Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

This article was inspired from a post at the Warrior Forum today. The question was a simple one. If you have a whole bunch of articles to submit, should you submit them all at once or a little at a time? This question actually got me thinking. I always submit articles one at a time, but if I was outsourcing and getting articles written for me, would I still do the same? This article takes a look at this issue.

There are certainly advantages to releasing a whole bunch of articles at one time, provided that the articles are well written and actually attract readers. Many articles can bring a ton of traffic at once. Quite simply, let’s say John Doe reads five articles that you release in one day. He doesn’t like four of them but one of them really hits him and makes him want to go to your site. By submitting just one article, he may have not read the one he liked and then, never read another article of yours again if submitted at a later date. So by casting a wider net, you have a chance to get more traffic quicker.

However, here is why I would still personally stagger the articles. Let’s say I submit them all at once and then later on find out that something covered in all the articles changed. I have now wasted all those articles. They’re out there and gone. But, it I submit one article and then a few days later find out that a piece of info in the remaining articles changed, I can go and correct the articles I didn’t submit before I go to submit them down the road.

Also, by staggering your articles, you get to see how they perform, little by little. Maybe you notice something about them that makes you decide to change something in your later articles. Maybe you stumbled on a certain title tactic that works great. You can then change the titles in your later articles to take advantage of that tactic. If you submit everything at once, you’re taking your chances that ALL your articles are going to perform well.

So as you can see, there is good and bad to submitting articles all at once. My suggestion is to try doing both and see what works better for you.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Sick of not getting your articles read? Fed up with resource boxes that don’t get the job done? Want to write articles that will turn you into a killer article marketer? Get my book on article writing and marketing located at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html - This is my own book written from over 30 years of writing experience.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this may be the most shocking article anybody ever read coming from me, a die hard article marketer. Well, one thing I’m not is a dreamer. I look at things quite realistically and call them for what they are. So that’s what I’m doing here. If you want to know the real truth about article marketing in 2010, read this. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Let me start off by saying no, article marketing isn’t dead. But it is certainly on life support. Shocked to hear me say that? Well, it gets worse. But in order to understand why, you need to get a little history on article marketing.

Up until about 2007 or so, very few marketers knew about article marketing. It wasn’t considered a really big way to get traffic. But the smart folks knew that content was, and always will be king on the Internet. So they wrote articles, put them on their sites and also started submitting to directories, like the one you’re at right now reading this.

Then Travis Sago came out with Bum Marketing, which is essentially a simple method for writing articles and making money from affiliate marketing…and the sky fell down…literally. Every marketer and their grandmother started doing Bum Marketing. Suddenly, article directory traffic started to skyrocket, which was great for the directories. Not so great for the other marketers.

See, one problem with Bum Marketing, no offense to Travis who is a great guy, is that it leaves a lot of room for abuse. What kind of abuse? Well, crappy articles to say the least. You should see some of the dreck that so called article marketers put out. It got to the point where the article directories with any standards at all had to change minimum word counts, ban certain categories and even get rid of many writers.

But the damage had been done. Look up just about any topic at all these days and you’ll find more articles on that topic than you can shake a stick at. The competition has gone through the roof. The days of writing an article, submitting it, and getting 300 quick views are gone. That same article, today, gets maybe 30 views before it dies a quick death.

Therefore, in order to get more traffic from their articles, ironically, article marketers have to generate traffic TO their articles. So all kinds of shady things go on that I won’t mention in this article because I don’t want to give anybody any ideas. Point is, the “by the book” article marketer is behind the 8 ball. He’s competing with countless of marketers doing whatever they can to increase those views.

If I had to start all over today, and didn’t want to stoop down to the level of some of these people, I’d probably be a total failure as an article marketer. Fortunately for me, many of my old articles still bring in a good number of views each month and account for my 10 to 20 opt ins each day.

I told you this article was going to shock the hell out of you. But that is the state of article marketing today.

Having said that, if you pick good niches, do your keyword research, write quality articles, construct killer resource boxes and have an offer that is close to impossible to pass up, you can still make some money as an article marketer.

As much as 4 years ago?

In my opinion, no.

The golden age of article marketing is gone.

