The Article Marketing Blog

When doing research on keyword phrases, you can find some great keywords to write your articles around.

But don’t get caught up in the literal results that you find!

For instance, if you use the Google Keyword Tool with “Stop Smoking” as an example, you get a great, long list of keyword phrases that people are actually typing into the search boxes:

stop smoking
best way to stop smoking
how to stop smoking
hypnosis stop smoking
stop smoking products
stop smoking aid
free stop smoking
stop smoking program
etc…

The two bolded phrases in the list above are great keyword phrases to rank for, but more and more people are trying to rank for the literal phrase by writing and submitting articles with the exact phrase in them…and they just don’t make sense!

For instance, someone would write an article with this title:

“Hypnosis Stop Smoking: Getting Help To Quit Easily”

Umm, I’m sorry but that doesn’t make a bit of sense! It is gramatically incorrect and is frankly improper English.

Don’t write like this to rank for the literal keyword phrase! You will look like an idiot to internet users and your CTR, much less your reader rate, will be somewherejust north of NILL.

Instead, write this: “Stop Smoking Hypnosis: Getting Help To Quit Easily”

Much nicer! You will get readers and click-throughs.

Another example using the list above is “free stop smoking.”

Sure enough, people are submitting articles about free stop smoking.

“Free Stop Smoking - 3 Steps To Quit Easily”

Free stop smoking WHAT!?

Free stop smoking suppositories? Free stop smoking doppler radar images?

Hopefully you get the point. If the keyword phrase makes no sense, don’t use it literally. Instead, work it into a phrase that your potential buying clients will be searching for…not for somthing that makes no sense or is written in poor or improper English.

Oh, one more thing. I wouldn’t suggest that new article marketers go for this niche. The competition is cutthroat and ferocious. Very hard niche to even get a portion of!

Good luck and KEEP WRITING!

Respectfully,
Allen Graves

This post will serve to prove that within a few weeks, you can be making $3,000 a month using nothing but article marketing…or does it?

First let me say that article marketing is much like a jigsaw puzzle. First you have to possess all of the pieces to the puzzle and then you have to place them all in the right places.

I cannot get into all of the pieces of this puzzle and which should be placed first, last or anywhere in between - it would take a 200 page ebook to do that. So let me just say that if you DO IT THE RIGHT WAY then this plan is entirely possible.

I study article marketing statistics on thousands of articles every single day, so when I say this is possible, I am speaking from factual evidence based on everyday statistics of Joe Blow Article Marketer.

So here’s the plan…

In a nutshell, write an article a day, work it and repeat.

Sound easy right? That’s because it is.

Again, the article must be written perfectly for both your prospects and the search engines - and must be targeted to the correct audience.

So let’s say that you are promoting a product that pays you…oh I don’t know…let’s just say $25 per sale.

You write your first article on day 1 and work it. (Working it consists of submitting it to the right places and marketing the article URL)

On day 2, you do the exact same thing with a new article.

Follow this plan for 5 days. On the weekend, do a little more marketing of your 5 articles, relax and have a nice weekend.

Then, on the following weeks, do the same thing.

This will get your article ranked highly in the search engines (again, if you do it right!) and bringing in some very targeted consistent traffic within 2 weeks which is only going to continue growing.

I am talking long term traffic here - not the quick burst of traffic you see from submitting to EZA and leaving it alone to watch it fade away into oblivion.

Now we can create and crunch some numbers based on actual data.

Lets say that each article you write brings in one sale per week…which is very low considering your articles are perfectly done and targeting the right audience, right?

After 10 weeks, you should have 50 articles all published and ranking highly for the long-term. If each of these articles brings you one sale per week, then you are already sitting at $5000 per month.

Allowing for attrition and the simple fact that not all articles will do as well as others, I believe we can safely assume that $3,000 in a month is a very reasonable and attainable figure.

Once you get to that point, you can educate and train a writer to create your articles for you - and continue to scale it up appropriately.

What are your thoughts?

Respectfully,
Allen Graves

If you are just getting started as an affiliate and you’re searching for products to push, the best place to start is digital marketplace - Clickbank. It’s an online retail outlet which has over 10,000 digital products from which to choose. Clickbank merchants are selling their digital products like ebooks and they are on the lookout for affiliates who will promote their products. These products have terribly high commission rates. When anyone buys the PDF, it’s instantly available for download straight onto their computer. There is no shipping and no other overhead concerned so the profits are high and is why the commission can be so high.

For someone only starting in in the affiliate marketing business Niche Formula is really attractive. Plus, you don’t need to have experience to start with Clickbank. There are more affiliate marketplaces that are out there today but sometimes they want you to build a proven track record before you start with them. By proven track record, we mean - prove that you can sell affiliate products. Once you start of the advantages of Clickbank and decide to around to start, you may take the marketplace and select from the products you wish to promote.

