reaction.
You should not expect that any of those bloggers to respond to your email. You can be lucky and it would be a thrill, if not it will end up with you being disappointed (maybe). If you already have a relation to the blogger it will be easier to make them link.
4. Another Funny Method to Get Top Links Back To Your Blog
The following method is something I really love, however I don’t do it as frequently as I should.
The method is: Interviewing other people.
I like doing interviews.; It also gives you some links back, imagine you can interview the best blogger in your niche, they get lots of traffic and they probably will link back to the interview. You can do different forms of interviews; you can interview by normal text or recording voice throughout Skype, this is called a Podcast.
I am a big fan of interviews, mainly because they are fun to make.
Try do it one time, I can recommend it, it is a good way to start a relationship foundation with another blogger, though.
read moreWhat is Your Goal for 2010?
This is an important subject I want you to think about. You might think it’s a bit early for this – but it isn’t! It’s the 8th December which means there is only 22 days to the new year is coming!
This also means that you’ve only got 22 days to choose one thing you have to improve when the new year begins. Every blogger should do this – it is so important for improvements on your blog.
For some this task is so easy, maybe because they have thought about what they have done wrong this year – or just recently. Others will find it quite hard, because they haven’t thought about it – you always have something you can improve – even if your name is Darren Rowse or Steve from the UK, really it doesn’t depends on whom you are, everybody can make improvements.
But if you have some problems to choose or just to find what you can improve – you just need to search deeper. I have done some pre-made things regular bloggers might wanna use.
- Post more often
- Guest post more often
- Do blog commenting more often
- Do forum posting
- Build more relationship
- Build stable relationship (focus on 10-20 people and build relationships from that)
- Raise 300% in traffic
- Raise search engine traffic by 200% (do much more SEO)
That’s some point for starters – nothing is wrong with taking two or three points – the more the better but, be sure to be able to finish them.
I think it is critical that you get this done. You need to have at least one new year continue for your blog by the end of 2009 – that’s 22 days from now!
read moreFollow up on The YouTube Video About Podcasting
A couple of days ago, I was talking in a video about audio podcasting. Now I’m writing a follow up post, so if you like text more you can just read some of the most relevant stuff here.
A podcast is simply an audio (video podcast is video) where a person (you) is talking about something. It can be an interview, reader question or a story (but more on that later.)
Podcasts is very powerful, lots of people with blogs doesn’t realize that this is so powerful. People love to share it on social media – the key thing is also that the reader can do something else while learning. I know some bloggers hide between the lines. They only write they don’t try these successful methods, they are much more powerful.
Not only the social media world loves podcasts, I bet your readers also likes podcasts. I think, you should try and record a podcast and see what people thinks about it. How good is the response?
What You Need?
To get started with podcasting, you actually doesn’t need a thing if you own a laptop with a recording device in it.
Otherwise, if you do not have a laptop with a recording device included, buy a headset with a microphone, those aren’t expensive – quite cheap IMO.
So you need
- Headset or a device that can record (could be a laptop)
- Software (all are free, Audacity (just do a Google search) if Windows or Linux – if Mac the in-built iLife: Garage Band)
What To Talk About?
Many people get confused when they have decided they want to record a podcast, then they suddenly get a “blackout” they don’t know what to talk about. It actually isn’t that much needed, you can seriously talk about anything. Talk about what you write about.
You can talk about a reader question you’ve got, maybe do an interview (you can use Skype) or just start with a story and then end of with having a point. The story will make people relate and they want to continue to listen.
I think “story-podcasts” are the most powerful – because if you start a story people will be listening to the end – just keep the story related to the point.
If you have intentions of making a long podcast you should write a script or just some keywords on a paper. Just be sure you don’t get all to distracted to the paper.
Do your best to prepare. You need somewhat preparation to start speaking unless you want to make your podcasts straight from the heart – but always keep in mind you need a topic to talk about 
If you feel best if you have a script, practice as much as possible. You shouldn’t be addicted to the paper and do never read the text, talk the text.
After You Have Recorded
..you might want to do a bit of editing, you can do that in Garage Band (Mac) or Audacity (Windows and Linux), there you can add melodies, maybe in the start add a jingle – that you have in each podcast.
You should save it in the audio format “MP3″ – it’s a cross-platform audio file. Everybody will be able to listen to it.
But in the end it should be quite easy. Use the plugin called podPress – follow the instructions.
If you want to watch the video about podcasting just click
Then rock and roll!
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