But it was fun while it lasted.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Sick of not getting your articles read? Fed up with resource boxes that don’t get the job done? Want to write articles that will turn you into a killer article marketer? Get my book on article writing and marketing located at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html - This is my own book written from over 30 years of writing experience.

There is no doubt about it. It’s not 2006 anymore and the glory days of article marketing are long dead and gone. Long live article marketing. I know this article is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, but somebody has got to let you in on the real deal or you’re going to be working under a premise that simply doesn’t exist anymore. While I can’t possibly cover everything in this article, I will cover the main areas where things have changed…drastically.

For one thing, if you’re submitting articles to article directories, the standards have changed. Directories are a lot stricter today than they were years ago. For example, I just recently edited an article from a few years back by changing the resource box. When I went to resubmit, even though the article itself didn’t change, it was initially rejected because the keyword percentage was 2.8%. Years ago, this was fine. But now, with Google cracking down on keyword saturation, anything above 2% is toast. So I had to do some keyword cutting to get the article approved. So standards themselves have gone up.

In addition to that, the niches themselves have become more saturated. There are more article marketers out there than ever before. So you have more people fighting for the same piece of the pie, or in some cases, even less of the pie where markets have actually decreased in demand.

Then of course you have competition from other sources of promotion. You have things like Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo and other web 2.0 platforms that are making it harder for article directories to rank. Years ago, if you found an article on a particular subject, it was most likely from an article directory. Today, that isn’t necessarily the case. You have a lot of niches where your top results are now video and NOT articles at all. YouTube has become a powerhouse for the SERPs for many niches that used to be dominated by articles.

And the above is just the tip of the iceberg. In short, article marketing is no longer just that. It has now become content marketing where you need to take your articles and re-purpose them in many ways, including turning them into free PDF downloads and even videos.

If you’re going to play the old article marketing game the way it used to be played back in 2006, you are going to lose that game. You’re going to need to step things up and ramp things up.

Those who don’t are going to be left behind.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Sick of not getting your articles read? Fed up with resource boxes that don’t get the job done? Want to write articles that will turn you into a killer article marketer? Get my book on article writing and marketing located at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html - This is my own book written from over 30 years of writing experience.

I am going to refrain my mentioning any names or sites in this article because I don’t want to take the risk that it won’t get published. But what I have to say needs to be heard and it needs to be understood by every article marketer out there. What you are about to read is a true story. The names have been left out to protect the guilty and the criminally stupid. Let’s begin.

Just today, I was reading a thread at a favorite forum of mine. It seems that the person who started the thread was complaining about submitting an article to an article directory and having the article rejected, not because of the content of the article itself, but because the site pointed to in the resource box had content that the article directory objected to. I hope I made that clear enough.

Now, before I go on any further, if you read the TOS of any article directory, it will state that they have the right to reject any article for any reason at all. The reason they don’t publish a complete list of reasons is because if they do that, any wannabe lawyer could argue that the reason the article was rejected is NOT in the list. So they make this pretty vague. Bottom line is simple. Any article directory can reject your article for any reason…like it or not.

Well, this person, who had their article rejected, went on to say that this was censorship…that they were censoring their site. Okay, obviously this person needs to look up the definition of censorship in the dictionary because they don’t have a clue. Their site was not removed from the Internet. Heck, it wasn’t even removed from the search engines. The article directory simply doesn’t want to be associated with the site in question. That is not censorship. It is simply policy. But of course the Internet wannabe lawyers will make it into something it’s not.

So here is your tip. Take it for what it’s worth to you. If you want to do article marketing and want to submit your articles to article directories, read the TOS of that directory BEFORE you submit your article to them. You will most likely find a section that says that they can reject your article for ANY reason they see fit. Any reason means just that…ANY reason. This is not censorship. It is simply directory policy. If you don’t like the policy, submit your article someplace else. It’s that simple.

Article marketing through another person’s site is not a right. It’s a privilege.

Some people have a problem with that concept.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Sick of not getting your articles read? Fed up with resource boxes that don’t get the job done? Want to write articles that will turn you into a killer article marketer? Get my book on article writing and marketing located at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html – This is my own book written from over 30 years of writing experience.

I hear this complaint all the time. “Nobody reads my articles.” Well, did you ever think that maybe one of the reasons why nobody reads your articles is because there is no heart in them? Be honest. Are you writing about something that you’re truly passionate about, or are you writing just to make a buck? If it’s the latter, sometimes, unless you’re REALLY good, people see right through it. So unless you can write from the heart, you’re going to run into the same problem over and over again.