These are grouped into a selection of classes. There’s available info like the merchant’s sales of the finest systems to help identify if it is something you need to pursue. Some merchants have their own associate programs which you may join if you would like. They will help you if you make a decision to promote their product by providing banners, key words and content for articles. Once you have decided on a it is you will want to create a hoplink. What’s this? Well, a hoplink is simply a code that you can place on a domain to promote the product. That way, when someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase, you will receive a commission. It’s a really good tracking tool.

Latterly , Clickbank added an additional tool called Hoplink Shield that adds privacy and security realize success in This is a very good tool because it hides your promotional systems from other people. Another reason that folk like Clickbank is that it’s got got an extraordinarily correct tracking tracking you bi-monthly. When you’re just starting out as a new affiliate, it’s important that you know your reports are going to be accurate and also that you will be paid on time. If you want to take your affiliate marketing campaigns to a higher level ( and who doesn’t? ) we highly advocate that you become a member of CB Quantum Control which is an interactive online marketing community.

This is a good spot place to find out all about affiliate marketing. You’ll be given all the tools and resources, help and support you need to achieve success. And best of all, CB Quantum Control actually tells you which Clickbank products are the most profitable. This takes the guesswork out of making those choices.

For any organization that wants to offer products or services that are highly focused and well targeted market research is important. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-

• Market research will help you better communicate - Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By asking the customer you not only show them that you care but you also take the guesswork out of customer services.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If a new service is planned and you want to know the attitudes people have then market research can help, not only by evaluating the potential for the new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be fine tuned.
• Market research will minimise risk - Market research can help shape a new product or service, identifying what is needed and ensure that the development of a product is highly focused towards demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress - You need to be able to measure so that you can ensure that your organization is always improving. Early research can identify flaws in your service or areas where a product needs to be improved, by conducting regular market research it will identify if improvements are being made and, if positive, will in turn help motivate a development team.

Considering the benefits that market research will bring to any organization it is perhaps surprising how few businesses invest sufficient resources to gather good intelligence that will help them improve business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

Your customers are demanding. They’re extremely media aware and increasingly cynical – it’s a clever marketeer who can get under their skin. Online surveys reinvent the traditional format – bringing all the benefits of the Internet without the programming. Here are ten reasons why they may be the silver bullet marketeers’ need, complete with examples supplied by Martin Day, managing director of Survey Galaxy - one of a new breed of websites making online surveys quicker and cheaper

1. It’s cheap
Select the right survey website and creating surveys can be free of any charge and the cost to publish very reasonable.
Useful information derived from survey analysis can be reused and repackaged in other marketing and PR for use in press outlets making it a very efficient form of information gathering.

2. It’s easy
Anyone can create and design an online survey. Online surveys are quick and simple to create and design, no programming skills are required and when publishing completing the surveys is straight forward.

3. Deployment options
Once the survey is online it’s a simple step to promote it, either through email (with a link enclosed), via a link from a website or referenced by other forms of advertising. Anyone who has the link can be connected instantly to the survey, at a time that’s convenient to them, 24×7.

4. We have an opinion – and we like to give it
Customers do not often view surveys as spam and the majority welcome the opportunity to voice their opinion and the chance to have an impact on a brand. They can be particularly good for change management projects; a survey asking a workforce on their opinion of change allows the key issues to be raised in a positive manner and encourages employee participation. Deliver a message to individuals and then have the feedback collated in a manageable form.

5. Get inside your respondent’s head
You can lead a customer to an advertisement but you can’t make them read it. Surveys engage the respondent, who think about the question before giving their response.

6. Seize the opportunity
It needn’t all end at the end of the survey – while you have the respondent’s attention and they are in the mood you can ask if they want to sign up for more information or a regular newsletter – making the most of the window of opportunity where you have their interest.

7. Have you also seen….
One of the most important benefits of a survey is the ability to make inspired or useful connections instantly to other areas. By embedding links within the survey you are able to reinforce the marketing message.

8. The soft sell
Use surveys to associate a product with its positive attributes. By listing the features of a product and asking the respondent to say how important they are to them, regardless of their response, the respondent will associate the product with the features.

9. Market, educate and gather market research
A survey is an effective, quick and easy method to promote and gain acceptance for a difficult proposal; maybe a public body trying to gain acceptance and support for a particular scheme.
Take the example of a city trying to gain support from the general public for their bid to host a future Olympic Games. A survey can explain each benefit putting the respondent in a much better position to appreciate what the real advantages are that might just combat any negative headlines. Using the feedback that is received the overall marketing strategy can be fine tuned.

