The Pen Is Mightier Than Website Traffic

This is something I came across

By: Mike Burke

Although significant website traffic to your site can seem to be an uphill battle, once again the pen is the clear winner. Other than free search engine traffic, publishing articles remains as one of the few truly effective ways to get targeted traffic to your site.

If you haven't already tried your hand at writing an article, it may seem like a pretty daunting task, especially if you don't think you have the necessary skills. Anyone can write and submit an effective article and it's easier than you may think.

There is a certain art to writing an article, however, but it doesn't really require any special skills. You don't need a degree to write an article and you don't need to be a programmer to submit your articles to ezines, blogs or any other article distributor to have your article published.

The art of writing an article is in the plan.

If you expect to achieve any amount of success in anything you do, you need to have a well thought out plan and writing an article for publication is no exception. Fortunately, after you have developed your plan, the hard part will be done.

Here are some of the basic elements you should include in your plan to write an effective article:

The first step is to decide what you want to write about but, more importantly, decide what it is you know about your topic that the majority of your readers don't already know. If you think you don't know enough about your topic to write an article, do some research.

Albert Einstein once said that he didn't clutter his mind with information he didn't need but he knew where to find it if he needed it. There's a wealth of information available and with a little homework, you'll have more than enough information for your article in no time.

The next step is to make a list of the main points of your topic. Pick one you want to expand and focus your article around that point. It's easy to get carried away and to try to pack too much information into a single article. Save the other main points of your topic for other articles.

The next step is to establish the sub-points, if any, of the main point you would like to convey to your readers. How can you further explain the point of your article? For example, what do you feel is important for your readers to know and what pitfalls should they avoid? Point out vulnerabilities and solutions.

The next step is to determine what you want your readers to get out of your article. Simply offering information will read like a text book and won't be very interesting. Challenge your readers to think about what you're saying and how they can put it to use in a way they haven't thought of before - peak their interest.

The next step to decide the 'color' of your article. By 'color' I mean the style you would like your article to have. For example, your article could be formal, informal, humorous, serious, casual, general, personal - you get the idea.

Now that we've gone over the steps to create an article, now let's put them in order and fill in the blanks.

#1) Decide what the main topic of your article will be.

#2) Establish the sub-points, if any, of your main topic.

#3) Determine what you want your readers to get out of your article.

#4) Pick a 'color' for your article -- the style you would like to use.

#5) Create a rough draft of your article.

#6) Edit your article. (have someone read your article and offer suggestions)

#7) Check your grammar and spelling.

#8) Create a title for your article. (keep it simple and catchy)

#9) Create a 'teaser' for your article. (a 'teaser' is a short, 2 or 3 sentence description of the contents of your article)

#10) Create a 'bio'. (a 'bio' is a short, 2 or 3 sentence description of who your are and your qualifications. Remember to put a link to your website in your 'bio')

#11) List 4 or 5 of the keywords that relate to your article. (some article distributors require them)

#12) Submit your article to article distributors. (that's a topic for another article)

The hardest part of writing articles is actually writing and submitting your first one. The more articles you write, the easier and more enjoyable it gets.

So, go ahead - start writing and submitting articles and watch your website traffic skyrocket!

Affiliate Maketing Tips

1) Choose a product that looks good. This is a skill in and of itself. Generally you want something with a decent gravity, but not so high that the competition is fierce. I would say look in the 30-100 gravity range, but others may differ.

2) Do some keyword research on that product. Google's keyword tool is good for this and it's free (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal), but I find the MicroNiche finder to be well worth the expense (it was the first purchase I made once I got my first paycheck, and I wish I had got it sooner). In general I look for keyword phrases with low competition and a monthly exact search number of 1500 or higher, preferably around 3000 (or more). (To help figure out what your competition is, do a google search of the keyword phrase in quotes. This will give you a sense of how many pages are targeting that exact keyword phrase. Stick below 10,000 if possible. Also do a google search for the phrase without quotes and look at the results on the first page, especially the top three slots. If they don't have a PageRanks over three or lots of backlinks, then it is good to go. With MicroNiche, look for a website with a SOC - Strength of Competition- below 20, less than 10 is ideal!).

3) Decide whether you are going to create a landing page for the product or if you are simply going to redirect an url. It is probably best to do both, since if you are going to pursue article marketing many of the ezines don't allow you to link directly to an affiliate page, so you will need a landing page instead. For cheap redirects you can use an .info domain which only costs a buck or so the first year. You can create your own landing page either on a free site (Squidoo is good for this, as is blogspot), or use your own domain.