Okay, I know what you’re going to say. “But I can only write about what people ask me to write about.” I am assuming of course that you write articles for other people for a living. Well, okay. That’s a fair point. After all, if you’re interested in music but everybody comes to you to write articles about spyware removal, it’s pretty hard to get pumped up about that. So what do you do? Well, you have two choices.

Choice number one, and granted it’s not much of a choice, is to turn down the job. Hey, who says you have to take on every job that comes your way? I turned down lots of jobs when I used to freelance because I didn’t want to write on the subject. Naturally, if you’re not getting many jobs that you like, or at all, you can only be so picky. Most people just starting out can’t be picky at all. So that brings us to choice number two.

Get passionate about whatever it is you’re writing about. Make it a game. See if you can research the heck out of the subject and become a true authority on it. Impress your friends and family with your newfound knowledge. I used to love saying to my wife, at the end of a long day of writing, “Hey did you know that…” and give her some oddball fact about something. It made me feel so smart. If you can’t motivate yourself for the client, find another way. Showing off for my wife did it for me.

Point is, if you don’t write from your heart, your articles are going to sound boring and lifeless. People are going to get half way through them and wish they were someplace else. Can you blame them? Think about it. The last thing YOU want to do is write the darn article in the first place. So why should anybody want to read it? I sure wouldn’t. And I doubt many others would feel the same way.

And if nobody is reading the articles you’re writing for others OR yourself, you’re going to stop getting customers and if you DO write for yourself in order to get traffic to your site or whatever, you’re going to stop getting visitors as well. Everything will suffer.

You have a heart. Use it!

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to write articles that get people’s attention and can earn you up to $200 per article written? Then check out my Complete Article Writing And Marketing Guide that you can find at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html – This is my own book that I wrote from over 30 years of writing experience.

This article was inspired by a rant at the Warrior Forum about article writers and how they’re working for slave wages. Yeah, I know what he means. So I want to thank Nathan Segal for lighting a fire under my behind and getting me to write this article. This is addressed to all you people who are undervaluing your work. You are doing yourself and this whole industry a disservice and it has to stop. Keep reading if you have the stomach for what’s going to come next.

It’s no secret that article writing is very big thanks to many Internet marketers who have turned article marketing into a big business. As a result, for those marketers who don’t want to write themselves, they turn to freelancers to write for them. Problem is, the rates that many article writers are charging for their articles are slave labor rates. I mean for crying out loud…$3 for a 500 word article? I can make more than that working at a Burger King saying “Would you like fries with your Whopper?”

Enough is enough people.

It’s time to start charging what you’re worth. And quite honestly, if you don’t do that, you’re not a writer and don’t belong writing for a living. I’m dead serious. You people who are writing $3 articles are killing this business and it has to stop. And you know what I’ve discovered? The people who DO charge $3 for a 500 word article usually have the writing skills of a parrot. So yes, they have NO business writing for others. It’s stinking up, not only the writing profession, but the article marketing business itself. No wonder article directories have to trash most of the crap submitted to them.

So, here’s my question to you. Are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution? Because quite honestly, if you’re going to be part of the problem, I don’t want to know you. Blunt enough?

Okay, for those of you who WANT to be part of the solution and want to charge more for your articles but don’t know how, it’s very simple. First, make a portfolio of your work. Let people see the quality of your writing. Then, set a fee for a standard 500 word article and stand by it. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, should be writing for less than 10 cents a word. That’s $50 for a 500 word article. The person who wants the article doesn’t want to pay it, let them go somewhere else.

You WILL get people who will pay for quality.

It’s time for this madness to stop.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to write articles that get people’s attention and can earn you up to $200 per article written? Then check out my Complete Article Writing And Marketing Guide that you can find at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html – This is my own book that I wrote from over 30 years of writing experience.

If you’re an article marketer, you’ve probably heard all the stories about click through rate (CTR) and wonder why, when people are reporting CTR of 50%, you’re lucky to get one that’s 20%. Well, there are several reasons for that. But the biggest one is that these people claiming rates of 50% are simply full of it. What you just heard is the sound of about a dozen article marketers getting ready to send me some nasty emails. So be it. But the truth needs to be told.