10. Engage interest
Think laterally and a lively and imaginative approach to surveys can provide a ‘hook’ to engage respondents. The survey subject can be aimed at a particular group on a subject close to theirs hearts. The survey’s marketing message can take the form of a simple brand awareness message by stating that ‘the survey is being sponsored by brand name’, or by finding a link from the subject matter to the product – something that is surprisingly easy to do and that is highly effective.

Attract more people to your website by providing a Public Survey section as many people who enjoy completing crosswords and doing word puzzles enjoy completing surveys. Low cost and automated, having a public survey notice board as part of a website will help increase traffic and establish a loyal and returning following. Unlike discussion boards there is no opportunity for people to disrupt the site by inappropriate remarks as the survey results are displayed in summary form enabling them to dispense with moderators and maintenance.

Customers do not associate surveys as spam and most welcome the opportunity to make their voice heard and a chance to have an impact on a brand.

Many of the techniques and a few more are contained in the following Sample Marketing Survey.

There are a lot of people making a lot of money online from what is known as niche marketing.  So what exactly is niche marketing?  And what makes a niche attractive to market to?

A niche is basically a market within a market.  For example, take the renewable energy market.  A niche within the renewables market might be the solar power or wind energy market. But it is possible to go even further and actually target smaller sub niches that niche.  As an example, homemade wind generators would be a sub niche of the wind energy market.

The more targeted or smaller your niche is, the less traffic or visitors it will receive.  But, conversely, because the traffic you do get will be very closely aligned to your subject matter, it is likely to convert better with whatever it is you are marketing.

Niche marketing is about identifying a small targeted market and making money from it.  You can make money from a niche by selling them your own product, or by taking a commission for promoting someone else’s product.

But how can you find out whether or not a niche is likely to produce profits or not?  Here are some tips on how to find a niche

Well the niche needs to get enough traffic to ensure you make regular sales.  You can simply use Google’s own keyword tool to assess whether or not your niche gets enough visitors to make it worth while you building a site.

Another strong indicator of whether or not a niche has potentially enough visitors searching online looking to spend money, is to search to see how many existing products there are serving their needs. A good way to research products is to go to a site called Clickbank.

These are just a couple of very basic ways to research a niche.  To learn some very specific ways to find niches full of  eager buyers,  take a look at  my free niche marketing strategy blueprint today, it’s FREE!

Why bother?

The life blood of any business is good customer service. Although you should try and attract new customers good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and encourage repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where to start?

Objective - Before you start creating your survey clarify the objectives of the survey, in that way you will find it easier to decide what are the right questions to ask.

Analysis - When the survey is complete consider how you will analyse the answers.

Bare in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

Much will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to advertise areas of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analyzed will help you make informed decisions.

Next, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research - provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing - promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education - advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good feedback on the facility they provide but they will also advertise their baby changing facilities and promote themselves as a family friendly store beyond those customers who have a specific need for the facility provided.

Warts and all – to maximise the benefit from a customer survey you must be prepared to take criticism.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to identify any problem areas so that they can be fixed; conducting regular customer satisfaction will help prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where you may be losing business to your competitors initiatives.

What are the questions you should ask?

Although it is a given that each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication - Is it easy for your customers to communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If customers reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to confirm that your customers find all your staff to be helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.

Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?

Making it pleasant, making it easy - For an online business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – In addition to measuring the quality of the service that you provide you should ensure that the products and services that you provide match your customers’ requirements.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is rarely a good measure, value for money is.

Do your current customers consider your services as value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – The majority of customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?

Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is appreciated but it needs to be followed up with a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?

The better you understand your customers the more you will be able to properly target your business.

Within the survey encourage customers to highlight their problems and provide contact details.

What next?

Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.

Trends – Identify specific and common areas where the customer service is failing.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where staff training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.

Do not squander the opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor - Make changes and then measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.

As the years have passed us by and the internet has grown in substantial numbers, it was inevitable that many people would eventually find a way to work from home. Working from home is the chance of a lifetime for individuals who wish to put their nose to the grindstone and really look towards the future and work towards their dreams.

The industry which has allowed people to work form their homes and quit their day jobs, is known as internet marketing. Internet marketing in a nutshell, is the very basis for which high income is earned on the internet. There are many faces to this kind of marketing and it is only a new branch evolving off of the centuries old business model. Internet marketing has grown greatly in the past 10 years and received a lot of attention from the media.

Marketing via the internet is done through the use of a website and selling the products of another person, company, or selling your own products. Perhaps you may want to start an internet marketing campaign but you have no idea what you want to do. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Any essential online business whether it is involved in the sale of digital or physical goods, membership sites or one time services, has to follow a few core principles. Those core principles include starting off with a quality product to sell. If you do not have a product of your own, then start out by selling someone elses stuff. These are the two basics principles of getting started.