4) Start writing articles on the product using your low competition keywords you found earlier. Ezine articles is probably the most popular, but they are getting more strict about what kind of content and links they accept, and they also can take a week or longer to approve if your don't have premium status. But there are literally dozens of worthwhile places to submit articles to: ArticleBase, Buzzle, SearchWarp, GoArticles, and ArticleDashboard are some of my favorites. Your main goal with these articles (as an affiliate marketer) is to get the reader to click on your links in the resource box, and there are different strategies people pursue to do this (mine is to try to write a quality article that gets people interested enough to visit my landing page to learn more, and then convince them they need to visit the clickbank seller's page to purchase the product).

For each product I promote, I try to write 50 articles initially (takes me about a week, usually). I write all my articles myself, and I usually target between 5-10 keyword phrases with these articles. Initial sales usually come from the articles, but I link each article back to my landing page website using the keywords as anchor text in my resource boxes (for those article directories that allow dofollow links), and my long term goal is to get direct traffic from Google searches so I won't have to continually spit out articles every day and visitors will arrive organically at my site. This can take a couple of months or longer, however, so for short term gain, article marketing is the fastest way to make some money.

I don't use adwords, so I can't advise you on this, but I'm sure others can.

Setting Up Your Affiliate Leads Capture Page

Once you’ve identified the niche market and its potential profitability, your next step would be to set up a simple direct response website to market the selected affiliate program.

We Call This The “Affiliate Leads Capture Page”.

You’d want to do this for long-term success as a money-making super affiliate. This is the website where you can capture leads and make profits from over and over again.
We’ll briefly cover the essential steps for you to get started below (You can readily find tons of information on these from the search engines and free tutorials online).

Choose A Suitable Domain Name:


Before you go to register a new domain name, it’s very important that you sit down and generate a list of potential names for your affiliate leads capture page. There are two approaches to doing this:

• Brand a site for the promotion of one affiliate product
• Brand a site for the promotion of multiple affiliate products

In the first case, coming up with available domain names is quite simple. Let’s say that you’ve chosen to promote a product like CheapCarFinder.Com as an affiliate. You can create variations on this domain name until you come up with an available one.

Some examples include: mycheapcarfinder.com, thecheapcarfinder.com,
findacheapcar.com, etc.

The second scenario takes a little more brainstorming, but is worth the effort for the sake of leverage and cost savings.

Rather than purchase a domain and hosting account for each product you promote, you will choose one domain and set up each of your products in subdirectories like:


www.mydomain.com/product1
www.mydomain.com/product2


The trick is to come up with an appealing and descriptive name that is still somewhat
generic. Here’re two powerful domain-branding tips:

• Register your full name, for example, www.Williamkayser.com.
• Mix in words like ‘info’, ‘marketing’, ‘tips’, ‘publishing’, ‘ebook’, ‘news’ or ‘secrets’
as these words imply content.

Visit NameCheap.com or GoDaddy.com to register your domains for less than $10.

Targeting A Profitable Affiliate Niche Market

This is frankly the most important step you need to perform. It is the foundation for the
success of everything that follows, especially when it comes to affiliate marketing.

The keyword of the day is “profitable”.

Remember That Some Markets Remain Underserved For A Good
Reason: There’s No Money In Them.

So your goal is to learn how to do two things quickly:
• Locate potential niche markets to market affiliate products to
• Determine the profit potential of that market before diving इन

Locating The Affiliate Niche Market:

The single biggest hurdle most new affiliate marketers face is coming up with niche
ideas because they get stuck on categories that are too broad. So, your first step is to branch out with any sub-categories you can think of off the top of your head.

Since no one can generate a list of infinite possibilities in one sitting, your next step is to go where the niches are already broken down for you. Guess what common source is a great place to start? Search Engine Directories!

Start up your browser right now and head over to either Google.com or Yahoo.com and
begin drilling down through those categories. Once you have a target in mind, employ
additional research by:

1. Checking some related search terms at Overture.com and checking on the size
of that niche market…

2. Visiting related discussion forums and monitoring threads pertaining to this niche. What questions are people asking? What problems are they looking to solve?


How To Determine The Market’s Profit Potential:

One Way To Determine Profitability Is Simply To Examine If An
Affiliate Product ALREADY Exists In The Niche You’re Targeting

The first place to start your search is at the ClickBank marketplace. Examine existing products and note if a profitable affiliate program is in place. Does the sales letter convert well? Can you readily market this product to the niche in question?

These are just some factors you need to consider. While a listing in Clickbank’s
marketplace is not necessarily a guarantee of strong affiliate sales, it’s a good start.
Pay attention to the products in the top 10 for each category.

Next, it’s time to take a trip to your local bookstore…

If your niche has its own specialty long-running magazine, that’s a good indicator of
potential profit within that market. It also indicates that the market has money to spend.

The reason:

Magazines are advertiser supported. The readership must generate sales for those
advertisers to keep them interested in advertising in that publication.

Pick up extra issues at your library if you can and scan the magazine for ads which
appear month after month. Those are profitable products for that advertiser.