Article marketers, especially the ones who are trying to sell you their hottest article marketing “how to” are out to do just that…sell you something. And they think that in order to do that, they have to jack up their click through rates. Well, I have a news flash for you. Most of these rates are bogus. The ones that aren’t, well…there are reasons.

One of the biggest reasons for initial high CTR is your competitors. That’s right. You come up with a new article and maybe a new resource box and your competitors will want to know what it is that you’re selling so that they can maybe take your idea and create their own product from it or, if it’s an affiliate product, sell it themselves. This explains the initial high rate. After a while though, when you start to get more REAL visitors, you will notice your rates go down.

Another reason for high rate reports is that many articles just don’t get a lot of views. Think about it. If you have an article with just five views, three clicks gives you a CTR of 60%. But the percent means nothing because the number of clicks themselves are meaningless. Remember the old saying…lies, damn lies and statistics. Anybody can skew numbers to make it look like something more than what it is.

So what does this all mean? Essentially, this. Don’t worry about CTR so much. If you can get a 10 to 15% click through on your articles that is real, you’re doing well. What matters more is how those clicks translate into income. I’d rather have a rate of 10% in a niche that makes me a good income than a rate of 40% that hardly brings me any real visitors at all.

At the end of the day, it’s how many real prospects you’ve gotten to your opt in page, sales page or autoresponder…whatever you may be using. So the next time you hear big claims about 50% CTR, take it with a grain of salt. Because more likely than not, those claims are more fantasy than fact.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to really increase your income through article marketing? Check out my book at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html and turn yourself into a real article marketing pro like me.

Some people just cannot come up with ideas for articles no matter how hard they try. Well, if you’re one of those folks, this article writing tactic is so simple that I don’t know why other people don’t use it. I call it “reporting the news.” If you wonder what I’m talking about, keep reading. You’ll get it.

Okay, so you want to write an article about car alarms. You know nothing about them. But here is what you DO know. Tons of people have written articles about car alarms. Now, I’m not saying you read their articles and steal their work. No, not at all. However, is so and so has written some great stuff on car alarms, why not let the rest of the world know about it?

Doing this is simple and legal as long as you cite references and give credit to the actual authors. In essence, what you’re doing is reporting the news. For example, let’s say John Doe wrote an article on car alarms that appeared in the January issue of Car and Driver or whatever magazine it was in. You might want to write something like this.

“In the January issue of Car and Driver, John Doe mentions that car alarms are…” and then go on to tell people what John Doe said in the article. You’re simply reporting the facts that other people have shared with the rest of the world. Compile enough of these facts from various authors and you have more than enough info for an entire article.

Think about it. When you open up a newspaper and read a news story, isn’t that what these reporters are doing? They’re taking an event and telling people what happened at the event. You’re simply reporting what other people have reported and citing your source. As long as you use citations and give credit, you’re fine. The problems arise when you DON’T cite where you got your sources from and make people think that you came up with this research all on your own.

Yeah, it’s a lazy way to write an article and should only be used when you’re absolutely stuck for ideas, but it is a valid technique and perfectly legal as long as everybody knows where you got your information from. In fact, by mentioning these people and their sources, you’re giving them exposure as well. I’ve written a few articles in my day citing sources that ended up bringing these people lots of traffic to their sites…traffic that they ultimately thanked me for.

So it’s a win-win for both parties. Just make sure you include ALL references.

Next time you’re stuck for ideas, give the “reporting” method a shot.

The person at the receiving end just might thank you for the extra readership.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to write articles that get people’s attention and can earn you up to $200 per article written? Then check out my Complete Article Writing And Marketing Guide that you can find at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html – This is my own book that I wrote from over 30 years of writing experience.

For the sake of protecting the innocent, and the guilty, no names will be mentioned in this article. However, just recently, a fairly well known and successful Internet marketer painted article marketers with a very broad stroke of the brush, essentially calling them all a bunch of spammers and a lot worse. Well, it’s time to set the record straight on this in defense of legitimate article marketers.

It should probably come as no surprise that these comments are made. After all, there are a number of article marketers who, unfortunately, do break quite a few rules in the process. Forget about the fact that they can’t write their way out of a paper bag. Add that to the mass submissions of poorly spun articles and you end up with the mess that the marketer in question was referring to. But to paint all marketers with that same brush is quite unfair.