Without visitors though, your website will not earn a lot of money. Visitors to your website are in fact not just visitors. They are folks with wants and worries just like you have. They are people like yourself. They want to solve their problems quickly and easily. So as it stands, we have to provide them with a solution. By presenting a quality solution to the problems your customers have, you will become an authority in their eyes. It isn’t hard, it just takes some planning.

The helpful tip here is to provide quality information to your customer base. This is how you can work from home and earn a full time living for yourself. Keep working towards your goal. By using both paid and free advertising, you will allow yourself to expand your market. These services are the most used on the internet, simply because they work very well.

Pay per click is the method of paying for each visitor that comes to your website. You set the amount you want to pay. Search engine optimization on the other hand, allows you to pay some money to get your website ranking well, and then your visitors are free once your website is ranking in the natural search results. Combine these two methods and you have a recipe for success.

Do you want to market your business on the World Wide Web?

The vast majority of marketing research shows that Internet banner ads are very ineffective. Internet classifieds also seem to be ineffective. The most effective method of publicity on the Internet is — far and away — the simple, uncomplicated textual link. Banner advertising is perceived as nothing more than blatant  promotion and web site visitors tend to simply brush it aside. Conversely, when online visitors read an “in context” or “contextual” link, they perceive this much like a personal recommendation from a friend or business superstar. These tendencies are even more noticeable in a small city like Charlottesville, VA.

A properly constructed and marketed web site offers area firms a very inexpensive yet highly effective method to…

* promote 24/7 without the exalted costs of print ads
* update information as the need arises not when your ad contract is up!
* get one up on local competitors who refuse to leave the offline advertising arena
* nurture and develop existing relationships with current clients
* encourage regular purchases/contracts
* cement client lifetime loyalty
* build new clients

That is… if you go about it properly… You simply need to know how to market your offline business online.

If you go out for a meal or enjoy seeing a particularly well-done movie, don’t you want tell all of your friends how extraordinary it was? Sure you do! We all do this. It’s natural.

The simple text link influences us in the same way.

For example, the next two sentences use several of the internet’s most competitive keyword phrases, yet neither seems to be a blatant advertisement: “In my opinion, the absolute best internet marketing services in Charlottesville, Virginia, can be found at Top Rated Web Pages, a small locally-owned company. I have discovered their SEO service (Search Engine Optimization service) to be excellent and, as their name implies, “top rated” in all respects.”

Online Marketing For Local Businesses

Internet Marketing, SEO consulting  and Search Engine Optimization are, for most offline business owners, quite akin to black magic, where the merchandising sorcerers act upon a web visitor’s subconscious to impose upon them uncontrollable desires for certain products or services. In a college town like Charlottesville, Virginia, finding experienced marketing help can be difficult at best. Even though Charlottesville — the home of the UVA — is a genuinely sophisticated and hi-tech university town, qualified online marketing services could be difficult to come by. Fortunately, the experts at Top Rated Web Pages are there to help!

Search engine spiders, also know as robots or bots, enjoy gobbling-up internet content, and so do your online visitors. Content is one of the most important facets of attracting the multitude to your internet site, and helping them to ascertain the value in what you are offering. The question you need to ask is: “How could I generate visitors who will come to my web site to check-out my content?Search engines are the best place to start since they are hungry for the same thing: CONTENT.

Therefore, if you want to put up top rated web pages, simply offer the search engines what it is they’re hungry for — content! The search engines will, in turn, give their visitors what they’re hungry for — content!

Finally, you’ll get what you want: a LOT of new traffic — IF you understand how to find Internet Marketing Services.

Creating multiple streams of income is a great way to create internet marketing wealth. It is a lot simpler to earn a dollar from one hundred different sites than it is to create one site that makes a hundred dollars per day! By creating multiple streams of income you ensure your online business keeps making you money for a long time without the worry of what happens if one income source should dry up. If you put all your eggs in one basket you're just looking for trouble.

Longer term risk can also be reduced further by building sites in multiple niches. The great thing about this type of niche strategy is that there is so much information already freely available on the net on any subject, you don’t have to be an expert on any subject to create a successful site. You can use other people’s expertise and knowledge. I even use other people to create the content for my sites!

The secret to success is being able to get traffic to each of the sites you create. If you can pull in regular traffic to each new site, you can make money from adsense or affiliate marketing day after day, with very little further work.

As an affiliate niche marketer it’s rather simple to set up multiple streams of income because there are an abundance of different affiliate programs in any niche with quality products available for promotion. With most niches you’ll likely even be able to find goods that complement each other instead of compete. This is an exceptional way to reinforce your affiliate earnings.

By publishing several basic sites in a number of different niches, you will be able to promote lots of related affilliate products simoultaneously. If you build lists of email subscribers from each site, you’ll be able to promote several products to each subscriber across the sites, significantly increasing your affiliate returns.

Soon you’ll have multiple streams of affiliate income in several different niches producing passive income on auto-pilot.