Even more unfair is what the person said about article marketing in particular, that it was an inefficient way of getting traffic. So let me address that point right here and now.

Are there quicker ways to get traffic to your site? Of course there are. I can name three off the top of my head…pay per click, ad buys and joint ventures. However, these have their drawbacks…especially for those who are either just starting out, short on cash, or both.

Pay per click and ad buys cost money…lots of money. To make any decent return on investment, you need to spend at least $100 per day. Tell that to somebody who is just about able to afford their rent when suggesting that they use pay per click. But it’s even more than just the cost that’s a problem.

With pay per click, you have an incredible learning curve that even some seasoned vets have trouble with. You have keyword selection, geographical targeting, ad writing itself and the quality of the landing page you’re sending people to. Any of these things can turn you pay per click campaign into a total disaster. Ad buys are just flat out expensive…period.

What about joint ventures? Well, try getting one when you have no name and no product. Affiliate marketers have very little to offer when seeking a joint venture. And even product creators, unless they already have a reputation, will have a hard time getting somebody to promote their product for them to their mega list.

Article marketing takes time. There is no question about that. It’s not an overnight thing…especially when done legitimately and not like the marketer in question alluded to in his rant. Yes, the mass submitters and garbage writers give us all a bad name. But that’s true with any type of marketing.

Bottom line is simple though. There is no cheaper way to build traffic to your site than through writing articles. But you should be doing more than just writing articles and submitting them to article directories. You should do these, among other things.

Put articles on your own blog.

Write articles for other blogs as a guest author.

Package articles together as a free report and give it away.

Turn your articles into an autoresponder series for your list.

And there is a lot more that you can do with your articles. The above list is just the tip of the iceberg. However, you do not have to resort to spam and writing garbage.

I took offense at the broad strokes but I also saw the point. Yes, this industry needs a lot of cleaning up.

How about doing YOUR part?

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

Sick of not getting your articles read? Fed up with resource boxes that don’t get the job done? Want to write articles that will turn you into a killer article marketer? Get my book on article writing and marketing located at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html – This is my own book written from over 30 years of writing experience.

A question I sometimes get asked is how article writing is different from other kinds of writing. As a writer of fiction in the offline world, I had an interesting transition to writing articles for the Internet. So I’m going to try to explain what the difference is and why offline writers might have trouble adapting to writing articles for the Internet. You might find this interesting reading.

For those who don’t know, I’d written quite a lot offline for many years before I hit the Internet. I wrote plays, songs, short stories, TV scripts, novels and poetry. I spent most of my life writing fiction…and loving every minute of it. It was something that came naturally to me. Then I hit the Internet for the purpose of making a living with my writing as an article writer and suddenly…everything changed. I didn’t have nearly the success that I had in the offline world. But why? Well, I have a couple of theories on that.

First of all, there is a big difference between writing fiction and writing a factual article. With fiction, you are not at all limited to what you can write. You can let your imagination run completely wild with you. With article writing, you are limited to the facts and opinions of the subject matter. This restriction can make it harder for some people to write a compelling article.

Another difference is the end result. With fiction, whether it’s a play, short story, novel or whatever, the actual reading or viewing of the work is the final result. That’s all you want to get out of it. If the person doesn’t like the work, oh well…they still viewed it. With an article, especially if you’re writing for the purpose of getting people to your site and making money from your writing, if they don’t like your writing, they’re either not going to hire you as a writer or buy your product.

So with article writing, there is more at stake because you are trying to achieve more. This is why I personally found article writing much more difficult. With fiction, you only had to convince one person to publish your work. With article writing, to be profitable at it, you have to convince a whole lot of people to buy your product or hire you for your services. It’s just not the same animal.

If you are an imaginative person like myself, you will probably find fiction a lot easier to write. If you are a more logical person, you will probably find article writing easier. A lot will depend on your personality. But make no mistake about it. There is a big difference between writing fiction and writing articles.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to write articles that get people’s attention and can earn you up to $200 per article written? Then check out my Complete Article Writing And Marketing Guide that you can find at http://www.honestincomeprogram.com/tcawamg.html – This is my own book that I wrote from over 30 years of writing experience.